Life advice from Kevin Kline
Those Chicken Soup for the Soul books are kind of made of vomit. Except I was published in two of them. One was a Father’s Day one where I told a story about doing a river race with my dad, and another was the Running book, where I told a story about running. And dogs. And Metallica.
If you read the latter you will see that, at the time, I did not have the best relationship with dogs while running. Despite the fact that I LOVE DOGS, I kept having these negative encounters, largely because many owners are fucking dipshits, but it was also my bad. Because I can’t change the fact that many owners are fucking dipshits, so I needed to change the way I interacted with dogs while running (or cycling).
My favorite western film is Silverado. In it, Kevin Kline says, “I always approach life like everybody is your friend, or nobody is.” Granted, it didn’t work out to well for Kevin in the circumstances he was describing to Scott Glenn, but never mind that. The issue was that I’d had a number of bad encounters with dogs, and was beginning to view every dog as a potential threat, and the dogs were sensing that, and so saw me as a threat, and, well, fucking death spiral that not only made running unpleasant, but meeting the greatest creatures on the planet also unpleasant.
So, I took Kevin’s advice.
This was several years ago; I can confirm it works for me well over 99% of the time. I approach each dog like they’re my friend and I’m happy to meet them. Pretty much every dog recognizes the word “puppy”, especially when said in an “I love you you’re such a cute puppy!” kind of voice.
Every dog I see while running or cycling gets an excited “Hi, puppy!” from me. And the owner often gets a “Nice dog.” More important is that I mean it. I am happy to see the dog, and approach the situation as if all dogs are nice dogs. In other words, every dog is your friend, or no dog is.
What a change. My negative interactions with dogs dropped to almost zero. Almost.
With several hundred encounters per year, there are still going to be issues. Often, it’s the little dogs leaping at me and the owners yanking them back. I used to imagine that there was something inherently hostile in the temperament of little dogs, but rather I think that a lot of the aforementioned dipshit owners are even less likely to train / learn to control little dogs because they feel they don’t need to. The dog is little, and getting your ankles ravaged is no big deal compared to getting your throat ripped out.
Sometimes dogs are kind of dickish and I talk them down in a “Oh, come on. You’re a good dog. Don’t be like that” and I give them a wide berth and go on my way and it’s fine. Other times, on rare occasions, there has been a truly negative encounter, and my “I love you puppy I want to be your best friend” attitude changes in a microsecond. A few times I’ve had a big dog, not on a leash, come straight at me with obvious ill intent. This isn’t just barking; this is upper and lower teeth bared vicious snarl I will eat you kind of shit.
And yet, I’ve never been bitten, because I let that dog know I am not easy prey. “BACK THE FUCK OFF!” is my usual go to, at max volume, with me closing the gap toward them. I’m not backing away, I’m on the attack. I let them know if they continue coming at me, it’s going to cost them.
So far, so good. They’ve always backed off. Of course, every time this happened (about four times over many thousands of dog encounters over the past decade), the owner has been a total cock about it. “What’s your fucking problem, man?” Odd that someone who has a vicious out of control dog would be a douchebag. I am not nice to such owners either. “Stupid motherfucker” is a common rejoinder.
Kevin Kline’s character wasn’t nice to those who wronged him. He approached the world with friendliness, until it was time to not be friendly. Such life advice doesn’t apply to just dogs.
No, this is not a “let’s be friends with Trumpers” kind of post. I expect most of you know me better than that to imagine I would ever say such a thing. I wouldn’t say such a thing because Trumpers have already shown their teeth. They have already proven they were the enemy myriad times via their vicious attacks. An aggressive defense is warranted.
Do you watch Cobra Kai? Cobra Kai is the evil karate dojo. Their motto begins with “Strike First.”
My wife and both our children have black belts in karate. My daughter is two-time national champion and in 2019 she ranked 5th in the entire western hemisphere. Their dojo’s motto is “No first strike.”
I prefer my family’s dojo’s motto.
My weapons are words, and I’ve been pretty fucking vicious with the Trumpers and other bigoted fucknuts the last several years. But this was defense. They struck first. They attacked. So, when I make a post that gets read by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people calling them semi-sentient taint stains, it’s not an attack, it’s a justified response to marginalize their deplorable behavior. To call out the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, and the transphobia. To show the world that what they espouse and support is wrong and must be stopped.
Spiderman’s uncle great power great responsibility blah blah.
On the 1981 Rush live album “Exit Stage Left” there is a quote from the band where they express how mystified they are at becoming so popular. It was the live album from the “Moving Pictures” tour. They’d been moderately popular before that, but the songs “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight” rocketed them to superstardom, and it must have been surreal as fuck. They didn’t know how to process it.
Well, I sure as shit am nowhere near as popular as Rush, but I have my loyal and dedicated readers, and it’s weird as fuck. I don’t really understand it, and it’s taken a while for me to realize that I have the power to influence people and therefore must be responsible in my use of it. Because I have the ability to ruin someone’s day.
And I’m trying to do better. I get a lot of comments on my social media, and I ignore a lot of the negative ones. Sometimes I endeavor to give them the benefit of the doubt. Rather than lambaste someone for being a dumbass, I will take a moment to peruse their profile and see if they truly are a dumbass, or if they just made a solitary dumbass comment. Or, perhaps, I actually misunderstood or didn’t get the joke or sarcasm. That happens. What I mean is, when you’re always on the defense, it can come to be seen as on the attack.
Everyone who comes to my social media page is by default my friend, until they prove otherwise. My biggest emotional leap forward in managing my page has been trying to raise that burden of proof. I desire to be more understanding, less defensive. If you’re going to be the target of my ire, you’re going to earn it by showing everyone that you’re a piece of shit.
Richard Cooper is a piece of shit, and wow did I roast that fucker. Remember this from last October?
That really blew right the fuck up. It launched an entire fucking theme of various professionals roasting the shit out of that misogynistic motherfucker. There was this one reply that followed mine:
Hi. Astronomer here. Willing to go out on a limb and expand your assertion to the whole of space as well as time.
And then this one:
I’m an archeologist and my team has spent countless hours digging down to the center of the earth searching for who even asked you.
And a whole bunch of others. The multitude of burns was covered on Yahoo and Upworthy and the Daily Mail and Scary Mommy and spread across social media like a Covid at a Kid Rock concert. Tens of millions saw him get repeatedly roasted.
Richard has been a misogynistic piece of shit for a long time, and I expect this did nothing to change that. But it exposed to the world the type of man he is. Perhaps it chipped away a small group of his supporters. More importantly, it drove home an important message for the bystanders: This kind of shit is not acceptable. Treating women like things that must adhere to your personal beauty standards in order to meet with your approval is not acceptable. Act like Richard, and you will be treated the same way we treated Richard. Don’t be a dick, won’t be treated like a dick.
It was also a great show of solidarity to strengthen the unity amongst those who have had enough of men behaving like this. Because that is how such bullshit is defeated. Not by ignoring it, but by exposing it. Again and again.
This piece didn’t end up where I intended. Not sure how that happened. But yeah, fuck Richard Cooper. Fuck Trumpanzees too.
But no first strike. Approach the world like everybody is your friend, until they prove that they aren’t.
Then, if you feel you have the fortitude to engage in that battle, fuck their shit up.