Do you know about Tyler Durden?

NOTE: This post deals with the movie "Fight Club". If you have not seen this movie, please see it. Debt Daddy gives it two enthusiastic thumbs up. If, like a friend of mine, you didn't see this film because you don't like movies about fighting, let me fill you in - Fight Club is about a whole lot more than fighting. In fact, IMHO, fighting is probably the least important part of the flick.


"Do you know about Tyler Durden?"

Meat Loaf says this line to Edward Norton in the movie, "Fight Club". Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt (Brad Pitt, organizer of the Make it Right foundation, rebuilding the lower 9th ward in New Orleans - http://www.makeitrightnola.org/ - please donate), is a larger than life, in your face character who takes the rules and constructs of society and turns them upside down to suit his needs and desires. It is Tyler Durden who, with the help of Edward Norton's character, starts Fight Club and, throughout the film, brings a large network of people around to his way of thinking. He does this by yanking them out of their comfort zone, shaking them out of their complacency and making them realize that you are not defined by your job, or your condo, or your IKEA living room set.

Tyler Durden recreates the world in his own image. When Debt Daddy grows up, he wants to be Tyler Durden.

When I first considered blogging about "Fight Club", my emphasis was going to be on how Tyler and his group dealt with the outside world. One of the best lines in the movie is where Tyler says to the Police Commissioner (who is at that moment, being held down on a bathroom floor with a knife pressed up against his family jewels - always a motivation to listen), "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep.

Do not... fuck with us."

To me, that pretty much sums up the current financial situation in our country. The Richies keep going after the Average Joe, taking his money, outsourcing his job to India, foreclosing on his house - all the while blind to the fact that Joe and the rest of the Average world keep the trains running on time. Now, with the housing market, GDP and consumer confidence in a tailspin, I think they might finally be starting to realize that yes - if you push us too far, it will cause those on the top to suffer as well. Indeed, best not to "fuck with us".

So, that was going to be the gist of this entry. But then I started thinking about Tyler Durden himself. Throughout this film, Tyler challenges our basic assumptions about our daily lives and the world in which we live. Not simply, "Are we winning in the game of Life?" which we regularly ask ourselves, but instead, "What does winning this particular game mean? Who made up the rules to this game? Why do we follow them? Is this really the game we want to be playing, in the way we're playing it?"

Tyler says, "The things you own end up owning you." If you're still paying 19% interest on that solar powered hot dog rotisserie and bun warmer that you just had to have, you know this is true.

Tyler says, "Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions." Why? See the above quote.

Tyler says, "You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?" Socrates once said, "the unexamined life is not worth living", yet most of us think of this self examination in much the same way that we might think about a colonoscopy - a big pain in the ass is the main thought. But, like a colonoscopy, we're also secretly afraid of what we might find. Fear aside, it's worth thinking about.

And here's a quote attributed to Tyler that I honestly don't remember ever hearing in the movie, but it spoke to me:

"Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler. "

Do you know about Tyler Durden?

My Drag Name? Ann O. Nymity

I think Drag Queens are great.

I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about, but for those who don't, drag queens are female impersonators - male performers that present the illusion of being female onstage, usually in a larger than life way (think RuPaul's friends - RuPaul herself is no longer a drag queen in my opinion - she has now attained "Icon" status).

Why do I think they're great? I couldn't really tell you - it's just a fascination. As a former actor myself, I know how much work goes into preparing for a role, but most roles that an actor might play are at least based on his current or "active" gender. FI's (female impersonators) don't have that as a foundation on which to build. They must construct their characters, their physical forms, their presentation from the ground up - and that takes work. And then of course, they need a name.

Here's how non-performers (people not of the stage) pick a drag name - you take the name of your first pet growing up as your first name, and the name of the street where you first lived as your last name which, in my case would make me "Dutchess Harrison". That ain't half bad as a drag name. My friend "Scruffy 23rd Street" didn't fare so well. As I said, this is the non-performer, fun little cocktail party way of coming up with a drag name.

Real performers, people who actually do perform as drag queens - well, they go about it a completely different way. Their names by and large are a turn of a phrase, usually telling and almost always funny. Dusty Britches, Charity Case, Candy Cayne, Summer Luvvin, Anita Mann, Amanda Love - this is just a small sampling of drag monikers that you might hear being announced at many bars and clubs across the country.

Using this method, I would name myself Ann O. Nymity. Or perhaps her dear next door neighbor Ann Onymous. Either way, you get the point. You don't know me; I could be anyone. I could be your neighbor, your gas man, your son's fifth grade music teacher - you just don't know.

At first, that was cool. I really enjoyed creating the Debt Daddy alter ego - that mythic man of mystery who's shower is only a passing acquaintance - but then I got to thinking; why do I need a "secret identity"? Most of my friends don't even know that this blog exists, and I find myself biting my tongue sometimes not to tell them. Why? The obvious reason, of course, is that I'm more than a little embarrassed by my fiscal mis-management, as I'm sure some other debt bloggers are. We messed up somewhere along the line, didn't get a handle on it, and let things spin out of control. Now we hang our heads in shame, not just because we're not the millionaires that our younger selves knew we would be by this age, but also because we're so far behind that it seems like we my never be. We knew when we were young that the term "working poor" would never come close to describing us and yet, here we sit, blogging in secrecy about it.

The thing is, I really don't think we're the minority here. I think there are a lot more people in the same boat that are also too embarrassed to talk openly about it, and so don't. We are the silent majority.

I think it's about time we got loud. I think it's time for us to come out of the closet. Not because we're proud of our debt, but because there is strength in numbers. We need to talk openly with our friends and neighbors about debt and see if they have thoughts or ideas on dealing with it that hadn't occurred to us, and share our ideas with them. We need to write Congress and Captain Veto often and insist that they pass legislation that might actually benefit us during this time of financial difficulty. We need to call our credit card companies on a regular basis and consistently request lower interest rates, perhaps by threatening default. And we have to urge as many people as we can to do the same. We need to be out and proud, not about the debt we incurred, but about the positive steps we are taking to make things better.

Having said that, I guess it's only fair that I tell you who I really am. It's time to unveil the identity of the man with the enormous debt that struggles each and every day to keep his financial boat afloat. So, who am I?

I am your neighbor.

I am your gas man.

I am your son's fifth grade music teacher.

I am a drag queen.

I am the majority. And so are you.

Tell a friend.

Where have I been? Ah...where haven't I been?

I know, I know...it's just been too friggin' long between posts, and you're jonesing just a little bit for the old Debt Daddy, aren't you? C'mon, fess up - you missed the curmudgeonly ramblings of the man also known as He Who Doth Not Bathe Regularly. Yeah, me too. I've missed being around...I've missed organizing my thoughts into some sort of neatly stacked diatribe and tossing it at the computer screen to see what sticks. It's just been a downright fugly bitch of a month for oh so many reasons. I'll get to a few of those in a moment, but first, some shout outs to my peeps - Boyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Okay, first off, if you don't know my buddy JW over at Need to be Debt Free (see my links on the sidebar), you gotta check him out. He's got some really good content, and seems to find much more time to post than your old good for nuthin' yours truly. A few weeks ago, I hit his site and was pleased to find a link to the entire movie, "Maxed Out". Debt Daddy gives this flick two huge thumbs up - by the end of the film, you just wanna take a credit card company CEO out behind the woodshed and show him the business end of a pitchfork...and not in a good way. Anyway, here's the link - catch it when you can and tell a friend. http://needtobedebtfree.blogspot.com/2008/03/watch-complete-movie-maxed-out.html

Second, to Brian over at Over 40 Debt Weight Loss - hey dude, thanks for missing me, and I'm glad you're picking up what I'm putting down. And while I'm at it, thanks as well to Jeff B for your completely cool comments - it's not every day that Debt Daddy gets called poetic (pathetic, on the other hand - yeah, I hear that pretty much every day - more often than not from that scruffy looking dude in my mirror - what's up with him??) As you can see if you looked around the blog, we don't get a whole lotta comments here in DebtDaddyville, so those I do get I treasure, like a Mantle rookie card or a Hummel (okay, Hummels are those kinda freaky looking miniature porcelain figures, usually featuring children with overly wide eyes. Why does Debt Daddy know about Hummels? True Story - when The Daddy was just a wee lad of 17, his virginity was taken ((okay, okay - I gave it to her happily)) by a hot little 21 year old blonde dancer who we'll call Bambi. Bambi was the stuff that dreams are made of, and she made a lot of my 17 year old dreams come true. And Bambi, hot little vixen that she was, collected Hummels. Now, did you really need to know all that? Nah...I just like to brag about Bambi sometimes.) So thanks for the comments, thanks for coming back, and tell a friend.

Okay, so on to why I haven't been around. Let's start with my computer, which has become quite possessed lately. Apparently, something posing as an Adobe update got into my system and has been multiplying like the price of oil. As a result, I've learned quite a bit about Trojans, AdWare, MalWare, GrayWare - most of which are designed to redirect your browser to places you didn't ask for. It's like Pop Up Hell. As a result, it would sometimes take me up to five minutes just to get to my homepage. Ironically, half the time it would redirect me to non-working websites, so it didn't even do it's job effectively. While I still haven't been able to get it all out of my system, I've found a way to bypass it, so I can do what I need to do and, more importantly, it can't do anything that it wants to do.

And so, I'd like to say something to the inventors of these programs, if any of them are reading this - congratulations. You've created an idiotic, devious little beast that most reasonable people don't want and don't like in the least. You've brought into the world a self important, time wasting hellion that seems to take great pleasure in blocking real progress, only to interrupt with programs that don't work and don't go anywhere. So pat yourself on the back. I mean really - how many people can say they've done that?

Yep, you and Barbara Bush. You're in fine company, bucko.

So, that's one reason I've been AWOL. There are others, and I'll get to them, but not tonight. It's late, I'm tired and I usually use the last hour before sleep to have a mild panic attack and question most of the major decisions I've made in my life (ahhhhhhhh...quality time). I will try to get back here sooner, and on a more regular basis. For all of you who keep dropping by - thanx for hangin' with the Debt Daddy.

You Rock.

Peace Out.