I'd be the first to admit I don't really understand economics. Money, as an idea, baffles me completely. But the notion of a narrow circle made up of mostly male, Type-A personalities holding onto most of the green stuff via bonuses and kickbacks simply by being cutthroat enough to slash employees' wages and cut product quality is, to be honest, rather buggeringly irritating. "Profits", i.e. the maximum share of a company's earnings that can be diverted to fill the CEO's and a handful of wealthy investors' offshore accounts, is more important than the working conditions and remuneration of the workers. Not to mention (though of course, I will) the impact that the mass production of almost any item has on the natural environment from which the company extracts its necessary materials. And wrapped up in this big sticky mess called "economics" is the serpentine whisperings of that entity known as "advertising", playing on people's innate tendency for social comparison and their intrinsic desire to be esteemed, wanted, admired, respected.
That being said, even if it weren't for the overtones of economic parasitism and fabricated elitism that seems to be a core tenet of most if not all of the Republican presidential nominees, I'd still be more strongly motivated to oppose them at any cost for the sake of far more clear-cut issues, such as legalizing same-sex marriage and preventing school bullying. I can plead ignorance of how finances and capitalism work, but when it comes to two consenting adults' rights to love and marry regardless of their sex/gender, I have no such qualms. The same goes for bullying: it's not just "a phase" or "a part of childhood" (for one, bullying often continues past high school), but rather, it is just plain wrong. Sick, twisted, disgusting, and evil. Natural? One could make that argument, but I say to that: a lot of things could be construed as "natural" (like shitting on someone's manicured lawn, say, or inter-ethnic violence), but that doesn't mean they should all be condoned. "Natural", or even "normal" (that favorite word of pop psychologists) does not necessarily equal make something right or unchangeable. We're only human, sure, but we can at least try to be better than simply acting out on every violent, rude, selfish, anti-social, impulsive urge we get from our Australopithecine ancestors.
Oh, but what about being gay? I hear some imaginary Baptist yelling from the back of the pack. Why, yes, it's true, part of my argument for tolerating gay marriage and lifestyles is that it is perfectly natural; every other primate species commonly shows, at the very least, bisexual behavior, and many more species afford examples of purely homosexual unions (look it up!). So, yes, homosexuality is a natural occurrence--but the difference between it and bullying is that the latter is undeniably and inexcusably harmful, while the other is not.The reason I stress homosexuality's "natural" origins is because of all the rhetoric, going back millennia, about it being "unnatural", "unhealthy", "abominable", "perverted". But it's none of those things, whereas bullying (as "natural" as it may be, springing from our innate primate competitiveness and desire for dominance) is both abominable and unhealthy. Our human nature has given us a lot to work with and work around--like our unfortunate innate drive to bully and tease and ostracize unlucky peers--but homosexuality is not one of them, and certainly not the demonic corruption some die-hard Bible-thumpers would have us believe.
Of course, nothing I say here is likely to change the way most committed social conservatives view gay marriage. They're "believers", they're "faithful", they shun the idea of "change". For four thousand years or more, the majority of our species has looked backward instead of forward, holding onto concepts and superstitions that, while we now understand where and how they may have arisen, no longer serve any function, and are in fact holding us back from achieving an unheard-of social unity. They've drawn a line in the sand and vowed to never cross it, even as the ground gives way beneath them. What exactly are they accomplishing?
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Great Popsicle Stick, and Other Fanciful Oddities
Oh, hey! Look, it's me again! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back online, ready to bore you all with the predictably pallid details of my unbelievably dull existence. Here, have some of my inane thoughts and aimless reflections, all for free!
Okay, I'll cut the ironical crap. But it's still something worth considering, at least from my point of view. Why should I bother with this? Why do I plant myself in front of a computer every couple of days, grit my teeth, and force myself to empty the erstwhile contents of my brain onto a webpage that no one (apart from my girlfriend) appears to read? And even if someone were to read one of my posts, why should they come back for more of my paralyzingly dull prose? What's the point in trying to write about the most random, silly, stupid, boring bits of drivel that I know of--namely, my life?
I'm no Orwell or Hemingway or even a Sedaris; I've never hunted an elephant, or smoked with travelers in a Parisian cafe, or created artwork out of human hair and cardboard while snorting cocaine. I've hardly done anything noteworthy or been anywhere exotic. I can't even offer readers the dubious fascination of hearing about life as a schizophrenic, manic-depressive, or obsessive-compulsive (not yet, at least). Who would want to listen to what I have to say, and what exactly is there for me to say?
But maybe that's just it. Maybe some people don't want to read about other people doing things that they, the readers, would never actually dream of doing. Sure, we all like to fantasize to some extent, we all need to, sometimes--but we also don't like being made to feel as if we're not really living, like we're not doing it right, like we're just not having as much fun or excitement as others get to have. Maybe what we want, some of us, sometimes, is to hear about someone like us--someone just as confused, as petty, as envious, as ordinary and uncertain as we are. Think of it as an ice cream Popsicle on a stick--there's only so much ice cream to go around for the Hemingways and Orwells of the worlds, but once that sugary sweetness is all gone, it's gone. Only the stick, a flat, bland, stubbornly splintery bit of ordinary wood, remains to tell the tale. Only some people get to have adventures--but human life in all its gloriously splintery blandness remains, foibles and baubles and all.
Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just trying to project onto all of you, the seven billion plus people out there, all of my awkward peevishness and fragile philosophizing. Maybe it's just me who fondly wishes that the world wants to hear a college student ramble on about the value of family, life, and archaic words. Maybe the only personal essays that anyone wants to read are the ones filled with wild foreign adventures, random sexual encounters, and reckless substance abuse.
But if not, and there is a demand for the ordinary, for the day-to-day headaches and epiphanies, even if it's from only one person in the whole chaotic shuffle of humankind--then I'll be here, watching my caffeine intake with a wary eye, dreaming of a professorship with tenure, and continuing to jot down astonishing revelations and absurd redundancies concerning life on my end of the Great Popsicle Stick of Ordinariness.
Okay, I'll cut the ironical crap. But it's still something worth considering, at least from my point of view. Why should I bother with this? Why do I plant myself in front of a computer every couple of days, grit my teeth, and force myself to empty the erstwhile contents of my brain onto a webpage that no one (apart from my girlfriend) appears to read? And even if someone were to read one of my posts, why should they come back for more of my paralyzingly dull prose? What's the point in trying to write about the most random, silly, stupid, boring bits of drivel that I know of--namely, my life?
I'm no Orwell or Hemingway or even a Sedaris; I've never hunted an elephant, or smoked with travelers in a Parisian cafe, or created artwork out of human hair and cardboard while snorting cocaine. I've hardly done anything noteworthy or been anywhere exotic. I can't even offer readers the dubious fascination of hearing about life as a schizophrenic, manic-depressive, or obsessive-compulsive (not yet, at least). Who would want to listen to what I have to say, and what exactly is there for me to say?
But maybe that's just it. Maybe some people don't want to read about other people doing things that they, the readers, would never actually dream of doing. Sure, we all like to fantasize to some extent, we all need to, sometimes--but we also don't like being made to feel as if we're not really living, like we're not doing it right, like we're just not having as much fun or excitement as others get to have. Maybe what we want, some of us, sometimes, is to hear about someone like us--someone just as confused, as petty, as envious, as ordinary and uncertain as we are. Think of it as an ice cream Popsicle on a stick--there's only so much ice cream to go around for the Hemingways and Orwells of the worlds, but once that sugary sweetness is all gone, it's gone. Only the stick, a flat, bland, stubbornly splintery bit of ordinary wood, remains to tell the tale. Only some people get to have adventures--but human life in all its gloriously splintery blandness remains, foibles and baubles and all.
Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just trying to project onto all of you, the seven billion plus people out there, all of my awkward peevishness and fragile philosophizing. Maybe it's just me who fondly wishes that the world wants to hear a college student ramble on about the value of family, life, and archaic words. Maybe the only personal essays that anyone wants to read are the ones filled with wild foreign adventures, random sexual encounters, and reckless substance abuse.
But if not, and there is a demand for the ordinary, for the day-to-day headaches and epiphanies, even if it's from only one person in the whole chaotic shuffle of humankind--then I'll be here, watching my caffeine intake with a wary eye, dreaming of a professorship with tenure, and continuing to jot down astonishing revelations and absurd redundancies concerning life on my end of the Great Popsicle Stick of Ordinariness.
Friday, December 23, 2011
One Big Ape-y Family
This past Wednesday night, eight of us sat around a table meant for six, smearing cream cheese on our bagels and swapping stories of childhood mischief that grew increasingly ridiculous. Kitchen escapades, pyromania, sibling warfare--our family has probably never been labelled with the adjectives "quiet", "peaceful", or "pleasant", at least not on my father's side. A spoonful of crazy (if one can describe a shovel as a spoon) goes with the name, the hair, and the distinctive tendency toward narrative embellishment.
Mid-reminisce, my great-aunt turned to me and told me I should be writing this all down, or better yet, recording it. "You've got the start of a story right here," she insisted. I smiled politely and nodded my head, and refrained from pointing out that so far, nothing that had been mentioned was really worthy of being recorded for posterity, and certainly wouldn't pull in a cent for the schmuck who bothered to try. Sure, we've done some silly stunts, but nothing that anyone outside the family would care to hear about. Hell, not even everyone in the family is interested in hearing about it.
Family legends and anecdotes give us something to share, some common conversational web on which we can all perch on our infrequent meetings. It allows us to pretend, for a brief moment, that we're not just an assemblage of individual misfits, as different from one another as a grain of sand is from a snowflake. I may share half my DNA, on average, with each of my brothers, but it's as if we come from completely different galaxies, let alone planets. Yeah, my grandmother once accidentally set a shed on fire, but hey, that doesn't make my own love of fires any less my own quirkiness or any more of a cute inherited trait. Older relatives are fond of pointing out things like that, along with characteristics like large foreheads, wiry hair, beak-like noses, or the habit of nail-biting, and ascribing deep, mystic significance to them. "He's just like his father." "He has your eyes, dear." "Oh, your grandfather used to love to read, too!"
At this point, dear reader, you may think I'm a misanthropic, family-hating, reclusive, ill-mannered wretch: the sort who'd shove his parents in a dingy nursing home, or burn the family portraits while reading Hobbes or Nietzsche. And maybe you're partly right (Nietzsche, though? seriously? spare me, please) but what I'm getting at is this: there's an almost unavoidable tendency in families to look for any and all means of assuring themselves that they are, indeed, one and the same. It's not enough to share as much as half of our unique genetic variability; it's not enough that when it comes to it, I'd donate blood, marrow, organs, and hell, even a cup of coffee (two, though? forget it) to help a member of my family; no, on top of all that, all our little foibles, silly misadventures, and every single trait or tendency have to be pinned and crucified on the cork-board of clannishness. Anything that makes any of us different has to traced back to some ancestral well-spring, validated and stamped by dynastic determinism.
And the really funny thing is, probably every family does it, to some extent. And if every family sees itself, comprised of all its individual members, as a single vein, a "chip off the old block", and each chip, in reality, contains flecks and specks and whorls of every metaphorical mineral or element in the catalog of human habits and desires--then all families are just one big family, and we're all the same, not because our great-grandmother had our hair or our grandfather had a taste for poetry, but because a few million years ago, a curly-haired apish-looking creature awkwardly shuffling on two legs tried her hand at iambic pentameter. Or something like that.
At least, in theory.
Mid-reminisce, my great-aunt turned to me and told me I should be writing this all down, or better yet, recording it. "You've got the start of a story right here," she insisted. I smiled politely and nodded my head, and refrained from pointing out that so far, nothing that had been mentioned was really worthy of being recorded for posterity, and certainly wouldn't pull in a cent for the schmuck who bothered to try. Sure, we've done some silly stunts, but nothing that anyone outside the family would care to hear about. Hell, not even everyone in the family is interested in hearing about it.
Family legends and anecdotes give us something to share, some common conversational web on which we can all perch on our infrequent meetings. It allows us to pretend, for a brief moment, that we're not just an assemblage of individual misfits, as different from one another as a grain of sand is from a snowflake. I may share half my DNA, on average, with each of my brothers, but it's as if we come from completely different galaxies, let alone planets. Yeah, my grandmother once accidentally set a shed on fire, but hey, that doesn't make my own love of fires any less my own quirkiness or any more of a cute inherited trait. Older relatives are fond of pointing out things like that, along with characteristics like large foreheads, wiry hair, beak-like noses, or the habit of nail-biting, and ascribing deep, mystic significance to them. "He's just like his father." "He has your eyes, dear." "Oh, your grandfather used to love to read, too!"
At this point, dear reader, you may think I'm a misanthropic, family-hating, reclusive, ill-mannered wretch: the sort who'd shove his parents in a dingy nursing home, or burn the family portraits while reading Hobbes or Nietzsche. And maybe you're partly right (Nietzsche, though? seriously? spare me, please) but what I'm getting at is this: there's an almost unavoidable tendency in families to look for any and all means of assuring themselves that they are, indeed, one and the same. It's not enough to share as much as half of our unique genetic variability; it's not enough that when it comes to it, I'd donate blood, marrow, organs, and hell, even a cup of coffee (two, though? forget it) to help a member of my family; no, on top of all that, all our little foibles, silly misadventures, and every single trait or tendency have to be pinned and crucified on the cork-board of clannishness. Anything that makes any of us different has to traced back to some ancestral well-spring, validated and stamped by dynastic determinism.
And the really funny thing is, probably every family does it, to some extent. And if every family sees itself, comprised of all its individual members, as a single vein, a "chip off the old block", and each chip, in reality, contains flecks and specks and whorls of every metaphorical mineral or element in the catalog of human habits and desires--then all families are just one big family, and we're all the same, not because our great-grandmother had our hair or our grandfather had a taste for poetry, but because a few million years ago, a curly-haired apish-looking creature awkwardly shuffling on two legs tried her hand at iambic pentameter. Or something like that.
At least, in theory.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Movie Madness
So, the first trailer for "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" has finally premiered. I've been a bit iffy about just how this new project of Peter Jackson's is going to work out--I mean, splitting it into two movies? Seems like a ploy for more money, right? Well, that may be, but after watching this new trailer open-mouthed, I can officially admit I'm stoked. Watching it, I'm reminded of when I was fourteen, and seeing the first trailer for Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring". I can still remember how it sent shivers up my spine--because that's what this new trailer did for me as well. The clip of the Dwarves all joining in to sing that ballad about their ancestral hall? Honestly, that's what did it for me. That kind of emotionally-charged, epic back-story and ambiance is exactly what made Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy so beloved for me. It was what I longed to see, having been a fan of Tolkien's books for several years prior to the films' release. Of course, the bit with Gollum (played, once again, by the inimitable Andy Serkis) confronting Bilbo in the dark and saying "precioussssss" also helped me warm to the new trailer.
I first read "The Hobbit" when I was about ten. It opened up my mind to the fantasy genre, introduced me to the quintessential 'quest' theme, and provided me with a means of escape from the awkwardness of junior high. Regardless of the money-grubbing aspect, I fully intend to go see both installments of "The Hobbit", and once again revel in the beauty and adventure of Middle-Earth. And based on what I've seen in this first trailer, it looks like I won't be too disappointed. Otherwise, of course, there's gonna be one severely irate fan-boy in the front row chucking troll-poo and hurling Orcish epithets at the screen. I've got my eyes on you, Jackson. Don't fail me now.
I first read "The Hobbit" when I was about ten. It opened up my mind to the fantasy genre, introduced me to the quintessential 'quest' theme, and provided me with a means of escape from the awkwardness of junior high. Regardless of the money-grubbing aspect, I fully intend to go see both installments of "The Hobbit", and once again revel in the beauty and adventure of Middle-Earth. And based on what I've seen in this first trailer, it looks like I won't be too disappointed. Otherwise, of course, there's gonna be one severely irate fan-boy in the front row chucking troll-poo and hurling Orcish epithets at the screen. I've got my eyes on you, Jackson. Don't fail me now.
Monday, December 19, 2011
The Peanut Paradox
My girlfriend is addicted to peanut butter. No, seriously--I've considered physically restraining her from finishing off half a jar in a sitting. Or stealing her peanut butter. Or distracting her with pictures of cute kittens--hey, whatever works, you know? It's a matter of life and death-by-stuck-together-jaws. As deaths go, though, she'd probably enjoy it--but hey, that's obsession for you.
On the topic of obsessions though, I recently had a moment of unreality. Halfway through a Friday crossword, I felt like I'd walked right into David Sedaris' essay "21 Down". Holy haggis, I thought. This shit is real! The mania, the frenzy, the pounding of each miniscule blood vessel in my head, and the exquisite thirst for victory overwhelmed me. I needed to capture that elusive word, needed to fill every gloating little box with triumphant ink. And I caught myself reliving Sedaris' story as I hunched over that rag of newsprint, fuming and frowning, tapping my foot impatiently as I racked my aching brain. Northern Missouri, drab and dead in winter's clutch, rolled on by in a blur of brown while I muttered, bit my nails, chewed my lips, and scratched at my stubble with the plastic pen cap. If it weren't for the seat-belt, I'd have been pacing.
Fucking words--we make 'em only to torment ourselves with 'em. Are we masochistic apes or what? To solve a crossword is one of the stupidest, yet most insanely gratifying accomplishments available to modern humankind. To flick the sweat from one's brow, lean back with a sigh, and flush with orgasmic exhilaration at having successfully pinned down every bloody tease of a box with a definite thing--is there anything more ridiculous, and more rhapsodical?
And yet, from Monday to Friday I repeat the ludicrous process, raising my blood pressure, lacing the air with profanity, and generally committing assault and battery on hapless paper. A little wordplay, that's all it is, like a spoonful of salty, mouth-watering, jaw-gluing peanut butter--until, that is, your spoon scrapes the metaphorical bottom and you realize you've been yelling obscenities at a dead sheet of tree-pulp, and oh, you've got a puddle of ink all down your wrist from squeezing your pen. Whoops.
On the topic of obsessions though, I recently had a moment of unreality. Halfway through a Friday crossword, I felt like I'd walked right into David Sedaris' essay "21 Down". Holy haggis, I thought. This shit is real! The mania, the frenzy, the pounding of each miniscule blood vessel in my head, and the exquisite thirst for victory overwhelmed me. I needed to capture that elusive word, needed to fill every gloating little box with triumphant ink. And I caught myself reliving Sedaris' story as I hunched over that rag of newsprint, fuming and frowning, tapping my foot impatiently as I racked my aching brain. Northern Missouri, drab and dead in winter's clutch, rolled on by in a blur of brown while I muttered, bit my nails, chewed my lips, and scratched at my stubble with the plastic pen cap. If it weren't for the seat-belt, I'd have been pacing.
Fucking words--we make 'em only to torment ourselves with 'em. Are we masochistic apes or what? To solve a crossword is one of the stupidest, yet most insanely gratifying accomplishments available to modern humankind. To flick the sweat from one's brow, lean back with a sigh, and flush with orgasmic exhilaration at having successfully pinned down every bloody tease of a box with a definite thing--is there anything more ridiculous, and more rhapsodical?
And yet, from Monday to Friday I repeat the ludicrous process, raising my blood pressure, lacing the air with profanity, and generally committing assault and battery on hapless paper. A little wordplay, that's all it is, like a spoonful of salty, mouth-watering, jaw-gluing peanut butter--until, that is, your spoon scrapes the metaphorical bottom and you realize you've been yelling obscenities at a dead sheet of tree-pulp, and oh, you've got a puddle of ink all down your wrist from squeezing your pen. Whoops.
Friday, December 16, 2011
A Retrospect: Are You Fucking Kidding Me?
As a friend of mine recently posted on the sacred Book of Frontal-Head-Parts, we've just finished Stage 5 of College (the Nightmare). (By "we", I mean those cool, hip, suave, ballin' comrades of mine in the great Circle of Shite otherwise known as @#!$%& State University, which I shall refrain from naming to avoid any potential, and completely FALSE, allegations of libel. Or calumny. Or tasteless erotica masquerading as poetry.) That is, we (again, "we" refers to those cool people with whom I drink and laugh and fight to the near-death) only have three semesters left before entering the real world--or, in most of our cases, sidestepping smoothly into the cavernous abyss of limbo known as grad school.
Anyway, this hellish semester being over at last, I took a look at all the creative nonfiction essays I wrote for my workshop, copied and pasted all that shit LIKE A BOSS into a new document, and voila! All I had was about 9,000 words. What in the Hoth? Only 9,000 words? I spent my semester slaving away under the influence of a a powerful stimulant derived from a rare and dangerous South American bean, ignoring all my homework in my two Psychology courses (fuck that learning shit, I just want a cozy office and a cushy counselor's job!), and skipping meals (ok, maybe one meal) just to not even scratch the hairy ass of a 10,000 word minimum output?
Yeesh.
Anyway, this hellish semester being over at last, I took a look at all the creative nonfiction essays I wrote for my workshop, copied and pasted all that shit LIKE A BOSS into a new document, and voila! All I had was about 9,000 words. What in the Hoth? Only 9,000 words? I spent my semester slaving away under the influence of a a powerful stimulant derived from a rare and dangerous South American bean, ignoring all my homework in my two Psychology courses (fuck that learning shit, I just want a cozy office and a cushy counselor's job!), and skipping meals (ok, maybe one meal) just to not even scratch the hairy ass of a 10,000 word minimum output?
Yeesh.
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