I'm Not A Nice Person.

There Seems To Be No Stopping Drug Frenzy Once It Takes Hold Of A Nation. What Starts With An Innocuous Hugs, Not Drugs Bumper Sticker Soon Leads To Wild Talk Of Shooting Dealers And Making Urine Tests A Condition For Employment -- Anywhere.

By The Reagan Era, The 'culture Of Poverty' Had Become A Cornerstone Of Conservative Ideology: Poverty Was Caused Not By Low Wages Or A Lack Of Jobs But By Bad Attitudes And Faulty Lifestyles. The Poor Were Dissolute, Promiscuous, Prone To Addiction And Crime, Unable To 'defer Gratification' Or Possibly Even Set An Alarm Clock. The Last Thing They Could Be Trusted With Was Money.

Among Other Things, [books By Bruce Doyle Iii And Mike Hernacki] Explain The Importance Of The "winning Attitude" I Have Been Urged To Adopt: A Positive Attitude "attracts" Or "fulfils", Depending On Which Author's Weird Science You Go With, Postiive Results, With Little Or No Action On Your Part Required. Herein, Too, Lies The Answer To The Question I Once Posed ...: Would It Be Enough Just To Fake A Winning Attitude? No Way, According To Doyle.

I Have A Ph.d. In Cell Biology. And That's Really Manual Labor. I Mean, Experimental Science, You Do It With Your Hands. So It's Very Different. You're Out There In A Lab, Cleaning Test Tubes, And It Just Wasn't That Fascinating.

At Wal-mart, A Co-worker Once Advised Me That, Although I Had A Lot To Learn, It Was Also Important Not To "know Too Much," Or At Least Never To Reveal One's Full Abilities To Management, Because "the More They Think You Can Do, The More They'll Use You And Abuse You." My Mentors In These Matters Were Not Lazy; They Just Understood That There Are Few Or No Rewards For Heroic Performance. The Trick Lies In Figuring Out How To Budget Your Energy So There'll Be Some Left Over For The Next Day.