Truth Parlor

Archive for the ‘Life Lessons’ Category

By guest blogger: Big J-oda

California Transplant

I am a transplant from California. Like many life-long Californians I’d had grown dismayed as my beloved state became overcrowded, dirty and hopelessly expensive. I was driving around the parking lot of a family-owned video store one Saturday and I kept going in circles looking for a parking spot. Around and around I went. After almost 10 minutes, I gave up and decided I needed to move. This was not just a spontaneous decision. I had been growing restless and discontented for some time: the half-hour commute to travel less than one mile on Pacific Coast Highway, the endless lines at the movie theatre, the cost of booze – it all added up to less and less fun; more mind-numbing routines of waiting.

About the time I had steeled my resolve to move, I was seduced by a young Chinese woman from Carrollton who just happened to work for American Airlines. We met on the internet before it became the socially cool thing to do. Back then, you had to be married or ugly to be desperate enough to go looking for love online. Though, truthfully, I think we both wanted to just get laid.

She flew me out to Texas for about $20 bucks, forced me to drink alcohol, then got me naked and said seven magic words I will never forget (more on these words in a later post). Three days later I emerged from a hotel room not sure whether to call the authorities and report a kidnapping (and subsequent sexual molestation) or call my small circle of friends back in Long Beach and brag about my physical prowess.

It got me thinking: Texas might not be all that bad a place after all.

Everything IS Bigger in Texas

A year later I had bought a car, sold almost everything I owned, quit my job, gave my cat to my mom (which she refuses to give back), and moved to Texas. I remember thinking on the plane trip out that I didn’t care what I did for money when I got out here, I was just glad to be leaving California. I got a job through a temp agency working for TXU as a billing accountant with unlimited overtime. The first thing I noticed about the people of Texas is that they are fatter than Californians – much fatter.

I had always thought of beefy farm boys who do nothing but lug bales of hay and play football when I thought of Texans. As for women, I imagined bleach-blonde Jessica Simpson types and slightly older MILFS in expensive homes whose kitchens all have center-islands. Instead, I saw women with pale skin and puffy red cheeks taking small steps back into their cubicles, consoling themselves with their short walk with a bag of chips and a Diet Coke. The guys were no better off: huge, rolling pot-bellies under a set of soft breasts big and round enough to put my wife’s to shame. These guys had legs thicker than my abdomen and would sweat walking up a flight of steps, breathing out of their mouths with each thundering foot-fall.

I was horrified by this, not so much socially as by the prospect of what lie not so far ahead for these poor souls. Keep in mind that I had just come from California where I had immersed myself in a 2-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week routine of self-improvement at the gym that left my muscles punished but proud.

To be sure, such people existed in California. But back there, one simply didn’t seem them so much and there was always an emphasis on healthy living, despite the smog and frequent drive-by shootings. There were some 30 plus Max Muscle stores where a person could buy any dietary supplement his hardening kidneys could desire. In Texas, there were two such stores … and one of those went out of business six months after I moved here.

It is a stretch to link obesity to the culture of the South, though if I suggest the southern diet might be a cause it is less of an exercise… Given the multiplicity of Barbecue Joints, Mega-Sized Whataburger drive-thru chains, and a culture of home cookin’ and apple pie, the size factor fit my addled cliché of what I thought southern folk might look like. Sometimes I wish there was a Trader Joe’s out here: Whole Foods is 20 miles away…

Stupid Texas Hillbilly Laws

Not too long ago, a cop in one of the mid-cities (one of the innumerable cities between Dallas and Fort Worth collectively known as the Metroplex for those of you who aren’t local folk) pulled a woman over for erratic driving, noticed a box of funny looking toys in the back of the truck and promptly arrested her for – get this – possession of dildos with intent to sell – a felony. A felony!? Selling sex toys in Texas is okay as long as the toy is promoted as a novelty. But if you demonstrate how to actually use one, you run afoul of obscenity laws. Possess too many and that’s a crime, too. I can’t begin to fathom how backwater and anachronistic this kind of thinking is, not to mention the absurd zeal of a cop actually arresting someone for it. This type of law makes Texas a national laughingstock to just about everyone under the age of 75, unless of course grandma had an affinity for self-gratification.

I can see a rational basis for it from a social control point, though. After all, what is more revolutionary than a free expression of one’s self through sex? Control the masses at every junction – even, or, especially – in the bedroom, and China-style authoritarianism isn’t too far behind…

I like to drink. In fact if there weren’t so many social, economical, emotional, mental, physical, financial, and medical problems associated with it, I’d probably spend all my free time drunk (and writing here, of course). In California, there is at least one liquor store every quarter block or so and they are always open – at least they are open as late as I need them to be which is about BAC 1.2… Here in the Metroplex liquor sales are only allowed in a very narrow strip of geographically isolated areas. This requirement is part of Texas’s blue laws. A blue law is designed to enforce a moral code, usually restricting activity and commerce on Sundays to allow for religious worship. So instead of driving to the local 7-11 for a pint of Evan Williams, I have to drive to either Dallas or Fort Worth. And since it is such a far drive, rather than buy a pint I’ll buy a few liters and really stock up. Nothing like restricting alcohol sales to make everyone stock up. Stand around inside a barn-sized Metroplex liquor outlet and watch some of these customers. You’d think there was a war coming. Of course, while you are there you can get good and tanked sampling the latest vodka or whiskey from the attractive sales reps who are always available handing out booze samples with the same freedom of a matronly Sam’s club employee handing out turkey burger samples. On Sunday you can’t buy beer before noon and all liquor stores are closed. So are the car dealers. That lobbying group alone should be strong enough to purge the scourge of these laws from the Texas penal code, but so far Sunday is still all about God.

I bought my last Nissan on a Wednesday.

Racism in Texas

I sell real estate and on more than one occasion I had a client who said, “I don’t want to live around any niggers.” The first time I heard this I recited my ‘race-is-a-federally-protected-status-in-real-estate transactions-so-if-you-have-concerns-about-the-racial-make-up-of-a-neighborhood-you-will-have-to-investigate-it-yourself-I-am-prohibited-from-discussing-it’ speech. I was shocked. Not by the fact the woman was a racist. Everyone nowadays has had some exposure to this simpleton’s kind of sentiment. Even a lily-white guy like me who graduated from a high-school whose 997 students distributed across four grades consisted of only two black people had heard the n-word long before the OJ trial.

What shocked me was the unrepentant part. There was no attempt to parse or hide her feelings, as though this was not an uncommon request in finding a home. “You know, I’d like tile in the bathrooms, a two-car garage, a deck, a pool, hardwood floors and no niggers.” Now I know it’s not fair to assume from one person that racism has its roots in Texas, but I’m fairly certain the KKK was born in the deep south and at least in my mind it’s damn hard to attribute lynchings and white hoods with the anything other than a group of angry rednecks trolling through the backwoods of [pick your favorite southern state] looking for some unlucky black kid to hang from a tree. Honestly, have we not progressed at all in the last 50 years?

I worked with this woman or more specifically, her husband, for almost a year before I found a home large enough and inexpensive enough to make them happy. And wouldn’t you know it, right across the street working on an old Chevy truck propped up on concrete blocks was a homeowner wearing overalls who was as black as Wesley Snipes. No joke.

For all I know, the two ended up fucking each other.

The Truth

Don’t misinterpret my words. I like Texas. I’ve been here for seven years and in all that time I have not had a desire to go back to California once, not even for a day. This is my home. I live five minutes from a lake and anyone can buy a house for $100K. I write this because some of the biggest leaders of this state try to position Texas as a progressive, modern state that is not some backwater hickville mired in the misdeeds of the past…

This is not true.

Texas is a Deep South State, it always has been. And that’s okay with me. There are parts of this state that are as progressive as anywhere: from the confines of Austin to the explosion of lofts in downtown Dallas to the avante garde restaurants on lower Greenville Avenue, Texas has evolved beyond its clichéd history, but there are still hurdles to climb. I will be watching and writing and I hope the next time someone says he or she doesn’t want to live around niggers, that person will say it with a little less pride.

[ad#in-post-image-ad]Well, it’s been an exciting month to say the least. My 30 Day Challenge this year was full of awesome surprises, from the cool new automation software to the efficiency of my own skills with building new niche sites. However, even though I’ve popped in once in a while, I haven’t been fully present, but that is over (at least for another year).

There have been a few major projects in the works that you should anticipate very shortly:

1. I have my amazing new Template Store currently up and running for those of you who have been asking me for a solution, but what’s even more exciting is that by the end of this month you will also have:

• FREE Templates – Simple and easy to use.
• Create Your Own Templates – this is sooo easy!
• Cost Conscious Templates – Sexy templates on a shoe string budget!

2. My Appointment Calendar will allow you to schedule consultation times online. I’m still working to get that confirmed in real time, but one thing you all know I’m not the best at is coding and this  site in particular revolves around doing all the coding myself.

3. HUNDREDS of FREE legal forms will be released shortly for use in your businesses. They are all the human resources forms I used almost daily in my brick & mortar businesses. I’m now making them available to you. Look for these my mid-May.

4. Insight into the Top 10 Coaches that also Twitter.

5. Discussions about Polygamy (have some family here from Thailand and the hubby has 2 wives) so this has been an interesting couple of days. I myself wouldn’t mind some help around the house! Oh wait, they actually hired servants for that.

6. Discussions about Pot: Do you think we should legalize it? Are you pro 420? Or against? And why?

Oh, & don’t forget to cast your vote in the poll on the sidebar!

7. Ok, if we’re going to talk about Polygamy & Pot, we also need the 3rd “P”: Prostitution. Should we legalize it or not? Why?

8. Oh-I should really do this, so I’ll give you my info on the Top 3 Affiliate programs that have been a smashing hit this year for me.

Ok folks, we have lots to cover so let’s get to it…