Quick Sketch: On Stroads, Losers, Confessions and Candour

“Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker,” ~ Miyamoto Musashi.

I'm enjoying riding again. Decades ago I went to an optometrist because my job and lifestyle was making me myopic and I'm still to this day annoyed that the lady that showed me my frame options remarked "as a cyclist you are taking your life in your hands." or some shit like that.

That is not a general statement to be made with confidence, and it being back in Melbourne riding a bike through her streets again, fucking her as it were, much as I enjoy it; it doesn't take long to be reminded a) of my own mortality and b) that the culture is very much against cyclists.

I could write at length. I as a cyclist get my patience tested by unassertive cyclists. For some reason in my own mental shorthand pejorative "Safety Petes" I don't know why Pete, one could predict that female cyclists with female names will be on average more timid. But I can get why sanctimonious know nothings with empathy deficits would see a lot of what I do on a bicycle and be as angry at me as they are at everyone and everything at inflation.

Much as George Carlin said, and is a documented psychological phenomena - everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and everyone who drives slower than you doesn't know what they are doing. However we ourselves calibrate becomes by self-proclaimed fiat "how to be a good driver."

I'm calibrated how I'm calibrated and yes, I brake a metric fucking tonne of road laws every time I ride my bike. Perplexingly for you, I break almost no road norms. I have been injured on my bicycle, I've been doored and I've been bounced off a bonet. I've had massive stacks, I've had my wheel caught in a tram track and faceplanted. I've had catastrophic mechanical failures, I've ordered KFC while openly bleeding from a classic scrape. 

I look at what skateboarders do and think "no way man." I think none of my collisions have ever really constituted a big deal, even though, like the dooring one, it could have very much been the end of me but it wasn't because you are reading my typing. I've never fucking injured anyone else in all my cycling. I think that would make me seriously rethink my mode of transportation and not much else. That's how I'm calibrated.

Anyway, as I said, I do like riding my bicycle. I love to ride my bicycle. Bicycles are probably the greatest mechanical invention of civilization. The only thing that would make riding my bicycle better is if I could ditch the helmet that mostly protects me from fines, but I know where I am. I'm not in Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Germany yadda yadda yadda. I'm in Melbourne and now I can describe Melbourne because Melbourne is fucking riddled with stroads. 

What is a stroad? well you could click on that link and fucking educate yourself but I guess I can't risk you not doing that, so shall avail myself of the opportunity to carelessly misinform you. A stroad is not quite a road, not quite a street. A street is a destination, it's where you park your vehicle get out and walk through a doorway to pick up or drop off fabric samples, order a skinny decaf latte, sit down and debate how authentic some kim chi is or catch up with a friend and complain about cyclists.

A road is a way to get from A to B, where A and B are probably streets. It isn't a destination but an "arterial" if you will, transportation. 

Sydney "Road" is a strode, because while once upon a time you would have hitched your wagon to some horses and taken Sydney Rd to of all places Sydney in the hope that young Mary-Ann-Clementine-Rosemary might recover from her tuberculosis in a warmer climate, now it is four lanes, parallal parking, shops, cafes and pubs and the number 19 tram line.

It is at once an iconic cultural hub with its own gravitational pull and one of the shittiest pieces of infrastructure imagineable. 

It's incredibly dangerous for cyclists, basically forcing them right into the car dooring strike zone, not to mention the people heading to and from the Northern Suburbs are endearingly shit in all the rainbow colours of human and animal bowel movements. Beloved scum of the Earth as opposed to the just plain shit people of the Eastern and Southern suburbs who generally enjoy better infrastructure in exchange for any semblance of or attachment to culture.

Trams make stroads worse, as does parallel parking. 

Since I've been back riding, I've reflected and appreciated that impatience is not necessarily or even most often, a function of needing to get to point X by time T. I think it is far more a product of bad design, a niggling feeling that things don't have to be this way. Cyclists of course in the late 20th century and early 21st century betwixt the advent of red-light and speed cameras and the advent of facial recognition tech being rolled out, do not have to sit around waiting for nobody because a dumb blind robot says so (aka a traffic light). 

Drivers have far less leeway. They have numbers that make the owners of cars relatively easy to find and face repurcussions for trying to implement what they feel are viable solutions to the product of poor road design. 

One such "viable" solution, is overtaking on the inside of a tram in a street with parallel parking. Drivers can get stuck behind trams in Melbourne. It's a terrible and frustrating predicament, but I have sufficient cognitive empathy to understand that trams, as public transport, have to deal with the public and annoying as they are, they make Melbourne Melbourne so the obvious solution of scrapping them or getting rid of routes is not so viable.

I suspect getting stuck behind a tram, is made more an irritant because they are spaced out enough that if you take Sydney Rd one day, you may not see a tram let alone get stuck behind it, and you have a "good" commute, and another day, you fucking try and fail to play leap frog with one and you arrive at your destination willing to kill someone.

Trams accelerate just long enough to hit the fucking breaks as they make frequent stops. Basically every intersection with a light, they stop to disgourge passengers and pick up passengers. They stop of course when a light is red, and they also stop when the light is green.

Because people are fucking morons, trams and tram doors being opened create a red light of their own to protect the public getting on and off. So a driver can zen out and bliss out sitting and watching a green light turn to red and give them extra whole minutes to zen out and bliss out waiting for the tram to move as they wait through an extra blessed red light, as a decrepid Granny painstakingly dismounts a tiny step up and down onto the tram with her zimmer frame, and then takes a whole light sequence to painstakingly trek three meters to the sidewalk during which the tram driver is obliged to sit there and keep the doors opened and the traffic stopped for her safety. These are the laws.

So of course, cars ignore those laws as they speed past a stopped train with doors opening, risking the lives of moronic and oblivious representatives of the status quo who would step blithely out of a tram with no awareness of their surroundings, all to liberate themselves from the tyranny of trams.

Now, this is necessary because intersections in Melbourne are the only areas where a four lane street has four lanes to use, because otherwise the inner lane is filled with parked cars. This leads to drivers not just flirting but going for penetration - with the idea that their f-series Canyonero SUV can go from stationary to fast enough to overtake an accelerating 34m tram in the space of 100m before if they don't make the window colliding with either the side of a tram or the back of a parked car.

Of course, it is rare for this commonly attempted manoeuvre to result in a collision with a tram or parked car, much rarer than it is attempted which would probably be equal to the number of tram services that run every day in Melbourne. The other day while jogging I witnessed a lady in an SUV attempt to overtake a tram tail to snout on the inside and she had to come to a halt behind a parked car...her gender is relevant because I want to call her a pendejo and my spanish isn't good enough to understand why some nouns are masculine but women can have them (como manos) and vice versa (como cabesas)...so drivers undertake this piece of bad driving because they are frustrated by poor infrastructure design, then if they fail they face the result of not even being stuck behind a tram, but stuck behind the car that is now behind the tram.

So of course this pendejo wasn't having that and cut in and cut off the car that was now behind the tram she had failed to overtake, resulting in a piece of valid feedback which was a car horn, to let her know she is a fucking shit driver.

Now the thing is, overtaking on the inside line is I assert a product of stroads like Melbourne where trams and parallel parking frustrate and subsequently incentivise bad driving. Like many four lane stroads, if a driver wants to turn across traffic (turn right in Australia, left would be the equivalent in Europe and the Americas) they can block the entire street if a clearway is not currently in force on the parking in the inner lane.

And sure enough, eventually you just get fucking loser drivers that want to overtake any traffic by switching to the inside lane at the lights knowing they have to beat the driver in the lane next to them and switch back into the middle lane.

I have empathy for impatience, even for frustration with less assertive drivers, though as a cyclist I have to take a short walk cognitively, operating a vehicle that weighs somewhere between single and double digits, offers no protection to it's driver and faces no consequences from robotic law enforcement devices and untraceable via witness testimony is fundamentally different from operating something between a half tonne and a tonne, can accelerate to lethal momentum in a matter of seconds and insulates it's occupants from the real world particularly their ability to perceive the real world and hence why they have to wear number plates so responsible parties can be held responsible.

So last week on my way to work, I was sitting on my bike in that little box marked with an esoteric symbol that around the world, in all my travels carries one unified meaning:

Universal symbol for "free parking space/pedestrian walkway for having mobile phone conversations"

You can even see the tram lines that make Melville Rd one of Melbourne's many dangerous stroads. I was heading northward away from the city which means culturally I was transiting from "bicycles are a necessary evil for food delivery" through "poor students need their piece of paper so they can buy a car and stop depending on bicycles and trams" to "why would anyone ride a bicycle?" to my eventual destination of "what's a bicycle?/how do you go through a KFC drive thru on that?" country.

I used to cycle commute so far north it took me months to figure out that drivers weren't always honking at me for no reason but they were attempting to alert me that I was riding a bicycle, that's how alien the concept of getting anywhere under your own power was.

But I digress, you can see that it's a subject that gets me hysterical. 

Word to anyone planning to get into a verbal altercation with a cyclist, all road-rage is generally ill-advised I would feel remiss if I suggested there was a safe way to voice your displeasure at another person on the road, you are always gambling with your life when you lose your temper behind the wheel - beyond that disclaimer though, you cannot hope to educate a cyclist by yelling something at them - the window is too small, we barely have time to realize you are talking to us before you are gone let alone absorb what you are trying to say.

And look, I don't want to suggest that people should never talk to cyclists from a vehicle. One of the most delightful things to ever happen to me while riding a bike was having a guy yell at me "real men ride women!" as their vehicle passed. That's hilarious, even if it was meant to be disparaging, I can't in good conscious say never yell anything at a cyclist after that.

What was noteworthy about this loser, was that he yelled something like (again window too small for me to absorb message) "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" over the head of his I'm going to guess 5-10 year old daughter in primary school uniform.

Right so if you lost track of it, this guy yelled at me after I was sitting in that box with the symbol in it painted on the road at the intersection, and the lights turned green and I cycled forward across the intersection.

You may have noticed, that I referred to this loser as a loser. I do this with confidence using what dubious science communicator Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" in his dubious book "Blink". 

You may also have lost track of the Musashi Miyamoto quote I opened with about the observing eye being stronger and the perceiving eye being weaker. 

I know this guy is a loser because he was incredibly angry because he was completely wrong. He was telling me how he perceives the world, in a manner where I can objectively determine he doesn't understand it.

I am well familiar with this. I worked in a call centre for 8 years where sporadically losers would tell me at 5.45pm their local time that I was calling during dinner and as such this was an illegal call to which eventually I would enthusiastically encourage them to take down our details and report us to the police because I romantically envisioned some down-on-their-luck cop having to man a desk that explained the laws regarding cold calling to losers who perceive the law to be whatever they intuitively feel it should be such that they are always right and everyone else is always wrong.

As an argument for progress scepticism (which for the record, I believe in progress) as cycling infrastructure is improved, I suspect research might find driver intolerance for cyclists on the road increases - creating a kind of risk homeostasis. Because if a local council builds a luxurious bike and pedestrian path that wends inconveniently in the most circuitous route between points A and B via F with frequent stops and duckling crossings and gaggles of middle aged women taking up the entire path and a legal obligation for cyclists to slow down and warn each and every pedestrian that they are passing even if I am jogging alone on the left extremity of the path with no-one else in sight for hundreds of meters and a group of old guys in lycra have to inform me of the coming and going of their insignificant existence as they peddle around awaiting a long and drawn out death via dementia or prostate cancer with or without being forced into a recumbent bicycle via stroke, just fuck the law you geriatric Safety Petes with your fucking stupid cable ties on your helmets because you get startled by magpies and plovers and ride by me without bothering me because that law was designed to protect gaggles of middle aged women who lose awareness of their surroundings and infer nothing from a broken line running down the middle of a path they are walking along no matter how much a city council visually implies it might operate like the very distant and distinct concept of a road because we can't have people being startled by an unanticipated fast moving object on a bike path when they have the important and consequential task of being fully absorbed in a discussion of the latest episode of "Married At First Sight" which will proceed whether or not they did actually see the latest episode of "Married At First Sight"; drivers are prone to assume that if purpose built bike paths exist, then it logically must be illegal for bikes to be on the road, even with that mysterious esoteric symbol that clearly means "free parking/stand here and have a phone conversation" is painted onto that stroad where bikes logically must be illegal now.

Tom Hardy allegedly says:

"Please stop thinking just because you have a college degree it makes you smart. I know a lot of people who have drivers licenses and they can't drive for shit." ~ Tom Hardy, as alleged by the internet, I cannot verify the attribution.

With sufficient clarity for me, he is clearly talking about the inherent problems of certification in general and using drivers licenses as a relatable example to point to that general problem. Too many people it seems were persuaded by the Wizard of Oz that a degree is as good as a brain for the Scarecrow who suddenly understood a geometric proof upon being handed a piece of paper. The satire is hard to get in Wizard of Oz.

 Because this is a thought sketch, I'd like to consider societies culpability in illusioning (opposite process of disillusioning, even if spellcheck doesn't like it) loser drivers like this loser that drove by me. 

A society has to make a decision about how hard or easy it is to obtain a license given the population it governs. In Victoria around the time I obtained my license that I don't think I should have, to go from a Learner's permit (can operate a car with a fully licensed driver's direct supervision) to a Probationary license (Basically a license but easier to lose via blood alcohol tests and traffic violations than a full license) involved passing a test.

There was a written component to demonstrate knowledge of road laws, probably multiple choice. When I got mine there was a touch screen component where you watched dashcam footage on a monitor that you had to touch when you observed something for which you should reduce speed (basically any change you observe) and then an actual driving test out on the streets where you would be asked to drive around a bit and make turns and complete one of something like six manoeuvres to pass the test.

So you could be asked to do one of either an angle park, reverse 30 meters in a straight line, a 3 point turn or a parallel park. Right. Right? I would say that would give the average 18 year old victorian a one in four chance of failing their license examination straight off the bat. If you luck out and have to do a fucking parallel park, particularly if you want a license that allows you to drive stick, the chances of failing are high.

Conversely, if all you had to do was pull into and out of an angle park, or reverse 30meters in an approximately straight line, there's a really good chance that like me you have a license but really shouldn't.

Someone using their stronger, observing eye, would probably come to the same conclusion Tom Hardy allegedly has. 

So I knew this guy was a loser, almost instantly by his conduct, and I knew he was a coward. Like, I can't be confident that he yelled "GET TO THE SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" precisely, but I'm not so far off that he could have been yelling "I CAN'T SEE YOUR HAIRCUT IF YOU WEAR A HELMET WHICH IS A SHAME BECAUSE YOU SEEM LIKE A GUY WITH A COOL HAIRCUT JUDGING BY YOUR SHADES AND BRAND JORDAN BASKETBALL SHORTS WITH POCKETS!!!" 

He definitely called me a fucking idiot, I'm reasonably confident he was trying to convey that I was a fucking idiot for obstructing his ability to overtake on the inside at an intersection. 

To steel man his case, he may have been so self-entitled that he knew he was speaking purely from personal preference, but occam's razor obliges me to attribute his sentiment to using his perceiving eye over his observing eye that could have derived a reasonable inference from say, the headstart box painted in the lane with the universal symbol for "free parking/stand here and talk on your mobile phone".

I can reasonably infer, that while there's a one-in-four or less chance that he obtained his license without being able to competently parallel park, he likely has no idea about vehicular cycling and despite his constant frustration that the world does not work as he perceives it, would, like every driver frustrated with cyclists, never have looked up what considered, informed minds have legally determined to be the community standard road rules.

Now, he, like me might disagree with the conclusions of those legal minds. The difference is, when I don't stop because a tram has stopped at a green light in the CBD and despite no passengers getting on and or off just sits there not closing the doors allowing me to proceed so I ignore the law, break the law and injure nobody ever, or even startle anybody, I don't yell at the driver "CLOSE YOUR DOORS SO CYCLISTS CAN PASS YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" over the head of my child daughter.

I would agree that the streets are poorly designed stroads, what he doesn't realize is that a big part of why they are poorly designed is because they have encouraged him to think he is so important and significant by his own self-diagnosis that he has the right to switch lanes to try and overtake all the cars in front of him on the inside.

That bike box is put there because society determined that that's where they want bicycles to be for the red light, in front of all the motor vehicles (often cyclists get a head start cyclist only green light) and out of the way of the lane dedicated to left-hand (right for right side drive) turns. Society doesn't want someone who's all "this 60kmph speed limit is fucking bullshit I can drive faster than that through a residential and commercial area" using that lane to overtake cars adhering to the speed limit.

So that's just one reason this guy I'm confident to the point of knowing, was a loser. But another fact was the whole being wrong and yelling that over the head of his child daughter. I mean he could have been a loser because he was abducting some kid to fuck her, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't a nonce, just a loser dad.

Of course, it is an inference that if he is willing to yell that at me, while being wrong, in front of his daughter, he will probably yell at his daughter that way one day soon. I'm pretty confident of that, because clearly in this scenario his emotional distress was that I had impeded him in some way in his delusion that he in some significant way contributes to the turning of the world and needs to get back to that as soon and sooner than all the other people on the road, as possible. It is one thing to lose your shit because somebody endangered your daughter, it is another thing to lose your shit because somebody impeded you from executing a piece of shitty driving in front of your daughter. 

Overtaking on the inside, is actually dangerous, as in he was frustrated at me because I was impeding his ability to endanger his daughter. 

I want to believe in the human race, and subsequently I wish I could be confident that if she didn't realize then, she will in time realize her dad is a loser and subsequently never has to take seriously anything he says and look instead for better more qualified role models to follow the example of. But I don't know that. I've met a depressing number of people who admire loser parents and are determined to make those losers proud by becoming losers themselves.

And beyond confessing to me and his daughter, that this loser was indeed a loser, he also confessed that he was a coward. Right. This guy saw me, must have sat there fuming in his own impotence, too afraid to honk his horn so I could turn around while my bike sat on the universally recognized symbol for free parking/stand here and use your mobile phone that strangely resembles a bicycle and give him an uncomprehending glare and a shrug before turning back around, but he saw me and waited.

He waited for the lights to change so he could drive past and yell at me, call me a fucking idiot before driving away. What he chose, was the scenario where he could yell something and I couldn't respond. Probably because he didn't want to endanger his daughter as a result of me in full compliance with the law obstructed his ability to endanger his daughter, which of course actually endangered his daughter because for a moment there was a very real possibility that I would catch up to his vehicle at the next set of lights. Fortuitously we were both spared that confrontation, because I know cowards are incredibly dangerous. I know this from stories and histories, Villains don't kill heroes anywhere near as often as cowards do. Heroes don't kill villains nearly as often as cowards do. 

For the record, I wouldn't hurt an innocent child because she happens to be the daughter of a loser, I would be sorely tempted though for the childs sake to tell her her dad is a loser, because it's probably never too early to hear that, even if it's way too soon to accept that. But who knows, when she is 16 and in an abusive relationship with the guy at school that most reminds her of her father, it might help it click just that bit sooner that her esteem is low because her dad is a loser and she needs to stop caring about what he thinks and how she feels about him.

C'est la vie. It's horrific out there.

You might have read this far and thought "gee tohm, angry much. You sound like a bitter loser, filled with impotent rage." ding ding ding. I'm as prone to impotent rage as the next human experiencing the human condition. But like Bill Russell says:

"It's the difference between being broke and being poor. Being poor is a state of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation."

When I lose things I feel like a loser, and this coward imposed a loss upon me which was the opportunity to impose my social dominance - to tell him what I know deep in his testicles he already knows or at least suspects.

My personal shortcut for short circuiting useless, anxious, rumination - rumination beyond the point of productivity - is to ask myself or others "who would you rather be?"

It's a bit cheap, because almost nobody would be somebody else, because you know it's hard to maintain your preferences while being someone else with their preferences. 

This guy had a daughter, and it would be nice if I had a daughter. He has that on me. I'd be quick to point out though the horror of having a daughter or son, loving them and not knowing by word and deed you are actively destroying their chances at happiness and emotional stability by your own bad example.

Which makes the rest fucking easy. I choose to cycle because I enjoy it. Not enjoying bad drivers yelling at me does not detract from cycling around on even a beaten up bike like mine, under my own power on one of humanities greatest inventions. I fucking love cycling. Much as I love living in Mexico even if my risk of dying via homicide spikes dramatically by virtue of just living in that land of freedom and opportunity.

I also as a cyclist more often feel empowered by my higher or equal to average speed as all other vehicles on the road. I'm fairly confident that most people's antipathy toward cyclists is generated by envy as they observe cyclists moving with the freedom that breaks the social contract that says winners get a car and losers ride bikes because they don't work hard enough to achieve a sedentary lifestyle. 

And speaking of social contracts, this incident, this one way altercation where a guy thinks he yelled something at me, and will go on thinking so never realizing he yelled at his daughter "I'M A LOSER AND A COWARD AND I'M A BAD FATHER" and she may realize nothing bar the consequences of that statement that I'm sure was not iterated for the last time.

I don't know how far it goes, but Australian's want for candour. This nations growth, perhaps even GDP is stunted because Australia cannot take it's lumps. I feel it strongly. 

This is why in the spirit of candour I want to impress upon you, that I know in my bones that this guy is a loser. It's not political, it is totalitarian - not up for debate. The sky god, in so far as He can be called Physics says so. That loser has to lodge his appeal with respect to the Laws of Physics.

It reminded me of an existential question that has plagued me for decades now:

If losers win, are they still losers?

Like the great philosopher and undisputable GOAT of pre-modern era basketball Bill Russell, it is a question of whether being a loser is a state of mind, or a temporary circumstance.

Twice in my life, I have been proximate enough to an event (actually in both cases I attended the event) but the point is, I had cause for my attention to review photographic documentation of an event and notice what I had not in my own direct experience of those events.

Two different losers appeared in photos gratuitously displaying splayed out wads of cash. Like probably tens of hundred dollar notes. In both cases, this was long before Youtube ads pushed fake gurus/con-traprenuers with fake wads of cash and rented hypercars all for the purpose of luring losers into transferring wealth to them, one was like a party, like just an ordinary party and this loser kept cropping up showing off his stack of bills.

Okay, if you don't understand my philosophical question, and because I'm not going to name the losers that were flaunting modest sums of money that did admittedly exceed any practical need to carry that much cash to an event where you would be drinking at; consider the difficult case of Floyd Mayweather Jr. someone who is definitely worthy of a place in the almost impossible GOAT debate of professional boxing with all it's weight divisions, eras and I assume at the time of writing 7 bodies that certify a champion of the world, and all the various ways a champion can accumulate title defenses or win other divisions while avoiding genuine competition and of course the ambiguity brought by performance enhancing drugs and the limited ability to enforce their prohibition.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired with a perfect 50-0-0 record, he fought big names for big purses and stopped bothering with belts and titles because he didn't want to pay the fees for the privilege of holding them and fought and beat numerous noteworthy opponents, I'm aware of Canelo Alvarez and Pacman who cannot be said to be weak opponents, Conner MacGregor exceeded expectations but wasn't really a strong opponent because he's an MMA champion and most expected him to get disqualified because he forgot he couldn't kick in boxing.

Mayweather is a winner, one of the winningest winners this side of Julio Cesar "El Campion" Chavez and his 72-0-0 win streak. 

But.

But...when Mayweather posts pictures on instagram of his stacks of cash what it says to me is "on the inside I am really poor."

This is behaviour to impress loser teenagers. One could rejoin me by saying "you don't get black culture. You don't listen to hip hop. You don't know how to hustle white boy. You wouldn't last a minute down in Baltimore, Killadelphia, South Side Chicago..." all that's true.

I'm asserting, and maybe I'm perceiving rather than observing, but that Mayweather, 2018's top earning athlete as perceived by Forbes, and estimated 6th wealthiest athlete of all time adjusting for inflation - his instagram behaviour might impress horny teenagers of low social status, but it also retrodicts this:

It was common for the young Mayweather to come home from school and find used heroin needles in his front yard.[34] His mother was addicted to drugs, and he had an aunt who died from AIDS because of her drug use. "People don't know the hell I've been through," he says. The most time that his father spent with him was taking him to the gym to train and work on his boxing, according to Mayweather.[35] "I don't remember him ever taking me anywhere or doing anything that a father would do with a son, going to the park or to the movies or to get ice cream," he says. "I always thought that he liked his daughter [Floyd's older sister] better than he liked me because she never got whippings and I got whippings all the time."[33]

Mayweather's father contends that Floyd is not telling the truth about their early relationship. "Even though his daddy did sell drugs, I didn't deprive my son," the elder Mayweather says. "The drugs I sold, he was a part of it. He had plenty of food. He had the best clothes and I gave him money. He didn't want for anything. Anybody in Grand Rapids can tell you that I took care of my kids".[36] Floyd Sr. says he did all of his hustling at night and spent his days with his son, taking him to the gym and training him to be a boxer. "If it wasn't for me he wouldn't be where he is today," he maintains.[33]

"I basically raised myself," Mayweather says. ~ from wikipedia all sourced.

This is how people made to feel like a loser by circumstance, and who internalise it behave. Just an observation. Of course I wouldn't say it to Mayweather's face, although I've written it on the internet and he has the resources to track me down and say "say it to my face." and I hoping not to get physically assaulted even though, provoking Mayweather into attacking me and the subsequent charges, lawsuit and settlements would set me up for life, would not and probably apologize and it would prove that Mayweather on the inside feels like a loser, if he has to worry about some nobody's opinion despite being a billionaire, and one of the greatest pro boxers of all time.

So do you get it? When I look at a photo, and someone who had previously impressed me as a loser, someone of low social status is flaunting wads of cash and no taste, I feel sad. I feel pity. Not the impotent rage of my traffic encounter with a coward, this is someone who thinks they are saying "SEE! SEE!! I'M NOT A LOSER I'M A WINNER!!!" and doesn't understand that that says "YOU, YOU PROBABLY BARELY EVEN SPARED ME A THOUGHT, YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT ME WHEN YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHO WAS GONNA BE AT THIS PARTY AND IT GOT TO ME, IT REALLY WENT RIGHT DEEP DOWN INSIDE. SEE THIS CASH! I THINK I'M A LOSER!!!" 

I suspect, the brutal reality we live in, is that there's no pile of trinkets so high, no shiny dragon's hoard, no list of accolades so long that will ever convince me a loser has blossomed into a winner.

Another application. Fan-fic. Fan fic can get big, it can get influential. It can get a fan fic writer a community, a sense of belonging and much positive feedback. But the very fact of having to take someone else's work, be it Harry Potter, LOTR, Twilight, Percy Jackson, Naruto, Inuyasha and Bleach, be it from the mind of JK Rowling, Pendalton Ward, Stephany Myers or Steven Moffat and write your own story into it...

Like I get an argumentum ad populim that so many people are sad in this same way that we shouldn't be ashamed and maybe it isn't sad and we can gather around and discuss what relationships we'd like to see between Hermione and Legolas or whatever...

Like I don't see why that is okay, and writing a story about the popular hetero-normative kids at your school (and let's make it real and say that you teach) you know are actually representative of your intersecting minority identities is not okay/something worthy of shame and embarassment if discovered. I'm inclined to think that even with solidarity in numbers, this is the product of the mindset of a loser.

Don't get me wrong, great writers often start off with works of shear incompetent rip-offery, George Orwell, one of the finest in his essay "How I Write" recalls ripping off "Tiger, Tiger" as a child with a phrase he still rated at writing of "chair like teeth" but like, he grew out of that and wrote his own stuff. George RR who has been vocal about his dislike of fanfiction, I recall talking about sending terrible writing in to some zine that was like a star trek or LOTR ripoff and getting feedback as a kid, before he grew out of that and started coming up with his own ideas.

And yet...

There are people who completely destroyed their own lives, or reputations that I would regard as winners. 

Like if an alcoholic loses everything but achieves sobriety and forgives themselves, they aren't a loser in my eyes. If they take responsibility and come to terms with themselves, even if they've caused damage that cannot be repaired and incurred losses they can never recover. I'd be all like "good job, winner."

Most notably, I don't know how to feel about Kobe Bryant. Because he probably raped a hotel maid, of which he's definitely responsible if he did so, and it was one of the two dumbest decisions he made in his life - the other being getting on a helicopter with his daughter during wildfires - something I don't know how similar it is to Stockton Rush's final Titan expedition.

The major injustice, regarding his victim settling I lay at the feet of greater society. It is what the system allows, and even if she used her own agency to settle, part of it was having a very powerful institution try to preserve its interests - keeping Kobe on the court and out of jail. 

But on the other hand, based on how Kobe at least, turned out on and off the court, in hindsight I look at it and see another systemic injustice because I doubt sending Kobe Bean Bryant to jail for a crime he actually committed (if he did) would not have produced the best outcome for society. It would have cost us Kobe Bryant's frankly glorious NBA career, an asset for humanity.

I don't know, it's a head scratcher. But to me what is clear, is that Kobe someway somehow transitioned from loser mindset to winner mindset and maybe it was fucking up so bad that it forced him to mature - he says during the trial he created the Black Mamba persona as a psychological necessity and I would suggest that his book "Mamba Mentality" is perhaps the finest work of anti-prison literature, a philosophical work as valuable as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, the finest work of prison literature, at least that's what I've heard and I'm just going to bet that it shits all over Gramsci's notebooks from prison.

To conclude this long and rambling sketch, when I think about how somepeople are losers, to speak candidly and indelicately, I'm not suggesting it is their fault, whereas other people lose but are not losers - what I think is going on is newton's first law of motion - people will remain losers unless a force acts upon them.

The dire situation I feel the world is in, is probably actually a problem of surplus democracy - a demeritocracy where a government cannot tell its people 'no.' for fear of reprisal and this trickles down into the culture and gives everyone pussy-feet that require pillow soles so everyone can pussyfoot around everyone else.

This is just a sketch, so I can get back in the habit of publishing stuff. That means I'm not going to do the required research to make my position bulletproof. The easiest thing to do is conclude yourself that you don't like me. I'm going to assert that the opposite of candour is flattery, and I haven't done the required reading of Plato thru Pieper, and I strongly suspect I wouldn't like Pieper if he's the guy who resurrected interest in Thomas Aquinas, a pain-in-the-arse intellectual to rival Foucault and Derrida, but we flatter people in order to use them.

There is a denial of fundamental human dignity to lie to people who want to be lied to, and I think where Mayweather's instagram behaviour tells me he's in some deeper way a loser contrary to what his boxing record in the beautiful science suggests - those conmen using those levers to try and gain something from the very losers Mayweather seeks to and likely succeeds in impressing seek to flatter and exploit.

To tell people that if you hate yourself, that if you spend your days in a quiet impotent rage, only expressing it when cowardly instincts concoct a seemingly inconsequential way to let a stranger know how desperately impotent you are (forgetting your daughter can hear you), that if they get fat stacks of cash then strangers will tell them they are great and then they will feel great I'm sure is all about enriching yourself.

At the same time, I think Australia's leadership is flattering Australian voters with the idea that they are going somewhere, when in reality for all Australia's achievements, most of which were achieved by the time Keating got into office, Australia is and has been going nowhere slow. 

The confessions are everywhere to be seen, just have to switch from perceiving eye to observing eye. Melbourne is still riddled with stroads. Candour is harder to observe than a symbol of a bike painted onto a stroad.