I have a new job now, one that pays much better than my previous job, though I am at the same company, doing basically the same thing, but that is beyond the point.
So today I received my first full paycheck with my pay raise included, and I was looking forward to tearing into that envelope and gazing upon the mountainous piles of cash that I would be gifted with for my hard work and longer hours.
Now, upon first glance everything seemed to be in order. I made double what I usually made before and there was a whole other place value to be accounted for. Then it hit me - But I worked two times as many hours as I usually did.
So I worked twice as long and got paid twice as much, which sounds good until you realized that hourly I should be making more money anyway. Thus, my disillusionment began.
The thing I have found out (which I should have known before) was that all those extra hours and extra pay added up to a higher paycheck, which thus put me into a higher tax bracket, which meant my taxes increased, which meant that I was making close to the same amount of money per hour as before.
This raises terrifying and worrying implications. I've always been under the impression that by being paid more, I would get more money. It seems, however, that by being paid more the government actually gets more money.
What?
How am I ever supposed to get a higher paycheck then? Will my life be an eternal struggle towards higher and higher pay grades, only to find that each of these pay increases also raises me up into the next tax bracket, thereby negating any hope I have of ever actually, you know, getting more money?
If so, then what, exactly, is the impetus to try harder? What reason do I have to ever aspire to more responsibility, or to do better work to get a raise?
Nothing. The answer is nothing.
Isn't that the opposite of capitalism? Isn't my incentive to do well in my work the hope that I will achieve more monetary compensation? Yes. Yes it is. But not so anymore.
And really, with a democrat in office (oh shit, here comes the politics) isn't it likely we're just going to be taxed more?
But anyway, I'm going to stop complaining and take my four figure check to the liquor store to dispel my unholy woes.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Nobel Prize - Like an A+ for Looking Forward to a Test
It's a crisp autumn Friday and I am just about to start the final day of my first week at my new job. Someone has brought cinnamon rolls and bagels into the office and I've got a cup of hot cocoa. What could go wrong?
Well it was around the time I was halfway through my cinnamon roll when someone said, "Hey, did you know Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?"
At first I laughed and wondered what acid-dropping hippie's twitter feed they had been reading and why they were working here if they were gullible enough to believe it. After all, I had just finished reading the paper on the Metro and only saw that some Romanian woman living in German had won the prize for literature.
It was at this point, though, that the icy cold wave of dread began to consume my once gaily beating heart, because it turns out other people had heard this news too. My hope that it had all be some random Onion article that the Chinese had misinterpreted (again) slowly began to die.
Can this be true, I thought to myself, I mean, come on. What has he done? Wasn't the deadline for nomination about ten days after he was inaugurated?
I rushed to the New York Times web site because like a small child setting out cookies for Santa Claus I still unfailingly believe in newspapers. There it was. In big bold letters.
And why did Obama win? Apparently because he's got a lot of spunk and said some things that people liked and once he shook and Arab's hand right after shaking an Israeli's hand.
That's right. The same logic that keeps the roguishly handsome yet harmlessly evil antagonist from killing the youthful version of a Hollywood hero ("You got spirit, kid") is enough to get Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now I am not saying that he might not deserve the prize later on in life. After all, the world loves him, he's more popular than God, he makes great speeches (at least in a syntactical way) and he's idealistic to a fault. And yea, while idealism and optimism are annoying when applied to people you know in the real world - like that friend who tells you "everything happens for a reason" after your girlfriend runs over your cat while driving off in a sports car with her Italian lover - those are the qualities you want in a person working for peace. If they faced reality like normal people they'd give up on world peace and surrender to the cold unfailing logic that the rest of us had.
However, giving a man a prize because he says he wants to do something is completely counter intuitive. Sure, he's on the right track, but it's sort of like firing the gun at the start of a race and then immediately waving the checkered flag and tossing wreathes on people. You're awarding their unfailing ability to make a show of starting something.
Imagining apply this logic to real life. I sit down and write my name on a test, at which point the teacher gives me an A. I apply to college and in the middle of my orientation seminar I'm given a mortarboard and a diploma.
"But I haven't done anything," you'd say in a baffled tone of voice as suddenly your parents show up on either side of you and your aunt who smells like chewing tobacco begins flirting with your friends.
"That's ok," the dean says, "you said you wanted to, and for that you deserve something."
So Obama says he wants to end the wars in the Middle East and close Gitmo and free the world of nuclear warheads. Cheers to him, the guy's got ambition. But shouldn't we hold off on congratulating him until after he's made a move to even try to do these things?
Remember that paper I was reading on the subway? According to it, Obama is thinking about adding 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Ooh, what a pacifist.
The fact is the man has promised a lot of things, and while I don't doubt that he wants to do them I sincerely doubt his ability to actually do it. You know why?
Because he's a goddamn politician.
Mother Teressa and Gandhi spring to mind as people who started off small and became huge through sheer dint of their unfailing will and their desire to create a better world. They were beholden to no one and had endless faith not only in the goodness of man but in God as well. They weren't worried about polls, they didn't care if people liked them or not. They weren't driven by ambition of politics but by an unchained sense of duty.
Allow me, before I go, to address what I am sure will be one of the main talking points for people who want to see their own personal Jesus (Wooo, Depeche Mode!) defended against the slings and arrows hurled by anyone with half a brain:
"Obama got the award because of his ability to bring people together and to remind him of his promises so that he won't let us down. It will encourage him to keep his word."
What? Have you never seen a movie involving a contract killer?
Killer: "Four million dollars, right?"
Hirer: "Yea. Half now, half when the job is done."
See? See how that works?
If a baseball team makes it to the World Series (topical sports reference) you don't hand them the damn title without making them work for it first, otherwise they slack off because they have nowhere else to go. We've already won, they will say, what's the point?
Sure, maybe Obama will be encouraged by his win, but only encouraged enough to hold back on ethnically cleansing the mid west, not enough to actually follow through on his promises.
When you get paid all at once you aren't more encouraged to do the job, or even to do the job better. You're just encouraged not to screw up badly enough for people to ask for the payment back.
Meanwhile, a group of Chinese activists who are trying to end travesties there were passed over for the prize, much as Obama passed over meeting with the Dalai Fucking Lama.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Why Cell Phones Suck - Part II
Here's a not-uncommon scenario that one of my friends has to go through from time to time.
His girlfriend likes to call him whenever they are apart. Not apart as in "I'm going off to war" or "I'll be across the country visiting family over the weekend." I mean apart as in "I'm just nipping off to the pub for an ale" (no, I have no idea why I wrote that like a British person).
That in and of itself is pretty much the most annoying thing someone can do. I'm out doing my thing, you know I am doing my thing, and yet you still phone me, thereby keeping my from doing my thing. And that was a thing I wanted to be doing!
Why is this?
Just because we have the ability to make sure someone is never, ever outside of our social grasp doesn't mean we should start hounding them so they remember we exist. Maybe she's just really insecure. Maybe she's bored or lonely.
Either way, if I tell you I'm out with someone, or going to see a movie, or doing something that I specifically don't want your company for, please don't call me "Just to say hi" or to "see how things are going."
You're not my mother. This doesn't concern you.
Maybe I am just being misanthropic because my own girlfriend doesn't call me incessantly to see if I am making sure my shoes or tied, or to ask when I am coming home, or to generate some crisis that can only be solved by me coming home right now and holding her hand as I explain that you can, in fact, take more than two Advil in a 24 hour period.
...Actually, looking at that last paragraph it seems like I really do find that just really annoying.
The thing is, too much of anyone is a bad thing. Sometimes we, as people, need a moment away from those we surround ourselves with just to remind us when we return what it is we like about them so much. Failing that, and in the case of someone who just will not let you be alone or apart from them, you just feel constricted and trapped.
So if I am out, and you get the urge to call me, listen to these whispered words of wisdom: Let it be.
You will survive two hours without me, and if not... wow. Get help.
This brings us to another thing. Sometimes I won't answer your call.
It's not that I am screening you out (most likely). Sometimes I just can't hear or feel it ring. Sometimes I lose service, like when I am on the Metro. Sometimes I just don't have the damn thing on me.
Should this occur, leave a message.
Do NOT call back seven more times, leave three messages, and then text me. This makes you appear desperate and needy, which is never, ever a reason to talk to someone.
Worst of all is when a friend (ok, who am I kidding, a girlfriend or boyfriend) becomes paranoid due to a lack of answer.
If you have the kind of mind that jumps from "Not answering phone" to "banging some other guy/girl behind my back" without ever taking a stop at "sleeping" then you need to contact your HMO and look into some well-deserved trepanation. Once again, just because you can reach anyone at anytime doesn't mean you will, or should even try.
Then we come to the old standby used by significant other and parent alike: I thought you were dead.
Yes. Of course. I didn't answer my phone, therefore I had been slaughtered Jack-The-Ripper style. Makes sense. If I call a pizza place at 5 a.m. and don't get an answer I think that the place must have burned down.
Oh wait. No I don't.
Even more egregious is when the statement "I thought you were dead" is prefaced by "It kept rolling right to voicemail."
Cell phones and human bodies are not biomechanically linked. The death of one does not result in the death of the other. Were I dead, my phone would have run twice, then been answered by someone saying in a deep, throaty voice "You're next."
...or so I can only hope.
In the end, people need to realize that a cell phone is a tool. And any tool is used at the discretion of its owner and operator. By getting a phone, I have not signed a contract which states that I will always pick up.
So calm down everyone. Let's all sit back, have a beer, and not talk to one another for a moment and see how that suits us.
His girlfriend likes to call him whenever they are apart. Not apart as in "I'm going off to war" or "I'll be across the country visiting family over the weekend." I mean apart as in "I'm just nipping off to the pub for an ale" (no, I have no idea why I wrote that like a British person).
That in and of itself is pretty much the most annoying thing someone can do. I'm out doing my thing, you know I am doing my thing, and yet you still phone me, thereby keeping my from doing my thing. And that was a thing I wanted to be doing!
Why is this?
Just because we have the ability to make sure someone is never, ever outside of our social grasp doesn't mean we should start hounding them so they remember we exist. Maybe she's just really insecure. Maybe she's bored or lonely.
Either way, if I tell you I'm out with someone, or going to see a movie, or doing something that I specifically don't want your company for, please don't call me "Just to say hi" or to "see how things are going."
You're not my mother. This doesn't concern you.
Maybe I am just being misanthropic because my own girlfriend doesn't call me incessantly to see if I am making sure my shoes or tied, or to ask when I am coming home, or to generate some crisis that can only be solved by me coming home right now and holding her hand as I explain that you can, in fact, take more than two Advil in a 24 hour period.
...Actually, looking at that last paragraph it seems like I really do find that just really annoying.
The thing is, too much of anyone is a bad thing. Sometimes we, as people, need a moment away from those we surround ourselves with just to remind us when we return what it is we like about them so much. Failing that, and in the case of someone who just will not let you be alone or apart from them, you just feel constricted and trapped.
So if I am out, and you get the urge to call me, listen to these whispered words of wisdom: Let it be.
You will survive two hours without me, and if not... wow. Get help.
This brings us to another thing. Sometimes I won't answer your call.
It's not that I am screening you out (most likely). Sometimes I just can't hear or feel it ring. Sometimes I lose service, like when I am on the Metro. Sometimes I just don't have the damn thing on me.
Should this occur, leave a message.
Do NOT call back seven more times, leave three messages, and then text me. This makes you appear desperate and needy, which is never, ever a reason to talk to someone.
Worst of all is when a friend (ok, who am I kidding, a girlfriend or boyfriend) becomes paranoid due to a lack of answer.
If you have the kind of mind that jumps from "Not answering phone" to "banging some other guy/girl behind my back" without ever taking a stop at "sleeping" then you need to contact your HMO and look into some well-deserved trepanation. Once again, just because you can reach anyone at anytime doesn't mean you will, or should even try.
Then we come to the old standby used by significant other and parent alike: I thought you were dead.
Yes. Of course. I didn't answer my phone, therefore I had been slaughtered Jack-The-Ripper style. Makes sense. If I call a pizza place at 5 a.m. and don't get an answer I think that the place must have burned down.
Oh wait. No I don't.
Even more egregious is when the statement "I thought you were dead" is prefaced by "It kept rolling right to voicemail."
Cell phones and human bodies are not biomechanically linked. The death of one does not result in the death of the other. Were I dead, my phone would have run twice, then been answered by someone saying in a deep, throaty voice "You're next."
...or so I can only hope.
In the end, people need to realize that a cell phone is a tool. And any tool is used at the discretion of its owner and operator. By getting a phone, I have not signed a contract which states that I will always pick up.
So calm down everyone. Let's all sit back, have a beer, and not talk to one another for a moment and see how that suits us.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Worst Thing About It...
So I found out about that job I talked about a few posts ago - the one where I said everyone in the office told me that the only way I would get it was to become blond and grow tits? Remember that?
Well, the verdict is in and the job has gone to a cute blond girl.
Now here's the thing, before you all start to say I am a sore loser.
Had she and I been up against one another for any other job, I could have lost without reservation. She's worked here longer than I, she seems pretty smart, and for all I know she does decent work. In my logical mind, my completely unbiased and uninformed mind, she is the winner by nothing by her own hard work.
However...
Because the man who hired her is notorious in our office for only hiring girls of her kind, her selection is forever tainted in my unconscious mind.
And that is the worst thing about going out for a job where the man hiring has a clear bias. She very well may have been the most wonderful candidate for that position, but I doubt I will ever be able to accept her as one.
If I had been hired by an avowed racist, and every other candidate was black, I would never feel completely fulfilled.
Am I saying she shouldn't be?
Who knows.
But I find it hard to believe that when she takes her place on that new team and looks around her to see that she has become the latest easy-on-the-eyes addition to his harem, she won't feel that small niggling feeling of self doubt.
Which is a shame, because if she does feel that way, it cheapens what should be a great accomplishment for her.
I never want to have to ask myself: Did I earn this, or was this given to me?
Anyone showing any kind of bias - who offers up incentives based on race, gender, anything - are forever tainting an entire generation of achievement.
Well, the verdict is in and the job has gone to a cute blond girl.
Now here's the thing, before you all start to say I am a sore loser.
Had she and I been up against one another for any other job, I could have lost without reservation. She's worked here longer than I, she seems pretty smart, and for all I know she does decent work. In my logical mind, my completely unbiased and uninformed mind, she is the winner by nothing by her own hard work.
However...
Because the man who hired her is notorious in our office for only hiring girls of her kind, her selection is forever tainted in my unconscious mind.
And that is the worst thing about going out for a job where the man hiring has a clear bias. She very well may have been the most wonderful candidate for that position, but I doubt I will ever be able to accept her as one.
If I had been hired by an avowed racist, and every other candidate was black, I would never feel completely fulfilled.
Am I saying she shouldn't be?
Who knows.
But I find it hard to believe that when she takes her place on that new team and looks around her to see that she has become the latest easy-on-the-eyes addition to his harem, she won't feel that small niggling feeling of self doubt.
Which is a shame, because if she does feel that way, it cheapens what should be a great accomplishment for her.
I never want to have to ask myself: Did I earn this, or was this given to me?
Anyone showing any kind of bias - who offers up incentives based on race, gender, anything - are forever tainting an entire generation of achievement.
The Merits of Moving to Ireland
Today should have been a wondrous day for me.
There is a new Muse album out. I had yet another interview for a job I actually want. It's not Monday. I had half a burrito for lunch...
And then came the moment, the pinnacle, the zenith of what should have made this day great - the arrival of my paycheck.
I am not like many people I work with. I disdain direct deposit. I want to hold my check, get to know it a bit, sign my name on it like I'm branding a pack animal and then take it to the bank so I can see it go through that kooky machine that zips it around in a semi-circle. These are the things I love. Because I earned that money, and I want it to be handed to me so that I might see it through.
According to my pay stub I worked a little over 60 hours in the last pay period. I get something on the order of 11 bucks per hour. As such, I thought it only fair to guess that I would make at least 600 bucks on this check.
So with childlike glee I tapped the envelope on my desk, ripped off one side of it, blew into it to open it enough for my fingers to reach in, and then - as an Academy award presenter would - I drew it out slowly and flipped open the folded paper within to see that I had made...
$580.83
Any younger readers should close their eyes and scroll down real fast, because this is about to get messy.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Aaaand we're back.
But seriously, what is going on here? How the hell did this happen?
So unlike most days where I simply say, Yea, that'll cover rent, this time I decided to take a good long look and crunch the numbers.
I did indeed work just a shade over 60 hours, so I was right about that. As such, my total income for this pay period was about 664 bucks.
Sweet! I could buy two PS3s for that kind of scratch.
And then came that God-scaringly terrifying field just below where it tells me how much I made... the Deductions.
Jesus, just that word alone is enough to make me want to leap out of a window because I know no love or goodness truly exists in this world.
First we have federal income tax, which I still think is bullshit. What the hell did the government do for me that I need to give them almost 30 bucks? But fine, you know what, take it. The there's the Medicare tax, which is hilarious considering that for the past four and a half years my medical plan has been slap a band aid on it, take a shot of whiskey and hope for the best. 10 dollars. Why? I don't know.
So what else was left? Two things only added up to a little over 40 bucks, and yet I had been fleeced something like eighty. So what could possibly...
...
Are you #%$ing kidding me?
Forty something bucks into....
Social Security? Social. Bloody. Security?
You mean that thing, that great thing that is supposed to sustain me when I am older and don't wanna work anymore? That pool of crystal clear life-water that is apparently being sucked through a mile-wide straw by an Oreck XL vacuum cleaner? That social security?!
Now I know what some of you might be saying:
Roan, dude, bro, calm down. All this money is, like, totally going to social programs that will, like, totally better our lives, man.
I'd punch you in the face if you weren't the hypothetical suggestion of what a hippie would sound like.
I have a fantastic plan. Anyone who wants to benefit from social programs can pay into them on their own damn time. If you think the government or someone else can better spend your money than you, then give it to them. Personally, I think I know what I want and I know how to get it (woo, Sex Pistols!) and that does not include asking someone else to do it for me.
And social security? Really? Who pays into an account at a bank when seemingly the only promise the bank gives you is that "However much you pay in, it won't be there when you want to take it out!"
Either give me hope that the system will still be operational or don't keep taking my money and putting it into it.
It's like using a priceless painting to try to put out a house fire. Sure, when the fire is small maybe you can beat it out, but once the whole bloody structure is alight there is no point anymore.
All of which brings me to the topic line (sure some of you were wondering when that would come into play) about moving to Ireland.
Basically it boils down to this:
I have given up on America and want to move to Ireland, where I won't be taxed, because I shall live in the fields in a small earthen cabin with my lovely, red-haired wife, who will knit sweaters out of the fleece of our flock of lambs, tossing her curly red locks over her shoulder as she bends over the large copper kettle to make our night's stew. I shall write and tend to our flock and will bend to no man or government. And we shall be happy there in our bucolic paradise, free from the constraints of society, able to live in harmonic coexistence with nature and God.
And if you are sitting there thinking "Well that sounds a bit too idealistic" I have this to offer.
It's a hell of a lot more realistic than the Obama-approved plans and social programs you're depending on to save your worthless ass the trouble of doing things for yourself.
There is a new Muse album out. I had yet another interview for a job I actually want. It's not Monday. I had half a burrito for lunch...
And then came the moment, the pinnacle, the zenith of what should have made this day great - the arrival of my paycheck.
I am not like many people I work with. I disdain direct deposit. I want to hold my check, get to know it a bit, sign my name on it like I'm branding a pack animal and then take it to the bank so I can see it go through that kooky machine that zips it around in a semi-circle. These are the things I love. Because I earned that money, and I want it to be handed to me so that I might see it through.
According to my pay stub I worked a little over 60 hours in the last pay period. I get something on the order of 11 bucks per hour. As such, I thought it only fair to guess that I would make at least 600 bucks on this check.
So with childlike glee I tapped the envelope on my desk, ripped off one side of it, blew into it to open it enough for my fingers to reach in, and then - as an Academy award presenter would - I drew it out slowly and flipped open the folded paper within to see that I had made...
$580.83
Any younger readers should close their eyes and scroll down real fast, because this is about to get messy.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Aaaand we're back.
But seriously, what is going on here? How the hell did this happen?
So unlike most days where I simply say, Yea, that'll cover rent, this time I decided to take a good long look and crunch the numbers.
I did indeed work just a shade over 60 hours, so I was right about that. As such, my total income for this pay period was about 664 bucks.
Sweet! I could buy two PS3s for that kind of scratch.
And then came that God-scaringly terrifying field just below where it tells me how much I made... the Deductions.
Jesus, just that word alone is enough to make me want to leap out of a window because I know no love or goodness truly exists in this world.
First we have federal income tax, which I still think is bullshit. What the hell did the government do for me that I need to give them almost 30 bucks? But fine, you know what, take it. The there's the Medicare tax, which is hilarious considering that for the past four and a half years my medical plan has been slap a band aid on it, take a shot of whiskey and hope for the best. 10 dollars. Why? I don't know.
So what else was left? Two things only added up to a little over 40 bucks, and yet I had been fleeced something like eighty. So what could possibly...
...
Are you #%$ing kidding me?
Forty something bucks into....
Social Security? Social. Bloody. Security?
You mean that thing, that great thing that is supposed to sustain me when I am older and don't wanna work anymore? That pool of crystal clear life-water that is apparently being sucked through a mile-wide straw by an Oreck XL vacuum cleaner? That social security?!
Now I know what some of you might be saying:
Roan, dude, bro, calm down. All this money is, like, totally going to social programs that will, like, totally better our lives, man.
I'd punch you in the face if you weren't the hypothetical suggestion of what a hippie would sound like.
I have a fantastic plan. Anyone who wants to benefit from social programs can pay into them on their own damn time. If you think the government or someone else can better spend your money than you, then give it to them. Personally, I think I know what I want and I know how to get it (woo, Sex Pistols!) and that does not include asking someone else to do it for me.
And social security? Really? Who pays into an account at a bank when seemingly the only promise the bank gives you is that "However much you pay in, it won't be there when you want to take it out!"
Either give me hope that the system will still be operational or don't keep taking my money and putting it into it.
It's like using a priceless painting to try to put out a house fire. Sure, when the fire is small maybe you can beat it out, but once the whole bloody structure is alight there is no point anymore.
All of which brings me to the topic line (sure some of you were wondering when that would come into play) about moving to Ireland.
Basically it boils down to this:
I have given up on America and want to move to Ireland, where I won't be taxed, because I shall live in the fields in a small earthen cabin with my lovely, red-haired wife, who will knit sweaters out of the fleece of our flock of lambs, tossing her curly red locks over her shoulder as she bends over the large copper kettle to make our night's stew. I shall write and tend to our flock and will bend to no man or government. And we shall be happy there in our bucolic paradise, free from the constraints of society, able to live in harmonic coexistence with nature and God.
And if you are sitting there thinking "Well that sounds a bit too idealistic" I have this to offer.
It's a hell of a lot more realistic than the Obama-approved plans and social programs you're depending on to save your worthless ass the trouble of doing things for yourself.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Speaking of Racism...
I have a perfect sense of timing, it seems.
Over at one of my favorite movie blogs there is a piece about the upcoming Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog.
Now, for a long time groups of all stripes have derided Disney for not having any black princesses. Ariel (who is a fish), Jasmine (who is Arab), Sleeping Beauty (who is a white narcoleptic), and Snow White (who is a chipmunk... or sounds like one). None of these women have been black.
Well they finally got one, and apparently everyone is squirming because, well... she's black. And so are most of her castmates. So every piece of comedy and plot wrung from her is obviously (all together now) racist!
A firefly is proud of his butt, the music is jazzy, funny characters are black... bastards! How dare they!
Ok, it's a comedy. A COMEDY. Did white people or fish or Arabs or chipmunks get offended when people of their races were used for humor in a Disney movie? Was Disney supposed to make this movie any less cartoony and stupid than all their others?
Is the film racist? Who knows, probably not. As I said above, Disney makes all kind of characters of whatever race stupid for their movies because little kids eat that shit up. Goofy characters are Disney's bread and butter. Just look at... well, Goofy. But just because they are black this time everyone is going crazy. Well you know what, I am pissed off that it's come to the point where you can't even have a character of a race be hilarious without it being seen as racist.
We're all too sensative. Way too sensative.
It's all especially odd, considering there is a point where one of the characters says, to a frog "Only thing's important is what's under the skin."
So here's a movie that was basically created because people were begging for diversity, which is being derided for using black people as comedy relief in a comedy movie centered around black people, and yet the film tells people that looks aren't important and everyone is equally judged by who they are on the inside.
Jesus I need an aspirin.
Over at one of my favorite movie blogs there is a piece about the upcoming Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog.
Now, for a long time groups of all stripes have derided Disney for not having any black princesses. Ariel (who is a fish), Jasmine (who is Arab), Sleeping Beauty (who is a white narcoleptic), and Snow White (who is a chipmunk... or sounds like one). None of these women have been black.
Well they finally got one, and apparently everyone is squirming because, well... she's black. And so are most of her castmates. So every piece of comedy and plot wrung from her is obviously (all together now) racist!
A firefly is proud of his butt, the music is jazzy, funny characters are black... bastards! How dare they!
Ok, it's a comedy. A COMEDY. Did white people or fish or Arabs or chipmunks get offended when people of their races were used for humor in a Disney movie? Was Disney supposed to make this movie any less cartoony and stupid than all their others?
Is the film racist? Who knows, probably not. As I said above, Disney makes all kind of characters of whatever race stupid for their movies because little kids eat that shit up. Goofy characters are Disney's bread and butter. Just look at... well, Goofy. But just because they are black this time everyone is going crazy. Well you know what, I am pissed off that it's come to the point where you can't even have a character of a race be hilarious without it being seen as racist.
We're all too sensative. Way too sensative.
It's all especially odd, considering there is a point where one of the characters says, to a frog "Only thing's important is what's under the skin."
So here's a movie that was basically created because people were begging for diversity, which is being derided for using black people as comedy relief in a comedy movie centered around black people, and yet the film tells people that looks aren't important and everyone is equally judged by who they are on the inside.
Jesus I need an aspirin.
Why Am I Never A Victim?
The plight of the white male is something you never really hear about.
Why?
Because it doesn't exist. Any time someone of the white persuasion who happens to be male feels that they are under served, discriminated against, or otherwise beaten down because of their race and sex they are accused of having entitlement issues, or narcissism, or some other such thing.
The truth - as many would have you believe it - is that all white men are part of a deceitful cabal who complain about being passed over for jobs, given worse grades, or not having enough scholarship opportunities as a way to deal with their loss of power in a world rapidly growing more diverse.
I suppose that makes sense, in a way. I mean, if this were still the 1800s.
Listen, I wanted McCain to win over Obama not because one was white and one was black, but because I don't want to be taxed into poverty, nor told what to do. I was pissed off when illegal immigrants were given in-state tuition not because they are Mexican (or Salvadoran, or Ecuadoran, or...) but because I lived here 16 years and yet just because my parents moved I was no longer considered a resident, except when it came to taxing me.
This isn't because these people are all part of a class that I used to be able to grind under my boot heel. I'm a child of the 90's, for Christ's sake. I never knew a world where we had segregation or Jim Crow laws. I went to school with people of all races, ate with people of all races, lived near people of all races. I have no glorious white-dominated past to fall back on. I just happen to have an opinion.
To some people, however, these opinions I hold are considered to be racist. Well sure, the object of my disdain happens to be of a different race, but let's be honest, I hate white people, too!
Zac Effron for instance. Or Stephanie Meyer.
Oh, you say, so you hate the female writer, eh? Because she's a successful independent woman?
No! I shout from my golden mountaintop, because she's a terrible author! I'd hate those books just as much if a man wrote them. And I don't care if she's black or white, either. If she was a black woman I would hate the books just as much as I hate them now! My disdain is equal opportunity!
In fact, as a white male in a society that practices an alarming amount of self-segregation I hate about 20 individual white people for every individual of another race that I hate.
But could I ever try to explain that to someone? No. No I can't. Because as a white male, the only excuse for me thinking that 50 Cent's music is complete tripe is that I am a racist.
Well guess what, I love Miles Davis, the Drifters, and NWA. (I'll take a moment to allow people who know me to recover from the fact that I find NWA enjoyable. Ok, time's up.)
Why is it that we as a society have to worry about our personal opinions being interpreted as racist? Why can't we trust that people will understand that tastes and ideas vary, and sometimes race and sex have nothing to do with it.
I hate Tyler Perry movies. Not because they have a specifically African-American focus, but because I hate watching movies where men don fat suits to pass themselves off as old women. I hate Hannah Montana because... Jesus, do I even have to explain? Moving on...
The problem with racism and sexism in modern America is that it is sort of our modern day witch hunt. Salem played out on a national scale. We were so afraid of witches and the evil that they sowed that if we couldn't find one outright we had to suspect that they are just hiding it very well. So we looked for any small sign and blew it out of proportion. Our fear of the witch was so powerful that our minds created them out of thin air.
The same can be true of most modern day cases of perceived racism and sexism.
I say "perceived" because we do live in a world where a number of people still practice hate professionally (I'm looking at you, Aryan Nation) and those people are disgusting. What "perceived" denotes is racism or sexism without intent. Someone says something and means it one way, but someone thinks it is racist or sexist and suddenly it is.
It's intellectual alchemy. Turning innocuous-banter coal into hate-speech gold.
Like this statement: If women want equal rights, they should have to be called up in the draft, too.
Holy shit, you just said, that's terrible! You're only saying that to scare women and keep them in their place.
I'm not. I am saying that because if we're to believe all this "Equal Opportunity" talk that gets thrown around then that means taking the good with the bad. You don't get paid as much as a world-renowned heart surgeon without having to go through the hell of med school and residency, after all.
If all you're asking for is the same rights and privileges as someone without all the responsibilities that go with it, you're really just asking for special treatment, which is more sexist than getting nothing at all.
"Aww, the little girl wants to make more money and be a CEO. Ok, sweetie, but don't worry, you won't have to fight in the big bad war because we know you don't wanna mess up your makeup."
Sexist.
"Ok, welcome to the club. Here's our list of pros and cons. Read 'em, love 'em, get to work."
Equal.
Yet because of the fact that every self-serving, publicity hungry Equal Rights Activist is looking for a new racist or sexist to burn at the stake, people self-censor to the point of hilariousness. I've heard friends start stories off with, "So I was serving this table of black people, and you know I am not racist, I mean, my best friend is black, and I love Beyonce, so, you know, but anyway..."
Come on. Stories live or die by their details. I don't start a story off with, "So I was chatting up this blond girl, and I mean, you know, I don't have a problem with blonds..." State the details so I can get a clear picture and move on. Stop apologizing.
(Also, just like hating one black person doesn't make you a racist, liking one black person doesn't make you not racist.)
I was a waiter. I hated serving tables of black people because they were, in general, terrible tippers. Now, of course there are always exceptions to every rule, and I have been stiffed by white people too, but on the whole if I had to choose one of two tables, I'd go for whitey any day of the week.
Does that make me racist? No! No it doesn't! It makes me adept at pattern recognition and playing the odds.
In fact, if you look at me and hear something I say and assume its racist, that makes you racist because you are making an assumption of my beliefs based on my skin color.
Which brings me to my original point.
I am currently up for a job working for a man who hires pretty, blond sorority girls. He's got a goddamned harem working in his section. When people heard about me interviewing for this job, they openly stated, "Good luck on that one, man. Maybe you should try growing some tits for the interview."
Now imagine this. I am a black man working for someone who hires white men, and when I tell friends I am going for the job they say to me, "You might wanna ask Michael Jackson how he got so white, because that's your only hope."
You'd have a CNN breaking news story on your hands. You couldn't keep the press away. A person who openly discriminates against black men? Queue up the specialized graphics and theme music.
But if I tried to sue over sexual discrimination I would get laughed out of court. Why? Because I am a white man, and nothing bad ever happens to me. I don't get mad because I feel genuinely discriminated against, I get mad because I can feel my racial and gender supremacy slipping away. I am hopping on the band wagon, acting offended by injustice when really I just wanna get my White Man's Club Card punched one more time.
Bullshit.
You know what? My families' roots in this country begin in the early 20th century and I'm Irish and Italian, two ethnic groups that were treated like shit when they first got here. I mean, the Irish were subjugated by the English for hundreds of years. We weren't even allowed to speak our own language in our homeland!
So I am not some redneck whistling dixie and talking about the good old days when a black man knew his place and a white man couldn't spit on the sidewalk without getting a job offer.
In fact, that statement was heavily racist against southerners, but I bet no one out there got offended.
I am just a man who has ideas that sometimes put me on the opposite side of the idealism-dividing-line from people of other races and genders. I am just a man who can tell when he is being treated unfairly, like any other human can.
What I am saying here, in short, is that equality works in both directions. We're either all equally capable of being victims and perpetrators, or no one is. If I am capable of discriminating, then I am also equally capable of being discriminated against. If you give one group special treatment and more opportunities while shutting out the formerly dominant group, then you aren't being enlightened, you're being condescending.
Put bluntly:
Level the fucking playing field, but don't fix the game.
Why?
Because it doesn't exist. Any time someone of the white persuasion who happens to be male feels that they are under served, discriminated against, or otherwise beaten down because of their race and sex they are accused of having entitlement issues, or narcissism, or some other such thing.
The truth - as many would have you believe it - is that all white men are part of a deceitful cabal who complain about being passed over for jobs, given worse grades, or not having enough scholarship opportunities as a way to deal with their loss of power in a world rapidly growing more diverse.
I suppose that makes sense, in a way. I mean, if this were still the 1800s.
Listen, I wanted McCain to win over Obama not because one was white and one was black, but because I don't want to be taxed into poverty, nor told what to do. I was pissed off when illegal immigrants were given in-state tuition not because they are Mexican (or Salvadoran, or Ecuadoran, or...) but because I lived here 16 years and yet just because my parents moved I was no longer considered a resident, except when it came to taxing me.
This isn't because these people are all part of a class that I used to be able to grind under my boot heel. I'm a child of the 90's, for Christ's sake. I never knew a world where we had segregation or Jim Crow laws. I went to school with people of all races, ate with people of all races, lived near people of all races. I have no glorious white-dominated past to fall back on. I just happen to have an opinion.
To some people, however, these opinions I hold are considered to be racist. Well sure, the object of my disdain happens to be of a different race, but let's be honest, I hate white people, too!
Zac Effron for instance. Or Stephanie Meyer.
Oh, you say, so you hate the female writer, eh? Because she's a successful independent woman?
No! I shout from my golden mountaintop, because she's a terrible author! I'd hate those books just as much if a man wrote them. And I don't care if she's black or white, either. If she was a black woman I would hate the books just as much as I hate them now! My disdain is equal opportunity!
In fact, as a white male in a society that practices an alarming amount of self-segregation I hate about 20 individual white people for every individual of another race that I hate.
But could I ever try to explain that to someone? No. No I can't. Because as a white male, the only excuse for me thinking that 50 Cent's music is complete tripe is that I am a racist.
Well guess what, I love Miles Davis, the Drifters, and NWA. (I'll take a moment to allow people who know me to recover from the fact that I find NWA enjoyable. Ok, time's up.)
Why is it that we as a society have to worry about our personal opinions being interpreted as racist? Why can't we trust that people will understand that tastes and ideas vary, and sometimes race and sex have nothing to do with it.
I hate Tyler Perry movies. Not because they have a specifically African-American focus, but because I hate watching movies where men don fat suits to pass themselves off as old women. I hate Hannah Montana because... Jesus, do I even have to explain? Moving on...
The problem with racism and sexism in modern America is that it is sort of our modern day witch hunt. Salem played out on a national scale. We were so afraid of witches and the evil that they sowed that if we couldn't find one outright we had to suspect that they are just hiding it very well. So we looked for any small sign and blew it out of proportion. Our fear of the witch was so powerful that our minds created them out of thin air.
The same can be true of most modern day cases of perceived racism and sexism.
I say "perceived" because we do live in a world where a number of people still practice hate professionally (I'm looking at you, Aryan Nation) and those people are disgusting. What "perceived" denotes is racism or sexism without intent. Someone says something and means it one way, but someone thinks it is racist or sexist and suddenly it is.
It's intellectual alchemy. Turning innocuous-banter coal into hate-speech gold.
Like this statement: If women want equal rights, they should have to be called up in the draft, too.
Holy shit, you just said, that's terrible! You're only saying that to scare women and keep them in their place.
I'm not. I am saying that because if we're to believe all this "Equal Opportunity" talk that gets thrown around then that means taking the good with the bad. You don't get paid as much as a world-renowned heart surgeon without having to go through the hell of med school and residency, after all.
If all you're asking for is the same rights and privileges as someone without all the responsibilities that go with it, you're really just asking for special treatment, which is more sexist than getting nothing at all.
"Aww, the little girl wants to make more money and be a CEO. Ok, sweetie, but don't worry, you won't have to fight in the big bad war because we know you don't wanna mess up your makeup."
Sexist.
"Ok, welcome to the club. Here's our list of pros and cons. Read 'em, love 'em, get to work."
Equal.
Yet because of the fact that every self-serving, publicity hungry Equal Rights Activist is looking for a new racist or sexist to burn at the stake, people self-censor to the point of hilariousness. I've heard friends start stories off with, "So I was serving this table of black people, and you know I am not racist, I mean, my best friend is black, and I love Beyonce, so, you know, but anyway..."
Come on. Stories live or die by their details. I don't start a story off with, "So I was chatting up this blond girl, and I mean, you know, I don't have a problem with blonds..." State the details so I can get a clear picture and move on. Stop apologizing.
(Also, just like hating one black person doesn't make you a racist, liking one black person doesn't make you not racist.)
I was a waiter. I hated serving tables of black people because they were, in general, terrible tippers. Now, of course there are always exceptions to every rule, and I have been stiffed by white people too, but on the whole if I had to choose one of two tables, I'd go for whitey any day of the week.
Does that make me racist? No! No it doesn't! It makes me adept at pattern recognition and playing the odds.
In fact, if you look at me and hear something I say and assume its racist, that makes you racist because you are making an assumption of my beliefs based on my skin color.
Which brings me to my original point.
I am currently up for a job working for a man who hires pretty, blond sorority girls. He's got a goddamned harem working in his section. When people heard about me interviewing for this job, they openly stated, "Good luck on that one, man. Maybe you should try growing some tits for the interview."
Now imagine this. I am a black man working for someone who hires white men, and when I tell friends I am going for the job they say to me, "You might wanna ask Michael Jackson how he got so white, because that's your only hope."
You'd have a CNN breaking news story on your hands. You couldn't keep the press away. A person who openly discriminates against black men? Queue up the specialized graphics and theme music.
But if I tried to sue over sexual discrimination I would get laughed out of court. Why? Because I am a white man, and nothing bad ever happens to me. I don't get mad because I feel genuinely discriminated against, I get mad because I can feel my racial and gender supremacy slipping away. I am hopping on the band wagon, acting offended by injustice when really I just wanna get my White Man's Club Card punched one more time.
Bullshit.
You know what? My families' roots in this country begin in the early 20th century and I'm Irish and Italian, two ethnic groups that were treated like shit when they first got here. I mean, the Irish were subjugated by the English for hundreds of years. We weren't even allowed to speak our own language in our homeland!
So I am not some redneck whistling dixie and talking about the good old days when a black man knew his place and a white man couldn't spit on the sidewalk without getting a job offer.
In fact, that statement was heavily racist against southerners, but I bet no one out there got offended.
I am just a man who has ideas that sometimes put me on the opposite side of the idealism-dividing-line from people of other races and genders. I am just a man who can tell when he is being treated unfairly, like any other human can.
What I am saying here, in short, is that equality works in both directions. We're either all equally capable of being victims and perpetrators, or no one is. If I am capable of discriminating, then I am also equally capable of being discriminated against. If you give one group special treatment and more opportunities while shutting out the formerly dominant group, then you aren't being enlightened, you're being condescending.
Put bluntly:
Level the fucking playing field, but don't fix the game.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
When To Give Up (A.K.A. The Balloon and the Cactus)
Far be it from me to say that love will never, in fact, conquer all.
Stranger things have happened in this world; Ball lightening, UFO encounters, successful white rappers, frogs falling from the sky...
Geronimo!But at some point either in the experience or observation of a truly dysfunctional relationship, someone has to ask: At what point should this lame horse be made to headbutt a bullet?
This becomes a rather tricky question. It asks at what point optimistic romanticism becomes meaningless routine. At what point does the "We can work it out" Beatles jingle become the "Remember when I said 'I love you,' well forget it I take it back, I was just a stupid kid back then" Alkaline Trio anthem to idiocy?
I suppose one way to look at it is this: Are you happy?
Seems like a simple enough question. Being with someone either makes you happy or it doesn't. Being without that person either then makes you miserable or it doesn't. To me, at a very basic and quantifiable level, then, someone is worth staying with if you feel better when they are around and feel a little bit worse when they aren't.
Not to say that living without them is intolerable (we call that an obsession, children) but that you honestly look forward to seeing them again.
As such, a significant other is someone whom you like being with and want to see again. A one night stand is someone you felt better being with and hope never to see again. And someone you are miserable with and yet want to see again is commonly referred to as "a bad idea."
Beyond simply being a bad idea, this person can also end up being ultimately destructive.
You are miserable, therefore people don't want to be around you, therefore all you have to cling to is the bad idea, who sooner or later twists you into an unidentifiable shell of your former self that people want to be around even less.
This is what I like to refer to as "The Balloon and the Cactus."
Imagine, if you will, a bright balloon, filled with air and floating happily through the world. It's a playful, kindly balloon. One day Balloon meets Cactus, an aesthetically interesting thing covered in sharp quills that make it impossible to become intimate with (for the purpose of this analogy, imagine I am talking about emotional intimacy).
Yet Balloon is in love with Cactus, and though all of Balloon's friends tell Balloon not to get involved with Cactus, the two strike up a relationship. Balloon believes that love will overcome the obviously Bad Idea that is trying to make it work with Cactus.
Before long, Cactus's quills, which before were just their problem, have pierced Balloon, sapping the poor soul of their former jovial attitude and fun. Balloon is earthbound, drained of the thing's they loved, and Cactus remains unchanged. Cactus remains remote and unapproachable, but now Balloon too is worse for the wear and is trapped with Cactus.
See? Simple. Read that to children when they are growing up and see if the marriage rate doesn't fix itself a little higher in coming generations when people learn that sometimes you really just aren't meant to be together so stop trying and for the love of GOD don't marry them thinking it will change things!
(Author's note: Same thing goes for children and pets. You can't fix what's broken by adding more complicated moving parts.)
So the question then becomes, When do you know he or she is a Cactus? How far should you go before you realize that you aren't nobly fighting for love anymore? When does it make sense to say, No, this isn't working, and to remain with you will only destroy me and my life?
Above: Not someone you take home to mom.
At what point is it responsible to make a call as to whether you have found your future prince/princess, or if you're just going to be kissing a frog for the rest of your life?
Love me!
Time, I think, doesn't even factor into this question. Say I were to put a firm stamp on two months. If after two months we are still making one another miserable, it's all over. What happens when an unforeseen incident crops up two years into a perfectly harmonious union? Jump ship? No, of course not!
Time doesn't matter because a relationship is an ever-evolving organism. It starts off small, eating plankton and what not, then swims around and hunts more wily prey, then grows legs and climbs onto the land and then wings and takes to the air (Charles Darwin hates me right now).So at any given point there will be a problem. First the tides might be working against you, then you might stumble while trying to work those legs, and then you might have trouble finding the right air-speed velocity to keep aloft. These are all parts of the process.
It's when you're still having the same bloody arguments you were having at the single-celled stage while trying to run and flapping your stunted wings then you have problems.
A year in, if you're still arguing about how you never hold hands enough or how you never do what the other person wants to do, you might honestly think about just ending this madness.
Even more egregious - in my opinion - is when one or the other of you flat out refuses to try to forge any common ground with the other. You're not sharing books, you won't give their favorite TV show a chance, she won't let you listen to your music in the car...
That's not a relationship. That's a hostage negotiation, and sooner or later you have to ask what you are getting out of this.
Why are you still in that thing? What is the point? What are you getting out of it? If 95% of the time you are flat-out suicidally depressed and 5% of the time you find yourself saying "Things have been really good recently" then you need to wise up and move on. If you say "They've been having a rough couple of weeks" at least twice a week, then there is a problem. The thing is that you have never found happiness. You have felt happy but you haven't been happy.
Do you know why mankind seems to think of the default of the world as having daylight? Because a majority of our lives are spent in it. That's the norm. If night lasted for 18 hours, then we would think night was the norm.
When your months-to-year-long relationship is still in the sea, and when you think the sun is a novelty, you know its time to GET OUT OF THERE.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Is It Depression or Is It A Terrible Mattress?
The other night was a study in mouth-inflamed terror.
No, that isn't one of my wondrous hyperbole. My mouth hurt like the body of a vampire trapped in the Vatican at high noon.
Since I feel like that involves some background: Wisdom Teeth.
Anyway, so I went to WebMD to see if there was something I could do short of DIY oral surgery to relieve the pain.
Right there on the homepage was a test to determine whether or not you had depression.
Why not, I thought, this seems like a fun waste of time. I was expecting a double-blind 600 question personality test that would examine my psyche like Freud's ghost mixed with some sort of futuristic omnipotent God-machine.
Instead I got myself a 10 question, single page waste of thirty seconds.
The first question asked me if I had trouble sleeping. Well yea, of course I do. I am a recent college graduate with no solid job prospects, mounting debt, and a four-year-old habit of staying up til 5 am funneling whiskey down my throat as fast as I can. If worries don't keep me conscious the niggling feeling that I should really be drunk and listening to Modest Mouse right now will.
Also my mattress sucks. It's a bit too hard and I can't get comfortable and its big enough for two pillows, but I inevitably find myself unable to sleep in the cozy center of the bed because then my head is between the two pillows and therefore lacking cushioning.
Question two: Does your back hurt?
Why yes, yes it does, and that must be because all the aforementioned terrors in my life which keep me awake are starting to actually gain physical weight which rests on my shoulders like a gorilla hypnotized to think it's a parrot and that I am Captain Jack Sparrow.
Also my mattress sucks and therefore I spent the night on a lightly pillowed bed of glass, nails, and scorpions with epilepsy. Which makes it impossible to get comfortable and puts a banjo-styled twinge in my neck and spine. Which keeps me from sleeping.
Question three: Are you lethargic during the day?
Yes, I am, because the overwhelming hopelessness of my life and my lack of a future that doesn't involve slinging dope on a cold street corner for pennies while I watch the world around me decay because of my greed stops me from ever finding the energy to try to achieve anything better.
Also my mattress sucks and I can't sleep because it's so uncomfortable and my back hurts because of it so even my moments of waking rest are devoid of any recuperative properties because I might as well just connect myself to an electric fence that causes my muscles to spasm repeatedly so that every moment of my life feels like I just finished climbing a damn mountain.
Question four: Do you not take join in activities you used to love?
Yes, because what is the point of trying to find happiness when inevitably I will die cold and alone buried in a coffin stitched together from cardboard burger boxes from McDonalds, stuck in the ground with a number on my tombstone because I had to be buried by the state for lack of funds and I pawned my identity to a Bulgarian immigrant two years ago so they didn't even know my name.
Also my mattress sucks and I am too tired and in too much discomfort to be bothered to go to a loud bar or try to write because the moment I sit down to try to write a story all I can think is "Some codeine would really be awesome now" and any moments of freedom and solitude I get are spent wondering if maybe I could fit a nap in because I am exhausted because I can't sleep because my mattress sucks!
The only question that seemed tailored solely to those who might be depressed was the one that asked if I often thought about murdering myself, and really if you can answer yes to that one what was the point of asking the others?
Suicidal Sam: God, I want to off myself and every night I fantasize about that one perfect steak knight and the way it gleams in the moonlight. However, I am sleeping great, doing all the things I love with limitless supplies of energy and never experience any back pain even while carrying my backpack filled with condoms and liquor across Europe, so I must not be really depressed, because even though I really cannot wait to feel the freeing kiss of steel against my wrists I own a really great mattress.
I cannot conceive of a person who dreams of the day when they can cut their wrists and shuffle off this painful mortal coil who isn't depressed, or else a fourteen year old boy who just got stood up at the dance.
And if a person who is suicidal really just needs a good night's sleep to keep from being considered 'depressed' maybe every psychologist in the world should be retrained as a sleep number salesman.
No, that isn't one of my wondrous hyperbole. My mouth hurt like the body of a vampire trapped in the Vatican at high noon.
Since I feel like that involves some background: Wisdom Teeth.
Anyway, so I went to WebMD to see if there was something I could do short of DIY oral surgery to relieve the pain.
Right there on the homepage was a test to determine whether or not you had depression.
Why not, I thought, this seems like a fun waste of time. I was expecting a double-blind 600 question personality test that would examine my psyche like Freud's ghost mixed with some sort of futuristic omnipotent God-machine.
Instead I got myself a 10 question, single page waste of thirty seconds.
The first question asked me if I had trouble sleeping. Well yea, of course I do. I am a recent college graduate with no solid job prospects, mounting debt, and a four-year-old habit of staying up til 5 am funneling whiskey down my throat as fast as I can. If worries don't keep me conscious the niggling feeling that I should really be drunk and listening to Modest Mouse right now will.
Also my mattress sucks. It's a bit too hard and I can't get comfortable and its big enough for two pillows, but I inevitably find myself unable to sleep in the cozy center of the bed because then my head is between the two pillows and therefore lacking cushioning.
Question two: Does your back hurt?
Why yes, yes it does, and that must be because all the aforementioned terrors in my life which keep me awake are starting to actually gain physical weight which rests on my shoulders like a gorilla hypnotized to think it's a parrot and that I am Captain Jack Sparrow.
Also my mattress sucks and therefore I spent the night on a lightly pillowed bed of glass, nails, and scorpions with epilepsy. Which makes it impossible to get comfortable and puts a banjo-styled twinge in my neck and spine. Which keeps me from sleeping.
Question three: Are you lethargic during the day?
Yes, I am, because the overwhelming hopelessness of my life and my lack of a future that doesn't involve slinging dope on a cold street corner for pennies while I watch the world around me decay because of my greed stops me from ever finding the energy to try to achieve anything better.
Also my mattress sucks and I can't sleep because it's so uncomfortable and my back hurts because of it so even my moments of waking rest are devoid of any recuperative properties because I might as well just connect myself to an electric fence that causes my muscles to spasm repeatedly so that every moment of my life feels like I just finished climbing a damn mountain.
Question four: Do you not take join in activities you used to love?
Yes, because what is the point of trying to find happiness when inevitably I will die cold and alone buried in a coffin stitched together from cardboard burger boxes from McDonalds, stuck in the ground with a number on my tombstone because I had to be buried by the state for lack of funds and I pawned my identity to a Bulgarian immigrant two years ago so they didn't even know my name.
Also my mattress sucks and I am too tired and in too much discomfort to be bothered to go to a loud bar or try to write because the moment I sit down to try to write a story all I can think is "Some codeine would really be awesome now" and any moments of freedom and solitude I get are spent wondering if maybe I could fit a nap in because I am exhausted because I can't sleep because my mattress sucks!
The only question that seemed tailored solely to those who might be depressed was the one that asked if I often thought about murdering myself, and really if you can answer yes to that one what was the point of asking the others?
Suicidal Sam: God, I want to off myself and every night I fantasize about that one perfect steak knight and the way it gleams in the moonlight. However, I am sleeping great, doing all the things I love with limitless supplies of energy and never experience any back pain even while carrying my backpack filled with condoms and liquor across Europe, so I must not be really depressed, because even though I really cannot wait to feel the freeing kiss of steel against my wrists I own a really great mattress.
I cannot conceive of a person who dreams of the day when they can cut their wrists and shuffle off this painful mortal coil who isn't depressed, or else a fourteen year old boy who just got stood up at the dance.
And if a person who is suicidal really just needs a good night's sleep to keep from being considered 'depressed' maybe every psychologist in the world should be retrained as a sleep number salesman.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Internet Ads Disturbing Tendency To Depreciate Moms
The story of advertising on the Internet is a long and interesting one. (No hyperlink... seems like a good place for one, though.)
First there were pop-ups that just sprang out of nowhere like a voracious jungle cat waiting to shove its materialistic fangs into your soft, warm, consumerist jugular. Then there were those banner adverts that would flash really brightly and claim you were the millionth person to visit the site and you'd just won a WiiPlayBox360 III and all you had to do was sign up for a subscription to Redbook and forward something to ten other people.
Then things for a little more sophisticated and suddenly we had poorly rendered men, women, aliens, and other human figures doing the cha-cha-shuffle because they were so happy that Mortgage Rates Were At There Lowest Since The Birth Of Christ!
Now we have entered a new golden age of idiot-baiting marketing on the net where we see pictures of yellow teeth juxtaposed against pictures of the same teeth photoshopped to be white. Or some fat, bloated, distended stomach juxtaposed against abs carved of marble. Such stunning results!
So once your eyes have been drawn in by these dramatic transformations you look down to read the tagline:
"Discover the teeth whitening tip discovered by a mom!"
A mom, seriously? Wow, good for her!
"D.C. Mom Loses 47 Lbs. a month by following this 1 Old Rule!"
Another mom, huh? That's pretty impressive...wait, 47 pounds? Is that healthy? And if the rule is so old why don't I know about it? Was it lost to time? Is she Indiana Jones' wife?
"Mom's are making unholy amounts of money using Google!"
...ok, I think the Internet just developed an Oedipal complex.
Now, I can see why this whole approach seems to make sense in a very general sense. I mean, honestly, you listened to your mom when she said all kinds of insane shit to you when you were younger (e.g. "Don't make faces, or your face will freeze that way") so why stop now? Leeches for whiter teeth? If you say so, ma.
Also, the word "mom" makes you think of some kindly old woman sitting at home who chances upon a world-altering discovery. The underdog sticking one to The Man. Well you know what, establishment? Guess who The Man is now! (Hint)
But the problem is this - you're using the idea of a mom to insight in the reader the idea that any idiot with a brain the size of a frog's and two opposable thumbs can do what this person did.
She's a mom! Mom's are pretty worthless, right? Sitting around all day doing nothing, no education. Why else would they marry and have kids? Mom's aren't real people. Real people have titles like "doctor" and "king." I mean, hell, if some tramp who pushed out a kid can lose weight and make money and have a smile as white as a Victorian woman's ankles, you should be able to as well, right? I mean, you actually graduated college, right?
The thing is, I have a mother who was once a teacher and also worked in a doctor's office. She knows more about medicine than many people I know, so if she invented a cure for the common cold I'd be more "Well I saw that coming" than "Holy hell, seriously?"
I just googled this type of thing and found the following quote: "I'm not a dentist, doctor or medical expert, I'm just a mom."
A mom is not someone whose sole purpose in life is to act as a birther and caretaker. These are women who have done great things and who are probably still doing them. They're not sitting at their home everyday eagerly awaiting the moment their kids and husbands get home so that can prostrate themselves before the feet of their masters. The term "just a mom" should never be uttered.
Sarah Connor was "just a mom," and she averted the Apocalypse, for Christ's Sake.
These ads smack of all kinds of thickness on the parts of their makers. A sense of superiority and sexism. They are base, degrading, and vaguely offensive. So screw you, Internet. I'm gonna start drinking coffee and rubbing coal on my gums just so my yellow teeth will stand as testaments against your mom-bashing ways!
And also, these ads usually come in threes. So I am expected to believe three different moms discovered three different amazing or previously forgotten things, and then all went straight to the Internet? That's just bad planning. Really.
First there were pop-ups that just sprang out of nowhere like a voracious jungle cat waiting to shove its materialistic fangs into your soft, warm, consumerist jugular. Then there were those banner adverts that would flash really brightly and claim you were the millionth person to visit the site and you'd just won a WiiPlayBox360 III and all you had to do was sign up for a subscription to Redbook and forward something to ten other people.
Then things for a little more sophisticated and suddenly we had poorly rendered men, women, aliens, and other human figures doing the cha-cha-shuffle because they were so happy that Mortgage Rates Were At There Lowest Since The Birth Of Christ!
Now we have entered a new golden age of idiot-baiting marketing on the net where we see pictures of yellow teeth juxtaposed against pictures of the same teeth photoshopped to be white. Or some fat, bloated, distended stomach juxtaposed against abs carved of marble. Such stunning results!
So once your eyes have been drawn in by these dramatic transformations you look down to read the tagline:
"Discover the teeth whitening tip discovered by a mom!"
A mom, seriously? Wow, good for her!
"D.C. Mom Loses 47 Lbs. a month by following this 1 Old Rule!"
Another mom, huh? That's pretty impressive...wait, 47 pounds? Is that healthy? And if the rule is so old why don't I know about it? Was it lost to time? Is she Indiana Jones' wife?
"Mom's are making unholy amounts of money using Google!"
...ok, I think the Internet just developed an Oedipal complex.
Now, I can see why this whole approach seems to make sense in a very general sense. I mean, honestly, you listened to your mom when she said all kinds of insane shit to you when you were younger (e.g. "Don't make faces, or your face will freeze that way") so why stop now? Leeches for whiter teeth? If you say so, ma.
Also, the word "mom" makes you think of some kindly old woman sitting at home who chances upon a world-altering discovery. The underdog sticking one to The Man. Well you know what, establishment? Guess who The Man is now! (Hint)
But the problem is this - you're using the idea of a mom to insight in the reader the idea that any idiot with a brain the size of a frog's and two opposable thumbs can do what this person did.
She's a mom! Mom's are pretty worthless, right? Sitting around all day doing nothing, no education. Why else would they marry and have kids? Mom's aren't real people. Real people have titles like "doctor" and "king." I mean, hell, if some tramp who pushed out a kid can lose weight and make money and have a smile as white as a Victorian woman's ankles, you should be able to as well, right? I mean, you actually graduated college, right?
I am so offended right now
The thing is, I have a mother who was once a teacher and also worked in a doctor's office. She knows more about medicine than many people I know, so if she invented a cure for the common cold I'd be more "Well I saw that coming" than "Holy hell, seriously?"
I just googled this type of thing and found the following quote: "I'm not a dentist, doctor or medical expert, I'm just a mom."
A mom is not someone whose sole purpose in life is to act as a birther and caretaker. These are women who have done great things and who are probably still doing them. They're not sitting at their home everyday eagerly awaiting the moment their kids and husbands get home so that can prostrate themselves before the feet of their masters. The term "just a mom" should never be uttered.
Sarah Connor was "just a mom," and she averted the Apocalypse, for Christ's Sake.
These ads smack of all kinds of thickness on the parts of their makers. A sense of superiority and sexism. They are base, degrading, and vaguely offensive. So screw you, Internet. I'm gonna start drinking coffee and rubbing coal on my gums just so my yellow teeth will stand as testaments against your mom-bashing ways!
And also, these ads usually come in threes. So I am expected to believe three different moms discovered three different amazing or previously forgotten things, and then all went straight to the Internet? That's just bad planning. Really.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Cinematical Agrees With Me
A recent article on one of my favorite movies blogs would seem to agree with me on my earlier post about movies I don't want to see.
Read it to gain a more credible opinion on the issue (though, as I said, still one that agrees with me).
Read it to gain a more credible opinion on the issue (though, as I said, still one that agrees with me).
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Proof We're All Going To Die A Very Stupid Death
I know this might be beating a dead horse that's already in the third stage of decomp after it's been picked clean by a pack of wild dogs, but goddammit do I get pissed off by the state of the modern publishing industry.
It seems like any novel that's new or interesting or has something important to say immediately gets co-opted by Hollywood and turned into some kind of period piece chick flick that jettisons all pretense of deeper thought in order to "up the sexitude" so that those long strips of celluloid can be transformed through dark alchemy into huge piles of cash.
Heaven forbid you happen to have a simple character drama, or something that has a Sci-Fi or Fantasy theme and yet still adheres to simple practices like plot, spelling, and saying something meaningful outside of "in the future women will totally wear bondage gear and use magick [sic] to entrap men in their web of sexiness." Even if your book does somehow sidestep that fanboy landmine, you'll still end up getting [redacted due to frightening sexual reference] by your publishing company when they put a dragon and two half naked models who took a day off from hocking margarine in order to do the photoshoot for the cover.
"But I don't even have a dragon in this book," you'll say with a note of confusion.
"This'll sell more," they will tell you, tossing you a stack of money which you will nervously put in your pocket as a little piece of your soul shrivels up and falls to the ground, to be consumed later by the publisher when they take their true reptilian form.
I bring this up because last night a friend of mine introduced me to a Web site whose sole purpose it to read and review and talk about romance novels. At least they have to decency to acknowledge in their URL and Web site name that the books are "trashy," and in truth I don't blame them for the jaw-droppingly appalling number of terrible books that get published every year, but this just goes to show a fundamental problem with the world.
Someone with something real and telling to say about the human condition will be told There's No Audience For This while someone who has some girl and some guy who can't have sex until the evil wizard is defeated or something like that will get signed on in a hurry.
You see, when something like Twilight hits the center stage and does an awkward preteen striptease for the world, most people - myself included initially - simply shrug and look away in embarrassment while muttering for it to please stop, you're making a scene.
However, four books, soon to be two movies, and several bleeding eardrums later, it's gotten kind of hard to ignore.
Now, I know what you're going to say, Roan, look, they're young girls and they can use some escapism in their life. When they grow up they will realize the error of their ways and read something better.
Wrong! Wrong for two reasons.
First, let me tackle that "young girls will be idiots" argument. While I readily admit that your youth is a time to do reckless and stupid things, Twilight, unlike, say, a heroin addiction, is something that will severely alienate you from meeting anyone worthwhile. I have met some really cool heroin addicts, junkies who can cook like some kind of Greek deity of culinary wonder and yet also wax philosophical on existentialism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only Twilight fans I have ever met are people who can barely be bothered to wonder about whether or not God is, in fact, dead, because omigodedwardissohot. If you have trouble reading that, imagine an entire conversation in which every sentence is pronounced like that is spelled.
Secondly, as this article with a hilarious title points out, they aren't all little girls. Grown women are reading this tripe and eating it up. Women who, for all intents and purposes, are raising other women as we speak, passing this thing down so that soon all we will be able to hear about from any woman from 16 to 89 is omigodedwardissohot.
Ok, wait, just thought of a third argument, what I like to call The Harry Potter Defense.
(Before I begin, let me start off by saying that I have no problem with Harry Potter. It's writing is nothing special, but at least it is not stomach-hemorrhage-inducingly bad, and it's got a good message at its money-pumping heart.)
So this is the argument that says, "Yea, its a terrible book with no real value in the long run, but at least its getting people reading, right?"
Yea. There's a sound argument to take to court with you. "Sure meth will slowly destroy you and lead you to a life of trailer park prostitution, but at least it's got people injecting something, right?"
See, it doesn't matter if the fundamental vessel for transmission is inherently good (books can bestow knowledge, needles can bestow intravenous medicine) if you take the vessel and fill it with detritus.
What's even worse are the people who attempt to defend Twilight by saying that if so many people read it it must be good. Well hell, if so many Nazis thought the Third Reich was awesome, who are we to disagree?
The most grievous of all of these transgressions of logic was when I was talking to a friend of mine about why she liked Twilight.
"It's really well written," she told me over crabs and cold beer (wooo, Maryland!), "and the characters are awesome and it's just a good story." Ok, so far so logical. "I think you would like it," she said, instantly making me wonder if she weren't a pod person sent to kill me. "I mean, I hate books and I like it, so that must mean it's good."
Jesus, I think Aristotle just entered a chess game with God to try and win fifteen minutes back on Earth so he could slap this girl. That's like saying "I hate ballet but this YouTube video of an epileptic spasming on a theater stage is just really awesome!"
Simply because you don't like to take part in a certain form of media doesn't mean that if you actually like something that takes that form it must be awesome. It means you have no leg to stand on and should shut up.
"Books are, like, lame and stuff" has been the bane of my existence since I started reading. And the most galling thing is that people think "He likes books, this is a book, ergo he must like this!"
And the overwhelming popularity of terrible romantic fiction only leads me to believe that at the end of the day there is only a select group of people who are intellectual enough to create and appreciate anything worthwhile.
I pray that when the bombs drop, anyone who ever did more than walk very quickly past the store displays of Twilight and other such trash romance literature for fear of passersby assuming they were interested in it will be given a nice pair of sunglasses and told to enjoy the view while the rest of us huddle in the bunkers and pray that the North Koreans worked out those targeting software problems.
It seems like any novel that's new or interesting or has something important to say immediately gets co-opted by Hollywood and turned into some kind of period piece chick flick that jettisons all pretense of deeper thought in order to "up the sexitude" so that those long strips of celluloid can be transformed through dark alchemy into huge piles of cash.
Heaven forbid you happen to have a simple character drama, or something that has a Sci-Fi or Fantasy theme and yet still adheres to simple practices like plot, spelling, and saying something meaningful outside of "in the future women will totally wear bondage gear and use magick [sic] to entrap men in their web of sexiness." Even if your book does somehow sidestep that fanboy landmine, you'll still end up getting [redacted due to frightening sexual reference] by your publishing company when they put a dragon and two half naked models who took a day off from hocking margarine in order to do the photoshoot for the cover.
"But I don't even have a dragon in this book," you'll say with a note of confusion.
"This'll sell more," they will tell you, tossing you a stack of money which you will nervously put in your pocket as a little piece of your soul shrivels up and falls to the ground, to be consumed later by the publisher when they take their true reptilian form.
I bring this up because last night a friend of mine introduced me to a Web site whose sole purpose it to read and review and talk about romance novels. At least they have to decency to acknowledge in their URL and Web site name that the books are "trashy," and in truth I don't blame them for the jaw-droppingly appalling number of terrible books that get published every year, but this just goes to show a fundamental problem with the world.
Someone with something real and telling to say about the human condition will be told There's No Audience For This while someone who has some girl and some guy who can't have sex until the evil wizard is defeated or something like that will get signed on in a hurry.
You see, when something like Twilight hits the center stage and does an awkward preteen striptease for the world, most people - myself included initially - simply shrug and look away in embarrassment while muttering for it to please stop, you're making a scene.
However, four books, soon to be two movies, and several bleeding eardrums later, it's gotten kind of hard to ignore.
Now, I know what you're going to say, Roan, look, they're young girls and they can use some escapism in their life. When they grow up they will realize the error of their ways and read something better.
Wrong! Wrong for two reasons.
First, let me tackle that "young girls will be idiots" argument. While I readily admit that your youth is a time to do reckless and stupid things, Twilight, unlike, say, a heroin addiction, is something that will severely alienate you from meeting anyone worthwhile. I have met some really cool heroin addicts, junkies who can cook like some kind of Greek deity of culinary wonder and yet also wax philosophical on existentialism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only Twilight fans I have ever met are people who can barely be bothered to wonder about whether or not God is, in fact, dead, because omigodedwardissohot. If you have trouble reading that, imagine an entire conversation in which every sentence is pronounced like that is spelled.
Secondly, as this article with a hilarious title points out, they aren't all little girls. Grown women are reading this tripe and eating it up. Women who, for all intents and purposes, are raising other women as we speak, passing this thing down so that soon all we will be able to hear about from any woman from 16 to 89 is omigodedwardissohot.
Ok, wait, just thought of a third argument, what I like to call The Harry Potter Defense.
(Before I begin, let me start off by saying that I have no problem with Harry Potter. It's writing is nothing special, but at least it is not stomach-hemorrhage-inducingly bad, and it's got a good message at its money-pumping heart.)
So this is the argument that says, "Yea, its a terrible book with no real value in the long run, but at least its getting people reading, right?"
Yea. There's a sound argument to take to court with you. "Sure meth will slowly destroy you and lead you to a life of trailer park prostitution, but at least it's got people injecting something, right?"
See, it doesn't matter if the fundamental vessel for transmission is inherently good (books can bestow knowledge, needles can bestow intravenous medicine) if you take the vessel and fill it with detritus.
What's even worse are the people who attempt to defend Twilight by saying that if so many people read it it must be good. Well hell, if so many Nazis thought the Third Reich was awesome, who are we to disagree?
The most grievous of all of these transgressions of logic was when I was talking to a friend of mine about why she liked Twilight.
"It's really well written," she told me over crabs and cold beer (wooo, Maryland!), "and the characters are awesome and it's just a good story." Ok, so far so logical. "I think you would like it," she said, instantly making me wonder if she weren't a pod person sent to kill me. "I mean, I hate books and I like it, so that must mean it's good."
Jesus, I think Aristotle just entered a chess game with God to try and win fifteen minutes back on Earth so he could slap this girl. That's like saying "I hate ballet but this YouTube video of an epileptic spasming on a theater stage is just really awesome!"
Simply because you don't like to take part in a certain form of media doesn't mean that if you actually like something that takes that form it must be awesome. It means you have no leg to stand on and should shut up.
"Books are, like, lame and stuff" has been the bane of my existence since I started reading. And the most galling thing is that people think "He likes books, this is a book, ergo he must like this!"
And the overwhelming popularity of terrible romantic fiction only leads me to believe that at the end of the day there is only a select group of people who are intellectual enough to create and appreciate anything worthwhile.
I pray that when the bombs drop, anyone who ever did more than walk very quickly past the store displays of Twilight and other such trash romance literature for fear of passersby assuming they were interested in it will be given a nice pair of sunglasses and told to enjoy the view while the rest of us huddle in the bunkers and pray that the North Koreans worked out those targeting software problems.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Life: As Viewed Through the McDonald's Menu
Yesterday I was standing in line at McDonald's, gazing up at the masterfully crafted fabrications of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, double cheeseburgers, chicken and fish sandwiches, and golden fries. These things - for we all know those picture's aren't really of the food itself - spoke to me.
They were promises.
Shining, glimmering, juicy, each sesame seed placed with God-like attention to detail. Cheese just beginning to melt, their yellowed corners bending ever so slightly, like dairy-born geisha inviting you to begin your feast.
I ordered, and opened my box with glee, looking forward to grasping that perfectly round, symmetrical burger. And I gazed inside to find...
But I am getting ahead of myself.
What I really wanted to talk about in this post was something far different.
You see as I was standing there, hands in pockets, fedora tipped low over my brow, I noticed something peculiar about the menu's system of organization. Something that speaks deeply about the American condition.
The two primarily divisions of the menu are as follows.
Kids' Menu - Happy Meals
Adults' Menu - Extra Value Meals
Let that sink in a bit. Let it wash over you like the sudden realization that Santa isn't real. (Sorry, spoiler warning.)
When we were young we didn't need 32 oz sodas, a pound of fries and half a pound of meat. We didn't need paper bags stuffed to the gills with food.
All we needed was four chicken nuggets. A tiny little soda to wash it down with. And a small little flurry of french fries.
And the toy. Oh, the toy! I am sure that somewhere in my family home there is a massive plastic bin filled to the brim with movie and television show tie-in toys.
See, back when we were young we didn't need grand and awesome (Biblical 'awesome', not Ninja Turtles 'awesome') material possessions. We didn't need to gorge ourselves on massive feasts piled high with sides and main courses. All we needed was enough food to keep us running around our neighborhoods, and a toy interesting and personal enough to keep our imaginations alive.
I can still remember back when even a Happy Meal seemed too much for me. I could barely finish before I wanted to go play again. And the toys I had... sure, I was blessed with the good fortune to have a Sega Genesis, but in the end if I could go outside, nature was my greatest toy.
Into our teens my friends and I could still spend hours a day catching and playing with frogs and toads.
Now, though, now that we have entered the real world, happiness is no longer what we want from our meals.
The economy sucks, the job market is shrinking, and all we can think about is high MPG, low APR, and extra value.
No more toys. No more boxes with little mazes and word games on them. Just a massive bag of pornographically perfect food...
Which brings us back to what I was first talking about.
I open up the box containing my double quarter pounder with cheese, the one that I saw crafted to such artisan-like perfection posted on the menu board.
And within I found two malformed patties of beef, cheese sliding off of them, one half on top of the other, both barely on the bun. Grease stained the cardboard, saturating it, dripping off of it. I sighed, closed my eyes, and then looked back up at the pictures. The promises. The perfect, saintly, broken promises.
The funny thing is that this is the reality of the world.
Happiness is simple, easily delivered, uncomplicated. It comes in forms of meager design. A perfect sunny Saturday, a soft kiss from a loved one, a two stanza poem. It is that look you get from a grateful stranger when you let them pull in front of you while in heavy traffic.
Value is the thing you supplant happiness for in your later life. After you have been indoctrinated to believe bigger is better and cash is king. Value allows you to have your sheet cake, and keep your pockets jingling too.
But are we happy? When we wake up in our massive houses with our central air and our plasma TVs, all of which we got at "a really good discount," don't we feel the slightest pang of regret? Don't we miss those days of innocent youth when baseball was our XBox, fireflies were our television, and frogs were our video games?
Don't you miss me?
They were promises.
Shining, glimmering, juicy, each sesame seed placed with God-like attention to detail. Cheese just beginning to melt, their yellowed corners bending ever so slightly, like dairy-born geisha inviting you to begin your feast.
I ordered, and opened my box with glee, looking forward to grasping that perfectly round, symmetrical burger. And I gazed inside to find...
But I am getting ahead of myself.
What I really wanted to talk about in this post was something far different.
You see as I was standing there, hands in pockets, fedora tipped low over my brow, I noticed something peculiar about the menu's system of organization. Something that speaks deeply about the American condition.
The two primarily divisions of the menu are as follows.
Kids' Menu - Happy Meals
Adults' Menu - Extra Value Meals
Let that sink in a bit. Let it wash over you like the sudden realization that Santa isn't real. (Sorry, spoiler warning.)
When we were young we didn't need 32 oz sodas, a pound of fries and half a pound of meat. We didn't need paper bags stuffed to the gills with food.
All we needed was four chicken nuggets. A tiny little soda to wash it down with. And a small little flurry of french fries.
And the toy. Oh, the toy! I am sure that somewhere in my family home there is a massive plastic bin filled to the brim with movie and television show tie-in toys.
See, back when we were young we didn't need grand and awesome (Biblical 'awesome', not Ninja Turtles 'awesome') material possessions. We didn't need to gorge ourselves on massive feasts piled high with sides and main courses. All we needed was enough food to keep us running around our neighborhoods, and a toy interesting and personal enough to keep our imaginations alive.
I can still remember back when even a Happy Meal seemed too much for me. I could barely finish before I wanted to go play again. And the toys I had... sure, I was blessed with the good fortune to have a Sega Genesis, but in the end if I could go outside, nature was my greatest toy.
Into our teens my friends and I could still spend hours a day catching and playing with frogs and toads.
Now, though, now that we have entered the real world, happiness is no longer what we want from our meals.
The economy sucks, the job market is shrinking, and all we can think about is high MPG, low APR, and extra value.
No more toys. No more boxes with little mazes and word games on them. Just a massive bag of pornographically perfect food...
Which brings us back to what I was first talking about.
I open up the box containing my double quarter pounder with cheese, the one that I saw crafted to such artisan-like perfection posted on the menu board.
And within I found two malformed patties of beef, cheese sliding off of them, one half on top of the other, both barely on the bun. Grease stained the cardboard, saturating it, dripping off of it. I sighed, closed my eyes, and then looked back up at the pictures. The promises. The perfect, saintly, broken promises.
The funny thing is that this is the reality of the world.
Happiness is simple, easily delivered, uncomplicated. It comes in forms of meager design. A perfect sunny Saturday, a soft kiss from a loved one, a two stanza poem. It is that look you get from a grateful stranger when you let them pull in front of you while in heavy traffic.
Value is the thing you supplant happiness for in your later life. After you have been indoctrinated to believe bigger is better and cash is king. Value allows you to have your sheet cake, and keep your pockets jingling too.
But are we happy? When we wake up in our massive houses with our central air and our plasma TVs, all of which we got at "a really good discount," don't we feel the slightest pang of regret? Don't we miss those days of innocent youth when baseball was our XBox, fireflies were our television, and frogs were our video games?
Don't you miss me?Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Cell Phones - Why They Suck - Pt. 1
I am old enough to remember a time before cell phones.
I recall walking outside into an idyllic spring day in order to trek from house to house in my neighborhood, searching for friends. Knocking on doors and having them answered by parents, asking politely, "Is Tony home?" and then listening to them yell for their son, who would bound down the stairs and we would chat at the door until finally he'd either come outside, I would be invited inside, or I would move on to the next house in search of something to do.
I remember my mother giving me a few coins so I could call her from a payphone if the movie got out early. I remember making plans days ahead of time and committing friends' numbers to memory. I recall listening to the radio in the car and never having to turn down my favorite song because someone was trying to make a phone call.
I remember seeing movies without the omnipresent glow of a cell phone screen or the sudden blaring of monophonic Motzart three rows up.
Yes, cell phones have made the world a worse place. When a friend and I used to hang out, I would never have to pause in the middle of a story so they could shoot a text or chat for fifteen minutes about something that people would never dream of actually committing time and effort to. ("Ohmigod, wait, what? He did what? With balsamic dressing, ohmygod, how could he order that salad with balsamic...")
I seriously believe that half the reason we've gotten so hung up on trivial things in this day and age is because of instant communication.
It used to be that you would see something stupid ("a man ordering a salad with balsamic dressing, ohmygod...") and you would think to yourself: Holy hell, I totally have to tell my friend about that later!
Then later would come and guess what, you couldn't even remember what you were going to tell them about. But that's ok, because in truth it was so stupid and trivial that God actually cried a bit to think he had some part in the creation of an entity which might find such a thing worth talking about.
Now, though, you can instantly text, call, e-mail, videotape, photograph, and otherwise document every inane triviality you encounter and spread it with an almost religious fervency right from your phone!
Now the internet is awash in ridiculously pointless pictures and videos of people and animals doing ridiculously pointless things that a lot of people will watch and quote and relate to friends who have also seen them and also think they are justtoofunnyholycrap and the whole thing will turn into a massive cultural phenomena that will be related on every closing-segment news program two days after it stopped being new, funny novel, or even tolerable and then Family Guy will do something on it and it will start all over again and seven thousand videos will show up on youtube claiming to be responses to it but are really just people singing an acoustic version or lipsynching in front of a web cam in a poorly lit room and yet people will watch them because if there is anything Americans hate more than foreign films it is anything even remotely approaching originality.
And all because some smart marketing sonovabitch looked at a cell phone and thought to himself, "Slap a camera on that thing, we'll make billions."
Every other day I hear a story about someone somewhere getting into some kind of trouble because of a cell phone. A thirteen year old charged with possession of child pornography because his girlfriend sent him a naked photo of herself. A tram car crashing because the conductor was texting. The list goes on.
And the worst part is how quickly people have begun to see cell phones not as a nifty device, but as a seriously necessary part of their life. I have watched a girl burst into tears when I turned her cell phone off and refused to give it back to her.
Get over it!
It's a phone! It's not your grandmother's goddamned dialysis machine!
I suppose the purpose of this rant is just to vent my frustration over the seeming over reliance on technology that is gripping us like one of those malevolent vines in The Ruins. Whenever I hear someone bitching about their lack of cell service or that Facebook won't load, or that the air conditioning isn't strong enough my first reaction is to punch them hard and tell them, "There, now you have something better to bitch about!"
But I don't. Because I know someone would probably end up filming it and putting it on YouTube, at which point I would become part of the problem.
***
(Now, as you can see from the title of this post, this is just Part 1. I honestly have no idea how many parts there will be in this series, or what they will focus on, but I can gurantee at least one more.)
I recall walking outside into an idyllic spring day in order to trek from house to house in my neighborhood, searching for friends. Knocking on doors and having them answered by parents, asking politely, "Is Tony home?" and then listening to them yell for their son, who would bound down the stairs and we would chat at the door until finally he'd either come outside, I would be invited inside, or I would move on to the next house in search of something to do.
I remember my mother giving me a few coins so I could call her from a payphone if the movie got out early. I remember making plans days ahead of time and committing friends' numbers to memory. I recall listening to the radio in the car and never having to turn down my favorite song because someone was trying to make a phone call.
I remember seeing movies without the omnipresent glow of a cell phone screen or the sudden blaring of monophonic Motzart three rows up.
Yes, cell phones have made the world a worse place. When a friend and I used to hang out, I would never have to pause in the middle of a story so they could shoot a text or chat for fifteen minutes about something that people would never dream of actually committing time and effort to. ("Ohmigod, wait, what? He did what? With balsamic dressing, ohmygod, how could he order that salad with balsamic...")
I seriously believe that half the reason we've gotten so hung up on trivial things in this day and age is because of instant communication.
It used to be that you would see something stupid ("a man ordering a salad with balsamic dressing, ohmygod...") and you would think to yourself: Holy hell, I totally have to tell my friend about that later!
Then later would come and guess what, you couldn't even remember what you were going to tell them about. But that's ok, because in truth it was so stupid and trivial that God actually cried a bit to think he had some part in the creation of an entity which might find such a thing worth talking about.
Now, though, you can instantly text, call, e-mail, videotape, photograph, and otherwise document every inane triviality you encounter and spread it with an almost religious fervency right from your phone!
Now the internet is awash in ridiculously pointless pictures and videos of people and animals doing ridiculously pointless things that a lot of people will watch and quote and relate to friends who have also seen them and also think they are justtoofunnyholycrap and the whole thing will turn into a massive cultural phenomena that will be related on every closing-segment news program two days after it stopped being new, funny novel, or even tolerable and then Family Guy will do something on it and it will start all over again and seven thousand videos will show up on youtube claiming to be responses to it but are really just people singing an acoustic version or lipsynching in front of a web cam in a poorly lit room and yet people will watch them because if there is anything Americans hate more than foreign films it is anything even remotely approaching originality.
And all because some smart marketing sonovabitch looked at a cell phone and thought to himself, "Slap a camera on that thing, we'll make billions."
Every other day I hear a story about someone somewhere getting into some kind of trouble because of a cell phone. A thirteen year old charged with possession of child pornography because his girlfriend sent him a naked photo of herself. A tram car crashing because the conductor was texting. The list goes on.
And the worst part is how quickly people have begun to see cell phones not as a nifty device, but as a seriously necessary part of their life. I have watched a girl burst into tears when I turned her cell phone off and refused to give it back to her.
Get over it!
It's a phone! It's not your grandmother's goddamned dialysis machine!
I suppose the purpose of this rant is just to vent my frustration over the seeming over reliance on technology that is gripping us like one of those malevolent vines in The Ruins. Whenever I hear someone bitching about their lack of cell service or that Facebook won't load, or that the air conditioning isn't strong enough my first reaction is to punch them hard and tell them, "There, now you have something better to bitch about!"
But I don't. Because I know someone would probably end up filming it and putting it on YouTube, at which point I would become part of the problem.
***
(Now, as you can see from the title of this post, this is just Part 1. I honestly have no idea how many parts there will be in this series, or what they will focus on, but I can gurantee at least one more.)
Monday, July 20, 2009
No, I Will Not See a Terrible Movie With You
I've begun to think that maybe the primary reason I will never find happiness in a true and lasting relationship is that I cannot be bullied into seeing a terrible movie. Every time I hear that some romantic comedy opened to $24 million, I can't help but feel that $12 million of that is guys who would have much rather been somewhere else, seeing something else, possibly while drunk.
Yet these stalwart heroes sit through an hour and a half of some interchangeable blond lobbing trite dialogue at some generically handsome man so that their girlfriend will be happy and they can go home at night content in the knowledge that the "We never do anything I want to do" argument has been warded off for at least another day.
Fuck that noise.
Maybe it's because I recently started seeing someone who thought that I could only truly be considered boyfriend material if I watched 'The Notebook' with her, or because the sudden and devious release of the newest Harry Potter movie suddenly has everyone asking me if I would be down to see it, but I've been thinking a lot about this whole "seeing movies together" thing.
Allow me to attack this perception that I am duty bound to see movies I don't want to with certain people from every angle I can think of.
1. I always go see movies that you want to see.
Yea, ok, so at the outset this looks like a pretty reasonable argument to put forward. I mean, if I make you go see a movie, then technically you should be able to make me go see a movie, right?
But did you see what I very subtly did there with italics? I highlighted the operative word.
Make. Forced. Coerced you to do under duress.
However, more often then not, I don't make anyone see any movie. In fact, I can say with absolute certainty that I've never made anyone see anything. And how do I pull this trick off? How can I still see all the movies I want even if no one else will go with me?
I go alone. Obviously.
It's possible. I've done it a lot. They don't stop you and ask you where your buddy is why you aren't holding their hand when you see a movie.
Still, most of the people who want me to see a movie with them use the "I've seen movies you want to see" approach with me anyway. So what happened? If I could just go alone, why didn't I?
Because they invited themselves along and I was too nice to tell them no.
Now don't get me wrong, most times I don't mind having someone along. I like being able to talk about a movie. But don't bring up that time we went and saw Funny Games and you freaked the hell out because it was so terrifying and cruel. I was going alone. You wanted to come. I warned you.
Tit-for-tat in a relationship is wholly acceptable. Compromise is what makes a relationship run. But you forcing your company on me during an experience I tell you you won't like and then demanding that I follow you to an experience I know I won't like doesn't make any damn sense.
It's like cutting off your thumb and then demanding that I do the same because you did it first.
2. It's not that big a deal.
How dare you, you presumptuous ass.
First of all, how can you deign to designate an art form's level of importance to someone else?
Let's say that on average a movie's time requirement is about 2.5 to 3 hours. That's three hours out of a 16 hour day (assuming you're getting the required 8 hours of sleep). That's almost one-fifth of my day I am devoting to something. Something that costs on average about $10.
That, my friend, is a deal, maybe even a big one. For ten bucks I could rent two good movies at Blockbuster. For 3 hours I could watch The Godfather. I could be doing so many better things with my time than watching Bride Wars.
I view movies as art. I don't go to a museum featuring art I have no interest in. And if I did, I could look at a painting for a minute and then move on. I don't listen to country music, and even if I was forced to the average song only lasts 3 minutes.
Movies require a much greater time and money commitment and therefore become a much bigger deal than you seem to think.
3. It will make me happy.
That's not my job.
If seeing a movie in general won't make you happy, why would having me there hating every moment of it make it any better?
This basically amounts to you being that kid who tortures frogs just for the fun of it, with me as the frog.
Yet these stalwart heroes sit through an hour and a half of some interchangeable blond lobbing trite dialogue at some generically handsome man so that their girlfriend will be happy and they can go home at night content in the knowledge that the "We never do anything I want to do" argument has been warded off for at least another day.
Fuck that noise.
Maybe it's because I recently started seeing someone who thought that I could only truly be considered boyfriend material if I watched 'The Notebook' with her, or because the sudden and devious release of the newest Harry Potter movie suddenly has everyone asking me if I would be down to see it, but I've been thinking a lot about this whole "seeing movies together" thing.
Allow me to attack this perception that I am duty bound to see movies I don't want to with certain people from every angle I can think of.
1. I always go see movies that you want to see.
Yea, ok, so at the outset this looks like a pretty reasonable argument to put forward. I mean, if I make you go see a movie, then technically you should be able to make me go see a movie, right?
But did you see what I very subtly did there with italics? I highlighted the operative word.
Make. Forced. Coerced you to do under duress.
However, more often then not, I don't make anyone see any movie. In fact, I can say with absolute certainty that I've never made anyone see anything. And how do I pull this trick off? How can I still see all the movies I want even if no one else will go with me?
I go alone. Obviously.
It's possible. I've done it a lot. They don't stop you and ask you where your buddy is why you aren't holding their hand when you see a movie.
Still, most of the people who want me to see a movie with them use the "I've seen movies you want to see" approach with me anyway. So what happened? If I could just go alone, why didn't I?
Because they invited themselves along and I was too nice to tell them no.
Now don't get me wrong, most times I don't mind having someone along. I like being able to talk about a movie. But don't bring up that time we went and saw Funny Games and you freaked the hell out because it was so terrifying and cruel. I was going alone. You wanted to come. I warned you.
Tit-for-tat in a relationship is wholly acceptable. Compromise is what makes a relationship run. But you forcing your company on me during an experience I tell you you won't like and then demanding that I follow you to an experience I know I won't like doesn't make any damn sense.
It's like cutting off your thumb and then demanding that I do the same because you did it first.
2. It's not that big a deal.
How dare you, you presumptuous ass.
First of all, how can you deign to designate an art form's level of importance to someone else?
Let's say that on average a movie's time requirement is about 2.5 to 3 hours. That's three hours out of a 16 hour day (assuming you're getting the required 8 hours of sleep). That's almost one-fifth of my day I am devoting to something. Something that costs on average about $10.
That, my friend, is a deal, maybe even a big one. For ten bucks I could rent two good movies at Blockbuster. For 3 hours I could watch The Godfather. I could be doing so many better things with my time than watching Bride Wars.
I view movies as art. I don't go to a museum featuring art I have no interest in. And if I did, I could look at a painting for a minute and then move on. I don't listen to country music, and even if I was forced to the average song only lasts 3 minutes.
Movies require a much greater time and money commitment and therefore become a much bigger deal than you seem to think.
3. It will make me happy.
That's not my job.
If seeing a movie in general won't make you happy, why would having me there hating every moment of it make it any better?
This basically amounts to you being that kid who tortures frogs just for the fun of it, with me as the frog.
I don't wanna watch Twilight!
In fact, more often than not, I don't invite people along to movies because it will make me less happy because I know they won't like the movie. I'll be worried that they will think the movie is terrible and won't have enjoyed themselves.
I don't like putting people in a position of unhappiness. I also don't want to have to deal with their whining.
4. Please?
You didn't say "Pretty please" so no. Sorry.
In closing, allow me to say this, for the record:
If you ask me to go see a movie with you, and I turn you down, it's nothing personal. I just think you have terrible taste in movies.
Friday, July 17, 2009
My Battle in the Name of the English Language
Before you ask - No.
No this will not be a blog post about the "mongrelization of our proud white dialect with Spanish and ebonics."
Whatever the grand fuck that means.
I have no problemo with that kinda stuff. Without shared words between languages we wouldn't have things such as deja vu, or je ne sais quoi, or... shit do any not come from the French? We need to work on that. Wait, there's a German one: schadenfreude (loving it when someone gets their shit kicked in by fate). So you can see that the English language isn't threatened by the use of foreign words or other turns of phrase (in fact, some people think we need more of them.
What is a threat, though, is this massive, frightening, almost unholy movement towards netspeak. I am sure that there is a real word for it, but I don't want to look it up. I prefer to pretend it is some terrible disease that no one took time to name because the sheer eye-hemorage-inducing terror of it all left them too dumbfounded to speak, and when it slipped away no one wanted to remember it.
You know what I am talking about... it's the kind of idiot-bred wackiness that turns "Thank you for all your help" into "kthnxbi!"
When I first became aware of this silent predator of intelligence I was but a wee lad of maybe 11 or 12. I was IMing with a friend when she said "lol."
Keep in mind that this was during simpler time when the internet was new and still cute and adorable. Before it hit slash-fic producing puberty and unleashed a whole realm of evil on the world.
When she told me it meant "laugh out loud" I could see the reasoning behind it. We were still new at this whole "Mass instant communication through text" thing. How else were we supposed to say we found a comment to be funny?
MaleScreenName1 - And then the priest said to the rabbi, I asked for a lobster!
FemaleScreenName1 - I find your comment to produce a reaction akin to amusement.
FemaleScreenName1 - I find your comment to produce a reaction akin to amusement.
So ok, I can accept lol. Of course soon enough I was just typing "haha" because I just can't even try to be trendy, but the point still stands.
Then it started to get out of control. Rofl. Roflmao. Roflmfao. Pretty soon I began to think statements I was making were so hilarious people couldn't even be bothered to type, they simply had to mash the keyboard to let me know they hadn't had an anuerism from laughing so hard.
"brb" made sense to me too. You're talking to someone, suddenly the house catches on fire and a robot is trying to eat your dog. You're not going to take the time to type out, "Hold on a second, man, some gnarly shit's going down here." Even "Be right back" is too much. Shortening it to "brb" allows you to politely excuse yourself without pissing off your parents, girlfriend, dog-eating-robot, etc.
Now, though, something more sinister is happening. No more are breevs (internet abreviations, get it, I think I heard that somewhere) simple used for quick interjections. No... whole sentences are disappearing at a rate even more alarming than the loss of the rainforests.
I am so glad I am not a word.
For instance, say I want to write something simple, like "Oh my God, I find your comments entirely too hilarious!" (though why would anyone ever say that in real life?) I can just write "OMG, I ttly lold! Rofl!"
First of all, why do you need to tell me you're rollingonthefloorlaughing when you just told me you laughedoutloud. Secondly, is it really so hard to just type out the damn words?
Thirdly, do you have any idea how stupid you sound? And really, if it hadn't been for those Cingular commercials with that girl who talked like some people type then maybe this could have just been a silent threat. But no! Instead those commercials held up a grim mirror to the possibilities of our bleak, bleak futures.
Don't you realize? Can't you see? You are that annoying as fuck little girl! I know we all like to laugh at those commercials ("Idk, my bff Jill? haha... what a lamebat.") but if you actually text those types of things to friends, then you. Are. Her.
And really, I blame it on Twitter.
140 characters? Are you fucking kidding me?
Most times I Twitter something I have to either pray I am not having a thought so simple that my two year old nephew couldn't fail to articulate it, or I have to self edit myself so that it becomes clear to me after a minute that I shouldn't have bothered trying into the first place.
But then again, I suppose there is nothing to stop the slow, cancerous forward march of the breevs. Man got tired of pushing things, he invented the wheel. He got tired of lifting he invented pulleys. He got tired of women he invented homosexuality (bah-dum-kish). Now he gets tired of writing, and he invents breevs.
God help us all.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
I'm Not Who I Was.
So here's my third post about the place I work (I'm counting the password one) and my second post that has to do with logging in to things (I'm counting the password one... again. Obviously.)
When I go to work everyday, I have to clock in, as many people with part-time jobs must. So I walk over to a little computer terminal, enter in my four digit Employee Identification Number, and then walk over to my desk to get down to work.
That's a lie. First I have to pretend I am James Bond and scan my fingerprint so that the computer will accept that I am who I am. My number isn't good enough for the computer, it needs some real hard evidence.
Now I know what some of you are thinking. "The future is here! Finally, my dreams of working in a place where I get to use television-like science can be combined with my reality of working a middle-class job where I sit at a desk all day!"
And I will admit, the idea of scanning my fingerprint every day to clock in and clock out was novel at first. It doesn't take more than a second, and really what do I care? So they have my print on file and can probably frame me for an assassination attempt, I at least get to say that I worked in a place with such high security that they needed me to scan my fingerprint to get in.
Then... then I started to look down while scanning my print.
You see there's this readout on the digital screen that happens to tell me how well my print matches the original print I gave them when I first began working here. It's like giving my fingerprint a report card based on its ability to be exactly the goddamned same.
What was unsettling, then, was my finger's seeming inability to score above a 72.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my finger is a C student at being itself. Every time I have to scan it I try something new. More pressure, less pressure, tilted to the right, the left, up, down, freshly cut with a razor blade. No matter what I do to try to help him along, my poor right index finger just can't get a B.
For a while this didn't bother me, except that for the past week or two something even more fiendishly bizarre had been happening.
My finger has actually been failing the test.
Instead of the reassuring Beep of success (or at least not sucking too badly) my fingerprint has been getting the unholy BeepBeep of failure.
It's like if Babe Ruth not only failed to hit a home run, but walked up to the plate with a loaf of French bread instead of a baseball bat.
Now this all links in with the first post I ever made, about the Existential Crisis that comes from working in a cubicle.
I've watched enough X-Files and Law and Order and Homicide to know that fingerprints are pretty much one and done. I have mine, you have yours, and you can always tell who I am by my fingerprint.
So what happens when my fingerprint ceases to be able to perform its sole task of being itself. Perhaps this little terminal with its fingerprint reader is some sort of Mexican Magical Realism device. Maybe its not reading my fingerprint, but my own self.
For instance, maybe I am really only 72% of who I was when I first got this job. Maybe my fundamental personality has shifted, and less than three thirds of my original characteristics are still in place.
This then raises an interesting question. Is it a good or a bad thing that I seem to be losing rather than gaining compatibility with my old self?
Maybe I was a terrible human being back then, and now I am slowly redeeming myself. Maybe back then I was suicidal and depressed, but now I am coming back into the light.
Maybe they just need to dust that damn thing so it will finally get a true reading and I can stop thinking about it.
Only time will tell.
When I go to work everyday, I have to clock in, as many people with part-time jobs must. So I walk over to a little computer terminal, enter in my four digit Employee Identification Number, and then walk over to my desk to get down to work.
That's a lie. First I have to pretend I am James Bond and scan my fingerprint so that the computer will accept that I am who I am. My number isn't good enough for the computer, it needs some real hard evidence.
Now I know what some of you are thinking. "The future is here! Finally, my dreams of working in a place where I get to use television-like science can be combined with my reality of working a middle-class job where I sit at a desk all day!"
And I will admit, the idea of scanning my fingerprint every day to clock in and clock out was novel at first. It doesn't take more than a second, and really what do I care? So they have my print on file and can probably frame me for an assassination attempt, I at least get to say that I worked in a place with such high security that they needed me to scan my fingerprint to get in.
Then... then I started to look down while scanning my print.
You see there's this readout on the digital screen that happens to tell me how well my print matches the original print I gave them when I first began working here. It's like giving my fingerprint a report card based on its ability to be exactly the goddamned same.
What was unsettling, then, was my finger's seeming inability to score above a 72.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my finger is a C student at being itself. Every time I have to scan it I try something new. More pressure, less pressure, tilted to the right, the left, up, down, freshly cut with a razor blade. No matter what I do to try to help him along, my poor right index finger just can't get a B.
For a while this didn't bother me, except that for the past week or two something even more fiendishly bizarre had been happening.
My finger has actually been failing the test.
Instead of the reassuring Beep of success (or at least not sucking too badly) my fingerprint has been getting the unholy BeepBeep of failure.
It's like if Babe Ruth not only failed to hit a home run, but walked up to the plate with a loaf of French bread instead of a baseball bat.
Now this all links in with the first post I ever made, about the Existential Crisis that comes from working in a cubicle.
I've watched enough X-Files and Law and Order and Homicide to know that fingerprints are pretty much one and done. I have mine, you have yours, and you can always tell who I am by my fingerprint.
So what happens when my fingerprint ceases to be able to perform its sole task of being itself. Perhaps this little terminal with its fingerprint reader is some sort of Mexican Magical Realism device. Maybe its not reading my fingerprint, but my own self.
For instance, maybe I am really only 72% of who I was when I first got this job. Maybe my fundamental personality has shifted, and less than three thirds of my original characteristics are still in place.
This then raises an interesting question. Is it a good or a bad thing that I seem to be losing rather than gaining compatibility with my old self?
Maybe I was a terrible human being back then, and now I am slowly redeeming myself. Maybe back then I was suicidal and depressed, but now I am coming back into the light.
Maybe they just need to dust that damn thing so it will finally get a true reading and I can stop thinking about it.
Only time will tell.
Slate.com Agrees with Me
Sorta.
Here's an article from Slate that deals with the idea of identification and security. Passwords on Post-its, man.
Here's an article from Slate that deals with the idea of identification and security. Passwords on Post-its, man.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Password Protection
Ever since the internet arose from the slimy depths of the collective human subconscious, passwords have been a necessity. And why not? Lord knows if I were a twelve year old girl I wouldn't want someone opening up my computer, checking my e-mails and seeing that I am a member of a fanfiction forum that specializes in homoerotic pornography based off of Harry Potter and that emo-vampire from Twilight.
(Contest: If someone wants to troll the internet to see if such a place actually exists, I will hyperlink to it, but as it stands I am too afraid of what I will find if I go looking for it to do it on my own.)
I remember back in the old days when a password was just that - a word that let you pass into the world of the internet (be it e-mails, chatrooms, or IM accounts). The word "slug" could be a password, and that was just fine.
But as cyberspace has morphed into a new and terrifying kind of animal, passwords have had to grow as well. And therein lies the problem.
You see, I work at a company that requires a password to get onto the computers. That same password is then applied to my company e-mail account
So far, so simple.
However, I also have to utilize a program that is specific to this company, and that requires its own password, which must be different than my computer password.
Ok...
The password for the computer and the e-mail must contain at least one number. Not so for my research program.
My university e-mail also requires that my password contain a number, but further specifies that I can't use any words from the English language... so really it isn't a password anymore. It's a Junior Jumble cypher as written by someone with a bowel-shakingly horrible case of dyslexia.
Then, when I need to check how many hours I worked last week so I can approve them so I can get paid, I have to enter still another password.
Still, if I just put my mind to it, I can remember all these passwords and never have to worry about them...
Until it is time to change them.
That's right, I can't be trusted to keep my own damn passwords a secret, so the world of technology helpfully decides when it's time to change them. The problem here is that all of these passwords are required to be changed at a differing interval of time.
So even if I were to simply make my most intricate and complicated password my universal password (which I have tried) sooner or later I will have to change one of them and the whole fucking system is thrown into utter disarray. Now I can't remember which one I had to change, and what I changed it to.
Suddenly I am typing in every password I have ever used until finally I simply mash the keyboard in frustration, only to find that the coagulative mess of characters I just created was the correct password all along. Because apparently I went through the same damn thing when I had to make the password in the first place.
Why? Because you can't reuse a password. Ever.
Now, I am no wiz when it comes to math, but I am guessing that by the end of my time on this earth, I will have created over 4,756 passwords. Most of them will be created by picking the name of a famous dead Russian (Leo Tolstoy for example) and then assigning him a random number (75).
This is why I love websites that allow me to pick a password, and judge it in real time for durability. A helpful box next to the "Enter desired password" field changes as a write.
Stop = Weak
Stopmaking = Frail
Stopmakingme = Fair
Stopmakingmewrite = Strong, but not good enough
Stopmakingmewritemore = Getting close...try again
Stopmakingmewritemorefuckingwords = Now you're just being mean, sir.
At least that incomprehensibly long string of bullshit will stick with me for the rest of my life.
Currently, my passwords are starting to feel a lot like my girlfriends. I lose one I loved and a new one comes along, and after a while I can feel a deep connection forming, until one day, seemingly without reason, they abandon me.
Someday we will figure out a way to simply feed a small sample of blood into a tube attached to our computers, using our very DNA as a password.
And the day after that we will have to expose our bodies to radiation to spark a genetic mutation, because unfortunately God didn't include enough numbers in our genetic code.
(Contest: If someone wants to troll the internet to see if such a place actually exists, I will hyperlink to it, but as it stands I am too afraid of what I will find if I go looking for it to do it on my own.)
I remember back in the old days when a password was just that - a word that let you pass into the world of the internet (be it e-mails, chatrooms, or IM accounts). The word "slug" could be a password, and that was just fine.
But as cyberspace has morphed into a new and terrifying kind of animal, passwords have had to grow as well. And therein lies the problem.
You see, I work at a company that requires a password to get onto the computers. That same password is then applied to my company e-mail account
So far, so simple.
However, I also have to utilize a program that is specific to this company, and that requires its own password, which must be different than my computer password.
Ok...
The password for the computer and the e-mail must contain at least one number. Not so for my research program.
My university e-mail also requires that my password contain a number, but further specifies that I can't use any words from the English language... so really it isn't a password anymore. It's a Junior Jumble cypher as written by someone with a bowel-shakingly horrible case of dyslexia.
Then, when I need to check how many hours I worked last week so I can approve them so I can get paid, I have to enter still another password.
Still, if I just put my mind to it, I can remember all these passwords and never have to worry about them...
Until it is time to change them.
That's right, I can't be trusted to keep my own damn passwords a secret, so the world of technology helpfully decides when it's time to change them. The problem here is that all of these passwords are required to be changed at a differing interval of time.
So even if I were to simply make my most intricate and complicated password my universal password (which I have tried) sooner or later I will have to change one of them and the whole fucking system is thrown into utter disarray. Now I can't remember which one I had to change, and what I changed it to.
Suddenly I am typing in every password I have ever used until finally I simply mash the keyboard in frustration, only to find that the coagulative mess of characters I just created was the correct password all along. Because apparently I went through the same damn thing when I had to make the password in the first place.
Why? Because you can't reuse a password. Ever.
Now, I am no wiz when it comes to math, but I am guessing that by the end of my time on this earth, I will have created over 4,756 passwords. Most of them will be created by picking the name of a famous dead Russian (Leo Tolstoy for example) and then assigning him a random number (75).
This is why I love websites that allow me to pick a password, and judge it in real time for durability. A helpful box next to the "Enter desired password" field changes as a write.
Stop = Weak
Stopmaking = Frail
Stopmakingme = Fair
Stopmakingmewrite = Strong, but not good enough
Stopmakingmewritemore = Getting close...try again
Stopmakingmewritemorefuckingwords = Now you're just being mean, sir.
At least that incomprehensibly long string of bullshit will stick with me for the rest of my life.
Currently, my passwords are starting to feel a lot like my girlfriends. I lose one I loved and a new one comes along, and after a while I can feel a deep connection forming, until one day, seemingly without reason, they abandon me.
Someday we will figure out a way to simply feed a small sample of blood into a tube attached to our computers, using our very DNA as a password.
And the day after that we will have to expose our bodies to radiation to spark a genetic mutation, because unfortunately God didn't include enough numbers in our genetic code.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
When Couples Fight
I consider myself a fairly... sociable man.
...
Let me start that over:
I consider myself the type of guy who gets along well in large groups of people.
...
No, that's bullshit, too.
Ok, last time:
I can stand being around maybe 3 people in a social setting before I start to think bad thoughts.
Yea. That's the ticket.
So I spend a lot of time with small groups of people. A clutch of friends. Conversations exist one at a time, and everyone gets their turn. It's less awkward this way. Like playing a game of catch instead of running along the inside of a batting cage trying to catch every ball fired out by the pitching machines.
The only problem with this is that a few of my friends are in Relationships. Yes, that is a capital 'R.' That's because they live together, and as such I often find myself in a house or apartment that is not mine, restricted in my actions and movements to a single room, and a select number of socially acceptable practices.
Not a huge deal. I never feel like a third wheel and I get the feeling (maybe a false feeling, but no one disabuses me of it, so I keep the hope alive) that my company is genuinely enjoyed. But some(often)times something happens which creates a layer of awkwardness so thick and viscous that it can't be cut with even the strongest, sharpest blade...
The Fight.
When a couple fights it has a strange effect on the rest of the room. It's like suddenly everyone is afraid to speak for fear of somehow making the situation worse. And yet the couple, now the center of attention, makes no attempt at calming down to spare everyone else their quarrels. It is as though they are saying, "Fuck you, world, our shit is your shit now."
Silence looms. Their voices rise, bolstered by the otherwise quiet room. Somewhere a man tries desperately not to sneeze. No one moves. God himself slows the movement of the universe and stays the hand of fate.
I am convinced that while a couple is fighting people on their death beds are hastened to their final reward because they try not to breath.
What the hell are you supposed to do when this happens? God forbid you try to be an arbiter of some kind, an emissary from a world that just wants to be able to open a fresh beer without feeling like they have been singled out.
The couple takes their fight so seriously, and brings to it such emotion, that it seems like sacrilege to try and do something else.
Don't leave the room. Don't enter the room. Don't eat. Don't talk. Don't think about eating or talking. Don't think about what would happen if you thought about eating or talking or thinking about leaving so you could enter again.
All conditions must be left exactly the same so that when the fight ends, the couple can emerge into a world that seems to have been paused. We are but a movie that the fight has interrupted, but now that peace comes again, we can press the collective PLAY button and get on with things again.
And thank God, because this is a pool party and Tim has been underwater for a good seven minutes.
But at least when you are in a large group of people you can glance feverishly between people. When I am alone during one of these raucous Relationship rows I have a feeling of intense dread. What happens if the relationship dies here. What happens if they leave the room and don't come back. At what point can I grab my shit and get out of Dodge? Is there protocol?
No. There isn't. Sit tight, shut up, pray they don't see you and drag you into it. Just remember, their vision is based on movement.
Probably the craziest thing about these fights is that they come seemingly from out of no where.
Picture the most innocuous activity possible - let's say staring at a wall with a picture of a smiley face on it. A couple is engaged in this activity with me next to them. We are enjoying ourselves when suddenly the man will say something equally innocuous.
Him: "Man, this is really getting good now."
Shit. Well, now he's done it. What has he done? No one knows. But for whatever reason, at this place and time, that was the exact wrong thing to say. Had he expressed Nazi sympathies he would have made a better choice of words.
Her: "So what, it wasn't good before?"
Him: "No, I was just saying it's even better now."
Her: "Why, because you had another sip of beer?"
Him: "Baby, I am just saying that this wall keeps getting better and better. Besides, this is only my second beer of the night."
Her: "Whatever, there's no need to get an attitude."
Him: "I'm not, I'm just trying to explain..."
Her: "You are drunk, I can't believe it, we have company over."
At this point I pound my fourteenth shot of whiskey and cross myself.
Did you see where this all went wrong? It was somewhere around the time they were both born.
As far as I can see, there is no way to avoid this type of thing. A joke about a priest and a rabbi will rapidly and horrifically morph into a shouting match about who is more worthless (note: in the end, they both are, because they are distracting me from the wall, dammit) or who has the worse addiction/bad habit/taste in chips.
Usually at the end of this all I am stuck sitting next to one of them (the victor? the vanquished? who knows...) as we sigh awkwardly and I steal myself for the final, painful moment when they ask, "Was I right?"
Fuck me, I don't know if you were right! I don't even know what you were fighting about in the end. At some point it sounded like you two were arguing the tenants of Zoroastrianism. Invariably I try to split the difference because I know no other way to work. You did this wrong, they did this wrong, you ought to stop doing things wrong.
My one enduring hope is that when I get into a relationship my girlfriend and I can only fight about important things. ("I am telling you, the relevance communistic Socialism died along with Lenin, and the only true way to operate a government in the modern world is through a Fascist dictatorship that melds itself with transcendental philosophies and a greater understanding of deist thought!") At least then people will be able to take a side. Or at least fake it.
Until then, I pray for the day when I am old enough to convincingly fake a fucking heart-attack.
...
Let me start that over:
I consider myself the type of guy who gets along well in large groups of people.
...
No, that's bullshit, too.
Ok, last time:
I can stand being around maybe 3 people in a social setting before I start to think bad thoughts.
Yea. That's the ticket.
So I spend a lot of time with small groups of people. A clutch of friends. Conversations exist one at a time, and everyone gets their turn. It's less awkward this way. Like playing a game of catch instead of running along the inside of a batting cage trying to catch every ball fired out by the pitching machines.
The only problem with this is that a few of my friends are in Relationships. Yes, that is a capital 'R.' That's because they live together, and as such I often find myself in a house or apartment that is not mine, restricted in my actions and movements to a single room, and a select number of socially acceptable practices.
Not a huge deal. I never feel like a third wheel and I get the feeling (maybe a false feeling, but no one disabuses me of it, so I keep the hope alive) that my company is genuinely enjoyed. But some(often)times something happens which creates a layer of awkwardness so thick and viscous that it can't be cut with even the strongest, sharpest blade...
The Fight.
When a couple fights it has a strange effect on the rest of the room. It's like suddenly everyone is afraid to speak for fear of somehow making the situation worse. And yet the couple, now the center of attention, makes no attempt at calming down to spare everyone else their quarrels. It is as though they are saying, "Fuck you, world, our shit is your shit now."
Silence looms. Their voices rise, bolstered by the otherwise quiet room. Somewhere a man tries desperately not to sneeze. No one moves. God himself slows the movement of the universe and stays the hand of fate.
I am convinced that while a couple is fighting people on their death beds are hastened to their final reward because they try not to breath.
What the hell are you supposed to do when this happens? God forbid you try to be an arbiter of some kind, an emissary from a world that just wants to be able to open a fresh beer without feeling like they have been singled out.
The couple takes their fight so seriously, and brings to it such emotion, that it seems like sacrilege to try and do something else.
Don't leave the room. Don't enter the room. Don't eat. Don't talk. Don't think about eating or talking. Don't think about what would happen if you thought about eating or talking or thinking about leaving so you could enter again.
All conditions must be left exactly the same so that when the fight ends, the couple can emerge into a world that seems to have been paused. We are but a movie that the fight has interrupted, but now that peace comes again, we can press the collective PLAY button and get on with things again.
And thank God, because this is a pool party and Tim has been underwater for a good seven minutes.
But at least when you are in a large group of people you can glance feverishly between people. When I am alone during one of these raucous Relationship rows I have a feeling of intense dread. What happens if the relationship dies here. What happens if they leave the room and don't come back. At what point can I grab my shit and get out of Dodge? Is there protocol?
No. There isn't. Sit tight, shut up, pray they don't see you and drag you into it. Just remember, their vision is based on movement.
Probably the craziest thing about these fights is that they come seemingly from out of no where.
Picture the most innocuous activity possible - let's say staring at a wall with a picture of a smiley face on it. A couple is engaged in this activity with me next to them. We are enjoying ourselves when suddenly the man will say something equally innocuous.
Him: "Man, this is really getting good now."
Shit. Well, now he's done it. What has he done? No one knows. But for whatever reason, at this place and time, that was the exact wrong thing to say. Had he expressed Nazi sympathies he would have made a better choice of words.
Her: "So what, it wasn't good before?"
Him: "No, I was just saying it's even better now."
Her: "Why, because you had another sip of beer?"
Him: "Baby, I am just saying that this wall keeps getting better and better. Besides, this is only my second beer of the night."
Her: "Whatever, there's no need to get an attitude."
Him: "I'm not, I'm just trying to explain..."
Her: "You are drunk, I can't believe it, we have company over."
At this point I pound my fourteenth shot of whiskey and cross myself.
Did you see where this all went wrong? It was somewhere around the time they were both born.
As far as I can see, there is no way to avoid this type of thing. A joke about a priest and a rabbi will rapidly and horrifically morph into a shouting match about who is more worthless (note: in the end, they both are, because they are distracting me from the wall, dammit) or who has the worse addiction/bad habit/taste in chips.
Usually at the end of this all I am stuck sitting next to one of them (the victor? the vanquished? who knows...) as we sigh awkwardly and I steal myself for the final, painful moment when they ask, "Was I right?"
Fuck me, I don't know if you were right! I don't even know what you were fighting about in the end. At some point it sounded like you two were arguing the tenants of Zoroastrianism. Invariably I try to split the difference because I know no other way to work. You did this wrong, they did this wrong, you ought to stop doing things wrong.
My one enduring hope is that when I get into a relationship my girlfriend and I can only fight about important things. ("I am telling you, the relevance communistic Socialism died along with Lenin, and the only true way to operate a government in the modern world is through a Fascist dictatorship that melds itself with transcendental philosophies and a greater understanding of deist thought!") At least then people will be able to take a side. Or at least fake it.
Until then, I pray for the day when I am old enough to convincingly fake a fucking heart-attack.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
