My “ONE CRAZIER!” System.
How to win life using mashed potatoes.
If you have been following my wak autobiography of grunge lit, you will be aware that I have not led a boring existence. Once I was a homeless druggie raggamuffin grinding it out on the mean streets of New Zealand, as well as a logger, a demolition man, a roofer and an all round Try Hard.
Now I am a recovering pampered suburbanite on a quest to regain my youthful vigor, through the medium of advising and repairing badly functioning farms around the world and being good with a chainsaw.
I developed many systems over the years to help me survive the various insane situations that I found myself in. Many of these situations are detailed in my stories.
Im going to start a series about these bullshit systems, which you can use to make your life more exciting.
Note I did not say better.
The ONE CRAZIER System is the first one I will detail, and here it is.
Here is the premise.
As a student of man and systems, and an untrained social scientist, who has been booted about on the winds of fate, I have learned that all social systems and functioning systems of law and order are based around violence at the very end.
The fact that many pay taxes or obey the law is because at the end of the line there are men with guns to make sure you do so. This is how governments work.
All political power originates in Violence. I don’t make the news… I just report it.
Here’s the link:
Growing up in the 90s in the rugged social systems of NZ and Australia, and for many years living very rurally, many uncertain social situations were rapidly resolved with the question “Do you wanna punch in the head, cunt?”
The person could then ask themselves if they wanted to fight to be right about what stupid action they had done or stupid statement or insult they had made or blusteringly apologize. I had said NO a few time to that question myself…
So… as I graduated out of the working class and being punched in the head or punching others in the head for infractions on our social code I saw that in the realm of the moderately educated and ostensibly sane middle class, people controlled each other with social systems.
These middle class systems seemed to be based on being mean, sarcastic comments, not inviting people to parties, backstabbing and other mostly incomprehensible to me at the time, bullshit.
The result of which meant as a rough country worker guy I often didn’t know where I stood with people.
I had a hell of a time integrating with “Polite Society”.
Im sure SOME of you readers grew up as a penniless white trash hick that somehow crawled into the middle class by mimicry….and reading.
Well… what has this got to do with my ONE CRAZIER SYSTEM….
Well it was an out growth of growing up in a rough rural area…
It was embodied by this quote by one of my mentors.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
When I read that, I was quite rocked… as I had experienced it at a dinner party.
I was a 23 year old East End Boy and at a nice dinner of the parents of a high class West End girl, in Remuera Auckland NZ. It may as well have been the Hamptons for how flash this was to me at the time.
Her uncle, a chubby rich real estate agent kept making smart ass remarks to me about my job in demolition and scummy sexual innuendo to my gal. His sister ( the gals mother ) would laugh nervously at these remarks… her father an insipid drunk milquetoast of a man pretended not to hear.
This behavior was apparently normal and tolerated.
The Uncle had money and was an emotional bully. I wasn’t as smart back then as I am now but I saw the scene for what is was and did not care for it.
I got up from the table and went over to him. I calmly said “One more mean word out of you and you will find out how hard I can punch.” I was sinister and he could feel how much I wanted to beat him out of his boat shoes.
But despite this… he laughed at me and said “Piss off little man.” Before he could get the full word of “man” out, I scooped up a full handful of mashed potatoes from his plate and slapped him as hard as I could in the face with it.
The slap is the best way to start the monkey dance.
The monkey dance is not the song by The Wiggles, it is the chest puffed posturing and shouting that untrained fighters do in front of each other in order to attempt to assert dominance. Sometimes it goes on forever, with no fight eventuating.
I was taught by tougher bastards than me about the slap. When I worked in demolition we had a bag in the bedroom ( see the story PEACHES ) and we would practice delivering devastating slaps to the bag.
The slap is humiliating and soul destroying. It signals the brain to fight or cower almost instantly.
One trick we would practice was to throw the left hand in the air, glance at it and say “SEE THIS HAND?” And at the same time as saying HAND deliver the brutal slap with the right.
The slap immediately either enrages the person to fight or to cower and apologize.
The slap was delivered after the threat.
The system that was always followed in the NZ and Aussie red neck world I worked in was this.
Rudeness. Someone was rude or pissed you off. Discourtesy.
The Threat.
“Do you want to see how hard I can punch?”
“Do you want a punch in the head?”
“ One more word out of you and I will throw you off this fucking roof.”
“If you pull some shit like that again, we will be going outside.”
If the person did not cower or apologize and kept misbehaving… then the SLAP or the warning push that sends them sprawling was enacted.
If the person did not get the message and cower… they would often try 5.
The monkey dance. This is where the untrained fighter would posture with chest puffing and insults, but would not dare attack.
At this point things would progress to a beating, followed by pitious cry’s for mercy.
It’s a rough thing to see a grown man beg off a fight because of being too bashed about. As a trauma counselor working with the NYPD and NYFD I encountered the male trauma caused by losing fights and being badly beaten. It’s a rough one. and brings to mind a lot ego stuff and ideas about one’s self worth.
A man is never the same after a few bad beats.
Many men never get to the point of getting punched… such is our wondrous society where we just call the cops on each other so they can take turns tasing our butt holes…
I decided long ago that I would either fight to the death or never get into a fight I couldn’t win. I badly lost one fight when I was 16 and had to ashamedly back away apologizing. My friends were embarrassed and ashamed for me and It fucked me up mentally for a few months.
Never in all my years did I see the above 1-6 happen with two evenly matched super hard tough guys. They just respected each other and were not disrespectful with mean comments.
I had seen shit blow up between two fake tough guys who start fighting right at 2. One not giving the other any warning or chance to back down. They did not use the formal system. But their lack of skill and fitness prevented them from seriously hurting each other anyway.
The above system was only used when there was one hard as nails guy and someone who was misbehaving that the tough guy wanted to sort out.
Maybe this is just a NZ and Australian thing … ( possibly Irish as well ) of pre 2000…
I can’t comment about what sort of scene is in NZ or Austria these days….
America where I live now has a totally different system, it called PEW PEW PEW!
A note on PEW PEW PEW. :
When I moved to the USA I just kept my mouth shut and was very careful to be aware of my surroundings and polite to everyone.
Because guns.
I made sure I got guns right away. I lived in a rough as fuck ghetto and gun shots were common, one stray bullet going through our front window one night.
The cops would never come by when you called and I decided it would be best to just shoot baddies at distance as they tried to smash in my door… I was not going to get into a punch up with enraged tweakers.
I digress… back to mashed potatoes uncle face slap.
KASLAPPPP!!! Mash potatoes to the face.
I was in uncharted territory…. Was he going to monkey dance… was he going to try to fight me …
Yes monkey dance…
He staggered out of the chair and screamed insults at me while cleaning his bright red face off… the screamed insults continued…
As cool as I could, imitating Michael Madsen from Reservoir dogs, I said
“Are you going to bark all day little doggie, or are you going to bite?”
This is called the taunt… where you use more and more degrading emasculating comments to push the slapped guy to attack you.
If he does you beat him into the dust.
There is one more trick… the fake rush.
If the taunts don’t work, you ball up your fists and put on the warrior face and fake rush the guy. If he attacks its on…
I did the fake rush and he shit himself and backpedaled so quick he fell onto the floor waving his arms about to ward me off. My gals mother Screamed “STOP! GET OUT! JUST GET OUT!” finally woken up from her boozy middle class slumber and about to see her mash potatoes covered brother stomped into the 40$ a foot Kauri floorboards.
I rolled out with her grinning daughter.
Cue intense and wonderful testosterone filled Victory Bang.
So this one Crazier System that I came up with was born out of that night.
Antisocial and Narcissistic people will be rude until some bad ass says NO.
They will push it as far as they can. They get away with it because few people are willing to fight. These nuts, and emotional bullies only understand violence. Reasoning does not work. They will not behave until forced to behave.
The system is Thus: When someone is being a crazy arsehole and does not respond to discussion, reason or logic, GO ONE CRAZIER. There will be a level at which they realize that their anti social behavior and pulling their girlfriend along by the hair through the produce isle, while the rest of the Californians pretend not to see, is not ok. It may be after you have thrown them through a cat food display in the bougie supermarket and they are upside down pissing their pants in shock that they realize in all of Sierra Oaks Sacramento there was one Kiwi, ready to go ONE CRAZIER.
In order to use this system it helps if you have had about ten years of martial arts training, and are fine with being punched.
But I think you should just try it anyway.
What’s hilarious is that by dint of hard work and diligent hustle I entered a very comfortable life in the USA. A few months ago in my back yard training my 13 year old son, he actually got a few good punches in on me. I spun a round house kick to his head to sort him out, missed and almost threw my back out.
I realized… Peace had cost me my strength… victory had defeated me… I was fighting like a younger man… nothing held back… admirable… but mistaken.
I had a little spiritual crisis that Im sure any aging fighter gets…
And watching the Mike Tyson fight DID NOT FUCKING HELP AT ALL.
So what Ive been doing to fix this is…
1. Daily Van Damme Movies.
2. Workouts and stretching.
3. Daily fight training.
When I was 25 in an argument with my father we both realized that It was his turn to back down from threats like taking me out side and beating me. I could beat him if it came to it. I know this is insane… but this is rural NZ.
I threatened to kick his ass across his dining room if he even tried a shot at the title.
He said “I still have the equalizer.” And pointed to his gun cabinet.
Man I guess my upbringing was nuts. My Dad threatened to bash me so I said I would kick his ass, so he said he would just shoot me. Super sane.
BUT NOW I GET IT… so step 4 of my program… is most importantly… getting back to the gun range making sure I a good shot with my pistolas !
PEW PEW PEW, If I can’t pull off a good Patrick Swayze Road House level round house at 47, I’m going to be shit out of luck at 60.
If you want to keep rotting your brain with more stuff in the ballpark of what I have written above, I recommend this piece on The purpose of Dueling.
https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/the-purpose-of-dueling?r=2eehxi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for reading and look forward to more tips.
I just blind subscribed to you because you mentioned my generation, X, in your bio. I like what I’m reading so far. I’m getting inspired to get off my 50-something duff and start writing again. It’s not for lack of ideas, it’s just not been easy to sit down and start typing.
More civilized than some behavior I’ve witnessed.