Writing for writing's sake as well as for Self Improvement's. Try it (as experiment) you might like it. The experimental is neither an unconditional virtue nor an unconditional vice. It is, rather, an invaluable tool for personal growth and development --for Objectively selfish personal growth and development, that is.

If reading this "article" proves to be too much "work" for you, I ask you ahead of time to forgive me and chalk it all up to, "an experiment", albeit, one that failed.

Thanks.

Since I started this particular ABOUT ME section on amazon.com's book reviewers file by the same name but due to amazon limits won't be able to finish it there, I am going to have to use themestream.com to finish it up. I could use my own website: gdeering.com but I want to try and do it this way --jump between amazon.com and themestream.com-- to see if I can overcome the writing limitations of one source (amazon's) by using the much less limited writing capabilities of another source (themestream's). (For the ultimate in unlimited writing capabilities afforded one on the Internet visit and explore my web site as Guest: click on author web site button at the end of this article.)

In order to start at the beginning to this article --assuming you aren't coming from there (amazon.com)-- you will have to click on and go to the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451147952/

and then find my (Gary Deering's) review (January 1, 1999, captioned: Myth Mashing of the highest order) of this book ("Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", by Ayn Rand, et al) and then click on my name there and read the ABOUT ME file. This file starts:

Then in there you will get to a point where you have to come back here. When you do you can continue with the following. Notice that the first two paragraphs overlap...

I wonder (now, not then but now) is this what Objectivism means when it says we should live on principles? (...or should that be, by principles?, we should live by principles). Proctorially speaking, to live ON them could be a mistake, but BY them would be OK, maybe even good. Hey, I like this idea. My new principle is this: the next time some ã-hole professor from England tries to STEAL two points from me, --and here's the principle-- I am going to protest.*

(My significant Ayn Rand says I (one) should NOT use obscenities in my (one's) writing and so perhaps here I should refer to said professor as perhaps, a "second hander" (that is, as one who doesn't even have enough originality to challenge his own "pigheadedness"), but since I don't like that term, my significant Dr. Branden says, not necessarily but perhaps a better word would be: "social metaphysician", conventional type. But I disagree with "both". Even though my Webster's Dictionary (1976) doesn't define the term, I think the absolute best word to use here to describe this particular University of Minnesota professor of mine from years gone by is: a!sh%le (due to themestream's obscenity restrictions you are going to have to use your imagination in certain parts of this article) and I modify it to ã-hole out of a sense of decorum for the sensibilities of others.). And as I was saying...

Wait. Instead of a!sh%le I could say, perverse. When I look up perverse (which I got by looking up ãss) it gives as its definition: a: turned away from what is right or good: CORRUPT b:INCORRECT,IMPROPER c: contrary to the evidence: obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted: WRONGHEADED[!!!]. Wow! I didn't know the guys who wrote the dictionary knew one of my old professors? Perverse is a pretty gõddãmn good word and I think I'll use it from now on. But for now, a polite ã-hole "feels" more precise to me, for me and since this writing is ABOUT ME it's 'gonna stand. Back then I did not but I should have but I did not but I SHOULD have protested, BUT as I was saying...

I was too young at the time to protest, and besides I was a Lutheran and they know only the "virtues" of NOT protesting and turning the other cheek (I actually did this ONCE, literally. We --me and my college beer-drinking buddies at the time: that is, in the autumn time of the year when the Minnesota trees are re-palleting their leaves into bloody reds and fiery red-orange colors and then dropping them on the ground-- we were at the New Ulm Minnesota Fall Beer Festival. A Festival, I suspect, that mimics the famous Oktober Fest that the displaced from their homeland German-Americans residing in that town were nostalgic for. Or at least now I suspect it does as I see the crowds in my minds eye and hear the distant sounds of ump-pa-pa emanating from a thousand accordions strapped like pianos to be moved onto the bodies of the movers --and as hard as it is to believe, shakers-- of the local towns men marching down the street in pre-winter gaiety. The muted gaiety was interrupted for me by a kid from some lesser college in Minnesota who picked a fight with me for reasons unknown and then slugged me in the mouth and cut my lip. I turned my head and said "go ahead hit me again, I'm not going to fight..." --an image of Jesus holding a little sheep in his arms loomed somewhere in my psyche-- actually it was this second punch that cut my lip and when I touched it and looked at the tip of my finger and saw it matched the color of the leaves beside me on the ground, I fought back enough to end the fight sooner rather than later. Rather than the later person that is that I would have been had I stayed in my then current mode. That is, I would have been like the winter version of those trees around me: stripped of all dignity and without the power OR foresight to re-create spring. The fact that I personally experienced Objectivism as if it was a spring re-creating me is way too personal to go into right now. But, the thing I want to say is I find it extremely interesting now that I can so vividly still remember this event when it occurred almost 40 years ago!...does this mean my (our) memory (capacity) as a thing is pretty fantastic!). Anyway, as I was saying...

My FIRST of the THREE semi-big failures I'm writing about here was the F grade I got in an Undergraduate University Course in Mechanical Kinematics. I hated Kinematics and the next quarter when I took it over again (if I aspire to be a published-by-others writer do you think I should pause here and stew about the word "over" not to mention the phrase "over again"? How do you NOT take something over again, what would such a thing be? I can't even think of what it could be, maybe I should have just said: ...when I repeated the class...) and got a B out of it WITHOUT studying, my lab TA for the class (Teaching Assistant and fellow basketball player on our --actually his-- CITY-CHURCH team of the time) thought that I must be some kind of genius because I never seemed to study (I allowed him to have his fantasy...maybe this is part of the reason why I wrote such a revealing eBook about me and my more recent life....could be...but I think, not.)...anyway as I was saying...

The SECOND thing I FAILED was the Pilots test to get into the Air Force ROTC back in 1965. The recruiter talked to me for three hours after the test results were in trying to convince me that I should STILL sign up --I could sign up as a Navigator he said. I replied, but it was those stupid upside down inside out aerial photographs that I couldn't make head nor tails out of that caused me to flunk the test! Sign up now he said, because in a few months they are going to be drafting college kids big time. Ya, sure I said, I'll take my chances here, if I can't be a Pilot I don't want anything to do with it (I didn't tell him that I was afraid of heights and what I really wanted was OUT of this grueling 18 hours a day, 7 days a week study schedule I had taken upon myself and couldn't break free of on my own.).

Of course NOW this does NOT look like a FAILURE given the reality of the Viet Nam War and the power of 20-20 hindsight: I'm glad I didn't pass. Besides, as a graduated engineer I got a top security clearance and worked on the precursor to star wars back in the late 60's and I do feel like I played a part in helping my country to be as good as it is and in trying to make it better. I especially felt this way when I saw on TV how the "brains" behind the smart bombs saved American men and women's lives during the Gulf "War" -- if, that is, you can call it a "war". I still remember how the media of the time prior to the war had me and other foolish Americans convinced that the American military was weak and wimpy and how Saddam Hussein could quite possibly be the world's best warrior --having run over Iran the way he did some months or years before-- and as such he may now very well run over the United States too like it was some kind of 98 pound weakling, so everybody had better watch out! What the media failed to recognize --as usual-- is that America is a great country because it is free, and that freedom --in the long run-- produces winners and totalitarianism produces losers. Saddam Hussein is perhaps the worlds biggest...loser, but a warrior? Give me a break. Why does the "media" hate America so much and then wonder why nobody likes them? Is it because they have the intellectual integrity of ... of...what, a gnat? Actually the "brain" physiology of a gnat is 100% perfect, ... then of what? A ... a ... a... I don't know, I can't think of a metaphor here. Maybe one will come to me later. In the meantime, let me NOT succumb to the same thing I accuse the media of succumbing to, which is: taking the good for granted. The sentiment I uttered earlier: "...if, that is, you can call it a 'war'...", was MADE possible by four heroes: Schwarzkopf, Cheney, Powell and the American military: especially those American soldiers who fought and died in the Viet Nam War. Especially those, that is, if you can believe General Schwarzkopf, an "on-the-job-trained" soldier from Viet Nam --and I do believe him-- when he said on TV during one of those interviews during the early days of the Gulf War, something to the effect that: there ain't no way in héll I will ever again sacrifice MY soldiers to the Politicians. If you want "me" --a little audience identification here, don't you just love it?-- if you want me! to lead the charge here I will only do it by winning as soon as is humanly possible and only while minimizing the risk to my soldier's lives at the same time. He --along with all those already mentioned-- did it by literally bulldozing that "great warrior" into the dirt (sand). Wow. Thank god for heroes. (The metaphorical "god" that is.)

My THIRD failure is the one that prompted me to write my first eBook: "How to GROW out of your problems and into your life. (And protect and promote your own mental health in-the-process.) ", check it out, that is BUY it and read it to identify ever more ways of How to GROW out of YOUR problems...if, that is, you happen to be interested in such things: CBR (ClickBuyRead):

and you will discover in there my last (last as in THIRD and most recent) failure was at being a General Contractor Residential Home Builder who filed bankruptcy after nearly 10 years of a héll heck of a lot of toil and trouble (HÕMÕ's being --next to local government bureaucrats-- the biggest source of the trouble... it stands for HÕMeÕwners...what were you thinking it stood for?). And that's it.

Except to say, as an Objectivist and Biocentric Psychology sympathizer I refuse to give up my dream to be a millionaire happy, and besides I've had a wonderful time for the most part ... so far ... and I hope to and plan to and feel really confident that I WILL have a really good time for the next 44 years (I plan to die when I'm a 109... IF, that is, I don't die before the day is over).

So like I was hinting at in the beginning here, my MISSION now is to PROVE one cliche wrong; that cliche is this: Three strikes and you're out.

Failure = Loser

Which is?

TBD.

Be sure to click your Browser's BACK button to get back to the text from whence you cometh. ... OR:  

A is for Art continued/overlapped from Amazon.com profile:

My ten worst movies / TV things are:
Mephisto Waltz (pathetically stupid)
Seven (evil)
The Howdy Doodie Show (extremely boring)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (should’ve been titled: Pee-Wee Herman discovers there’s more to life than popcorn boxes)

My ten favorite books / articles are: Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Atlas Shrugged etc = Everything written by Ayn Rand The Psychology of Self Esteem The Disowned Self etc = Everything written by Dr. Nathaniel Branden The Analytic Synthetic Dichotomy (whoever said you can’t get orgastic—or similar kind of satisfaction—from reading non-fiction never read this) Ominous Parallels etc = Everything written by Dr. Leonard Peikoff (even—inspite of a [maybe] error or two [as challenge to myself to put my feelings on this into words some day in the future (maybe)]--Fact vs Value—[including if and when I should discover it, the possiblity that since dr p is more intelligent than I that he’s right and I’m wrong and I haven’t yet clear enough concepts to see this ... though in the past this is always so ... I don’t feel so strongly about this one ... which is to say ... tbc ... (maybe) ... ) etc = Everything written / taped by other Professional Objectivists, Dr. Harry Binswangner (the world’s best amatuer scientist), Peter Swartz (the guy who leaves me enough time to discover the meaning of my intellectual feelings and act on them and then who proceeds to put those feelings of mine into big people words for me), Dr. Locke et al Professional Objectivists (qua Professionals qua group are quite possibly the smartest people on planet earth today) Yes, (Is BiO Spiritualism the answer?) etc = Everything written to completion / be it books, articles, opt eds/letters-to-editors, Technical Reports , virtually everything in my life that I’v ever written [including an approved by me work-for-hire love letter I commisioned an older kid to write for me when I was in first grade and closer to the end of my 5th year in life than to the end of my 6th] to completion (though there are one or two sentences in a couple of Technical reports from my first career that I would modify if I could but since they are buried in yesterday’s technology it isn’t important to anyone other than me and even to me—now—its not that important) My ten worst books / articles of all time are: I dunno ... none come to mind, this doesn’t seem to fit as much as best and worst in movies ... why is that??? ... I wonder. halt for now. To be updated--as required--(maybe) as time rolls on. Sex ... as same relates to the S in those things that bathe us in pleasure—that is, WASHER’s ... too personal for here. Human relationships married seven years separated divorced reconciled, not legally married but morally so for 28 years since the divorce two daughters—one a screen writer, one a lawyer—both the best kids there are inspite of some errors I made while raIsing them ... Exercise of my human capacities see my first book: Yes. (Is BiO Spiritualism the answer?) and my horse race handicapping software program: Logical Choice; and my websites and websides. Recreation Horse racing, going to movies, going to the Casino/playing nickel slots and/or 2¢ slots ... I gave up on Black Jack many years back because it seemed to me to be mathematically incorrect (that is, how come every time I get 3 cards I go bust but it seems like the dealer can get as many cards as it takes to get one more point than me just this side of twenty-two??? How come that is ... or ... is this just one example of what some call, (cry baby) anecdotal evidence?) Stop. Done.