Ray's Place: Syndromes Galore!

Hi Ray. How are you so calm and chill? I am anxious about everything. —Jonathan  

Jonathan, 

No way to sugar coat this: chill is a born thing. I’m sorry about how life seems to you, but there is no solution except either (a) finally finding whatever chemical God didn’t give you, or (b) spending seventeen years meditating. Even in the latter case, though, if somebody cuts you off in traffic you’ll still emotionally relapse and repeatedly bang your head at either end of a continuous arc between your headrest and the steering wheel, and your pencil-type Hare Krishna hair thing will flail all around in your 1999 Honda Insight. (Butts in the ashtray, old Incubus CD with a chewed gum on it in the console box. Calling it.) 

So, my main advice is to eat a real small-dose (like 1-2mg) weed gummy and see where that goes. For me, I stop knowing “when” it is, if you catch my meaning, and that’s like always the first step towards happiness. Was time the worst invention man ever made? On a real big philosophy level, probably. Maybe you agree.  

-=Pistachione=-

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Hey Ray, How do you get over impostor syndrome? I feel like I've gotten lucky to get where I am but it's a bit of a house of cards right now, professionally. I'm worried that I am gonna get "found out" one day for not really being fit for the gig. Joe L. 

Dear Joe, 

I’ve heard this term “impostor syndrome,” but I never connected with it — just like people who say they can’t eat cilantro. I love cilantro in all the ways that I can experience it, so I am baffled by folks who say, “iiiitttt’’’’sss ssssooooaaaapppyyyyy!!!” 

What you need to really get through your head is that outside of Albert Einstein and the other old suds who got their jay-peg on with equations, everybody is fakin’ it to some degree. (And there is actually new evidence that even he cooked his potatoes a little sideways sometimes.) Also! Remember this: nobody is as good as folks in the movies, ’cause nobody has Aaron Sorkin dreamin’ up how witty they could be while he trips on some ultra dark-web designer smoke called like, “amethyst-antagonized purple dialogue meth.”

Here’s an exercise I want you to do: next time you see a CEO, or a gray hair person who meanly teaches the hardest literature, imagine them driving along in an average pickup truck with the windows up. They indulge in some real humid garlic-seafood-on-a-road-trip gas (the kind that actually stays in the fabric of your clothes for a while) at the exact same moment a cop pulls them over, and they have to roll down the window and let the cop see that they have been sittin' there stewin’ in the kiss that their next shit just blew ’em. Who's lookin' all expert now, SpongeBob FogShorts?

Also, that reminds me: try takin’ an acting class. Spongebath, that big dude on the mart scooter, took improv for a couple months down at the JC, and I swear that guy could be national. His flow is lava, his flow can melt aluminum objects, you can braise oxtails in a pot near his flow. I need to have a party, so I can share his flow with the people. 

-=Raycharles=- 

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Hey Ray, my go-to dinner routine to impress a date is home made pasta with a lobster cream sauce (lobster base ftw) with some tender shrimp on the side. But how do you live an ethical life with the weight of capitalism on your shoulders? I should be middle class but damn if asparagus as a side dish isn't wrecking my budget. — Sandra T. 

Dear Sandra, 

Daaamn, that sounds luxe as hell! How’s a player get on your dating schedule!? I mean, I don’t know anything about you, but you are clearly a lady of tender textures, and □□□&&endif

Okay, I just got an alert from our new software Chris installed, saying I am not supposed to respond to stuff in that way anymore. We are being real careful about this stuff these days. It ain’t the grody old times of me just sayin' whatever. It is now, and we are serious. It's the right thing to do. We are on track for a great ESG score and it means more to us than anything.

I want to talk to you about charred broccoli. Charred broccoli is very affordable and has a smaller carbon footprint than asparagus. You can cook it for one dollar a person and it is nearly identical in fiber content. Charred broccoli is mainly the molecule 8-dibroctane-chemodecahedron-9-1111-1111111.1111

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  then.PerfectRay

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Confidential to Gary_V in Minneapolis: To make matters worse, there’s crimp PEX and there’s clamp PEX, and they ain’t interchangeable, and each needs entirely different tools. (I tried to re-pipe my hot tub one time when Arlingo was outta town, and learned this the hard way.)