STUDY COURSE FOR THE PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE-In these modern times of stress and crowding, as more of us are forced to live under one roof, it is incumbent upon the churlish to perfect the art of being difficult.

For that reason, famed Hollywood Guru, stargazer to the Stars of Hollywood, Anita Sands now offers a groundbreaking Course: PASSIVE AGGRESSION 101. This is a seminar you must take. In it, YOU WILL LEARN 'state of the art' P.A. Technology ! Yes! Up 'til now, you've been nasty on the natch but why should you be ordinary in anything you do? There have been important developments in behavioral systems developed for the torture of so-called superior (but really meeker) humans ---by surlier, burlier ones ---and, as an even cursory purusal of the curriculum of this workshop will prove, tricks in terror can be taught! You can become a doormat with TEETH. HOW? 

It pays to stay au courant. Things have moved a great way from the early days of simple, caveman aggression. Advanced studies take basic human aggressiveness and refine it into sublime and ever more evolved manifestations. Use the same old Cro-Magnon fist but shroud it in a Third Millenium velvet glove! 

P.A. Studies 101 does not involve putting aside the mortal weapon. Oh no. It involves a lighter touch on a smaller, more streamlined club, targeting more mortal spots on the enemy. Take this class and become the shit you always wanted to be! 

    Watch me DRIVE MOM WILD! hehehehe!
 

CHATS- Avoid consorting directly with the enemy. No idle conversation at any time. If you wanna chew the fat, try the enemy's friends who will then drive the Enemy crazy telling him/her what a good kid you are. How great, how charming, how conversational, how well rounded, befuddling Enemy even more than he/she is.
REVENGE CHATS- If the enemy is one of those silence junkies, those meditator folks, and has asked you to not indulge in idle chatter, wait three minutes, then chatter like a monkey. They'll ask you to be silent, again, offer to play Gregorian chants. Just say 'Oh, no. ' Wait a few minutes, and start up a rousing conversation. 

CREATIVITY- This is the subtlest way to FUCK your housemates up. Do something ostensibly kind and creative, like planting the lanai or cooking a meal, only tear their pansies and ivy which they grew from tiny cuttings, tear them out of the ground --ripping their roots to shreds, then hammering the amputees into a thimble ‘til they’ll fit in the lanai. Or, take the DUCK they were going to cook for their party guests, and cook it YOURSELF, but do it at 9 a.m., while the housemate is asleep. So they can wake from sleep 5 hours early smelling their dinner roasting, and as they’re screaming, and haven’t slept a wink, their party totally went bye-bye! Then act consternated that they don’t appreciate your fine work, and now, you have a real gripe, you were the mistreated one, and now you can tear down the lanai and throw the half roast duck in the trashcan with impunity as you were the wronged one. 

DIVERSIONS: 1.) Distractions you create for yourself when you get too close to a loving person. Diversion can be your friends, work, business appts., lodge or union meetings or cleaning your gun. 2.) FUN things for the Passive Agressive: looking great, great wardrobe, image. Great cars. The 'I Am and You're Not' game. One-up-manship. 

DRIVES-1. Noun form:i.e basic needs. Forget ‘em; the better you are at PA tech, the less drives you will have. Eat, sleep, use jerks and fuck them over. Why make life any more complicated than it already is? 2. Verb form: Drives as in moving car. When the enemy is asleep, take the family car, disappear. Go to interesting, scenic spots which they don't have time to visit as they must work all the time to pay your rent. Try to get their VISA card so you can get gas, food, even lodging. If you're a teen PA, and many of you are, no matter that you aren't licensed. Cops will never find you, you're too smart for social or legislative codes. So what if cops confiscate your parents' car. Serves the dummies right! 

GONE TOO FAR?- IF your behavior accidentally moves into the realm of really gross, bad manners, (which is overtly AGGRESSIVE, and not a mode you want to be CAUGHT IN because the simps will be at your throat in a second,) correct trajectory; do a teeny weeny 'make nice' payback. Understand, this is not the real thing, so you do not have to compromise your basic, brutish values. Always choose a SAFE pretext or tactic. You don't have to decide on one beforehand. The Devils of Hell will inspire you with something, hopefully not related to areas of stress. Example: Enemy is upset over your playing with their PC until it broke. So offer to fix it. Stick it in your car trunk. Doesn't matter if they never see it again. Or say enemy is irritated with your borrowing their car keys and driving in their car, or your lack of chattiness, or your eating the last of the kippers then locking yourself in your room when they screamed that kippers were 6 bucks a package---In such cases, approach enemy, NOT recontritely or nicely but neutrally, offhandedly say: 'would you like some tea?' It is not required you actually brew decent tea. That would push you too far back into servile terrain. Just give it at room temperature. They'll get the point: you are wonderful and they aren't.

GREAT ESCAPES-No matter where the enemy has taken you, to whose fabulous house, to what wonderful party or dance, to what rehearsal of what play that's soon to open off-Broaday, once you're there, develop a peeve. You're hungry, you have to walk to a shop and eat. Do they have money? If the refuse, demand to be taken home. If they won't , sit sullenly, clicking on something or brooding conspicuously until others intercede on your behalf. Last resort, just leave, hitchike, let them worry, let them sweat it. If they scream with worry when you come in the door at 3 a.m. say ultra-benignly that you walked home and why did they worry? They weren't considerate of your feelings at the terrible place you escaped from. 

HARMONY- Why should we have any harmony on earth? Life sucks. Earth is a place for SUFFERING. You're suffering, why shouldn't everyone else? Be the Equalizer with your own brand of the Golden Rule. Not to give others what you yourself want... No way! Your job is to give others what you got. Every glad ass is trying to sell some dumbfuckin' harmony seminar. It's on every street corner. Harmony has been done to death. COSMIC TRUTH: There's harmony everywhere EXCEPT on earth. That's how God made it. Don't try to fix it if it ain't broke. If God meant for humans to be happy automatically he wouldn't have given babies painfully hungry stomachs, wee-wees, ammonia in diapers, mucus in noses, soft skulls that crush with a minor fall off a bed, necks that break with the slightest slap!

MEDIATION: Never let yourself be dragged into any mediation. Intercessions are just a fancy word for mediation and enemies often try to do them with plural mediators. If you see one coming, lock yourself behind doors or get out of the house. 

NEGOTIATION: As a beginner, REMEMBER this simple rule: avoid negotiating at any cost. When someone with NEEDS talks to you, like a need to negotiate, pretend to be swatting a thousand flies around your head, while walking backwards NODDING, move toward your room. Close and lock both doors. Then, go into silence. As you've changed terrain, there's no danger of being sucked into negotiation which is the death knell of a P.A. Only a very hig tech-P.A. can negotiate effectively. In the hands of a master, it's big artillery, however. 

NEGOTIATION: ADVANCED COURSE. Face to face, verbal engagement, done quickly. The winner will be the one who can hold their ground,--literally keep their feet in the same square of earth the longest. As the Enemy is using TRUTH and you are using P.A. SPEAK, the need to parry, feint and dodge is all you have. The onus will be on you. They will attack and you must parry, feint or dodge. A P.A. rarely gets to attack, but when the Enemy leaves himself open, you can and will attack. Attack can be the secret to the Master Game and the total upperhand. EXAMPLE: ENEMY: You disappeared last night in my car. P.A. PARRY: Who could stay in this dump with you? Note that a good parry absolutely stops them dead, defies a logical answer. And using a Betty Davis persona to deliver a retort scores double points. Result: You easily win that round. EXAMPLE: ENEMY: "You never want to talk with me." BAD ANSWER: Your breath smells. GOOD ANSWER: "You don't talk. You just harangue." LOGIC: first assertion can be discussed and proven false, also, quoted later to make you look mean-spirited. The second cannot, will not, as it's fairly close to accurate. What is more --it is a comment that can be delivered with a little pathos and you do get points for pathos, points which sometimes will take you far enough ahead to win where you couldn't win with logic alone. 

HOT TIP! FOR FREE NEGOTIATION P.A. STUDIES, LISTEN TO THE GREAT RADIO SHOCK JOCKS. You will learn ways to cause people grief with verbal daring you never imagined. You'll learn about triggers, flare points. When you talk with people, your goal is to TRY TO GET THEM TO TOTALLY LOSE CONTROL. FIND A SHORT HAIR AND PULL IT. Go for their ego and keep up until they smash their hand thru window and hurt themselves, or (better yet) try to hurt YOU. 

SHARING-Ever notice how high horse the enemy gets when you have the flu? It really deserves a get-back. Here you are feeling stuffy, headachy, feverish, unable to sleep and they're perky as a squirrel going "More tea? Can I get you a Mango smoothie?" Implied by all this wussy pussy energy is 'where'd you fuck up, you little maniac that you're this ill? You wanna eat Big Macs with change stolen from my purse, you goddamn pay the price. Look at me. I'm in perfect health. I eat spinach. I never get the flu." Well, fuck them and the bale of hay they rode in on. They're made of steel maybe, but you've got an endless supply of kryptonite. You'll show them! The thing to do is get them in a corner where they can't get away like when they're reading to you, sitting downwind and cough right in their face. Don't bother to turn your head or cover your mouth, just casually HACK in their face. Make sure a shower of spit falls on their lips, eyes and nose. If they call you on it, do a wide-eyed huh? Like, aren't you testy. Here I'm the one dying of a l08 fever and you expect me to HOLD BACK every cough just because you insist on sitting with me and reading me Peter Wabbit?" Then when they come down with your flu and are lying in bed missing work, hacking, as you go out the door, remind them to drink mango smoothies. It's not expected you make it for them. You're not Florence Fucking Nightengale. You're Greta GetBack.

TRICKS:(enemy's) Beware of this Enemy trick. They will sneak wax earplugs into their ears, and when you lay into them with vicious rap, in their inner mind they will concentrate on the syllables, "out of God comes all creation" or some such puerile thought. They will say it repeatedly to themselves, meanwhile, they will look right into your eyes with peace and love, look for the divinity in you and feel great love for you and they won't be listening to one salient word of your nasty rap. If they adopt this tactic and have no visible 'flight or fight' response, you will quickly burn out, feel guilt hence love, lose the battle and will have to eat shit, later, for your nastiness. Beware of earplugs! Saints have trainers and are going high tech but this course will prepare you for dealing with their wimp tricks. 

POWER PLAY-As you don't want to be loyal, sympathetic, or conversational, as you don't want to study, work, create, be an artist, make money, or pay rent you unfortunately get (or are entitled to) very small increments of legitimate power. Well, maybe NONE. For that reason, you have to seize all opportunities to be in control, to keep your emotional dance from and to bash all other, more developed beings but do so in a subtle way so your fingerprints aren't on the weapon. Give no praise ever. Give no acknowledgement, ever. Never follow an order, never accede to a request, even a polite one. These are the basic P.A. power strategies. The mainstay of your arsenal is to scream that whatever they said is wrong and they are stupid and to prove it with logic and top it off with the claim 'I'm having a good life. It's not my problem if you're not.' 

REFUTE- Any blanket statement not l00% complimentary must be refuted with bravado, logic and energetic dialectic. Let them be right in statements on trivial issues. Pecan is better than apple. Fine. Mozart beats Chopin. No argument. When they edge onto YOU as a subject, you lose points if you don't refute immediately because if you don't, the accusation gets written in stone in the Holy Book and later they will quote it as gospel.

SUSPICION- It is natural for PA's to have suspicion when anyone is NICE to you. You may want to come right out and accuse them of being nice just so you will feel guilty, miss them, love them, or fall into their power. Don't say any of these things, ever. When people are nice to you be curt. This must be a lifelong discipline. NEVER voice suspicions. There's a nasty word for rampant suspicion...PARANOIA and they can lock you up for it.

TRANSFORMATION- This is what namby pamby people plan for you. To make you a soft, cream-filled simp like they are, whether thru AA, Scientology or YOGA, vegetables or herbs and supplements or co-joint therapy is not the point. The point is --- TRANSFORMATION is not the Master Plan so deride transformation technology. Articulate, religious vehemence is required. Derision and Insults only work if backed up by sordid facts. Buddha was overweight, that guru broke the Mann Act and was a pedophile. This saint was seriously into offshore banking in the Caymans. Freud sniffed coke. No matter how fine the restaurant, how big the menu or how delicious the food, find one cockroach and no one will ever eat there again.

WORK- NOUN form. A salaried task or job they choose to pursue outside the home to be able to pay your rent and food when nobody asked them to do either. When they mention your working, and paying for their food and rent, (patently ludicrous,) pretend to be agreeable, pretend to look at classifieds. Even circle things. Pretend to hand out any flyers they print up for you --- meaning, go for a long walk and come back with flyers folded into a wad and hidden in your coat. Leave them under mattress for them to find years later. If they dare come up with a potential boss figure, and arrange an interview, allege that boss made improper sexual insinuations toward you and refuse to ever talk to him again. If they happen to be there at the meeting, keep saying ‘she wants me to work. I don’t want to, who’s right?’ No danger at all the guy will hire you and he’ll escort your mother out the door post haste, embarassing the fuck out of her. You can't do that trick twice in a lifetime, so next time she sends you out on a job interview, swear the guy was fruit and tried to grab you. 

As for WORK IN THE HOME? Handy man chores and mindless housework? The trick is REFUTING that the work even needs doing, with much amazement. Like 'what? This wall? It's perfectly clean! Or this carpet? Vaccuum won't help it. Needs a steam cleaner. " Or, put down a mattress pad? Why? I like it the way it is." Never ever say "No, I won't do that job." Your tormentors can get pretty outraged and start talking about your living on the street with ‘the other bums,’ as they love to say. Alternative: let them scream for a day or two, then do the work, but waaaay later, and only after they stop screaming. That way you sorta lose but you also sorta win. :>) 

So, join the California Transformation movement, study with famed Guru, Anita Sands at her new seminar, 'How to be A Passive Agressive' and learn how to make the world pay for your boredom or unhappiness. No longer just an unhappy accident, today, aggression can be an art form.

THAT WAS THE HUMOROUS SIDE OF PA and ALSO an easy-to-read PRIMER on RECOGNIZING the kind of things that PA's can DO to you but here is the serious side of this syndrome.

PASSIVE AGGRESSION, the BEHAVIOR OF STUPID PEOPLE, or THE sign that someone's  a member of the 'WALKING WOUNDED?'

Passive aggressive behavior is a feature of a sloppy, reactive mind. The hostile, twisted pranks of a P.A. are a dead giveaway that some trouble in  processing 'reality' exists. The low-functioning brain (a non-reality-processing mind) is like a wild dog, an untrained dog. This pooch has no sense of being loved. No trust in those around him. He is out of reality almost to the degree of Schizophrenia. He is supicious, wary, certain others are plotting against him. Because of those feelings, he will have many bad habits. He will want 'gitback'. Street justice. He is not openly enraged, testy. He doesn't speak of his mistrust. He will never cuss or  snarl. What he does is with a light touch, mordant, witty, substitutive. Symbolic acting out. He will vector in on your best stuff, target it and blithely destroy it. He will lie and believe his own lies that he didn't know what he was doing. He has the habit of taking what is not his just because he wants it: your money, car, checkbook, food. He doesn't look at life's dark side. He may hate someone but he can't give a reason. He just cuts them dead. The tendency to do a blank out, is pronounced. I believe the information is not even available to them. They have a light touch. They don't have the killer's ability to collect injustices and brood. They forget cause and effect and exhibit no need to get 'revenge' but what's eerie is that they get it with little, perverse games designed to enrage others. 

This kind of an unorganized mind has many 'automatic' traits: the grass is greener syndrome, a lack of gratitude, jealousy of the fruits of others' work: their car, their sweetheart, their clothing, their beauty. Other collateral adjustment problems saw to it that they never dud anything that would require work, like a career, a big education. They work 'any ole job that comes along.' They covet the 'easy' things that others have and they often will have the impulse to take them. You could put the laws of the Ten Commandments, the 'do not covet, malign, gossip, steal and kill 'Laws' on a page and these would be all the impulses of a sloppy, overly reactive stupid mind which cannot sort out reality from fantasy, (subjective events from actual) -- hence the poor bearer is stumbling around with seriously  warped behavior. 

The organized and perceptive mind does not habitually blame others. He's not editing out his need to educate himself and work and socialize in the real world, i.e. he is not in chronic denial. He sees that he brings life's catastrophes upon himself with laziness, unscholarly ways so he avoids that behavior. 

The logical man has no rage and certainly does not think he should steal from, brutalize or kill people to even the score, to achieve 'getback.' He may have a complaint from time to time but even if it's a big one, his perception is usually reasonable (meaning his interpretation of reality is accurate) so he will and can discuss it, openly. The reasonable man has no irritation that he must HIDE his feelings. No, that is the behavior of someone who unconsciously suspects that his allegations wouldn't 'fly.' 

If an organized mind is irritated, its bearer can generally define and articulate his rage to others. He will convince, maybe win. His complaints will stand on their own two legs. Not so with the disorganized mind. He has learned that his complaints are chronic, he's just overly touchy, his assertions are without foundation and he has learned that discussing them  probably will not bring him others' agreement. Thus, he cannot come right out and tell you openly what's bothering him.  This has gone on for years and every time his complaints  are not handled  by an authority figure, the suspicion grows in him that no one cares, that he will not be able to explain, that he is not verbally clever, and, foiled time and time again at resolving complaints, he learns not to go there. Not to get into discussion. 

The passive aggressive personality is not someone who handles any matter. It may be that he is subnormal in intelligence or verbal skills or has had suppressive parents but what is for sure is that HE always suspects that he is sub-normal, cannot win with his authority figure and he is careful not to 'try a case' in a conversational courtroom because he knows he probably won't convince and win as he never has.

What intelligent people invariably discover about people who do not have acme communication or social skills, is that the 'dummies' are smart enough to suspect that they are deficient. They are working hard at HIDING it, and as the very thought that they're slow produces anxiety in them, they are keenly bent on denial, on hiding it from themselves. 

Denial like rage, is a fungus. A little bit creates more. They  spread  easily. The habit of rage or the allied but different habit of burying feelings, of denial, both become pervasive. A rolling snowball gathering size and speed. When rage and denial combine, you get  the biggest, fastest rolling snowball of them all, the passive aggressive

So, to reiterate, a less than clever mind perceives and interprets events badly, overreacts dramatically yet  is habitually talked out of his perceptions, and ends up feeling weird, undefended, ignored, unloved. He loses conversational battles, finds he does not defend himself well and thus stops trying. And cornered, becomes the passive aggressive. 

In family constellations, this is most probably going to happen to the youngest in a string of boys. The older boys (or the oldest) will 'act out' on the younger one and (as kids are kids) do so brutally. The elder brother is jealous of the 'baby' and lives to torture him. He does it subtly, so the parent who favors the youngster, will never catch the elder brother who will not only brutalize but never allow the caboose brother to laugh, have fun, play with the gang, nor ever be 'right'. 

The Elder will taunt and torture The Younger until the pressure of infantile rage builds in the little guy. A rage that mimics what the Elder one feels. The older one is angry too, as the baby is getting more 'babying, cuddling and loving' from the mother than he is. That is what fires him, makes him want to see the other child hurting, too. The elder brother can be the 'authority figure' who will never be convinced in an argument, half because the younger sibling lags in articulateness or intellect, and is chronically bewildered, half because the torturer is not going to deal logically or be convinced or accept reason. He's acting maliciously and sadistically. 

The younger sibling learns to fear that he's a dope but in truth, he's only being tweaked to believe he's dumb by a superior child however, a deliberately mean one. A passive aggressive can be created by a very specific situation: a mother showing too much affection to the caboose and letting elder boy see it, (a boy is not mature enough to process it as legitimate for an infant to be cuddled.) Seeing this affectionate treatment all the time, keeps the elder boy hurting and jealous. The younger boy does not have to be stupid or slow, but he soon learns that he is in comparison to older, competitive siblings who are always making the point that the younger one is 'slow,' he IS slow. 

Passive Aggressives are not necessarily low-functioning intellectually. A busy, harassed, non-listening parent can  make a passive aggressive out of a normal child but parents do not have the deliberate, mean streak that an older brother can have so when you see a passive aggressive, cherchez le frere.

Some people who have the genetic disposition toward the brain disorder called schizophrenia, can, in early stages, out of less than perfect brain function, do all the automatic things that Passive Aggressives do. And genuinely stupid people can do them, too, but the element of having been tortured by someone very cruel has to be there, as P.A. tech is about CRUELTY to another. 

Genuinely lowered brain function and limited processing of reality is part of the P.A. syndrome and of course, that can be genetic. But the enviornmentally-created fear that one is low functioning can create the same,  reduced self image. Stupidity combined with the fear it will be found out, denial that the low IQ exists and the final ingredient, having suffered cruelty at the hands of an enraged authority figure all are required for a full blown P.A. 

The history and family constellation of the common, garden variety passive aggressive as well as the other end of the spectrum, the overt criminal who takes P.A. to the max, (the serial killer, rapist ) should be examined and most probably the fingerprints of a cruel, elder sibling as a belittling, goading creator of this kind of mind and personality warp will  be found. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you've read this far, you're probably desperate for information on this mental malady, so for the real thing, go to http://www.passiveaggressive.homestead.com/links.html  and search engines will yield gold.