The World Is My Obstacle Course (Bayan's Tirades: Volume 3)

By Rick Bayan

Follow the author of "The Cynic's Dictionary" as he struggles with an uncooperative universe, from childhood through college to the trials of homeownership and the insults of middle age.

In this third and final volume drawn from his popular online "tirades," Bayan serves up a series of personal confessions, dreams and fantasies. You’ll read about his fraught relationships with work, love, noise, obligations, scammers, physical fitness, hopeless sports teams, God, politics, headcolds and malevolent inanimate objects whose sole purpose is to exasperate us. For those of us who aren’t instinctively attuned to its secrets, the world really does look like a vast obstacle course.

Contents include "In Praise of Sloth," "On Becoming a Dullard," "Interview with an Unemployable Man," "The Sensory Deprivation Blues," "Love and the Single Cynic," "Why Do We Bother?," "The Fountain of Futility" and the somewhat more upbeat "Why I Can't Hate Christmas" -- along with 40 more essays that will have you chuckling over the various snares, conflicts, insults and afflictions that the gods have prepared for us mortals.

Even though this is the most autobiographical of Bayan's three books of tirades, you'll probably discover that these essays are as much about you as they are about him. If you’ve ever felt at odds with the universe or struggled to open an unyielding bag of corn chips, you’ll feel right at home when you delve into this refreshingly funny and honest book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rick Bayan
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780991359929

Rick Bayan

I was born and raised in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I enjoyed an idyllic semi-suburban childhood. I graduated from Rutgers with a degree in history, then picked up a master's in journalism from the University of Illinois. At the latter institution I learned little about reporting but discovered the works of classic American curmudgeon H. L. Mencken. In my twenties I held a number of typical jobs for an idealistic liberal arts graduate, including assistant editor of Rubber Age and managing editor of Container News. At Time-Life Books I was assigned to write about plumbing fixtures. After 18 months of gainful unemployment (during which I burrowed into dozens of great books and saw my first essays published), I survived seven years as chief copywriter at Barron’s Educational Series. In 1985 I moved from New York to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Why? I had taken a job as advertising copy chief at Day-Timers, the original producer of old-fashioned personal organizers. (People still wrote on paper then.) My work there won six advertising awards. In the evenings I crafted my "disgruntled definitions" for The Cynic's Dictionary (Morrow, 1994) on my office computer. Two years later I created The Cynic’s Sanctuary online to promote my book, but the site took on a life of its own – with lively message board conversations, my own monthly "tirades" and other fun features. I also wrote a weekly syndicated column, "Some Cynical Guy," for Upbeat Online. One dedicated fan even wrote a screenplay, I, Cynic, based on my writings. After 14 years at Day-Timers, I called it quits and leaped into the perilous world of freelance writing and creative consulting. As Richard Bayan (my “serious” professional alter ego), I’m the author of the popular advertising thesaurus Words That Sell and its spawn, More Words That Sell, both published by McGraw-Hill. I've also published three collections of humorous essays on Smashwords: Extremely Dark Chocolates, Lifestyles of the Doomed, and The World Is My Obstacle Course. In 2007 I created The New Moderate (www.newmoderate.com), a blog for "extreme" centrists. I’ve been interviewed by CNN, Psychology Today, Australia's leading women's magazine and numerous radio and TV shows. These days you can find me living with my teenage son and a middle-aged cat in a tree-shaded former stable in Philadelphia. I’m a longtime birdwatcher and one of the few people alive who can do a reasonably accurate vocal impression of Teddy Roosevelt. Wish me luck (and buy my books!).

Book preview

The World Is My Obstacle Course is the third and final volume of a trilogy that includes the already-published Extremely Dark Chocolates and Lifestyles of the Doomed.

Roughly half of these essays first appeared as monthly tirades on my old website, The Cynic’s Sanctuary, from 1996 through 2002. The others come to you from my syndicated column, Some Cynical Guy, written for Upbeat Online (and which I cross-posted on The Cynic’s Sanctuary with the publisher’s permission). You’ll probably spot some dated cultural references here and there, but I’ve left them as they are. (Updated references would soon become dated again, anyway.)

In the interest of anchoring my (cough, cough) future literary reputation, I’ve tweaked my prose here and there to bring it up to my current standard. I’ve also added two essays of slightly more recent vintage as fitting postscripts to my career as a professional cynic.

Rick Bayan

Philadelphia, August 2018

Preface

Welcome to the third and final volume of essays from my brief but fertile career as a professional cynic. As the author of The Cynic’s Dictionary, I amused myself (and, presumably, thousands of readers) by lampooning the follies of our times in neat, sharp, whimsical definitions that eviscerated their targets in the manner of that magnificent old crank, Ambrose Bierce.

But I had more to say, and I said it in a series of dark-humored tirades over a six-year period that spanned the turn of the millennium. I relished writing those pieces, and my Web visitors apparently enjoyed reading them. When I eagerly offered them to my literary agent for compilation in book form, her reply knocked the stuffing out of me: I love your work, Rick, [so far, so good] "but [uh-oh] collections of essays don’t sell." [Bummer! Dejection! Existential despair!]

It seems that the humorous essayist’s niche, once the province of H. L. Mencken, S. J. Perelman, E. B. White and other eminently initialed professional wordsmiths, had been invaded and occupied by edgy stand-up comics — preferably those with a top-rated cable TV series and a worshipful built-in audience to boost their odds of bestsellerdom. Publishers weren’t taking any chances on obscure middle-aged cynics who clacked away on their keyboards in the privacy of their kitchens.

So here I am, offering the final self-published collection of my essays for your amusement, enlightenment and whatever else you choose to do with it. I took care to shape each collection around a common theme. The first volume, Extremely Dark Chocolates, gathered the most delectably morbid pieces from my six-year run as an online cynical scribe. The second book, Lifestyles of the Doomed, focused outward: it collected my curmudgeonly social and cultural commentary as America transitioned from the Age of Yuppiedom to the Age of Terror.

What can you expect from The World Is My Obstacle Course? Well, I suppose it’s the closest thing you’ll find to a Rick Bayan autobiography. I’ll be the first to admit that my life hasn’t been nearly exciting or noteworthy enough to justify an actual memoir — unless reading about the adventures of an introspective history major with a fair-to-middling career as a direct-mail advertising copy chief is your kind of thing. In these pages you won’t learn much about my parents, grandparents or the countless spellbinding hours I spent building plastic models and playing backyard badminton with my boyhood pals. I almost never got into hot water in my youth, a character flaw I regret to this day.

Instead of compiling a chronicle of my largely vanilla life on this endlessly diverting globe, I’ve served up a series of personal confessions — along with a few intriguing dreams and fantasies. You’ll read about my fraught relationships with work, love, noise, obligations, scammers, physical fitness, hopeless sports teams, God, politics, headcolds and malevolent inanimate objects whose sole purpose is to exasperate the bejeezus out of me. For those of us who aren’t instinctively attuned to its secrets, the world really does look like a vast obstacle course.

As I’ve reread these pieces after the passage of roughly two decades, I’ve winced now and then at my epic self-absorption, my whining about chronic overwork, my obsessive preoccupation with the condition of my stressed arteries. I’ve learned during the ensuing years that marriage, homeownership, child-rearing and divorce are surefire antidotes to an overdeveloped ego.

At the same time, I have to commend my younger self for cultivating a plucky independence of spirit — a stubborn, happy refusal to adapt to our often joyless contemporary culture. Like an indulgent father watching the antics of his growing son, I’ve enjoyed reading my honest effusions of youthful cynicism — a kinder, gentler cynicism (to borrow a ghostwritten phrase from George Bush the Elder) that sprang from thwarted hopes, trampled ideals and a genuine befuddlement about the sinister workings of the real world.

I hope you enjoy my effusions, too. You’ll come to know me more thoroughly than many of my longtime friends and neighbors. But even if you learn more than you expected (or wanted) to know about the author of The Cynic’s Dictionary, you might discover that most of these essays are just as much about you as they are about me. If you’ve ever felt at odds with the universe or struggled to open an unyielding bag of corn chips, you’ll feel right at home here.

How I Became a Cynic

I don't know about you, but I wasn't born cynical. Few of us are. In fact, my more venerable relatives and friends will tell you that I dreamed away my youth in a state of idyllic ease and contentment. I was convinced that I lived in the best of all possible worlds, which for me was a leafy, semi-suburban enclave at the eastern edge of New Brunswick, New Jersey, during the third quarter of the twentieth century. I liked virtually everyone in those days: my family, my neighbors, my neighbors' dogs, my classmates and schoolteachers — even our rotund and jovial principal. In short, I was impossibly happy.

So how did I end up disillusioned enough to write a mostly-forgotten volume of fractured definitions that I dubbed The Cynic's Dictionary? What malevolent imp yanked the rug from under the merry young idealist? What unseen gravity pulled him into the orbit of those mischievous malcontents who earn the world’s contempt for refusing to lead, follow or get out of the way?

I can't give you the exact date and time, but when it happened it happened fast. I had just graduated from a respectable university with a degree in history. I had taken my education seriously enough to graduate with honors. I knew all the monarchs of England in order from Egbert to Elizabeth II. I could tell you about the cause and outcome of the Third Mithridatic War. I could... well, you get the picture. There was absolutely no doubt in my green and buoyant mind that the real world and I would get along just fine. I was poised to make my entrance.

I date my downfall to the moment I opened the want ads in search of my first job. Suddenly my place in the universe was revealed to me in one ego-crumpling phrase: Coll Grad Typist, 7K. One phrase, repeated over and over again, irritatingly, mockingly, diabolically, until the point was driven home: in the eyes of society, I was worth approximately as much as a shoestore clerk (not that there’s anything wrong with shoestore clerks, but I had more ambitious ambitions).

In The Cynic's Dictionary I define a cynic as an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision. The day I opened those want ads was the day I had my glasses snapped.

What galled me even more as I studied the want ads (and believe me, I became an authority on the subject) was that any job with a whiff of nobility automatically paid less than one that called upon our less elevated instincts. Thus an assistant editor of a literary magazine was forever doomed to be outearned by an assistant buyer of ladies' undergarments. Society was rewarding those folks who had been callous enough — or shrewd enough — to resist the enchantments of art and philosophy.

I make my living in the business world as I write these words, but my soul has never been at ease there. I must be constituted differently on a genetic level from your average MBA, who seems to thrive in an environment I consider semi-lethal — the way certain strains of bacteria thrive on antibiotics. To anyone with a mildly vigorous imagination, the modern corporation must seem a pale imitation of life: a mundane yet strangely artificial world without colorful streets to ramble or green woods to roam... without passionate exchanges of deeply held ideas...without romance or gaiety or great books or history or dogs or children.

And what about the petty rivalries and sneaky intrigues, the subtle brainwashing and not-so-subtle backstabbing, the self-important corporate jargon, the self-appointed hall monitors, the arbitrary goals and deadlines, the ever-lengthening hours, the havoc wreaked on mind and body... the soul-numbing pointlessness of all this BUSINESS!

Still, there are those who love the corporation... who take to it as naturally as a cat to a windowsill. I can't resent them for following their bliss. But it's not my bliss, and I suspect it's not yours either.

The Cynic’s Dream

From the moment I woke up, unaccountably relaxed and refreshed after four hours of sleep, I knew this day would be different.

Picture this: a Mozart piano concerto is wafting its lyrical notes from my clock radio (finally, golden oldies worthy of the name!) and the entire room glows with warm and soothing sunlight. I reach over to nuzzle my cat and find, in his place, a slumbering redhead tangled in the sheets, still blissfully oblivious to the music. My wife, of course! How could I forget that we had finally found each other — we who had loved each other as platonic ideals all our lives, now enjoying the fruits of our longing. A decided improvement over personal ads and video dating services!

A moment later I hear a scratching at the bedroom door. It’s Skippy, the beloved dog of my boyhood: a splendid English Setter, spry as ever at the age of 43… my friend for life. Old Skippy fetches the morning newspaper and I begin to read. Israelis and Palestinians Agree to Share United Holy Land… David Bowie Abducted by Space Aliens: I’m Going Home, He Says… Teddy Roosevelt Throws Hat in Ring for Presidency″… Dow Jones Industrial Average Jumps 1,619 Points to All-Time High — No Inflation in Sight, Declares Fed Chief… Turkey Cedes Eastern Provinces to Armenia" (as an American of Armenian ancestry, I derive particular satisfaction from that one). I check the bestseller list: my Cynic’s Dictionary is solidly entrenched in the #3 spot; John Grisham, Danielle Steel and A 16th Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul are nowhere to be found. Ah, there’s good news today!

I sit down to a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs and home fries, all recently found to raise crucial levels of good cholesterol in the blood. The bacon is derived from a new genetically engineered meat source that grows from fertilized pods; no innocent animals need be slaughtered. I reach out my window, pluck a few oranges from the tree and enjoy a tall glass of fresh juice.

Our two children are dressed and ready for school. Running out the door, they shout, We love you, Daddy, and you never have to buy us any toys that are crassly produced as commercial movie tie-ins! I’m fond of those kids.

Now I’m ready for work. (It’s Wednesday; the weekend begins tomorrow.) Tooling down a scenic highway as the morning sun slants against the blue-green mountains, I realize that I’ve driven directly from town into the open countryside: no congested highway strips littered with fast-food joints and gas stations, no sprawling tract-home developments or unnaturally immaculate condos, no insufferable Wal-Marts or used-car dealerships or ugly high-tension wires. On top of that, every traffic light I encounter as I leave town has been programmed to turn green as I approach.

I reach the office, a Georgian-style colonial mansion on an estate overlooking the sea. A few colleagues greet me as I stride in the door at 9:45; it’s still early, and more than half the crew hasn’t arrived. I have time to craft my thrice-weekly column, The Generalist, a 1,200-word discourse on any subject that strikes my fancy. (Millions of enlightened fans look forward to reading it, the way some folks used to look forward to an all-new episode of Seinfeld.) The job pays handsomely and takes me only half an hour at most. I unleash a dazzling stream of felicitous phrases that tumble effortlessly from my brain; I’ve never known the meaning of writer’s block. What block? You just sit at the keyboard and take dictation from God. Doesn’t everyone?

After browsing the Web for half an hour, I attend our daily 11 o’clock meeting for solving the world’s problems. Today we establish plans for reversing the deterioration of the inner city and stopping the Microsoft juggernaut before it destroys civilization as we know it. But soon it’s time for lunch.

Three colleagues jump into my little Oldsmobile Achieva (currently the most prestigious of all automobiles) and we head for France, just nine miles down the Interstate. Tall poplars, straight and narrow, flank the sun-dappled road as we approach the cathedral of Chartres. We stop in its shadow, where we hastily assemble a lunch of fresh baguettes, Camembert and Champagne from the local shops. Then we relax at an outdoor cafe to enjoy the passing scene. Some locals approach me at the table.

"Etes vous vraiment l’auteur de La dictionnaire cynique?, they ask. Vous êtes formidable, comme Jerry Lewis!" They’re handing me the ultimate compliment, and I thank them.

Back at the office, those of us on the creative team watch a Marx Brothers classic, Duck Soup, as part of our campaign to re-introduce intelligent silliness into American culture. A few upper-management people stop by to ask politely if there’s anything they can do for us. We tell them they can promise us 15% annual raises. Great idea! they exclaim as they shuffle out the door. How I love this job!

At 3 o’clock we’re free to conduct independent research or head home for the day. I’ve put in a long three-day week, so I opt for the latter. Homeward bound, I take a slight detour along the Oregon coast, stopping to enjoy the panoramas of craggy cliffs and sea-stacks from windswept overlooks. How wonderful a place the world has become since they moved all the good parts close together!

Home again, I inspect our rose garden and greet the children as they step off the school bus.

Daddy, we love you, they shout, and guess what — we bought you the new Oxford edition of the Collected Works of Jonathan Swift! Delightful kids.

We frolic with Skippy in the backyard, in the cool shade of the sassafras trees. My wife, home from work, joins us for a pitcher of lemonade on our verandah. We nod hello to the Applebys and Stewarts, who join us to swap a few neighborly yarns.

For dinner, it’s off to the Vienna Woods, just 12 miles north of town. After a hearty meal of sauerbraten and dumplings, we find our favorite wine cellar and enjoy a bottle of ice-cold Riesling. The crowd begins to sing lusty old university songs. My wife and I know the words, and we join in the merriment. Outdoors in the moonlight, we dance to a favorite waltz and take a carriage ride through the darkening woods. It’s a good life.

We’re pleasantly fatigued as we walk up the steps to our home and open the front door. The kids have done all the housework; they’re ready for bed. I read them an H. L. Mencken essay and they clamor for more.

"He’s almost as good as you, Daddy," they shout gleefully.

But it’s time to put out the lights. We’ll read some more Mencken tomorrow, I say as I tuck them in.

Alone in my study, I sketch out an idea for a new book, The Riddle of the Cockroach, and write half of it within an hour. I’m humming; my mental powers are prodigious; I’ve reached peak performance. Meanwhile, my wife announces that she’s heading up to bed.

I just want to write another cynical tirade for my website, I tell her. I’ll be up there in twenty minutes.

OK, darling, she says. I’ll be waiting.

I sit down at my computer and stare at the screen. Hmmm. I draw a blank. I can’t think of anything cynical to write! The ideas just won’t come. I fidget in my seat; droplets of sweat begin to bead on my forehead. Am I washed up as a cynic? It’s not possible! Where did I go wrong? Aaaaaarrrrrghhhhh!!!

I wake up with a start. Wild Thing is blaring from the clock radio. It’s 7:30 on a dark and drizzly morning. I lean over to kiss my wife and get a mouthful of cat fur instead. This would be a day like any other.

Will the Real God Please Stand Up?

When I was a mere pup, no older than some of the unopened soup cans in my cupboard today, I used to believe that God looked like Arthur Godfrey.

If you’re too young to remember Arthur Godfrey, let me tell you this much about the man: he was among the first and most legendary of the daytime TV talk-show hosts; his benign countenance beamed its way into millions of American homes during television's infancy. His bulbous features gave him the look of a cheery middle-aged cherub and conveyed a benevolence that passeth all understanding. To my three-year-old mind, he was almost an object of reverence. I watched in awe as his image materialized on that mysterious glowing screen.

When I first heard about God, I assumed he was simply a more distant incarnation of Arthur Godfrey. The names were similar; maybe they were related. And from that time forward, whenever I tried to visualize the face of God, I would invariably see the mirthful eyes, the puffy cheeks, the perpetual beaming smile of... ARTHUR GODFREY.

There was no avoiding it. In the crazy maze of my youthful imagination, God and Arthur Godfrey became inextricably linked. At school, when we'd say grace before our afternoon snackfest of milk and cookies, there was Arthur Godfrey nodding his approval from on high. When I walked through a field on a sparkling day and dared to look the sun in its face, it was the unmistakable face of Arthur Godfrey I beheld. Godfrey was everywhere, and he made me feel at ease in the world.

Only later did the more orthodox theologies cloud my sunny relationship with the Supreme Deity. Yes, God was our shepherd, his mercy was everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations. But he was also known to pull an occasional fast one.

The God of the Old Testament could be alarmingly ruthless and persnickety. He had a nasty penchant for punishing the innocent along with the guilty, yet nobody quibbled with his decisions. Why would he drown hordes of helpless children in the Great Flood, or smite all those firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, or turn Lot's good wife into a pillar of salt? For that matter, why would he condemn all of humankind because our first ancestors’ fruit-eating habits? And why the seemingly petty obsessions with dietary restrictions and Jewish men's hairstyles? Could the creator of the galaxies really be all that chagrined if we ate a knockwurst?

Even the kinder, gentler New Testament God, speaking through his presumptive son, could turn spiteful if we didn't play by his rules. Sure, he'd reward us if we accepted Jesus as our personal lord and savior; otherwise we could stew in hell for all eternity. And how would he know which of us deserved a place of honor in his own lofty accommodations? He'd have to tally the scoresheets of billions of individual humans from the Paleolithic to the present. As if he isn't busy enough inventing new viruses or destroying stars in the dark regions beyond the Crab Nebula.

And how is it that so many generations of believers have bowed to his more unfathomable whims with the bland resignation of sheared sheep? Eighteenth-century burying grounds are littered with the remnants of human bodies rudely snatched in their infancy; I've seen mildewed monuments to entire broods carried off by a single epidemic. How could the faithful parents not have been consumed by rage at their presumptive benefactor? Meekly and heroically, they subjected their own will to his: Here lyeth all that is Mortall of our beloved Daughter Elizabeth, whom it pleased God to take from us in the seventh Yeare of her Age. If they felt betrayed, they didn't let it ruffle their periwigs.

Creator, benefactor, destroyer, heartbreaker. Exactly what kind of deity are we dealing with here? Who is this God that so many of us have worshiped, abandoned, loved, cursed, wrestled with and obsessed about for all these many centuries? Is he a charitable father whose eye is on the sparrow, or a remote and brilliant physicist more concerned with gravitation than salvation? Might he be the abstract, beneficent Providence invoked by Franklin and Jefferson? Is he more like a visionary but essentially amoral Chairman/CEO of the universe? Does his apparent tolerance of evil make him indistinguishable from the devil? Could he be (choose one) Yahweh, Zeus, Allah, Wotan, Quetzalcoatl, Ahura-Mazda, Shiva or the Tao? Is he dead, nonexistent or just retired? Have the New-Agers discovered him in their hazy preoccupation with healing energy? Finally, could