CHAPTER ONE: Borderline
What a week of discovery and angst. A week in pursuit of the ever-elusive perfect-every-day-radio-show. I may be the only guy on earth who gives a shit……You see, as a friend of mine once told me after doing some research, “You, Phil, are a borderline personality.” This is an actual condition, a state of mind if you will. It is a “type” that psychiatrists recognize. It is marked by mood swings but borderline personality is not “bi-polar.” The borderline personality can be gentle and generous and explosively hostile, all within a 10 minute period. But borderline personalities do not go back and forth all day within these ten minute windows. A borderline may go days and days in a relatively contented mood. He is okay because there is nothing triggering him. For me, good work, paid bills, money in the bank and time alone are all prerequisites if i am to have peaceful days and sleep-filled nights. I can deal with anything if my physical security and peace of mind are intact. But the minute anything occurs to upset those things…an intrusion by anyone that ‘needs’ me, a call from the bank, a sloppy, badly executed radio show in which I can identify people in addition to myself that didn’t do their job or anyone trying to fuck me out of money…I could easily kill someone. And I’m not exaggerating. For people like me fear is not the fear of being hurt. It’s the fear of hurting someone so bad you lose your freedom. So I’ve learned that that kind of anger strangles everything creative and worthwile in myself. I’m literally of no use to anyone, least of all myself, when I’m that rageful. I have to mitigate it. Moderate it. It has taken years. And slowly you try and get a grip on those things that give you peace. You get organized all over again, knowing those triggers await. And you tell yourself you’ll get better at knowing the trigger when you see it and not squeeze it. Being a borderline personality means enduring things other people breeze through. Grocery shopping is torture. 
CHAPTER TWO: Grocery Shopping Is Torture.
I despise all shopping because my mother made a spectacle out of me when we went clothes shopping. My real irritation with “mother” though is much deeper. But, naturally, anything having to do with her seems painful now. And that would include shopping for clothes. “He has broad shoulders, don’t you think,” she would ask a sales lady as the two of them turned me round and round sizing up my look in a 1) car coat 2) V-neck sweater 3) navy blue blazer 4) etc. Of course, mothers clothes shop with sons all the time. So, as I indicated, my impatience with this had much deeper roots. We’ll explore those later. For now though we can trace my immediate hatred of shopping to those forays with mom. Grocery shopping in particular is agony but I can claim some allies in this feeling. Why else would Burger King hit it spot on with their TV ad from a couple of years back. In it, we see a man standing at the immense doors of an endless supermarket freezer, gazing at all the choices before him. We know he’s going to be there awhile. The voice-over: “Burger King…without us some guys would starve.” That’s me. And that’s why I’ve suddenly got weight to deal with. Older, slower metabolism plus mother issue with shopping equals fat ass on wheels. Grocery shopping with women is, as one would understand, the worst. It seems to take forever. Because it does take forever. When we arrive at the checkout stand, I hate every person there. I hate the checker who appears to be the slowest, most retarded person on the planet. I hate the chatty customer, so lonely and empty their daily exchange with people in the grocery store is a highlight. And I hate the parking lot and the search for the car and the loading and the unloading. And I know all of this is irrational, born of biochemical and psychological imbalances. I think sub-consciously I chose a career where the earning upside was significant so I might one day afford to not have to do any of this shit but pay someone else to do it instead. That’s why, when my economic fortunes took a turn for the worse a few years back, my hatred for all things human ratcheted up a notch.
CHAPTER THREE: My Hatred For All Things Human
You see, in the radio business many of the bosses we call “suits.” Why? Because they aren’t real people, not real artists, just shit dressed up in a tie and slacks. Well, anyway, since they are notoriously cheap and dishonest every now and then you have to have, what we call, a “Come To Jesus” meeting with them. Also because they are dishonest, cheap and immoral the “Come To Jesus” usually winds up with the talent telling them the truth about themselves and their mothers. See, the fact is for many shows radio ad sales are for shit. So that means the radio ad guys need to “man the fuck up” and get to work for a change or they will continue to have to deal, increasingly, with talent that, also increasingly, has other ways to make a living. This chapter is called “My Hatred For All Things Human” because in fact I love life. When I am enraged to the point of doing serious damage to something or someone it is so removed from who and what I want to be I define it as “hatred for all things human.” It really isn’t. It usually has something to do with the business I’m in. Radio. A business of energetic, principled and creative people led by a cadre of the worst trash that ever got out of diapers and into a..well, into a suit.
