Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
The home of Ask a Sadist, Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers, and the First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Levity saves lives.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
Reciprocity Now
LA's #1 avant-garde personal development program will help you break all your bad habits but one.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is a production of KCHUNG. Donate to KCHUNG today.
Music by Visions of the Universe, Jesse Spillane, uhanoffski, and AHOAMI. Written, performed, produced, and created by Emerson Dameron, who is solely responsible for its content.
"Everybody Wants Me" is heavily indebted to "The Loved One" and "The Loved One (Remix)" by Joe Frank, Emerson's #1 artistic hero. If you don't know Joe, check him out immediately.
Follow Emerson on Instagram for more Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers.
I'm Emerson Pendammerin III, and if you don't get my jokes, you don't have to get mad about it. I'm more sophisticated and better than you, and that's okay. I may be, objectively, more materially, spiritually and sexually successful than you, as well as more suave, debonair, cerebral and sensual, but that only causes you to suffer, if you allow it to. The truth is, you're not missing much. I'm better than you, and it doesn't make me happy. My incandescent brilliance makes the world fractally complex, which makes it hard for me to commit to arrogant, asinine opinions, the way you obviously enjoy doing. My bottomless reservoir of compassion means it breaks my heart every day that I can't save everyone. You may lack my depth of feeling, but you can start by loving yourself and getting out of your own way. I may be running laps around you in every meaningful field of human endeavor, but if you could set aside your ego and insecurity, you could learn something. K-chung, los Angeles, 1630 AM. Kchungradioorg.
Emerson Dameron:This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes medicated-minutescom. I am Emerson Dameron, the producer and host of the show, but hardly the most interesting star in the EDMM firmament, because this show is about the most fascinating subject in the world, which is you, and I beg of you if you remember only one thing from tonight do not hide your intelligence. Playing dumb does not work for you. This is Los Angeles and people dumb it down because they think that's what's going to sell Screw that Shine brightly. Do not be afraid of your own light and heat and intellectual courage and humility and honesty and sparks and friction. This has nothing to do with innate ability. This is about how you greet the world, the attitude that you adopt out of habit. You are what you do every day. This is what you do every day. This is the gift that you give to yourself and to others to create the kind of world you want to live in. This is the constant flow of the feedback loop of communication. Don't play dumb. I don't play that. Don't be afraid of your own intelligence. Afraid of your own intelligence, because tonight I will show you things that you may not be ready for, and right now I'm not sure if you are playing dumb. It reminds me of an experience I had watching a Lifetime original movie. I was on vacation, I was quite stoned and I couldn't figure out if one of the players was a bad actor or a good actor playing a character who was supposed to be a bad liar.
Emerson Dameron:That brings us to you right now, and whatever it is that you're doing, I'm not sure what to make of this. I know you have a crush on me. It's kind of cute, I'm flattered, but this is not grade school. This is serious business time right now, not grade school. This is serious business time right now. We have important work to do tonight and so far you are not acing this.
Emerson Dameron:There was a reading list. I assumed that you had plenty of time to get through that. No, it's not just Ulysses and the Art of War. There's a whole reading list that would have prepared you for the experiences that we're going to have tonight.
Emerson Dameron:In a way, the fact that you're going in unprepared is kind of sexy is kind of sexy. But I at least need to know that you're sharp enough to be able to enter into a contract so that I can own you, because I own you for the next hour. That's the agreement, and it feels unethical to me if you're not able to make your own grown-assass, grown-up decisions. I only dominate the willing, the deserving, the ready, the able and the wildly enthusiastic, and you've checked off at least a few of those boxes. But I need to know that you have the spark plugs to know what you're doing, and I'm going to take your word for it. There's a spark in your eyes. You have the excellent taste to be head over heels in love with me and long for me day after day, night after night, and also listen to this show, emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, which is the number one avant-garde personal development program in Los Angeles, for reasons that we will discover tonight. I am one of those reasons. I will turn you inside out and I will help you break all of your bad habits, except for one. That's me, and I do this entirely in a giving mode, spending time with you in this way, this creative collaboration, this give and take that we have. This for me is its own reward.
Emerson Dameron:However, I do like to feel appreciated, and if you are of an artistic bent, for instance, if you're a musician, I would love it if you wrote and recorded a song about me, possibly one of the catchier ones, like the lead single from an album that could also be all about me. Normally, I most enjoy consuming content that is both by and about me, but I'll settle for one or the other. I would also love to have an abstract painting inspired by the waveforms of Emerson Dameron's medicated minutes. That would make me feel appreciated, like I matter, and if nothing else works out, I could definitely be open to hate sex. But I could go either way. Just don't screw with my head. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you personally. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. Here we go. Yes, I know you want me. It's laughably obvious.
Emerson Dameron:When I come into the room, you lick your lips and gyrate your hips like some awkward, besotted Elvis impressionist, which doesn't work for you. When you forfeit your swagger, charm and charisma, the horny, desperate gestalt is unmistakable. You want me and I'm not mad about it. Attraction isn't a choice. We don't have much conscious control over who gets us crushed out and hot in the crotch. Usually it's someone German, engineered to make us miserable, and I am, it must be said, devastatingly sexy. Maybe it's my penetrating eye contact with my soulful, wounded brown peepers or my hypnotic and sonorous voice, the wave on which my stimulating message of libertine decadence rolls in. It could be my sly and sophisticated sense of humor, or the strong stillness of my deep, grounded masculine presence, or my well-honed skills as a patient and passionate lover, which are internationally known as those who experience them are doomed to run their mouths. Whatever it is, everybody wants me and I'm reluctant to complain. The party doesn't start when I walk in. It follows me. Everywhere I go. There's someone for everyone, and that someone is me, because everyone wants me.
Emerson Dameron:Once, two seductresses and femmes fatales competing for my attention both hired skywriter planes that collided midair near my home in Venice Beach. The wreckage landed on Oceanfront Walk, killing and wounding several tourists and traumatizing dozens more. But even if I wanted to, I couldn't reward either of these women with dinner and burger lords. My dance card is full front and back, and the waiting list is an unwieldy scroll. Because, as I mentioned, everybody wants me.
Emerson Dameron:I crave solitude. It's my curse and one of my two strongest desires. I'm a little hot for myself too. Some things are popular because they're the best, but with all the attention and stimulation I get, I've lost touch with my desires. I'm a little hot for myself too. Some things are popular because they're the best, but with all the attention and stimulation I get, I've lost touch with my desires. I'm not even sure how to properly masturbate anymore. My other strongest drive, somewhat paradoxically, is my hunger for authentic human connection. I want an Algonquin roundtable of my fellow witty cynics and wounded romantics, but everyone is in love with me, which makes them want to be what they think I want them to be, which isn't at all what I want. I've tried disfiguring myself, I've tried scaring people off with vulnerability and neediness and I've tried hiding in plain sight, which works about as well as you'd think.
Emerson Dameron:It's a melancholy life for the modern Marlboro man, stranded alone in a crowd. Since you ask, I haven't made up my mind about you yet. I like you too much to get your hopes up or reject you outright. Our genetic imperatives make monsters and fools of us all. But we have some choice in how or whether to act on our attraction and I prefer to deliberate and take my time deciding who's going to ruin my life.
Emerson Dameron:Reciprocity now, generosity later. You know you're a generous person. You know you're full of love. We're all one. You smoked the venom of Bufo Alvarez, the Colorado River toad, and had a psychedelic experience. You have no more illusions of separation with some of the social dynamics and you're getting played and you're getting rolled on and manipulated and that's got to stop. Get good at being selfish. Take some time off to figure out what you want and who is being good to you who's on your team and then start a loyalty program. You can have punch cards.
Emerson Dameron:Whatever Reward first class treatment. These people are guests in your penthouse suite. That is your reality. If they want you to come visit them in their world, they can pony up and fly you in first class. Second class is the first one out and you're just going to ignore anybody that treats you that way or train them like dogs. Reward the good treatment, ignore the bad treatment, ice that out. Just ignore it. If they're trying to get attention, they failed. They deserve to fail For bullies and parasites.
Emerson Dameron:Bullies know what they're doing. They have plausible deniability. Your sensitivity and vulnerability is your gift to the world. Don't let them hurt you for that. Parasites just don't have their own thing going on because they don't have the courage or the confidence to take those kinds of creative risks, and you can wish them the best. You can help them out if it works and they pick up what you're laying down and they go on to achieve something of their own. If they use your help to help themselves and get better and start bawling, that's one thing. But if they're just perpetual victims, unhappy and unlucky, essentially by choice, but not even able to be aware of the choices that they make. You may not have time. You know, life isn't necessarily short, it's long. The world is small. You don't want to alienate people just to do it.
Emerson Dameron:But if you've been people-pleasing, it is important to establish who you really are, because people can't trust you if you're not asserting yourself and letting it be known who you are, what you stand for, what you love, what you hate. Do that first and then treat others the way that they treat you and pretty soon people will gravitate to you that understand generosity, that ride the toad and know what that's all about. And then you'll be in business. You can put the G in generous and be genuinely generous, and then it's on. The first thing you got to do is be fascinating. Not easy, but it can be done. It requires charisma and irresistible magnetism.
Emerson Dameron:Charisma is, for sure, a real thing. Science has not figured out how to measure it yet. It's not necessary. You can be fascinating without it. The other end of things that are fascinating by virtue of the sense of integrity that they create by refusing to cultivate or display anything like charisma. I would recommend you at least try to pick it up. If it's out there, go find it, have an interesting time looking for it. It will be a little bit harder than you think because if you're low on charisma, you're gonna meet people, they're gonna have charisma oozing out of their pores and that's gonna affect your life in a way that's not necessarily positive. Positive You're going to discover, as long-haul listeners of EDMM already know, that monogamy is another word for non-consensual, non-monogamy Marriage is a crock that was created to stop peasant revolts and subjugate women for the royals, to keep people down and it's all there just to keep us from the unfettered sex fest.
Emerson Dameron:That is our god-given, natural right and would be so easy if we could just get out of our own way, which is one thing that naturally charismatic people naturally do. But if you're not one of them and in fact in the early days of conscious incompetence, you're not one of them and in fact in the early days of conscious incompetence, you're well aware of how charisma deficient you are. You were in previously because your person that you thought was perhaps your lifelong lover has taken off this paragon of charisma. If you are really strong in your thinking and very strategic and seeing the world from the perch of your highest intelligence, you might think that's something I want to cultivate, or at least try, and if I fail I can find other ways to be fascinating. More likely, especially because at this point you're hurt, bleeding. You're going to just start resenting charisma itself and that's going to make it incredibly hard to cultivate.
Emerson Dameron:That is an anti-charismatic move. The easiest way, I think, to get started is an anti-charismatic move. The easiest way I think to get started is to, when you meet people and you start talking, make those people guests in the luxury penthouse suite. That is your reality. You can do that more easily when you know damn well who you are, which could be somebody with a background in archaeology or working at a convenience store on the graveyard shift. I did that. That was wild. That changed me in a lot of ways or know that you're made of bees. If that's the case, you can use CRISPR to create different kinds of bees for different functions. If you need to do that, which would be to change the bees you want to see in the world genetically, be curious, inquire, be inquisitive and be, fully present.
Emerson Dameron:See what happens when you turn your full attention on this fellow person. See if you can figure out, without asking, what they are truly passionate about, what makes their eyes light up, expound on that Free associate riff yes, and tease banter, but as long as the subject is something that is meaningful to the person that you're talking about, to the extent that you can see them light up when the topic is raised. You're cooking with gas, especially if you steal my patented move and are constantly surrounded by a swarm of bees Everywhere you go. If you're going to do it this way, you should never be without dozens and dozens of bees swarming you, not stinging you, because at this point, hopefully, you front-loaded the work of gaining the loyalty of the bees. I have a way of doing that.
Emerson Dameron:I live in the state of California where weed is free, abortion is mandatory and cripes were going to run out of water really soon and everyone is dehydrated and thirsty, and that includes the bees, and that is why sometimes they end up in swimming pools or other bodies of water and it's hard for them, if not impossible, to get out by their own devices. They're going to drown if they don't get some help. And if you're there and you see that happening, save the drowning bee and do this over and over again at every opportunity and soon enough you will win the ironclad loyalty of the bee community in your area. And if you don't live in Southern California, there's probably another method that works better because it's set in setting. But you need the swarm of bees. That's an essential part of this whole charisma building exercise. K-chung is a celebration of the street-level activism, experimental theater, comedy and performance art, wildly eclectic music and edge-of-the-world weirdness of the most diverse city on earth. We're LA's rebel radio family, the hub for Southern California conversation and chaos.
Emerson Dameron:We do a lot with a little and we need your help in the form of your hard-earned frog skins. Go to kchungradioorg slash, donate, give what you can and be honest. Hey, beautiful, I love it when you push my love buttons and make me feel good. You make me feel so good. It makes me want to make you feel good. It makes me wish you were here so I could make you feel good all over the place and then clean it up with an old t-shirt I meant to get rid of anyway. When I close my eyes, I imagine the two of us together in a hot tub, skin to skin, tongue, kissing and feeling so good. It feels good when you embrace a lifestyle of casual sex.
Emerson Dameron:The minotaur in the labyrinth is the love Jones catching feelings. Here's how to keep it smart, safe, sexy and casual. Maintain emotional distance. This is exactly what meditation is for. Protect your heart. Prioritize friendship, lance the romance before it gets swollen and infected. Limited moments it's about pounding it out, not crying it out. Avoid idealization. No one belongs on a pedestal. It's dehumanizing and they don't deserve it. Set clear boundaries and communicate in the language that that person understands. That would be the one language of spicy, five-a-long dirty talk. Explore other relationships. Get involved in different activities, different people Get really deeply involved with certain people who don't know each other. You can keep it casual, it is possible, and you know if feelings are caught you can release them, thanks to our sponsor, meditation. Meditation kills feelings dead.
Emerson Dameron:If you're going to get what you want, you have to know what you want, and if you don't know what you want, decide what you want and have a very clear idea, a picture, know what it sounds like, feels like, smells like, and then learn everything there is to know about it. If you want a boat, learn everything there is to know about that boat and boats across the harbor. Quit your job that you hate anyway and spend all of your days in the Marina del Rey Public Library, which has a massive selection of books about boats. You'll be broke because you quit your job. Hopefully you're charming and people will give you money to buy sandwiches, because you need that energy to absorb the information that you're reading about boats and philosophy and Crowian magic, so you can manifest your bloodthirsty demon boat into existence. Know why you want a demon boat.
Emerson Dameron:That requires understanding your values, understanding the value of values, how to value them, and quantification is not a perfect paradigm, but it's the one that we like the best in America. The scoreboard doesn't lie so much. Like the great philosophers such as Seneca and Aristotle, you will want to calculate the value of your values using an abacus. Slide those balls back and forth, those nice smooth, hypnotic balls, the way that they move, a clacking sound that keeps your confused roommates awake at night. Hypnotize yourself with the balls and then believe whatever the hell you want.
Emerson Dameron:The important thing is that you take action. Ideas are nothing without massive action, and that means execution. Killing someone is maybe not the best thing that you could do with your time, but it's better than nothing. You are what you do every day. If you're really all in on something, you're going to do it every day, or you're not going to do it at all. So unless you're killing someone every day, you're not really a murderer. So you could kill the ghost over and over again. That would be repetitive, but that would be taking action. Take action, do it, do it, do the damn thing, like we always do about this time. And whatever you do, go all in.
Emerson Dameron:As you get in the game and get active, you will encounter problems. The only way to not have problems is to not leave your domicile, and the problem with problems is that you don't know how to enjoy them. And being a grown-ass grown-up involves staying cool in the face of chaos and being the kind of warrior survivor who does not need to have fun to have fun. You're having fun regardless. So go out there and get the problems that get you off. Become a problem for your problems. Put your problems in their place and then you'll have new and better and more difficult, challenging and rewarding and exciting, very sexy problems.
Emerson Dameron:You will tell yourself stories about yourself and your problems and your opportunities and what you think other people think of you and think that you think of you and them, and it goes on and on and it's all quite ridiculous. We talk to ourselves about ourselves all day and it's almost entirely crap. We are wrong about everything, sometimes in very interesting ways. Most of these stories are just depressing and not interesting or fun. They're like miserable little art films miserable little art films. So if you're going to be telling stories to yourself, why not make them exciting? Go on an adventure, be a hero Star in a rip-roaring comedy, or make it porn.
Emerson Dameron:Just make sure that you dress well and look good as an action figure, as Mitch Horowitz, the author, advises in his guidelines on style. And if you're afraid to look good, if you're afraid to get your shine shining and your swagger swaggering when you get the right fit. When you get the right fit, understand that fear and anxiety are two interpretations of the same thing. If you're not scared, you're not challenging yourself, and keep improving and improve yourself before all the other people improve themselves and be better than other people. Be terrified all the time. Put out a hit on yourself. Know that there's someone out there who's tracking you down and is going to murder you. And understand that anything that you attain or gain could be taken away with the swing of a blade and the vicious sting of betrayal, because anyone could turn on you at any time. You don't really know who you are to those people.
Emerson Dameron:Make a plan and be willing to adjust as you go. Plan ahead. Plan for the worst. You can hope for the best if you want. That doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that you improvise, iterate and be able to MacGyver your way out of hell. Plan for chaos, dance with discontinuity and learn to enjoy drinking your own urine. You may have to survive off of that. Water is gonna be the oil of this century. So drink your own urine and like it. You were born ready for anything. Just get out of your own way and gargle that stuff, or you can have some of mine, that might be better. Mine gets excellent reviews. Create rituals that help you get into the state beyond unconscious competence, in the golden realm we call paradise city. Some people call it flow, some people call it just state that's where you want to be every morning.
Emerson Dameron:You can do an exercise called the morning pages, which is recommended by Julia Cameron cameron in her book the artist's way, which just involves writing 750 words the equivalent of three handwritten pages every day, and the morning is the best time to do it. Just get it done and do it kind of the same way every day, because the more things that you do exactly the same every day, the more mental energy you will free up to put real thought into important things. So your morning pages should be variations on the same theme. Every morning you should write a letter to an imaginary friend, a middle child in a family in the suburbs of Connecticut who is relatively happy, very bright, curious about the world, feeling a little boxed in by suburban life, kind of knowing in her. It's creeping into her conscious awareness that the dream of the mortgage marriage and monogamy is dead, and she's bored at a family dinner with relatives who she doesn't really feel anything for, and you can be the hero that she needs every day. She has not yet heard the song Life on Mars by David Bowie.
Emerson Dameron:It is your responsibility, and will be your honor, to introduce her to that song, as well as the rest of his catalog, which will serve her well when she becomes a theater kid later in life, which you will not discourage. You, in fact will familiarize yourself with some of the great arias as her musical tastes expand into realms that yours have never been in, and you will write to her every day and that will put continuity in your life, and that will be all to the good, because there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. You're wrong about everything, but you have to trust your instincts and your experience. That's until you awaken from the daydream. That's's really all you got. So you can't trust your own instincts and experience. You're kind of lost. So that's a good thing to be wrong about, and it will help if you can embrace the power of poetry and paradox and realize that nothing has ever made sense and we're still trying to make sense of that.
Emerson Dameron:That's the struggle of our modern age. The future is full of surprises, but don't put money on that. It could be boring. Again, it's full of surprises. All bets are, or should be, off. Make sure you get the big stuff handled every day. You can do maybe four significant things in a day. You'll give yourself a massive to-do list and then you'll barely put a dent in it and you won't trust yourself. So stay humble. Take notes on how it goes Again. Revise as you go. Have sex every day. You really should be doing that. You should have the self-confidence and swagger flowing through you at this point where you want to throw down hard in the bedroom every day. Make that happen, whatever it takes. Do it before dinner. Don't try to do it after a meal. Have sex first and then eat and then watch Netflix or whatever else it is you're going to do. And make sure that at least twice a day, you do your meditation practice.
Emerson Dameron:Meditation is not a nice to have. It is absolutely necessary for enduring the cascading avalanche of too much information, too much garbage, too many outer orbit acquaintances taking up our time and awareness. You need a meditation practice. It doesn't have to be sitting meditation, that's boring. The people who do it are obnoxious and precious, but you can do screaming meditation precious, but you can do screaming meditation. It's kind of a combination of a meditation and primal scream therapy. Like John Lennon and Yoko Ono did, just make sure you do the same thing every day, because every day should be close to identical vis-a-vis your own itinerary and plans, so that you will have plenty of energy left to deal with the inevitable. I don't know, it's not guaranteed, nothing's guaranteed. You're probably going to chew on some chaos.
Emerson Dameron:So be consistent in the areas where you control and find the people who deserve to have you around and share your oxygen, and only hang out with people who deserve your company and who you enjoy hanging out with more than you enjoy being alone and who enrich your life in some way. They can be mentors, people who are a couple of levels ahead of you, but humble and see the greatness in you and help bring that out rather than just trying to make copies of themselves. You want to be aware of that and help people who are struggling but can help themselves If you give them a hand and give them a platform. They can take it from there and they can take it with them and they can reciprocate and return your gratitude at some point, which isn't the point. If you never see them again, your job is done. But it is kind of nice. You can have someone around to help you move across town or just enjoy a pizza without them moving.
Emerson Dameron:You will be filled with gratitude. You have people like that on your team and you really ought to be. There's no should Just be full of gratitude all the time. You already are. You can't help it because gratitude is everywhere. So be grateful for everything and to everyone. If somebody is your enemy or did you dirty, you may as well learn what you can from it and laugh, ask yourself what can I learn from this? What's funny about this? And then get revenge and be grateful for the opportunity to do that and sharpen your killer instincts, make peace with your capacity for violence. Be grateful to anyone you may have choked or strangled over the years. Those are your best teachers. They helped you in ways you'll perhaps never fully understand, but that are deeply embedded in your psyche. Those are your best teachers. They helped you in ways you'll perhaps never fully understand, but that are deeply embedded in your psyche and who you are and how you move in the world. Have gratitude for fruit cups, for the sunk cost, fallacy for the color magenta, and when you have a chance, get some stuffed animals. They could be yours or somebody else's, or you could get them from a thrift store and set them on fire and sacrifice them and purify them with flame because you can, and be grateful that you can because you are free.
Emerson Dameron:Grief is inevitable, but it's a bad look. So here's how to get it out of your system without embarrassing yourself. Number one don't feel bad. Feel good instead. This is it. This is the one piece of advice that will solve all of your problems.
Emerson Dameron:Number two replace the loss. Determine the exact value of the thing you lost and get something of equal or greater value. You are now objectively made whole. Number three do it yourself. Contain the bad vibes. If you can keep your own counsel, you'll be glad. You didn't compromise your dignity, and everyone else will too.
Emerson Dameron:Number four give it time. Everything always changes, so keep it moving. Patience solves your problems or you die, and it's a moot point. Number five stay busy. If you're sad, pessimistic or stuck in a muck of self-pity. Earn your positive attitude through the practice of capitalism. Go for that promotion. Start five side hustles. You'll be too pumped and or exhausted to grieve. Number six focus on other people. Other people's pain will cheer you up and make you feel happy. By contrast, you've entered a no-grief zone. You've got one day to wallow and that's it. You're doing well. You're right on schedule. I know that you're suffering right now. Life is suffering. It will not always be like this. You will not always have these problems. Sooner than later you're going to have a completely different set of problems, and everything that happens after this will happen in part because of this, and what's going to happen after this is going to be beautiful. Give yourself the opportunity to love yourself that allows other people to love you not me, but somebody.
Emerson Dameron:Since I was a kid, I've had an avid interest in self-help. I think it's self-evidently true that thoughts are causative to some extent, and what we think creates the world that we live in. I like the idea that change is possible and if it is, I think we should do it intentionally. Sometimes I think that it's better to be high on yourself and wrong than down on yourself and right. I have a brutal internal monologue. I have a drill sergeant that lets me have it. Anything I can throw at that be it. Cbt affirmations, ketamine-assisted therapy, meditation, hypnosis, all under the rubric of personal development, I'll do it. Hitting a punching bag is really the best thing I've found. Really, I just want to be better than other people. My interest tends to wax at times in my life when I'm at loose ends, which has happened during the last recession.
Emerson Dameron:I got washed out of LA, ended up back in Chicago, which is where my family lives and where I was trying to resuscitate a long-distance relationship, someone I really loved. But I think living in two very different parts of the country exacerbated our communication issues, and Hollywood rom-coms may have given me the wrong idea about the odds of success in that endeavor. I could kind of tell as soon as I got there that it was doomed and it was a matter of time. I still loved her, but sometimes love is running out of other ideas and sometimes that just ain't enough. I was broke. I had a drinking problem that was encroaching into other areas of my life. I needed a job and I needed a purpose, and I lucked out. I thought when I found a job ad in the Chicago Reader looking for a digital marketing professional for a life coach. At the time I was very good at digital marketing and it was an exciting time to be doing it.
Emerson Dameron:One great thing about self-help is a lot of it is marketing. If you kind of reverse engineer the sales letters and seminar pitches and ridiculous marketing promises, you can become a pretty good digital marketer and copywriter, which I did. It was appropriate. In that way, I met Dr Dick, the life coach in question. I liked him right away. He was clearly full of it.
Emerson Dameron:I had some narcissistic traits, but also was very articulate and saying nothing of substance. He had a book called Outgrow your Shrink. His angle was basically there's nothing wrong with you, you're not sick, you're not broken. You just need a little nudge into your zone of greatness. And psychologists and psychiatrists don't get you because of science that keeps them at arm's length. So what you need is an uncredentialed, possibly dangerously unqualified life coach, because that's going to be the wild ride that's going to get your juices flowing again, and I liked that.
Emerson Dameron:He wanted to work with executives, winners, and I wanted to be on the winning team. I hadn't felt like I was in a minute. The money that he promised me. The base salary was peanuts for the amount of work that I expected to do, but I thought that he'd left an opportunity there because he said I could get commissions for bringing in new business and I could see all kinds of opportunities to bring new business into his all kinds of opportunities to bring new business into what he was doing, because he wasn't using the internet well at all.
Emerson Dameron:This was an exciting time the time of Arab Spring and Twitter was new. Social media was just taking off. He wasn't doing any of that and I can see so much potential and so I drafted a marketing plan in detail. And so I drafted a marketing plan in detail. It described how, in the next three years, we could pivot mostly to video coaching. At the time it was Skype, now it would be Zoom Talk to executives all over the world. They wouldn't have to come into his office and then after a while, as the revenue started coming in from that, we could hire other coaches and let them do the coaching and let Dr Dick jet set around the country on the lecture circuit, which seemed like the sort of career appropriate for a narcissist. And just to reiterate, at the time I did not mind his narcissism. When you're very depressed and anxious, having someone that's never wrong, they're always right.
Emerson Dameron:Screw everyone else is exhilarating when that person is on your side. Dr Dick said that he loved my marketing plan, but then he just dismantled it, sold it for scrap and by the end of it there was nothing really to actually do. The main action step that we had in the office was reporting our action steps for the day, which were all mostly just in maintenance of the status quo, which was entropy. Dr Dick was a bad life coach. There are basically two kinds of coaches and teachers. There are the ones who help you become better versions of yourselves and there are the ones that try to make copies of themselves.
Emerson Dameron:Dr Dick was in that category. He knows everything. You're just lucky to be sitting at his feet, and he may have been dangerous had he been at all competent. There might be a lot of Dr Dicks running around, but I don't think he ever successfully life coached anyone. He was also a terrible boss. He was a micromanager. He was the kind of boss that knows that he can do everyone's job better than they can. He just doesn't have time. So he has to hire them just to get things done, but they're never done correctly. So of course he has to make sure that things are being done to his specifications, which, of course, they don't necessarily know how to do, and nothing ever gets done.
Emerson Dameron:And the way that he did this was rather odd, considering his ignorance about the internet. He didn't show up at the office very much, which the scuttlebutt was that he was hungover most of the time. Badly, that was his executive assistant. He was also in charge of his grocery shopping who was dating the writer, who I thought was a complete hack, because I read the stuff that he wrote for Dr Dick's blog and I thought it was god awful. But then when I met him, I was very surprised at how wily and intelligent he seemed and I was like, oh yeah, he's just phoning it in. He, unlike me, he has the awareness to not take this seriously. Then he quit. The awareness to not take this seriously. Then he quit. Then we had an all-hands meeting where all these people who had been spending time together when Dr Dick was not around, getting bullying emails from Dr Dick, trying to micromanage them to death, and had been comparing notes and just developing, building up hostility toward him until they were out for blood. He came in for the all-hands meeting, which turned into a combination of an intervention and a roast. The executive assistant wanted to set boundaries. The ex-marine-slash-HR guy lashed out the guy whose other hustle was selling his sperm to a sperm bank was just kind of there. He and the ex-Marine quit. So both of the convicted felons were gone.
Emerson Dameron:Because we hired people and then did background checks and after a while I was kind of one of the OGs. Just after six months everybody that was there when I started was gone and it was basically just me and Dr, kind of one of the ogs. Like just after six months everybody that was there when I started was gone and it was basically just me and dr dick a lot of the time and I still kind of liked the guy, which is how I learned it was weird, like I could see. You know, narcissists suffer quite a bit under the surface and sometimes right on the surface, like it's not a sustainable way to live. It's its own punishment. That's not necessarily gratifying when they're treating you like trash, but there's real pain there and I could see that with him. He knew this wasn't working. He thought that he needed to act as if it were working because there's a lot of fake it to make it and personal development false positivity and it has its downsides and you meet absolutely wonderful people and complete whack jobs and sometimes they're the same people. But don't dance too close to the abyss.
Emerson Dameron:I was having lunch with Dr Dick and I heard myself complaining about the recession. At this point I think most of the worst was over, but we were still feeling the aftershocks and I was complaining about how I just couldn't get it together to get out of debt and take care of myself financially. And I heard myself complaining and I realized I don't want to complain. I'm trying to take down my complaining because I really think it's inversely proportional to happiness. I think if you notice when you're complaining and make an effort to complain less, you will be happier and you'll be amazed at what happens if you get it close to zero. So I just shut up and Dr Dick chimed in, which is what he did when you stopped talking, and he said I actually like the recession. And I was like okay, this will be interesting, let's see how he reframes this. He said I like the recession because I can hire really talented people for a lot less than their worth.
Emerson Dameron:I have severe chronic depression. I've had it for most of my life. So, although I prefer the empowerment side of self-help, I don't think I'm diseased or broken or a victim, but I pretty obviously have depression and sometimes it spirals out way out. On one occasion where I called a suicide hotline, the woman on the other end was very sweet and well-intentioned Certainly meant well when she recommended that I read the book Think Big and Kick Ass by Donald Trump, because that would show me how to live. And that's how I learned that good ideas can come from anywhere. I'm not a fan of Donald Trump at all Less so now than I was even then but he does have some good ideas. To wit, if somebody asks you to name your price, come in ridiculously high because you're not setting your price. You're starting a negotiation. Let them talk you down.
Emerson Dameron:I realized when Dr Dick said this that I was thinking small and getting my ass kicked, and I also learned that I realized that much of the reason I was staying is I had this residual fondness for the guy you know. I thought maybe we could still make it after all, and that's when I realized that was not reciprocal. So that's when I learned have, have compassion, but don't make a fool of yourself, which became one of the tenets of the first church of the Satanic Buddha. And Satanic Buddhism is the religion that I practice and also invented, and that's when I decided to quit. I got another job through an ex-girlfriend, which required a little bit of groveling, and I did my quitting ritual that I do whenever I quit a job, which is to, on my way to quitting, listen to the soundtrack for Sofia Coppola's film the Virgin Suicides, performed by the French group Air. I've done this every time I've quit a job for the last, I think, 15 years, and I'm going to keep doing it because I'll probably quit a lot more jobs. I should be the world's expert on job loss, but everyone is different. You never quite get used to it. And this was hard because I wanted to get my two weeks notice.
Emerson Dameron:Dr Dick didn't show up at the office. I figured maybe one week's notice would be fine. He didn't show up that day. The last day came. He said he would be there. I said look, I need to talk to you in person. He said I'll be there.
Emerson Dameron:He didn't show up. So I called him at home and said I'm quitting, this is my last day. And he said look, I want you to take a walk around the block and think about your values. I said my mind's made up. He said that's fine, just also take a walk around the block and think about your values. So I did what I did every day when I was working there, which is that I took a walk around the block to an Iowa Hawkeyes themed sports bar where I knew I wasn't going to see anyone that I knew and I got obliterated. I'm drunk, which is how I lived. The lesson, the biggest lesson that I learned from working in this office Rise above the chaos and in the end, self-help only works if you're willing to help yourself. So help yourself to self-help, but the onus is on your anus.
Davey:I'm standing in a swanky mid-century modern living room. I'm naked and I'm not alone. A man and a woman are looking at my body with sly, knowing smiles. They seem to be admiring me, although I can't fully gauge their sincerity. The woman remarks he looks good. The man says, yeah, but he doesn't look real. I become self-conscious about my acne scars. The woman suggests I should get a modest but remarkable tattoo, something that tells us who you are Something that says hello.
Davey:I point to the spider on my shoulder. I got from my college roommate Something that tells us who you are, something that says hello. I pointed the spider on my shoulder. I got from my college roommate. She said that doesn't cut it. I'm pretty sure they're screwing with me.
Emerson Dameron:But not sure enough to call them out on it. Thank you. You've been listening to emerson dameron's medicated minutes on k-chung, los angeles 1630 am. K-chung radioorg. My name is emerson Dameron.
Emerson Dameron:I am the producer, host, witty and wounded romantic hero of the show, but hardly the most interesting character, because this is the number one avant-garde personal development program in Los Angeles, and what that means is that we are dedicated to exploring the most interesting subject under the sun, which is you. I hope that you have picked up some of the gems that I dropped along the way. I do need those back eventually. You can hang on to them for the weekend. You've got people coming in from out of town. Show them off, but then, uh, I need them back, polished by at least end of day monday. So, and uh, any acts of appreciation mean a lot to me.
Emerson Dameron:I put a lot of work into this and it does make a difference when I know that it matters and I matter. I've been through some stuff, some challenges and difficulties. People try to play me, you're out of game tokens, your fun times are over. I'm still angry at some people who are angry at me for reasons that I don't understand, and that's why I'm angry at them, but I'm getting over it because I'm back back to what matters that levity saves lives, at least temporarily, not permanently. I don't think you don't have to evangelize for the show. I do hope that it's enriched your life.
Emerson Dameron:We have not had the discussion about exclusivity yet, which, in the absence of that, I assume that we are not exclusive in terms of our parasocial relationships. So if you could bring in a few extra listeners, that would be both hot and cool and I would feel very appreciated, which is important to me. I like to be acknowledged. I would feel very appreciated, which is important to me. I like to be acknowledged. I like to know that I exist and that I matter and that I'm loved, like you are, as long as I'm around. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, thank you.
Emerson Dameron:You have no idea how badly you hurt me.
Emerson Dameron:I doubt you'd care if you did and I'm okay with that, because I'll make you pay for my crushing disappointment and the currency of earth-shattering orgasms. I love making people cum, I get compliments on it and I hate you, so I'm going to make you cum purely out of spite. I'll give you devastating, life-ruining orgasms using all the tools at my disposal Fingers, tongue, vibrators, dildos, priceless artifacts from my most recent art heist and degrading dirty talk I'm not kidding about. I'll make you cum so hard for me that you change into someone entirely different, and I'll also hate that person and make them come for me too, even harder than you. I'll make you come until you're tired of coming. You'll beg me to stop and I will, and then you'll beg me to make you come again, and I'll do that too, just to break your heart and break your brain a little bit more, until you come like Krakatoa. You know I'm the best lover and hater you'll ever have, and everything else in life is worthless garbage in comparison after I've made you cum out of spite.
