Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, was a certified genius. At 27, he was part of the Manhattan Project team that created the first nuclear bomb. He was brilliant in several fields of science besides physics. He was a lover of Brazlian music who was so good at the bongos, he played percussion in several bands.
He hung out in strip clubs.
When he was stuck on a problem, he would grab his pad of paper and a pencil, and he would head out to a strip club in Pasadena, where he would sit for hours, watching girls, flirting with the waitress and doing equations.
The funny thing is, I'm sure the dancers thought to themselves, "There is another cheap, pathetic loser who doesn't tip!"
Richard Feynman, a PL? No way!
Have you ever gone into a too-hip record store and watched the sales people give attitude to the customers? Ever watched if someone was so unhip as to buy a lame mainstream CD from these purveyors of cool? (Like the scene in the movie "High Fidelity"...)
Those $7 an hour clerks think they are so cool, that anyone who doesn't buy the right music is a loser.
Yesterday, I saw a barrista at Starbucks give attitude to a well-dressed businesswoman who had the temerity to order a decaf soy latte. The attitude was, "Yo bitch, don't come in my store unless you are going to order REAL coffee."
These incidents have gotten me thinking, being a loser is relative to the field. If Bill Gates went to a strip club incognito, there would doubtless be someone there who would think he was another geek loser. If that same person went to work for Microsoft, Bill would probably think they were a loser.
This is not the way the word "loser" was meant to be used! "Loser" is in danger of being overused, and of losing its meaning. My copy of Webster's doesn't even define the word!
Traditionally, being a loser has been characterized by a particular set of values. Lately, a loser has come to mean anyone who comes up short in a particular situation. I'd like to reclaim the original set of values:
- Inability to maintain steady income.
- Inability to maintain relationships.
- Inability to maintain good living conditions.
- Inability to maintain a vehicle.
- Inability to maintain perspective between what is important and what is a waste of time.
Notice that "inability to maintain" means the person occasionally gets these things, but loses them due to stupidity, carelessness or corruption. This distinguishes them from the poor, who never get these things, and the tragic, who lose these things due to horrible circumstances. A loser is a person who gets a BMW, but loses it by crashing it before it's insured. A loser is a person whose girlfriends leave him for whoever happens to be his best friend at the time.
A person is not a loser because they are a poor tipper, or because they buy Robert Goulet CDs. Those choices simply reflect bad judgement.
A married guy with lots of friends, living in a nice home, making decent money and driving a car in solid running condition is not a loser just because he goes to strip clubs. He is merely pathetic. No one should ever think of a Nobel prize-winning physicist like Richard Feynman as a loser. The proper term for such people, which I now coin, is Pathetic Winner. If the person has a sufficient income, he may even be a Pathetic Upscale Patron, or PUP.  The PW and the PUP are a step up from the Pathetic Dweeb, whom I classified a few weeks ago, who is somewhere between a winner and a loser (e.g., Darryl Strawberry).
To clarify the scale:
PL - a true loser, and pathetic (a superset of fuckos)
PD - not such a loser, but pathetic anyway
PW - a pillar of society, a leader, but pathetic anyway
PUP - a rich PW
Let's save the term "loser" for those to whom it really applies, and maintain its rich heritage of meaning.
Thanks for reading.
Sax "pretty much a total loser" beat
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