It might come as something of a shock to those that know me in person to find out that this lithe and muscle knotted frame was once a smallish and lanky kid. And by lithe I really mean klutzy and by muscle knotted I really mean soft as rotted fruit. But the history is still the same. I weighed in at ninety pounds up until high school where I then ballooned to a buck thirty six. Needless to say I never really cut an imposing figure and very rarely people asked me why I didn’t go out for sports. Later in my life, when my metabolism pulled an Oprah and quit, the repercussions of my pizza/beer diet combined with the effects of my rigorous Xbox schedule to frame a person that kind of looks like Jim Carrey with a paunch. But once upon a time I was small.
The thing that I liked the most about being small is that it tended to allow me to fade into the background of wherever I was. I could observe what was going on around me without feeling like I should be a part of the action, which suited me fine because I never really felt like I had a lot to contribute. No matter the subject, it always seem ed that there where people that where more knowledge able or funnier than I was present, so in my mind saying anything would only steal the shine from where it belonged. If I did find myself in a situation where I was the vanguard of the conversation, it generally meant that the discussion had degenerated to the point that my common observations or banal comments became the cement that held together the very lowest common conversation denominator. Unless the topic on hand was video games, Violent Femme records, or how much I like Hawaiian Punch, chances where that I was just happy with social voyeurism.
But the thing that I miss the most about being small was the fact that the natural world seems to prefer that kind of frame, and rewards the tiny with special benefits. Where I grew up there where plenty of trees to climb, but more than that, there was a very specific node of branches in a particular maple in a copse of trees behind my parents house. And just like in The Secret Garden that node formed a perfect little seat that was perfect for reading. You would never know by looking at it, and I cannot think of a reason why my brother or sister would ever climb that tree, so I ended up viewing that spot as uniquely mine. It felt like a little part of the world that grew into shape just for me, and I loved it. But recently I spent time at my parent’s house and on a lark I walked behind their house to go to the tree that I remembered. Upon seeing that branch I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no way that it would support my weight now, nor do I possess the spider-monkey qualities to ascend even if I wanted to test it out. In a very real way, I found that the world physically changes around you when you get older/bigger. Sure I can go into a bar now, but the trade offs are all the little, hidden corners of my world that where made just for me.
I think I’ll build a treehouse when the weather breaks.
Monday, November 30, 2009
The System
I do not consider myself organized in any conventional definition of the term. That shortcoming was thrown into a very sharp relief this week when against all good judgment I attempted to organize a group outing to the windy city to catch a live stage act of a pair of actors made famous for their voice work on Adult Swim cartoons. The relatively easy task of asking whom would want to go followed by the action of purchasing the appropriate amount of tickets was entirely too complicated a processes for complete in a timely fashion. When I finally logged on to the Lake Shore Theater website and found the ten thirty show sold out I; 1.) Freaked the hell out. 2.) Cried a little. 3.) Spent the rest of the day pouting like a cheerleader that got stood up on prom night. I then had to make the agonizing phone call/text messages to the people that I was to accompany and let them know that I am indeed sloth incarnate and as a result we will be spending this Saturday night doing the usual verse-chorus-verse.
The lessoned to be learned here is that organizing something like this is just not in my repertoire of tradable skills. I should have remembered the harsh lessons learned from my adolescence when I would mangle plans for bonfires, barn parties, or hardcore/ska shows, and leave the planning to more interested and capable parties. Thinking in a group sense just isn’t my particular bag. Which I believe is proof positive that I am chronically single, I am just too damn good at being by myself. Over the course of a few years my single-hood has reprioritized the inanities of my life and developed a series of systems to meet these challenges. Some of my friends don’t understand it, and when I try to explain it they immediately distance themselves as though I was inviting them to crawl into a funhouse of madness.
Take laundry for example. To most people, clothes are either clean or dirty, but not to me. I don’t subscribe to the belief in those sorts of absolutes. I prefer to think more in terms of “too dirty for…” or “clean enough for…” For instance, if I had a sweater that smelled like downy fabric softener then I would say that it is date-clean because it carries with it the irresistible smell of domestication that drive women wild. That sweater would be considered “Clean enough for…wearing when entertaining female company.” Now afterwards would I set that sweater to be washed? Unless I spilled something stinky on it the answer would be no. That sweater would simply bump down to “clean enough for…grocery shopping” On the other end of the spectrum, if I could locate my jeans via smell then those pants are “too dirty for…any occasion.” Once an appropriate pile of clothing reaches this level then I spend the night before gathering it up into appropriate bags, pack a brown bag meal and get an early nights rest. Then the next morning I will gut a hare and read its entrails, if the gods favor my endeavor I will go to the Laundromat/spray tan emporium burdened with my loads of jeans, shirts, and unmentionables to spend my entire morning and at least thirty bucks to clean the bastiches. Later at home I will go home queue up the Godfather trilogy and iron and fold and stuff and hang all my clothes until I am restocked with vestiges that are “clean enough for…six weeks.”
Most people don’t understand my DVD organization either. Like a hipster with vinyl records or a survivalist with submachine guns, maintain a large and growing collection of movies and shows that I will either watch or simply put on while I do something else, like lay in a reclined position. But to most people they only see a jumble of four hundred or so flicks and boxes set in no discernable order. But if you where Russell Crowe from A Beautiful Mind (also in the collection) and you stared at my shelves a pattern would emerge, and then you would explain to your imaginary friends that I have organized my movies by alphabetized genre and ranked in ascending order of kickass. That’s why I have Kung Fu Hustle to the right of Vera Drake, because I feel that they are both non-U.S. made art house comedies, the dry British humor gets eked out by the other movies regular and gratuitous face kicking.
Another example of how I try to streamline my life is with my dishes. If you where to look into my cupboard you would find out two things about me; one, I don’t own any dishes or glass with print or graphics on them. And two, I only own two dinner plates. What you would find is a full assortment of restaurant quality Rocks tumblers, shot glasses, pub pints, pilsners, wide bowled stemware, Collins highballs, and Martini glasses. This works out because most of the people that come to my place aren’t there to eat but rather to wet the appetite for more serious alcoholism later. I don’t really need all the accruements of a normal kitchen because one can simply eat take out Chinese food with the supplied silverware. The only downside to this is that I have actually been caught by the neighbors drinking milk out of a brandy snifter.
While my organizational talents don’t lend themselves well when it comes to evening planning I do feel I have a solid skill set that serves the bachelor well. A few more years of study and I will be able to write the definitive treatise on the subject. I will call it The World As Explained By Ebner: A Survival Guide for the Single Guy. Other books may try to give advice on seducing women, mine will focus on how to best redirect a bachelors remaining four percent of brain capacity to optimize their living conditions.
Now if only I could only organize my thoughts.
The lessoned to be learned here is that organizing something like this is just not in my repertoire of tradable skills. I should have remembered the harsh lessons learned from my adolescence when I would mangle plans for bonfires, barn parties, or hardcore/ska shows, and leave the planning to more interested and capable parties. Thinking in a group sense just isn’t my particular bag. Which I believe is proof positive that I am chronically single, I am just too damn good at being by myself. Over the course of a few years my single-hood has reprioritized the inanities of my life and developed a series of systems to meet these challenges. Some of my friends don’t understand it, and when I try to explain it they immediately distance themselves as though I was inviting them to crawl into a funhouse of madness.
Take laundry for example. To most people, clothes are either clean or dirty, but not to me. I don’t subscribe to the belief in those sorts of absolutes. I prefer to think more in terms of “too dirty for…” or “clean enough for…” For instance, if I had a sweater that smelled like downy fabric softener then I would say that it is date-clean because it carries with it the irresistible smell of domestication that drive women wild. That sweater would be considered “Clean enough for…wearing when entertaining female company.” Now afterwards would I set that sweater to be washed? Unless I spilled something stinky on it the answer would be no. That sweater would simply bump down to “clean enough for…grocery shopping” On the other end of the spectrum, if I could locate my jeans via smell then those pants are “too dirty for…any occasion.” Once an appropriate pile of clothing reaches this level then I spend the night before gathering it up into appropriate bags, pack a brown bag meal and get an early nights rest. Then the next morning I will gut a hare and read its entrails, if the gods favor my endeavor I will go to the Laundromat/spray tan emporium burdened with my loads of jeans, shirts, and unmentionables to spend my entire morning and at least thirty bucks to clean the bastiches. Later at home I will go home queue up the Godfather trilogy and iron and fold and stuff and hang all my clothes until I am restocked with vestiges that are “clean enough for…six weeks.”
Most people don’t understand my DVD organization either. Like a hipster with vinyl records or a survivalist with submachine guns, maintain a large and growing collection of movies and shows that I will either watch or simply put on while I do something else, like lay in a reclined position. But to most people they only see a jumble of four hundred or so flicks and boxes set in no discernable order. But if you where Russell Crowe from A Beautiful Mind (also in the collection) and you stared at my shelves a pattern would emerge, and then you would explain to your imaginary friends that I have organized my movies by alphabetized genre and ranked in ascending order of kickass. That’s why I have Kung Fu Hustle to the right of Vera Drake, because I feel that they are both non-U.S. made art house comedies, the dry British humor gets eked out by the other movies regular and gratuitous face kicking.
Another example of how I try to streamline my life is with my dishes. If you where to look into my cupboard you would find out two things about me; one, I don’t own any dishes or glass with print or graphics on them. And two, I only own two dinner plates. What you would find is a full assortment of restaurant quality Rocks tumblers, shot glasses, pub pints, pilsners, wide bowled stemware, Collins highballs, and Martini glasses. This works out because most of the people that come to my place aren’t there to eat but rather to wet the appetite for more serious alcoholism later. I don’t really need all the accruements of a normal kitchen because one can simply eat take out Chinese food with the supplied silverware. The only downside to this is that I have actually been caught by the neighbors drinking milk out of a brandy snifter.
While my organizational talents don’t lend themselves well when it comes to evening planning I do feel I have a solid skill set that serves the bachelor well. A few more years of study and I will be able to write the definitive treatise on the subject. I will call it The World As Explained By Ebner: A Survival Guide for the Single Guy. Other books may try to give advice on seducing women, mine will focus on how to best redirect a bachelors remaining four percent of brain capacity to optimize their living conditions.
Now if only I could only organize my thoughts.
The Bond
Being the fundamentally positive guy I am I view the passing of Halloween with a sigh, because I know that it is the last of the fun holidays until New Years. Every year, Thanksgiving seems to come sooner and sooner, often without time enough for me to do the ‘early shopping’ I have planned on doing each year since I got a drivers license. Then the time between ‘Black Friday’ and Christmas is spent at a dead run completing familial obligations, work projects, aforementioned holiday shopping, not to mention my own packed videogame and napping schedule. This is a stressful time of year for everyone so it is only natural that tempers flare and tensions rise.
But in anticipation of that very event, I propose that we in the NWI set take a moment to look at the things that make us one united people. We should brace ourselves against the seasons chill by celebrating our common heritage that comes from our version of oral tradition. We had no Aesop to tell us stories, or medicine men to explane the dancing of the celestial bodies. What we had was something very different, but no less binding in the common experience amongst the region natives…Chicago market UHF television commercials from the 1980s and 1990s.
Those dopy, shoestring budgeted, thirty second spots where a connecting gossamer thread amongst people of this area. One can achieve instant connection with a Rat just by reminding them of Empire Carpet and one of their lame incentive programs. “You mean all I have to do is re-carpet my house at a cost of thousands of dollars and you’ll give me a Michael Jordan branded basketball?” I would hazard to guess that not one of my friends have been on the corner or York and Roosevelt roads, but they are very well aware that you will always save more money. Not only that but it would be pure muscle memory to fan out cash and hold it in front of you while you where saying it.
Like any great appreciator of a medium I have my favorites. But it really is hard not pick a few that absolutely stand apart. For instance, there was a commercial that would always play in the middle of the day, like during Small Wonder reruns that would comfort you by telling you that no matter what condition it was in, “That old car is worth money!” All you had to do was call Victory Auto Wreckers and POOF, a fat guy in Ditka specs would show up to haul your jalopy away and leave you with three -count ‘em, three- twenty dollar bills!
Imagine if you will that you are not actually you but rather two chubby girls from the south side. You are discussing a mia culpa with yourself over not having proper car insurance. Hark! What is that?! It’s EAGLE MAN! Some dingus in a rented mascot suit on top of your 81 civic intoning with his flat, Leonard Nemoy, voice “I’ve got something for you.”. Then he squats and Eagle Man lays an egg. No sooner can you wrap your collective head around this act of spontaneous generation - that flies in the face of all modern reproductive science - the egg instantly hatches and a tiny eagle chick with a insurance invoice clutched in its beak wags its head about causing the both of you to say “look at those low rates!” That commercial was so horrible it was fun, and I am genuinely sad that the current generation of kids might never see the jewel of advertising. Watching it now is like warm hug.
Growing up where I did, we got the Chicago channels but my parents would rarely take us to the city. So the places in these commercials became little more than ideas in our heads. Some of them took on a life and imagination all their own, because we never saw them. In that way Carson’s Ribs became a fucking Valhalla to me. If I could live my life in a morally upright fashion and avoid temptation I would be rewarded in the afterlife with heaps of smoky-sweet barbecue ribs so famous they where on an episode of M*A*S*H* in a place known as Carson’s. I could even take ‘em to go if I where so inclined. Years later my fascination with Carson’s ribs had not abated at all, but I have as yet never gone. I was and am afraid that no barbecue joint built my mortal hands can reach the level of majesty that I had mentally constructed as a child. I just hope that when I go to the halls of my fathers, probably following some embarrassing accident involving drinking lawn darts, that place my soul resides in has ample stock of those white cartons I remember so fondly from the commercials.
I know that all media markets have their own local staples as far as commercials go, and Chicago is not special in that way. If you grew up outside Detroit or Atlanta I’m sure you have some doozies to share, but there is something very special about dispelling the holiday tension by singing “Brown’s chicken! It tastes better!” Immediately we all know we are one people with a common heritage. It’s odd, like we all have the same tattoo or campaigned in Napoleon’s army together. It’s a bond that is stronger than the holiday bullshit and I am thankful for it.
If you should see me in poor spirits during the coming months, please, just sing to me Empire Carpetings phone number and just see if that doesn’t put a smile on my face.
But in anticipation of that very event, I propose that we in the NWI set take a moment to look at the things that make us one united people. We should brace ourselves against the seasons chill by celebrating our common heritage that comes from our version of oral tradition. We had no Aesop to tell us stories, or medicine men to explane the dancing of the celestial bodies. What we had was something very different, but no less binding in the common experience amongst the region natives…Chicago market UHF television commercials from the 1980s and 1990s.
Those dopy, shoestring budgeted, thirty second spots where a connecting gossamer thread amongst people of this area. One can achieve instant connection with a Rat just by reminding them of Empire Carpet and one of their lame incentive programs. “You mean all I have to do is re-carpet my house at a cost of thousands of dollars and you’ll give me a Michael Jordan branded basketball?” I would hazard to guess that not one of my friends have been on the corner or York and Roosevelt roads, but they are very well aware that you will always save more money. Not only that but it would be pure muscle memory to fan out cash and hold it in front of you while you where saying it.
Like any great appreciator of a medium I have my favorites. But it really is hard not pick a few that absolutely stand apart. For instance, there was a commercial that would always play in the middle of the day, like during Small Wonder reruns that would comfort you by telling you that no matter what condition it was in, “That old car is worth money!” All you had to do was call Victory Auto Wreckers and POOF, a fat guy in Ditka specs would show up to haul your jalopy away and leave you with three -count ‘em, three- twenty dollar bills!
Imagine if you will that you are not actually you but rather two chubby girls from the south side. You are discussing a mia culpa with yourself over not having proper car insurance. Hark! What is that?! It’s EAGLE MAN! Some dingus in a rented mascot suit on top of your 81 civic intoning with his flat, Leonard Nemoy, voice “I’ve got something for you.”. Then he squats and Eagle Man lays an egg. No sooner can you wrap your collective head around this act of spontaneous generation - that flies in the face of all modern reproductive science - the egg instantly hatches and a tiny eagle chick with a insurance invoice clutched in its beak wags its head about causing the both of you to say “look at those low rates!” That commercial was so horrible it was fun, and I am genuinely sad that the current generation of kids might never see the jewel of advertising. Watching it now is like warm hug.
Growing up where I did, we got the Chicago channels but my parents would rarely take us to the city. So the places in these commercials became little more than ideas in our heads. Some of them took on a life and imagination all their own, because we never saw them. In that way Carson’s Ribs became a fucking Valhalla to me. If I could live my life in a morally upright fashion and avoid temptation I would be rewarded in the afterlife with heaps of smoky-sweet barbecue ribs so famous they where on an episode of M*A*S*H* in a place known as Carson’s. I could even take ‘em to go if I where so inclined. Years later my fascination with Carson’s ribs had not abated at all, but I have as yet never gone. I was and am afraid that no barbecue joint built my mortal hands can reach the level of majesty that I had mentally constructed as a child. I just hope that when I go to the halls of my fathers, probably following some embarrassing accident involving drinking lawn darts, that place my soul resides in has ample stock of those white cartons I remember so fondly from the commercials.
I know that all media markets have their own local staples as far as commercials go, and Chicago is not special in that way. If you grew up outside Detroit or Atlanta I’m sure you have some doozies to share, but there is something very special about dispelling the holiday tension by singing “Brown’s chicken! It tastes better!” Immediately we all know we are one people with a common heritage. It’s odd, like we all have the same tattoo or campaigned in Napoleon’s army together. It’s a bond that is stronger than the holiday bullshit and I am thankful for it.
If you should see me in poor spirits during the coming months, please, just sing to me Empire Carpetings phone number and just see if that doesn’t put a smile on my face.
The Dreaming
I read somewhere that the average amount of shuteye that a person gets is only like half that recommended by the National Institute of People Who Give a Shit. If that is the case then I am maybe only a third of that. I have been dealing with some insomnia that is bordering on truly Tyler Durden levels. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that following some lost time, I awaken to consciousness to find that I have dug an extensive catacomb system under my property and stocked it with DJ equipment, orange juice, and neon signs that read “Dante’s Dance Dance Revolution”.
A quick google –bing, if your one of those losers- search can be enlightening on the subject, including the possible causes for sleeplessness. These causes include anxiety, depression, and stress, and all of those are some of my favorite hobbies. They also mention alcohol and caffeine consumption as possible causes of broken or fragmented sleep, which is odd to me because I viewed those both as treatment methods for insomnia. Next thing they’ll try to push on me is that it might not be entirely “healthy” to shotgun an extra large meatball sub from Quizno’s just before I try to sleep.
One of the odd bits of nuisance knowledge that I had hewn from my time at Purdue was the concept of REM rebound. (and no, I don’t mean anything on the Up album. That whole damn cd was a collection of suck that has no equal.) If memory serves me, the sleep is separated into several distinct phases, one of which is Rapid Eye Movement. It is believed that REM is the period of sleep in which the lion’s share of dreaming occurs but is also the least restful of the phases. The term rebound comes from the observation some researchers has seen that show prolonged periods of REM sleep following bouts of sleep deprivation. If that is the case then the next good nights sleep I actually get should be one long unbroken episode of Yo Gabba Gabba.
I guess that if I where to be honest I would say that the real reason that I don’t get a goodnights sleep most of the time is because I don’t want to spend my life with my eyes closed. It always seems like there is some fun to be had- or at the very least witnessed - somewhere, even in the comparatively empty quiet of my small Midwestern hamlet. The common wisdom being that there will be plenty of time to sleep when I am dead, but it would be more accurate to say that there will be plenty of time to sleep when the history channel and adult swim no longer hold my interest.
Short one today, I’m pretty tired.
A quick google –bing, if your one of those losers- search can be enlightening on the subject, including the possible causes for sleeplessness. These causes include anxiety, depression, and stress, and all of those are some of my favorite hobbies. They also mention alcohol and caffeine consumption as possible causes of broken or fragmented sleep, which is odd to me because I viewed those both as treatment methods for insomnia. Next thing they’ll try to push on me is that it might not be entirely “healthy” to shotgun an extra large meatball sub from Quizno’s just before I try to sleep.
One of the odd bits of nuisance knowledge that I had hewn from my time at Purdue was the concept of REM rebound. (and no, I don’t mean anything on the Up album. That whole damn cd was a collection of suck that has no equal.) If memory serves me, the sleep is separated into several distinct phases, one of which is Rapid Eye Movement. It is believed that REM is the period of sleep in which the lion’s share of dreaming occurs but is also the least restful of the phases. The term rebound comes from the observation some researchers has seen that show prolonged periods of REM sleep following bouts of sleep deprivation. If that is the case then the next good nights sleep I actually get should be one long unbroken episode of Yo Gabba Gabba.
I guess that if I where to be honest I would say that the real reason that I don’t get a goodnights sleep most of the time is because I don’t want to spend my life with my eyes closed. It always seems like there is some fun to be had- or at the very least witnessed - somewhere, even in the comparatively empty quiet of my small Midwestern hamlet. The common wisdom being that there will be plenty of time to sleep when I am dead, but it would be more accurate to say that there will be plenty of time to sleep when the history channel and adult swim no longer hold my interest.
Short one today, I’m pretty tired.
The Fraud
Last Tuesday I sat in an empty theater with a friend and watched The Invention of Lying with Ricky Garvis and Jennifer Garner. The flick itself plumed some depths greater than what is alluded to in the previews and I haven’t had so much fun hating Rob Lowe since Wayne’s World. However, over the course of a subsequent meal of Chinese food and cocktails my friend and I discussed at length the nature of duplicity. Lying really is a concept. The irony isn’t lost onto me that it is also deceptive in its own nature by how seemingly simple it is. I.e. to communicate an idea that is false.
You could ask a thousand people and almost to the person they would identify ‘liar’ as slander. That is why I find it odd that so many people insist upon the practice. When I do my usual gallivanting across the shitscape that is single life in North Western Indiana, I find people presenting one other with the same facades of whitewashed bullshit that they have been for eons. Guys will regale newly acquainted women with the same anecdotes and parlor tricks that they have foisted upon dozens of women before them. Maybe they don’t consider that to be actual –according to hoyle- lying but really they are presenting themselves as much more charming people then they actually are. Eventually these dudes run out of tricks, stories, knock-knock jokes and whathaveyou, and as quickly as it was thrown up the façade breaks down and the women see them in the harsh light of truth. I should know, it’s exactly what I do, which is why my “significant others” have a shelf life of about sixty to ninety days.
And there are times we demand that others lie to us. Representative democracy is contingent on people being liked enough to garner a vote over some other teethed freak, and one of the first lessons learned was that the average voter would rather be lied to and be a happy person then lectured to and be a better person. The real Mr. Smiths never make it to Washington because a realistic and practical approach to government means tough love to a lot sacred cows. And if you have idiot b standing right next to him saying only what you want to hear it is easy to relax your standards of ‘honesty’.
Now, whenever I hear an argument that was predicated by a lie, I am given to wonder if it was the dishonesty or the intention that did the real damage. We will gobble up, bones and all, the safe sanitized white lies of our culture – we have constitutionally protected freedoms, diet soda is better for you, Puddles of Mud is a good band- and not feel the sting of betrayal. Sometimes I overhear these fights and I go through the two or three greatest hits arguments I have had with some former girlfriends and I realize that the fulcrum of the dustup was never chicanery. It was the hurtful, the cruel but ultimately the honest intention behind the action that caused these tiny nuclear exchanges. Lying is just another form of imperfect communication.
Just so I am clear, I am not staking out a pro-deceit stance. I draw the distinction between discretion and treachery. If you fudge the truth to spare someone their feelings, good on you, if you manipulate someone with crafted lies then you suck. But the same argument of motive could be applied to honesty as well. Say I am getting ready to go out and I look in the mirror and I say “You know something Ebner? You look kind of awesome.” And one of my friends looks at my ensemble and tells me that I just invented a new sub category of gay then that friend was using honesty as would Cirino de Bergerac because it spares me humiliation later. But if that same friends says “that will defiantly turn heads.” then they are using honesty as would Iago because later there might be ladyboys looking at me like I have pockets full of candy.
But possibly just as curious are the lies we tell ourselves for therapeutic reasons. We try to convince ourselves via repetition of thought and action all the things that we are suppose to. We tell ourselves we don’t love certain people because they hurt us long before the actual emotion fades. We bang our collective heads against the wall doing certain activities because the nameless gods of hip decided that they were the done thing. I think that if we were a lot more honest a people, you would see more of us in our bathrobes drinking in bars at 10:00 am.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris from Gladiator) once wrote “if it is not right do not do it, if it is not true do not say it.” I like to think that those aren’t two independent clauses but rather a conditional statement. It is to say always tell the truth unless it is not moral to do so. This interpretation is not to be confused with the Cooler (Swayze) when he said “Always be nice until it is time to not be nice.” But if you ask me the two men are about equal in terms of greatness.
Well, there you have it. A lunch break in which I muse on the topic concerning of duplicity and, as always, no wiser for the effort. But at least it entertains me. So in lieu of wisdom I will instead go to the pub armed with one-liner jokes and card tricks…bathrobe in tow.
You could ask a thousand people and almost to the person they would identify ‘liar’ as slander. That is why I find it odd that so many people insist upon the practice. When I do my usual gallivanting across the shitscape that is single life in North Western Indiana, I find people presenting one other with the same facades of whitewashed bullshit that they have been for eons. Guys will regale newly acquainted women with the same anecdotes and parlor tricks that they have foisted upon dozens of women before them. Maybe they don’t consider that to be actual –according to hoyle- lying but really they are presenting themselves as much more charming people then they actually are. Eventually these dudes run out of tricks, stories, knock-knock jokes and whathaveyou, and as quickly as it was thrown up the façade breaks down and the women see them in the harsh light of truth. I should know, it’s exactly what I do, which is why my “significant others” have a shelf life of about sixty to ninety days.
And there are times we demand that others lie to us. Representative democracy is contingent on people being liked enough to garner a vote over some other teethed freak, and one of the first lessons learned was that the average voter would rather be lied to and be a happy person then lectured to and be a better person. The real Mr. Smiths never make it to Washington because a realistic and practical approach to government means tough love to a lot sacred cows. And if you have idiot b standing right next to him saying only what you want to hear it is easy to relax your standards of ‘honesty’.
Now, whenever I hear an argument that was predicated by a lie, I am given to wonder if it was the dishonesty or the intention that did the real damage. We will gobble up, bones and all, the safe sanitized white lies of our culture – we have constitutionally protected freedoms, diet soda is better for you, Puddles of Mud is a good band- and not feel the sting of betrayal. Sometimes I overhear these fights and I go through the two or three greatest hits arguments I have had with some former girlfriends and I realize that the fulcrum of the dustup was never chicanery. It was the hurtful, the cruel but ultimately the honest intention behind the action that caused these tiny nuclear exchanges. Lying is just another form of imperfect communication.
Just so I am clear, I am not staking out a pro-deceit stance. I draw the distinction between discretion and treachery. If you fudge the truth to spare someone their feelings, good on you, if you manipulate someone with crafted lies then you suck. But the same argument of motive could be applied to honesty as well. Say I am getting ready to go out and I look in the mirror and I say “You know something Ebner? You look kind of awesome.” And one of my friends looks at my ensemble and tells me that I just invented a new sub category of gay then that friend was using honesty as would Cirino de Bergerac because it spares me humiliation later. But if that same friends says “that will defiantly turn heads.” then they are using honesty as would Iago because later there might be ladyboys looking at me like I have pockets full of candy.
But possibly just as curious are the lies we tell ourselves for therapeutic reasons. We try to convince ourselves via repetition of thought and action all the things that we are suppose to. We tell ourselves we don’t love certain people because they hurt us long before the actual emotion fades. We bang our collective heads against the wall doing certain activities because the nameless gods of hip decided that they were the done thing. I think that if we were a lot more honest a people, you would see more of us in our bathrobes drinking in bars at 10:00 am.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris from Gladiator) once wrote “if it is not right do not do it, if it is not true do not say it.” I like to think that those aren’t two independent clauses but rather a conditional statement. It is to say always tell the truth unless it is not moral to do so. This interpretation is not to be confused with the Cooler (Swayze) when he said “Always be nice until it is time to not be nice.” But if you ask me the two men are about equal in terms of greatness.
Well, there you have it. A lunch break in which I muse on the topic concerning of duplicity and, as always, no wiser for the effort. But at least it entertains me. So in lieu of wisdom I will instead go to the pub armed with one-liner jokes and card tricks…bathrobe in tow.
The Grouping
Call it delayed reaction maturity, call it a post thirty paradigm shift, but for some reason the same verse-chorus-verse of daily activities that served me well all throughout my twenties has suddenly left me wanting more out of my life. For causes unknown, I have emerged, blinking, in this new stage of my life keenly aware of the fact that very few people actually understand me at a meaningful level. As much as I would like to blame more people for not making the effort to pry apart my outward projection to get to the nougat-y center of my intrinsic being, I have to admit that I don’t make it very easy on them.
I spent most of my twenties living by myself, and when I say that I lived alone, I don’t just mean that I didn’t have roommates, I literally lived alone. I spent my spare time alone; I took up hobbies that didn’t involve other people like cartooning, and reading. I played through the entire Xbox 360 catalogue. After a while I began to take on a persona of a wild eyed and beetle browed recluse that would only reluctantly leave his dwelling for food and toilet paper. My friends would worry and stop by to see me, only to find that I had regressed into a proto human that wore animal skins, communicated in grunts and chirps and worshiped an idol he made out of dirty laundry and empties.
It only occurs to me now that I didn’t give a great many people an opportunity to get to know me. I had my small coterie of friends, mostly from high school, and I must have figured that was enough. There where six guys, and six was a good number. It was enough for say, a groomsmen party or a pickup game of basketball. One of those six guys would almost certainly help me get rid of a body and almost all of them would be down for a titty bar run on a Tuesday afternoon (fyi, not their A team). But as time continued in its unceasing march, horrible things began to happen…my friends grew up. One would get married and one would land an awesome job in another state, or one would simply lose interest in Wednesday night South Park marathons. Before I knew it I found my pool of potential murder accomplices began to shrink, and I was left on the vanguard of the emotionally stunted.
But as I have stated before, I now find that I am meeting some newer people and reconnection with some old acquaintances and suddenly the life of quiet solitude chasing synthetic entertainment seems…less. I tend to care far less about being the first to listen to a given band, or buy the latest game. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that if I was to be honest with myself I am now incredibly jealous of my friends that have connected with someone in a meaningful way. So now I am hardly ever home. Staying in my house for too long at a stretch gets me more restless that pounding redbulls in a maternity ward waiting room. I have my standing commitments; poker nights, quiz tournaments, wing night, as well as an expanding group of friends that I can call for a beer, a movie, or a workout.
Sometimes when I leave for the night I can imagine the ghost of a beetle browed, wild eyed Neanderthal looking at me pleadingly as if asking me to stay and offering a gris-gris of shaving cream leftover pizza.
I spent most of my twenties living by myself, and when I say that I lived alone, I don’t just mean that I didn’t have roommates, I literally lived alone. I spent my spare time alone; I took up hobbies that didn’t involve other people like cartooning, and reading. I played through the entire Xbox 360 catalogue. After a while I began to take on a persona of a wild eyed and beetle browed recluse that would only reluctantly leave his dwelling for food and toilet paper. My friends would worry and stop by to see me, only to find that I had regressed into a proto human that wore animal skins, communicated in grunts and chirps and worshiped an idol he made out of dirty laundry and empties.
It only occurs to me now that I didn’t give a great many people an opportunity to get to know me. I had my small coterie of friends, mostly from high school, and I must have figured that was enough. There where six guys, and six was a good number. It was enough for say, a groomsmen party or a pickup game of basketball. One of those six guys would almost certainly help me get rid of a body and almost all of them would be down for a titty bar run on a Tuesday afternoon (fyi, not their A team). But as time continued in its unceasing march, horrible things began to happen…my friends grew up. One would get married and one would land an awesome job in another state, or one would simply lose interest in Wednesday night South Park marathons. Before I knew it I found my pool of potential murder accomplices began to shrink, and I was left on the vanguard of the emotionally stunted.
But as I have stated before, I now find that I am meeting some newer people and reconnection with some old acquaintances and suddenly the life of quiet solitude chasing synthetic entertainment seems…less. I tend to care far less about being the first to listen to a given band, or buy the latest game. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that if I was to be honest with myself I am now incredibly jealous of my friends that have connected with someone in a meaningful way. So now I am hardly ever home. Staying in my house for too long at a stretch gets me more restless that pounding redbulls in a maternity ward waiting room. I have my standing commitments; poker nights, quiz tournaments, wing night, as well as an expanding group of friends that I can call for a beer, a movie, or a workout.
Sometimes when I leave for the night I can imagine the ghost of a beetle browed, wild eyed Neanderthal looking at me pleadingly as if asking me to stay and offering a gris-gris of shaving cream leftover pizza.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Methodology
From time to time I will wander from my usual conversation topics of videogames and interesting places I have farted venture into territory of more substance. On one such occasion I found myself in the company of teachers of the special education variety, and it didn’t take long for me to become infuriated with the bass akwards approach our society takes concerning what should be the most sacred responsibility a society can engage in – the education of the next generation.
Now when I say “society”, “responsibility”, and “education” in the same sentence it can make some of my right-of-center friends cringe a little bit, but for the life of me I don’t know why. I am not saying that parents don’t or shouldn’t play an indispensable and active role in the education of their children; it’s simply a question of skill sets. Just like I don’t know anything about fixing my air conditioning, I haven’t the foggiest idea of how to instruct a child on a concept and give it any kind of staying power. Educators are trained professionals, they have done some fancy schoolin’ on such methods and I am more than inclined to letting them do what they do. No, my bone to pick is more with the governing educational philosophy that I thought would have atrophied since my waltz through the public school system.
I was diagnosed with a learning disability early in my scholastic career, and as such I spent two hours every Thursday with a series of frayed and overworked special education instructors. And I wasn’t alone either, these classes tended to be huge, even by public school standards. It seemed like everyone of these students had different maladies ranging from mild dyslexia to dementia, and all of it would be presided over by one –maybe two – Special Education Instructors doing their level best to address the individual needs of their students. Although the name Special Education Instructor would make it seem that they where well respected professionals in their field when in reality they where more like glorified caretakers of ‘problem children’. They would spend the lion’s share of their time caring for the least functioning of their charges or arguing with the students with authority issues, whilst the other children where sort of left to their own devices. I didn’t realize it at the time but I would look to my left and my right, consider my company and surmise that my mild aberration with number comprehension was an educational deal breaker every bit as crippling as the tragic cases all around me.
It wasn’t until I got to middle school that I some of the same yearly test that confirmed me as a sped also recommended me for some accelerated courses. And having been Sheparded into the Shangri-la of the collage prep courses I saw just how lopsided and cruel my schools approach to the student body actually was. Because I looked to my left and my right in those classrooms and saw very little difference! These kids where just as screwed up as the Thursday crew, only for some reason they where labeled as eccentric and their every utterance was nurtured like potential wisdom. Whatever you where interested in, you where free to pursue and so knowledge came to you in a much more fluid and natural way. It was Jeckyl and Hyde approach to my education that shed the harshest light yet on our cirque du learning; In a society that prides itself on finding the individual solution to our important problems – re: Starbucks coffee or customer service counters – we apply a generic and wholly inefficient method of education to our youth , involving the memorization and regurgitation of trivia, and anyone that doesn’t fit that mold is either squirrled away into the boiler room where they will be forgotten about until graduation or put in the clean room in the library where they can be spoon fed SAT answers.
It is a broad approach that is meant to shoot right down the middle of the educational spectrum, applying to as many kids as possible. But the truth of the matter is that not all kids assimilate knowledge in the same way. Some kids who are just as capable of learning and using that data in productive ways don’t get that opportunity because they fall outside that spectrum and are branded (seemingly at random) as learning disabled. So they are removed from the larger educational continuum so that they don’t gum up the works for the rest of the student body. Kids that don’t deserve it are getting thrown over.
The fix to this of course, is more teachers that are skilled at deducing the students individual need and using their professional expertise to help that child reach certain benchmarks. But, as the old adage says, everything cost money, and it would appear that there are things we would much rather spend our money on. Whenever one of my projects puts me into contact with a government agency and I spend half my day calling a dozen or so extensions within the Federal Redundancy Department of Redundancy my mind would sometimes wonder to those frayed Special Education Instructors.
The only other public entity that I know of that applies the same kind of generic approach to the training and using of people is the military - and that institution is properly funded. The irony is not lost unto me that we use a powerful standing armed force to protect the interests of client states –states with excellent education systems, I might add- by feeding the personal pools of that force with the kids that didn’t make the grade in our cash strapped school systems. When someone joins the military to improve themselves I feel proud for them (that is part of what the military should be all about) but if someone joins it because they had the misfortune of falling outside the lines of how we drill reading/writing/arithmetic into people, well then a very different feeling wells up in me.
If you are a special education instructor come and find me and I’ll buy you a drink, because you are doing something that Ebner so far hasn’t gotten around to doing…make the world a better place.
Now when I say “society”, “responsibility”, and “education” in the same sentence it can make some of my right-of-center friends cringe a little bit, but for the life of me I don’t know why. I am not saying that parents don’t or shouldn’t play an indispensable and active role in the education of their children; it’s simply a question of skill sets. Just like I don’t know anything about fixing my air conditioning, I haven’t the foggiest idea of how to instruct a child on a concept and give it any kind of staying power. Educators are trained professionals, they have done some fancy schoolin’ on such methods and I am more than inclined to letting them do what they do. No, my bone to pick is more with the governing educational philosophy that I thought would have atrophied since my waltz through the public school system.
I was diagnosed with a learning disability early in my scholastic career, and as such I spent two hours every Thursday with a series of frayed and overworked special education instructors. And I wasn’t alone either, these classes tended to be huge, even by public school standards. It seemed like everyone of these students had different maladies ranging from mild dyslexia to dementia, and all of it would be presided over by one –maybe two – Special Education Instructors doing their level best to address the individual needs of their students. Although the name Special Education Instructor would make it seem that they where well respected professionals in their field when in reality they where more like glorified caretakers of ‘problem children’. They would spend the lion’s share of their time caring for the least functioning of their charges or arguing with the students with authority issues, whilst the other children where sort of left to their own devices. I didn’t realize it at the time but I would look to my left and my right, consider my company and surmise that my mild aberration with number comprehension was an educational deal breaker every bit as crippling as the tragic cases all around me.
It wasn’t until I got to middle school that I some of the same yearly test that confirmed me as a sped also recommended me for some accelerated courses. And having been Sheparded into the Shangri-la of the collage prep courses I saw just how lopsided and cruel my schools approach to the student body actually was. Because I looked to my left and my right in those classrooms and saw very little difference! These kids where just as screwed up as the Thursday crew, only for some reason they where labeled as eccentric and their every utterance was nurtured like potential wisdom. Whatever you where interested in, you where free to pursue and so knowledge came to you in a much more fluid and natural way. It was Jeckyl and Hyde approach to my education that shed the harshest light yet on our cirque du learning; In a society that prides itself on finding the individual solution to our important problems – re: Starbucks coffee or customer service counters – we apply a generic and wholly inefficient method of education to our youth , involving the memorization and regurgitation of trivia, and anyone that doesn’t fit that mold is either squirrled away into the boiler room where they will be forgotten about until graduation or put in the clean room in the library where they can be spoon fed SAT answers.
It is a broad approach that is meant to shoot right down the middle of the educational spectrum, applying to as many kids as possible. But the truth of the matter is that not all kids assimilate knowledge in the same way. Some kids who are just as capable of learning and using that data in productive ways don’t get that opportunity because they fall outside that spectrum and are branded (seemingly at random) as learning disabled. So they are removed from the larger educational continuum so that they don’t gum up the works for the rest of the student body. Kids that don’t deserve it are getting thrown over.
The fix to this of course, is more teachers that are skilled at deducing the students individual need and using their professional expertise to help that child reach certain benchmarks. But, as the old adage says, everything cost money, and it would appear that there are things we would much rather spend our money on. Whenever one of my projects puts me into contact with a government agency and I spend half my day calling a dozen or so extensions within the Federal Redundancy Department of Redundancy my mind would sometimes wonder to those frayed Special Education Instructors.
The only other public entity that I know of that applies the same kind of generic approach to the training and using of people is the military - and that institution is properly funded. The irony is not lost unto me that we use a powerful standing armed force to protect the interests of client states –states with excellent education systems, I might add- by feeding the personal pools of that force with the kids that didn’t make the grade in our cash strapped school systems. When someone joins the military to improve themselves I feel proud for them (that is part of what the military should be all about) but if someone joins it because they had the misfortune of falling outside the lines of how we drill reading/writing/arithmetic into people, well then a very different feeling wells up in me.
If you are a special education instructor come and find me and I’ll buy you a drink, because you are doing something that Ebner so far hasn’t gotten around to doing…make the world a better place.
The Repartee
I envy clever people. Try as I might I simply cannot summon the wit I have seen on full display in Bond flicks and assorted youtube clips. If someone needles me in a bar or at a party, I can’t think of a decent riposte until well after the moment has past – sometimes weeks later in the shower. There have been more than a few times I would be sitting quietly at a restaurant reading a book when I would suddenly sit bolt upright and scream “I didn’t ask you to dance, I said you looked fat in those pants!” But, I was completing a quip from three nights earlier, and now I have to pay my bill lay down track before everyone at the diner thinks I went off my meds.
Clever is often used as a byword for intelligence, which isn’t true. Intelligence concerns itself with knowledge, a calculated amount of data and one’s ability to assimilate more data. Cleverness is using whatever data you have in creative ways. Too often I have heard people miscatagorized as ‘clever’ because they can speck several languages or because they graduated collage. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are clever, it might mean that they have an ear for grammar or that they learned to play the game, and certainly worth of their success. But all I can say is that the entertainment industry is administered by people with degrees form prestigious universities and I would in no way categorize Rock of Love as being clever.
If one where to ask me which of the two you would prefer, Zach, clever or intelligent, I would simply say this; Kim Ung Yong is smart and Bill Clinton is clever. Now, which name did you have to google and which one got laid like spring break?
So how do you know if you are clever? What is the standard candle for measuring it? Some people may tell you to consider the professional success of a given person as an indicator but I would disagree again. The utter randomness of life has taught me that success can be hewn from many different sources, not just the merit of cleverness. I have literally met people that shouldn’t be living unassisted thrust into roles of authority for a myriad of justifications ranging from familial connections, right place/right time situations, and the ever popular silly dumb luck. It’s when I come face to face with an odd or counterproductive policy put in place because the decision maker had no better qualification than the fact that he was on the bosses bowling team, that I get filled with such white hot rage that I wonder if this will be the time I finally stroke out. I don’t know about you guys but I do not want to punch my timeclock while yelling at the Microsoft customer service representative and ruining my tiny house with my anger.
A good litmus test for the clever is their pets, specifically, pet names. There is something strangely final once you have chosen a name for a pet and if your chose poorly everyone who comes to your house and pets them will know you lack imagination. My cat’s name in Vincent Von Kickass because I was forced to pick one at the vet, and my friend has a cat named Chairman Meow. I feel sorry for my cat. He could have easily gotten a better name if only I had been doing something, anything, while I was naming him. Depending on what was on my ipod, he could have just as well been named Robert Smith, or Dr. Strangelove, or Goody Two Shoes. I was watching the first season of Rome when I came close to tears over the regret of not naming my cat Pompey Magnus.
All you can really do is read the recommended books and watch clever television, locate little instances of wit and squirrel it away until you can spring it on someone who, hopefully doesn’t go to the same source material as you.
Clever is often used as a byword for intelligence, which isn’t true. Intelligence concerns itself with knowledge, a calculated amount of data and one’s ability to assimilate more data. Cleverness is using whatever data you have in creative ways. Too often I have heard people miscatagorized as ‘clever’ because they can speck several languages or because they graduated collage. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are clever, it might mean that they have an ear for grammar or that they learned to play the game, and certainly worth of their success. But all I can say is that the entertainment industry is administered by people with degrees form prestigious universities and I would in no way categorize Rock of Love as being clever.
If one where to ask me which of the two you would prefer, Zach, clever or intelligent, I would simply say this; Kim Ung Yong is smart and Bill Clinton is clever. Now, which name did you have to google and which one got laid like spring break?
So how do you know if you are clever? What is the standard candle for measuring it? Some people may tell you to consider the professional success of a given person as an indicator but I would disagree again. The utter randomness of life has taught me that success can be hewn from many different sources, not just the merit of cleverness. I have literally met people that shouldn’t be living unassisted thrust into roles of authority for a myriad of justifications ranging from familial connections, right place/right time situations, and the ever popular silly dumb luck. It’s when I come face to face with an odd or counterproductive policy put in place because the decision maker had no better qualification than the fact that he was on the bosses bowling team, that I get filled with such white hot rage that I wonder if this will be the time I finally stroke out. I don’t know about you guys but I do not want to punch my timeclock while yelling at the Microsoft customer service representative and ruining my tiny house with my anger.
A good litmus test for the clever is their pets, specifically, pet names. There is something strangely final once you have chosen a name for a pet and if your chose poorly everyone who comes to your house and pets them will know you lack imagination. My cat’s name in Vincent Von Kickass because I was forced to pick one at the vet, and my friend has a cat named Chairman Meow. I feel sorry for my cat. He could have easily gotten a better name if only I had been doing something, anything, while I was naming him. Depending on what was on my ipod, he could have just as well been named Robert Smith, or Dr. Strangelove, or Goody Two Shoes. I was watching the first season of Rome when I came close to tears over the regret of not naming my cat Pompey Magnus.
All you can really do is read the recommended books and watch clever television, locate little instances of wit and squirrel it away until you can spring it on someone who, hopefully doesn’t go to the same source material as you.
The Clue
“You loved me long before I earned it, you stopped well before I deserved it.”
I must have stared bleary eyed at those words for twenty minutes. I had been drinking the night before and fell asleep on my couch in much the same state of dress as I was when I set out, and while I was emptying the pockets of my blazer for clues to the previous night, I found those words written in what seems like my handwriting on a scrap of paper folded between my cell phone and my wallet.
I have a game that I like to play, kind of like a themed murder mystery party only it’s played solo and instead of murder, it involves missing time. To play this game I look around my bedroom, bathroom and living room on a Saturday or Sunday morning and attempt to find visual cues that will help me remember the preceding eight to twelve hours. The first period of this game is like Hercule Poirot in that I observe the evidence (fast food wrappers, dvd menus cycling on the television, web pages still open on the computer, etc.) and interview bystanders if present. Then the second part is like The Dead Zone in reverse, because sometimes all it takes is the slightest touch of a stain on my slacks to zip me to a time six hours earlier when a sloppy drunk girl at the table next to me spilled a fruity smelling cocktail on my knees. Utilizing the sum of these two periods I am able to reconstruct parts of the evening that are lost to me, thanks be to dark beer.
But I have to say that this is the first time I found a note I had written to myself that could have easily been a set of Morrisey lyrics. I am a generally positive guy so I didn’t know my melancholy went up to eleven. This being so out of character for me I decided to reexamine the slip from new angles. Maybe this is a Dan Brown thing and the message is layered; the paper itself means something or the letters are scrambled. Maybe if I chase a set of clues long enough it will lead to the basement of the local library, behind a false wall and deep within forgotten catacombs. That’s where I will find a latched chest with Nordic runes for RAGNOROK emblazoned on the sides and is –in fact- the progenitor item of Eve’s apple and Pandora’s box…the forbidden knowledge unleashed upon patriarchal society by woman’s hands.
At a more literal level I can think of at least a dozen girls that I would write that about at one time or another. The truth is that I generally can’t recognize the fact I am attracted to a particular person until they are no longer in my life. I really don’t know what particular bit of psychological jibberjabber one would brand that with, but it is a state of affairs that has proved wholly inconvenient for me and the girls that have been goodly enough to date me. Recently I was out with some friends and I made the all too common joke that only crazy women are attracted to me, almost as though I give off a pheromone that is perceptible only to the bipolar. But squinting at the paper at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning with mouth agape, I began to entertain an alternative theory; perhaps I am the one who gravitates to imbalanced codependent people. It’s not the young ladies around me that are the problem, it’s my taste in them that’s at fault. If that is the case then someone would have to be slightly damaged goods in order to get and maintain my interest. The thought made me shudder a bit, not least of which because it explained all too succinctly the lion’s share of my romantic entanglements.
And so with no questions answered and no wiser for my efforts I got up to conduct my Saturday. But as I did so I made a mental note that if I bring writing utensils to the bar with me anymore it will be only to make a sign that reads “Cool Kids Section” and hang it above my booth and most definitely not to write cryptic notes that funk up my morning.
I must have stared bleary eyed at those words for twenty minutes. I had been drinking the night before and fell asleep on my couch in much the same state of dress as I was when I set out, and while I was emptying the pockets of my blazer for clues to the previous night, I found those words written in what seems like my handwriting on a scrap of paper folded between my cell phone and my wallet.
I have a game that I like to play, kind of like a themed murder mystery party only it’s played solo and instead of murder, it involves missing time. To play this game I look around my bedroom, bathroom and living room on a Saturday or Sunday morning and attempt to find visual cues that will help me remember the preceding eight to twelve hours. The first period of this game is like Hercule Poirot in that I observe the evidence (fast food wrappers, dvd menus cycling on the television, web pages still open on the computer, etc.) and interview bystanders if present. Then the second part is like The Dead Zone in reverse, because sometimes all it takes is the slightest touch of a stain on my slacks to zip me to a time six hours earlier when a sloppy drunk girl at the table next to me spilled a fruity smelling cocktail on my knees. Utilizing the sum of these two periods I am able to reconstruct parts of the evening that are lost to me, thanks be to dark beer.
But I have to say that this is the first time I found a note I had written to myself that could have easily been a set of Morrisey lyrics. I am a generally positive guy so I didn’t know my melancholy went up to eleven. This being so out of character for me I decided to reexamine the slip from new angles. Maybe this is a Dan Brown thing and the message is layered; the paper itself means something or the letters are scrambled. Maybe if I chase a set of clues long enough it will lead to the basement of the local library, behind a false wall and deep within forgotten catacombs. That’s where I will find a latched chest with Nordic runes for RAGNOROK emblazoned on the sides and is –in fact- the progenitor item of Eve’s apple and Pandora’s box…the forbidden knowledge unleashed upon patriarchal society by woman’s hands.
At a more literal level I can think of at least a dozen girls that I would write that about at one time or another. The truth is that I generally can’t recognize the fact I am attracted to a particular person until they are no longer in my life. I really don’t know what particular bit of psychological jibberjabber one would brand that with, but it is a state of affairs that has proved wholly inconvenient for me and the girls that have been goodly enough to date me. Recently I was out with some friends and I made the all too common joke that only crazy women are attracted to me, almost as though I give off a pheromone that is perceptible only to the bipolar. But squinting at the paper at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning with mouth agape, I began to entertain an alternative theory; perhaps I am the one who gravitates to imbalanced codependent people. It’s not the young ladies around me that are the problem, it’s my taste in them that’s at fault. If that is the case then someone would have to be slightly damaged goods in order to get and maintain my interest. The thought made me shudder a bit, not least of which because it explained all too succinctly the lion’s share of my romantic entanglements.
And so with no questions answered and no wiser for my efforts I got up to conduct my Saturday. But as I did so I made a mental note that if I bring writing utensils to the bar with me anymore it will be only to make a sign that reads “Cool Kids Section” and hang it above my booth and most definitely not to write cryptic notes that funk up my morning.
The Application
It has already happened a couple of times this week. During a telephone conversation I mentioned offhandedly that I tweet and immediately on the other end her tone changed in a manner that suggested that I admitted to wearing mascara, which is to say she disapproved. A couple of days later, in a fit of boredom, I resurrected an ongoing argument with a friend about the merits of social networking websites – me pro, him con. He refuses to join them because he stubbornly states that he already has all the friends he needs, when I point out the ‘networking’ part of the title, he just digs his heels further. Over the course of both scenarios I emerged as the champion of internet based pseudo communication, and while I am not sure if that is entirely accurate I did have an epiphany. A way of looking at social phenomenon as a whole and then certain things fall into place and make sense, like the time I was watching Hunt for Red October when Marko Rameus offers his fellow conspirators more tea and I figured out that he was actually threatening their lives.(I was really proud of myself for putting that together.)
What I was able to pull away from these encounters with those whom apparently hold contempt such things is that there is a new dichotomy forming where internet based communication is concerned. I have noticed two distinct kinds of chic have formed all around me, each with their own prototypical spokesperson. On one side of the battlements you have the plugged in, tech savvy neo-wonk that silently judge everyone from behind their horn rimmed glasses and over the tops of their netbooks. Maybe you see them at a coffee shop, and you took to long to decide on chai and now Morpheus there is blogging about you and you can only take solace in the fact that only six people read it. The other side is represented by the street wise, no nonsense, Doubting Thomases who can’t be bothered with such trivialities and view tweeting as something practiced by songbirds. This person is most defiantly not one of the aforementioned six.
I have to admit that I am somewhat torn on the issue. I mean, I have taken to blogging for therapeutic reasons, and I tweet because it simultaneously updates my myspace and facebook profiles. But at the same time I can see how some of this can be viewed as inconsequential techno-glitter and little more than chum for dorks. Posting, responding, and then reposting a status update does not count as a conversation, they are the written equivalent of sound bites. And nothing inflames my inner Dennis Leary quite like hearing about some relationship breaking down via text message, where I come from you just don’t dump people with your thumbs.
I can see where they are coming from, they are deathly afraid of jumping on a bandwagon that goes nowhere. I remember a time in collage when I would loudly denounce (and still do) pro wrestling, calling it dinner theater for the retarded. I would then go on to predict that the WWE will have a short and shameful life. Now, everytime I turn on the television I have John Cena’s name projected at me as though I should know or care what the hell he is or does. But the opposite is also true. I have seen it a million times, the next big awesome life expanding product comes along and all the nerds walk around with tech-chubbys as they try to fit, cram, or otherwise force this new thing into all facets of life. Meanwhile a vast majority of these new technologies goes to the happy hunting grounds like so much betamax. Do you remember DAT (digital audio tapes)? The two hundred people that bough Actung Baby in that format do.
The difference, as I have found it, is that there seems to be a rift between technology used for entertainment and that used to talk to one another, even if that communication uses bastardized English. Farmville aside, facebook is primarily a communication tool. I could show you this if it weren’t for facebook. Twitter allows me to get a little nothing off of my chest and maybe start a sound bite conversation with someone. I am just as wary of anyone of the possible dangers posited by worthless trends, but I have never seen a form of communication that is considered a fad. The only thing we have to watch out for is the abuse of this new tool. I quote a friend of mine when I say “I will always be right back, laugh out loud, and talk to you later. I will never brb, lol, or ttyl.”
Funny, the erstwhile conversation that let me down the thought processes that lands me as the defender of grammar started with the accusation that I it’s most hated enemy.
What I was able to pull away from these encounters with those whom apparently hold contempt such things is that there is a new dichotomy forming where internet based communication is concerned. I have noticed two distinct kinds of chic have formed all around me, each with their own prototypical spokesperson. On one side of the battlements you have the plugged in, tech savvy neo-wonk that silently judge everyone from behind their horn rimmed glasses and over the tops of their netbooks. Maybe you see them at a coffee shop, and you took to long to decide on chai and now Morpheus there is blogging about you and you can only take solace in the fact that only six people read it. The other side is represented by the street wise, no nonsense, Doubting Thomases who can’t be bothered with such trivialities and view tweeting as something practiced by songbirds. This person is most defiantly not one of the aforementioned six.
I have to admit that I am somewhat torn on the issue. I mean, I have taken to blogging for therapeutic reasons, and I tweet because it simultaneously updates my myspace and facebook profiles. But at the same time I can see how some of this can be viewed as inconsequential techno-glitter and little more than chum for dorks. Posting, responding, and then reposting a status update does not count as a conversation, they are the written equivalent of sound bites. And nothing inflames my inner Dennis Leary quite like hearing about some relationship breaking down via text message, where I come from you just don’t dump people with your thumbs.
I can see where they are coming from, they are deathly afraid of jumping on a bandwagon that goes nowhere. I remember a time in collage when I would loudly denounce (and still do) pro wrestling, calling it dinner theater for the retarded. I would then go on to predict that the WWE will have a short and shameful life. Now, everytime I turn on the television I have John Cena’s name projected at me as though I should know or care what the hell he is or does. But the opposite is also true. I have seen it a million times, the next big awesome life expanding product comes along and all the nerds walk around with tech-chubbys as they try to fit, cram, or otherwise force this new thing into all facets of life. Meanwhile a vast majority of these new technologies goes to the happy hunting grounds like so much betamax. Do you remember DAT (digital audio tapes)? The two hundred people that bough Actung Baby in that format do.
The difference, as I have found it, is that there seems to be a rift between technology used for entertainment and that used to talk to one another, even if that communication uses bastardized English. Farmville aside, facebook is primarily a communication tool. I could show you this if it weren’t for facebook. Twitter allows me to get a little nothing off of my chest and maybe start a sound bite conversation with someone. I am just as wary of anyone of the possible dangers posited by worthless trends, but I have never seen a form of communication that is considered a fad. The only thing we have to watch out for is the abuse of this new tool. I quote a friend of mine when I say “I will always be right back, laugh out loud, and talk to you later. I will never brb, lol, or ttyl.”
Funny, the erstwhile conversation that let me down the thought processes that lands me as the defender of grammar started with the accusation that I it’s most hated enemy.
The Boxes
In 1998, when I was eighteen, I packed a whole bunch of my crap into boxes and moved them to my first apartment. When I got there, I only unpacked things as I needed them clothes and sundries mostly. I never got around to unpacking a large number of the boxes because they contained books and games I had amassed during my tenure at high school, and seeing as how I was going to start my freshmen year at Purdue university, I figured that there were bold new types of fun to be had. And that thought turned out to be prophetic; before I knew it, it was time to pack up my cloths and unpacked boxes and move to another apartment. This kept up for years, simply moving sealed boxes from dwelling to dwelling until enough time had gone by that I had forgotten what was in them completely.
Now those boxes are sat in a corner of a garage that has never housed my car. I open those boxes, one at a time and never more often than once a month, and go through what is essentially a time capsule to the person I was. Sometimes the find is solid gold, for example the time I cam across the box that had old drawings covering a handful of CDs still in the case. These discs dated back to my early introduction to ska music when it was a branching of the street punk scene and I wasted no time ripping them to my zune. The power chord guitar and trumpets where the soundtrack to my summers, and immediately brought back a flood of memories of late night coffee outings to the truck stop, of operating a caged tractor at a driving range whilst taunting the golfers, and generally running about with my collection of artful dodgers and ne’er-do-wells.
Sometimes the finds where more sobering, such as a velveteen bag filled with ten sided dice. When I cam across that particular box, the one with a lot of tabletop role playing gear in it, I couldn’t remember a single play session. All I could think of is “my god, how did I ever get a woman to kiss me in high school?” I felt like calling each and every one of them and thanking them for their acts of charity.
But more than anything else it is interesting to see what I thought merited saving. I am a packrat by nature and cannot bring myself to throw anything away, thus I have boxes of notebooks from my various subjects and in the margins are quips and observations I would write to myself. I have found a shoebox of old notes from girlfriends. I found old ribbons and awards. I found a picture of me and some friends I haven’t thought of in years. All these things come together to form a picture of the kind of person I was during my salad days, and the picture that emerges is a gangly, loud, nerdish, kid with more bravado than he had a right to.
If I met the eighteen year old version of me, I think we would be friends.
Now those boxes are sat in a corner of a garage that has never housed my car. I open those boxes, one at a time and never more often than once a month, and go through what is essentially a time capsule to the person I was. Sometimes the find is solid gold, for example the time I cam across the box that had old drawings covering a handful of CDs still in the case. These discs dated back to my early introduction to ska music when it was a branching of the street punk scene and I wasted no time ripping them to my zune. The power chord guitar and trumpets where the soundtrack to my summers, and immediately brought back a flood of memories of late night coffee outings to the truck stop, of operating a caged tractor at a driving range whilst taunting the golfers, and generally running about with my collection of artful dodgers and ne’er-do-wells.
Sometimes the finds where more sobering, such as a velveteen bag filled with ten sided dice. When I cam across that particular box, the one with a lot of tabletop role playing gear in it, I couldn’t remember a single play session. All I could think of is “my god, how did I ever get a woman to kiss me in high school?” I felt like calling each and every one of them and thanking them for their acts of charity.
But more than anything else it is interesting to see what I thought merited saving. I am a packrat by nature and cannot bring myself to throw anything away, thus I have boxes of notebooks from my various subjects and in the margins are quips and observations I would write to myself. I have found a shoebox of old notes from girlfriends. I found old ribbons and awards. I found a picture of me and some friends I haven’t thought of in years. All these things come together to form a picture of the kind of person I was during my salad days, and the picture that emerges is a gangly, loud, nerdish, kid with more bravado than he had a right to.
If I met the eighteen year old version of me, I think we would be friends.
The Tableau
Every now and again I like to mentally compile list of people that owe me apologies. I find this to be therapy in its purest form. I am fairly sure that I have yet to live a full day without making some kind of social faux pas that would land me on a similar inventory, so it feels kind of equalizing to know that there are several people in front of me in this daisy chain of sins against civility. Today I accidentally pulled out ahead of a car at the gas station. The other car was an off duty hertz and the driver flipped me off. I literally got the one finger victory salute from a guy that essentially a shepard of the dead. That made me feel bad, so to compensate for this and center myself I thought of all the people who have wronged me in my life.
I include a predictable grouping of dickstains that I went to school with, but I also like to think that I include them for legitimate reasons. Slighting my character isn’t enough to land on this spiteful catalog; you need to commit a greater offense. For example calling me a nerd would land you on this register, but not because I resent the statement, but rather that you seized on the most immediate and observable thing about me, you then announced it like you realized something and in the processes branded yourself an unimaginative tool box. I believe you owe me an apology for wasting air.
I believe that Italy owes me an apology for making food so damn delicious. Normally good food, let alone an entire country wouldn’t warrant my ire except in the scenario in which a.) Italian cuisine encourages binge eating and b.) none of it is good for you. Italian chow is all heavy carb shells stuffed with sausages drenched in spicy sauces and covered with the richest melted cheese in existence. In a time in my life when my metabolism went the way of my ability to keep up with modern music and my morning mantra includes standing in front of the mirror grabbing handfuls of my gut screaming “Get thee behind me Satan!” the last thing I need is an entire category of scrumptious fare that happen to be about seven thousand calories a bite.
When I was fourteen and entering the wider world of my high school I jumped headlong into competitive speech and debate and was immediately introduced to a body of people that where brilliant, fun, creative, and tolerant. It took me up to my mid twenties to come to terms with the fact that some of the first people I met in my formative years where of exceptional caliber and therefore set an unnaturally high standard for future social interactions. I take pains to surround myself with fine examples of humanity now, but when I think of the Fantasia Broom Army of petty, boorish, and cripplingly uninspired spanks I have met in my life, I feel that those people I considered to be friends then and now owe me one big assed apology for engendering in me a naive expectation level in the general populace.
Elisabeth Shue owes me one too. That bitch knows what she did.
I include a predictable grouping of dickstains that I went to school with, but I also like to think that I include them for legitimate reasons. Slighting my character isn’t enough to land on this spiteful catalog; you need to commit a greater offense. For example calling me a nerd would land you on this register, but not because I resent the statement, but rather that you seized on the most immediate and observable thing about me, you then announced it like you realized something and in the processes branded yourself an unimaginative tool box. I believe you owe me an apology for wasting air.
I believe that Italy owes me an apology for making food so damn delicious. Normally good food, let alone an entire country wouldn’t warrant my ire except in the scenario in which a.) Italian cuisine encourages binge eating and b.) none of it is good for you. Italian chow is all heavy carb shells stuffed with sausages drenched in spicy sauces and covered with the richest melted cheese in existence. In a time in my life when my metabolism went the way of my ability to keep up with modern music and my morning mantra includes standing in front of the mirror grabbing handfuls of my gut screaming “Get thee behind me Satan!” the last thing I need is an entire category of scrumptious fare that happen to be about seven thousand calories a bite.
When I was fourteen and entering the wider world of my high school I jumped headlong into competitive speech and debate and was immediately introduced to a body of people that where brilliant, fun, creative, and tolerant. It took me up to my mid twenties to come to terms with the fact that some of the first people I met in my formative years where of exceptional caliber and therefore set an unnaturally high standard for future social interactions. I take pains to surround myself with fine examples of humanity now, but when I think of the Fantasia Broom Army of petty, boorish, and cripplingly uninspired spanks I have met in my life, I feel that those people I considered to be friends then and now owe me one big assed apology for engendering in me a naive expectation level in the general populace.
Elisabeth Shue owes me one too. That bitch knows what she did.
The Arrangement
Last night I was celebrating my newish television by watching King Kong in 1080p. It was that part where Kong was running amuck in downtown Manhattan looking for Scarlet Johansson amongst the sea of blondes in Times Square. He picks them up one at a time, takes a closer look, and cast them aside in disgust – presumably to their deaths. I am quite sure this brief scene had the wrong effect on me. I am sure the look of frustration and fright on Kong’s face in combination with such a feral act was meant to incite sympathy in the great beast, but instead I couldn’t help but think of those people that died during the rampage of a gigantic ape. I thought about how random and bizarre their deaths would seem to other people. Their immediate relatives would be devastated and their casual acquaintances would laugh themselves silly (“You hear about Bob, from accounting? He was on a trolley when it got derailed by the biggest monkey you ever saw!”) Maybe these people would have provincial relatives that would use the giant ape related deaths as further justification for living in the sticks, I mean, that stuff happens in a city like New York.
By the time Stopwith Camels were strafing the fearsome animal with machine gun fire I was full on in my musings on the topic of mortality. I remember a time when movies had a tendency to spare the innocent bystander from whatever peril was going on- how many people did you see Godzilla actually stomp? – But as moviegoers became more desensitized to the violence the filmmakers had to up the ante. Now no one is safe, and the effect it has on me is to show that life can randomly end at any point for no good reason. One day you leave work and decide to stop by Woolworths to get some gingham for you wife and maybe a licorice whip for you kid and them BLAMO, crushed to death by an uncontrolled tropical ape. You could just live your life in a completely boring and unobtrusive way, it doesn’t matter. One simply never knows when providence will see fit to drop a rampaging behemoth in your life.
It is for reasons like this that my several friends and I have taken the time to make our funerary wishes known. So if the unthinkable –re: plague of scorpions – where to happen, there would be those around us who know what we would have wanted with our earthly remains.
One of my friends wants his body to be lit aflame and launched from a catapult to be the opening salvo in a land war between East and West Lafayette, Indiana. We have long wondered how the university kids of Purdue would fair vs. the Hoosier townies if it ever came to arms, and we thought that if we had a corpse to get rid of we could kill two birds with one stone. The only catch is that, as per the deceased, the catapult used could not be crafted by mortal hands. It had to be an un-manmade catapult. The possibility of an extraterrestrial trebuchet surfaced but was quickly overshadowed when another friend of ours pointed out (it should be noted, here, that this guy had taken an epic dose of psilocybin mushrooms when he thought of this) that according to Ministry Jesus build hotrods, so why not artillery? Thus was born, The Jesus Catapult.
Another guy I know took many of his cues from Nordic tradition. In his case we are to dress him in the finest tuxedo we can afford, place him in a Viking longboat along with a carton of camel non filter cigarettes, a full wet bar, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Then we have to find a blonde virgin to recite the funerary passage from The Thirteenth Warrior and lay in the boat. After launching it into Lake Michigan in full view of the steel mills, one of us has to shoot lit arrows Rock of Gibraltar style until we score a hit and watch it burn. Then we imagine that when the boat comes to rest on the shore it had passed into an ethereal plane coexisting with our own. From that point on our friend’s shade would follow us around with a martini in one hand and smoke in the other like a perpetual rat packer in the hereafter to whisper wisdom and encouragement in the ears of the friends he left behind when life has them most downtrodden. I’m not sure what happens to the blonde.
With me, I have a funeral set up in my mind that is fittingly grandiose to commemorate a monstrous ego like mine. This funeral would include my corpse reanimated marionette style to deliver my own eulogy before being joined by Cirque Du Soleil in a fully choreographed tap-dance routine to I’m Your Turbo Lover by Judas Priest. Then my friend rides on horseback into the funeral home in full Scottish battle regalia a proclaims “you’ve bled with Ebner, now bleed with me!” then he steals my body, lashes it to the front of a semi trailer and barrels it into the Bar at the Court Restaurant in Valpo, while Too Old to Rock n Roll and Too Young to Die by Jethro Tull plays on a loudspeaker and the back of the trailer reveals an 44 cal. Machinegun nest that another friend is using to lay waste to the Valparaiso city seat of government.
I think it’s important to have a plan.
By the time Stopwith Camels were strafing the fearsome animal with machine gun fire I was full on in my musings on the topic of mortality. I remember a time when movies had a tendency to spare the innocent bystander from whatever peril was going on- how many people did you see Godzilla actually stomp? – But as moviegoers became more desensitized to the violence the filmmakers had to up the ante. Now no one is safe, and the effect it has on me is to show that life can randomly end at any point for no good reason. One day you leave work and decide to stop by Woolworths to get some gingham for you wife and maybe a licorice whip for you kid and them BLAMO, crushed to death by an uncontrolled tropical ape. You could just live your life in a completely boring and unobtrusive way, it doesn’t matter. One simply never knows when providence will see fit to drop a rampaging behemoth in your life.
It is for reasons like this that my several friends and I have taken the time to make our funerary wishes known. So if the unthinkable –re: plague of scorpions – where to happen, there would be those around us who know what we would have wanted with our earthly remains.
One of my friends wants his body to be lit aflame and launched from a catapult to be the opening salvo in a land war between East and West Lafayette, Indiana. We have long wondered how the university kids of Purdue would fair vs. the Hoosier townies if it ever came to arms, and we thought that if we had a corpse to get rid of we could kill two birds with one stone. The only catch is that, as per the deceased, the catapult used could not be crafted by mortal hands. It had to be an un-manmade catapult. The possibility of an extraterrestrial trebuchet surfaced but was quickly overshadowed when another friend of ours pointed out (it should be noted, here, that this guy had taken an epic dose of psilocybin mushrooms when he thought of this) that according to Ministry Jesus build hotrods, so why not artillery? Thus was born, The Jesus Catapult.
Another guy I know took many of his cues from Nordic tradition. In his case we are to dress him in the finest tuxedo we can afford, place him in a Viking longboat along with a carton of camel non filter cigarettes, a full wet bar, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto. Then we have to find a blonde virgin to recite the funerary passage from The Thirteenth Warrior and lay in the boat. After launching it into Lake Michigan in full view of the steel mills, one of us has to shoot lit arrows Rock of Gibraltar style until we score a hit and watch it burn. Then we imagine that when the boat comes to rest on the shore it had passed into an ethereal plane coexisting with our own. From that point on our friend’s shade would follow us around with a martini in one hand and smoke in the other like a perpetual rat packer in the hereafter to whisper wisdom and encouragement in the ears of the friends he left behind when life has them most downtrodden. I’m not sure what happens to the blonde.
With me, I have a funeral set up in my mind that is fittingly grandiose to commemorate a monstrous ego like mine. This funeral would include my corpse reanimated marionette style to deliver my own eulogy before being joined by Cirque Du Soleil in a fully choreographed tap-dance routine to I’m Your Turbo Lover by Judas Priest. Then my friend rides on horseback into the funeral home in full Scottish battle regalia a proclaims “you’ve bled with Ebner, now bleed with me!” then he steals my body, lashes it to the front of a semi trailer and barrels it into the Bar at the Court Restaurant in Valpo, while Too Old to Rock n Roll and Too Young to Die by Jethro Tull plays on a loudspeaker and the back of the trailer reveals an 44 cal. Machinegun nest that another friend is using to lay waste to the Valparaiso city seat of government.
I think it’s important to have a plan.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Waste
I have been stuck on the same part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra since 1996, which is to say, the introduction. The shameful compulsion to buy the book unfortunately isn’t enough to push me through her pages. I added it to an amazon.com order because I thought it was one of those seminal works that a self styled cerebral chap like me should read. Ultimately, however, generous doses of ‘thee’ ‘thou’ and any unreasonable about of ‘–ometh’ is enough to suck the fun out of an experience to the point where the vacuum left is too great to plug up with fantasies of my intellectualism. And so this famous work by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche occupies the same space in my life as power washing the siding of my house or learning a new language; which is to say, doing something worthwhile with my time.
I am convinced headshrinkers could have a field day decoding what I do for fun whenever I am dodging the mundane and left to my own devices. What does it mean when someone blows off the gym in lieu of watching an especially heated game of televised Texas Hold Em? I imagine these therapists gazing into the Kafkian wonder of my playing The Sims 3 and directing my avatar to clean my virtual house whilst my non-digital domicile exists in a state of constant bachelor clutter, and gazing back at these therapists is the face of madness.
So why don’t I learn mixed martial arts or take an art class? Well, those are pretty horrible examples, I reasonable sure children could tap me out and I am horrified of having my worked judged in a classroom setting. But the source question is why don’t I spend my leisure time engaged in enriching activities instead of learning sleight of hand tricks and committing whole movie monologues to memory? (As though Paths of Glory isn’t enriching enough) I fear these are question I may never be able to answer, much like the mystery of whatever the hell that circular divot in plastic milk gallon jugs are for.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t activities I take to with great relish, it’s more or less that the fruits of these labors don’t yield any kind of trophy that I could easily wield for the proper respect. If had read Thus Spoke Zarathustra you better believe I would find ways to drop an obscure passage from it into a conversation, no matter how ill fitting, just to go on to mention the fact that I had read Thus Spoke motherhugging Zarathustra.
I try not to equate the stack of unread literature on my nightstand or flower garden that could be declared a nature preserve, with a lack of ambition. I am an enterprising guy, it’s just I haven’t found that enterprise yet. As the great Randal Graves astutely put it in the great work Clerks II ; “Sooner or later I’ll do something with myself and make my mark but until then, whatever I do is not a waste of time, it’s all building toward something.”
I am convinced headshrinkers could have a field day decoding what I do for fun whenever I am dodging the mundane and left to my own devices. What does it mean when someone blows off the gym in lieu of watching an especially heated game of televised Texas Hold Em? I imagine these therapists gazing into the Kafkian wonder of my playing The Sims 3 and directing my avatar to clean my virtual house whilst my non-digital domicile exists in a state of constant bachelor clutter, and gazing back at these therapists is the face of madness.
So why don’t I learn mixed martial arts or take an art class? Well, those are pretty horrible examples, I reasonable sure children could tap me out and I am horrified of having my worked judged in a classroom setting. But the source question is why don’t I spend my leisure time engaged in enriching activities instead of learning sleight of hand tricks and committing whole movie monologues to memory? (As though Paths of Glory isn’t enriching enough) I fear these are question I may never be able to answer, much like the mystery of whatever the hell that circular divot in plastic milk gallon jugs are for.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t activities I take to with great relish, it’s more or less that the fruits of these labors don’t yield any kind of trophy that I could easily wield for the proper respect. If had read Thus Spoke Zarathustra you better believe I would find ways to drop an obscure passage from it into a conversation, no matter how ill fitting, just to go on to mention the fact that I had read Thus Spoke motherhugging Zarathustra.
I try not to equate the stack of unread literature on my nightstand or flower garden that could be declared a nature preserve, with a lack of ambition. I am an enterprising guy, it’s just I haven’t found that enterprise yet. As the great Randal Graves astutely put it in the great work Clerks II ; “Sooner or later I’ll do something with myself and make my mark but until then, whatever I do is not a waste of time, it’s all building toward something.”
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Rules
The last forty eight hours of my life have been peppered with reasons as to why I haven’t seriously sought relationships for the last five seasons of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Apparently the insistence that people act with tact, logic, grace, and tolerance is a wholly unrealistic expectation. I have also found that a patient and thoughtful approach to problems is viewed by many of the woman-folk around me as timidity or weakness. You swirl all this together and the picture that settles is one in which I spend my life up to my sixties playing (according to my projections) Metal Gear Solid: Confusing Story on a PlayStation 25 with a menagerie of pets that both keep me company and the neighbor kids at bay. I imagine that as a part of this suburban zoo -in the back yard - I have a water buffalo named Elvis.
At the risk of sounding misogynistic, I simply refuse to accept illogical behavior from woman as a given or an unavoidable inclusion into the female experience. I do this because it is a ridiculous standard that, as tripods, we are expected to tolerate. This is a line that I draw for the same reasons I pick verbal arguments to challenge my friends so they don’t fall into intellectual complacency, even if it means I stake out a position in a camp I don’t agree with. It’s the same reason I got into an heated exchange with someone during an episode of Sex in the City (not my choice) that pan au chocolat and a pilsbury chocolate toaster strudel is essentially the same thing.
I would rather walk away from budding relationships than deal with what I consider to be absurdity. I wont bore you with the details of my must recent kurfluffle, save to say that every person in which I posit the situation, removing real names and instead using muppets, follows my line of thinking. The only aberration is when I drop the ruse to my female friends and mention that person B is a woman I know, their attitudes change radically. “Of course she does”, they’ll tell me “she is a woman.” When I protest that the answer is still prepasteurized bullshit, I get a lot of exasperated sighs and rolled eyes accompanying the accusation that I just don’t understand women.
I humbly submit an alternative theory; I understand them perfectly yet I am unwilling to accept preposterousness as an inevitability. I think that a human being should behave in manner congruent with lucidity, no matter their sex. That is not asking too much. If we as dudes accept that irrational behavior is fixed condition in woman then they should consider it equally unavoidable that guys will walk around with fibula bones and club rival males for access to the Galaga machine. There is reason why decorum exists. It gives people a fighting chance to anticipate what other people will and will not find offensive or hurtful. If you invent new rules to this game on the fly and then attempt to punish me for breaking them I, for one, refuse to play.
I once saw a Wanda Sykes stand up routine in which she joked that women fail men on tests they aren’t even aware that they are taking. If you agree with that statement, you have failed mine.
At the risk of sounding misogynistic, I simply refuse to accept illogical behavior from woman as a given or an unavoidable inclusion into the female experience. I do this because it is a ridiculous standard that, as tripods, we are expected to tolerate. This is a line that I draw for the same reasons I pick verbal arguments to challenge my friends so they don’t fall into intellectual complacency, even if it means I stake out a position in a camp I don’t agree with. It’s the same reason I got into an heated exchange with someone during an episode of Sex in the City (not my choice) that pan au chocolat and a pilsbury chocolate toaster strudel is essentially the same thing.
I would rather walk away from budding relationships than deal with what I consider to be absurdity. I wont bore you with the details of my must recent kurfluffle, save to say that every person in which I posit the situation, removing real names and instead using muppets, follows my line of thinking. The only aberration is when I drop the ruse to my female friends and mention that person B is a woman I know, their attitudes change radically. “Of course she does”, they’ll tell me “she is a woman.” When I protest that the answer is still prepasteurized bullshit, I get a lot of exasperated sighs and rolled eyes accompanying the accusation that I just don’t understand women.
I humbly submit an alternative theory; I understand them perfectly yet I am unwilling to accept preposterousness as an inevitability. I think that a human being should behave in manner congruent with lucidity, no matter their sex. That is not asking too much. If we as dudes accept that irrational behavior is fixed condition in woman then they should consider it equally unavoidable that guys will walk around with fibula bones and club rival males for access to the Galaga machine. There is reason why decorum exists. It gives people a fighting chance to anticipate what other people will and will not find offensive or hurtful. If you invent new rules to this game on the fly and then attempt to punish me for breaking them I, for one, refuse to play.
I once saw a Wanda Sykes stand up routine in which she joked that women fail men on tests they aren’t even aware that they are taking. If you agree with that statement, you have failed mine.
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Words
Music has always been a big part of the coping mechanism I utilize to keep myself sane. But like other things in my life I tend to over analyze lyrics because I cannot shut off the part of my brain that should just enjoy it. Here are a few of the songs that cause me to stop what I am doing and marvel at their construction, for good or ill.
Some indefatigable law states that the only clear radio station you can get at work is either sucks dong or is Spanish-language. Where I work is no different, as such I have been subjected to more alt-country and seventies soft rock than any freeborn person should be.
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? by Chicago.
As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
We’ve all got time enough to cry
Let me paint the picture for you, I have to go to Chicago for a very important meeting and decide to crash the night before at a friends place. We go out drinking. Next thing I know it is morning, I’m asleep in a fountain and I am wearing a stewardess uniform. I’m concerned that I might miss my very important meeting, so I check the time on my cell phone and suddenly remember that I sold it for beer money, so I ask the first person I see what time it is. And they reply “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Aw, fuck. I asked a dada-ist. I would kick that dude square in the beanbag and I am a non violent person, what a dick answer to a very straight forward question. I mean, I am hung over, probably late, I likely feel dirty on the inside, and to top it all off Salvador Dali wants to get all existential.
U + UR HAND, Pink.
I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it's over
Before it began
Keep your drink just give me the money
It's just u and ur hand tonight
I always hate it when artist title their songs with words they spell phonetically. What? Does shitty english make you more street? Are you too real for an ampersand you have to use a plus symbol? U and UR are goddamn texting shorthands for girls and the plus sign as it is used here is a fucking hieroglyphic. But on to the song proper, I can tell you as a single chap that this song is probably our worst nightmare. Say you are at a club and you see the prototypical bad girl walk in with some of her friends. You’ve had a couple of shots of liquid courage so you announce to your friends that you are going to talk to her, they all say “do it man, go on! What’s the worst that can happen?” That, alright. That song is the worst that can happen. Not only do you get rejected, but you get rejected in a ABA rhyme scheme which she later puts over a horrible rap metal backbeat and it shoots to number one! Not only that, but the song is also very presumptuous. Sure Pink is rejecting this suitor, but to suggest that her rejection immediately means rejection for the entire night is a little bullshit. Are you saying you speak for all women Pink? I may be floundering about my life like a fish out of water but I can say with absolute certainty that a real woman, i.e. one of grace, brilliance, tact, and beauty, is so far out of realm of your (excuse me, UR) conception as to be alien.
Alyssa Lies, Jason Michael Carrol
'Cause she doesn't lie
in the classroom
she doesn't lie anymore at school
Alyssa lies with Jesus
because there's nothin' anyone would do
I will spare you the lions share of this crime against music save to say the song, in typical country music fashion, is about a small child that tells her father about her friends abusive home and when he finally gets around to doing something the abused kid dies. I know this song is suppose to be a heart wrenching story about a very real issue, and I should note that if this song helped even one person, then this one song did more good than the combined effects of all my rambling. It’s just so damn depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to music that challenges you to think and some of my favorite bands take on causes that need attention. But I don’t think anyone is unaware of child abuse and everyone finds it reprehensible. Do we really need a song to remind us of it at refill our coffers of melancholy? Also, this song has no resolution! That expert is the final stanza, at no point did Jason Michael Carrol sing about how he avenged his inaction but knifing Alyssa dick daddy in the throat so that this song has some bloody closure.
Every song ever written by Nirvana.
I know I will get some hell for this one, but let me preface this with the fact that I love Nirvana. But I love Nirvana like I love a big dumb dog. It’ll come barreling into a room with much gusto a noise only to crash into a wall and look bewildered with it’s tongue out, and I just look at it like, oh you silly beast, I just want to hug you. Kurt Cobain songs are great for what they are; angsty blank verse poetry which were probably written in his margin of his highschool history notes. Later he and some friends laid down riffs that sounded like punk rock on Quaaludes, and he applied the aforementioned poems and sang them in a voice that sounds like a muppet with a nine pack a day habit.
I can tell this is a concept that I will revisit a lot.
Some indefatigable law states that the only clear radio station you can get at work is either sucks dong or is Spanish-language. Where I work is no different, as such I have been subjected to more alt-country and seventies soft rock than any freeborn person should be.
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? by Chicago.
As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah
And I said Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I cant imagine why
We’ve all got time enough to cry
Let me paint the picture for you, I have to go to Chicago for a very important meeting and decide to crash the night before at a friends place. We go out drinking. Next thing I know it is morning, I’m asleep in a fountain and I am wearing a stewardess uniform. I’m concerned that I might miss my very important meeting, so I check the time on my cell phone and suddenly remember that I sold it for beer money, so I ask the first person I see what time it is. And they reply “Does anybody really know what time it is?” Aw, fuck. I asked a dada-ist. I would kick that dude square in the beanbag and I am a non violent person, what a dick answer to a very straight forward question. I mean, I am hung over, probably late, I likely feel dirty on the inside, and to top it all off Salvador Dali wants to get all existential.
U + UR HAND, Pink.
I'm not here for your entertainment
You don't really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
Cause you know it's over
Before it began
Keep your drink just give me the money
It's just u and ur hand tonight
I always hate it when artist title their songs with words they spell phonetically. What? Does shitty english make you more street? Are you too real for an ampersand you have to use a plus symbol? U and UR are goddamn texting shorthands for girls and the plus sign as it is used here is a fucking hieroglyphic. But on to the song proper, I can tell you as a single chap that this song is probably our worst nightmare. Say you are at a club and you see the prototypical bad girl walk in with some of her friends. You’ve had a couple of shots of liquid courage so you announce to your friends that you are going to talk to her, they all say “do it man, go on! What’s the worst that can happen?” That, alright. That song is the worst that can happen. Not only do you get rejected, but you get rejected in a ABA rhyme scheme which she later puts over a horrible rap metal backbeat and it shoots to number one! Not only that, but the song is also very presumptuous. Sure Pink is rejecting this suitor, but to suggest that her rejection immediately means rejection for the entire night is a little bullshit. Are you saying you speak for all women Pink? I may be floundering about my life like a fish out of water but I can say with absolute certainty that a real woman, i.e. one of grace, brilliance, tact, and beauty, is so far out of realm of your (excuse me, UR) conception as to be alien.
Alyssa Lies, Jason Michael Carrol
'Cause she doesn't lie
in the classroom
she doesn't lie anymore at school
Alyssa lies with Jesus
because there's nothin' anyone would do
I will spare you the lions share of this crime against music save to say the song, in typical country music fashion, is about a small child that tells her father about her friends abusive home and when he finally gets around to doing something the abused kid dies. I know this song is suppose to be a heart wrenching story about a very real issue, and I should note that if this song helped even one person, then this one song did more good than the combined effects of all my rambling. It’s just so damn depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to music that challenges you to think and some of my favorite bands take on causes that need attention. But I don’t think anyone is unaware of child abuse and everyone finds it reprehensible. Do we really need a song to remind us of it at refill our coffers of melancholy? Also, this song has no resolution! That expert is the final stanza, at no point did Jason Michael Carrol sing about how he avenged his inaction but knifing Alyssa dick daddy in the throat so that this song has some bloody closure.
Every song ever written by Nirvana.
I know I will get some hell for this one, but let me preface this with the fact that I love Nirvana. But I love Nirvana like I love a big dumb dog. It’ll come barreling into a room with much gusto a noise only to crash into a wall and look bewildered with it’s tongue out, and I just look at it like, oh you silly beast, I just want to hug you. Kurt Cobain songs are great for what they are; angsty blank verse poetry which were probably written in his margin of his highschool history notes. Later he and some friends laid down riffs that sounded like punk rock on Quaaludes, and he applied the aforementioned poems and sang them in a voice that sounds like a muppet with a nine pack a day habit.
I can tell this is a concept that I will revisit a lot.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Muse
Originally I wanted to write something about the death of my imagination, and as if to accentuate the point, my mind went completely blank. It was my plan to outline the processes in which I have slowly bludgeoned to death my muse with comfortable and unchallenging stories hewn from cheap movies and video games to the point were I am incapable of producing a single scenario that doesn’t owe it’s germination from an earlier work. Now, I am more than familiar with the argument that there is nothing new under the sun, and that even Shakespear used established theatrical traditions of his time. That may be, but I am not even ripping off Shakespear’s sources. I would be proud of myself if I was drawing from his primary reference material. He was doing a redux Pyramus and Thisbe, I tried writing a screen play once and fourteen pages into it I realized I was basically updating Small Wonder.
Believe me I wanted to regale you with witticisms of how my muse has taken her leave of me, but all I can think about right now is a conversation I had with my friend in which we tried to remember the words to the theme song for Jem and our favorite Mr. T “I pity the foo” dot dot dot moments. By the way, our current leader is the episode in which B.A. Barracus said “I pity the fool who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to his momma!” That is just needlessly awesome.
But that thought processes tells me that my imagination isn’t dead. If I measure my individuality by what I take from commonly experienced thing then the fact that I had way to close to an encyclopedic knowledge of A-Team quotes and M*A*S*H* episodes tells me that my personal muse is alive, well, and focused with laser like intensity on the trivialities of life. I remember growing up how teachers would marvel at the fact that I could remember every Shel Silverstien poem that I came across, yet whatever lesson plan they put before me couldn’t maintain residence in my head. I reasoned with them that there was only so much room for stuff in my noggin and to be honest, Atari was there first. They instead handed down the ruling that I was not applying myself, which was true, but the real reason that stuff didn’t stick is still true today. Specifically, I cannot shut off my brain enough to refocus on the things that do not captivate my imagination, no matter how important they are.
Recently I was sat on the receiving end of a very important looking desk talking to an insurance agent regarding the level of coverage I should carry on my home and all I could think of is you fool! I am not the person you should be talking to about this. You should be speaking to someone much more centered and gown up. Someone who knows where all there bills are at any given time and when they are due, and to whom they should be paid, and in whatever form of payment they take. No no no, I have been sitting her looking at your mouth move and thinking about the fact that It’s Wednesday and that the new comics come out today. Then this very nice lady asks me if I understood everything we had just discussed and I am immediately ten years old again and sat in front of my Special Education instructor telling the exact same lie “Yes ma’am.”
This phenomenon even explains why I am so horrible with names. Unless your name is cool, like a badass Native American sobriquet such as “He of the Wolverine Fury” or “Laughing Vagina”, I probably wont remember it. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you, only that your name isn’t nearly as interesting to me than trivial details about you yourself. That is how I identify to people my head - the odd little facts about that person that rolls into the totality of your socialization with that person. In fact I wish that’s how I could legitimately identify people in conversation.
Someone who isn’t me: “Zach, who are you what are you doing tonight?”
Me: “Oh, I’m hanging out with Lesbian, Abandonment Issues, and Naughty Tattoo. It’s dollar draft night at Pastimes.”
Yet, there are times someone can say something, something very random and my mind takes it and fucking runs. One time somebody off handedly mentioned that since Brad Pitt was considered for a gubernatorial race in Louisiana, that maybe Matthew McConaughey should run for governor of Texas. At this my brain immediately chased a set of scenarios that included McConaughey going mad with power and consolidating his authority into a centralized fascist dictatorship that is juxtapose to his outwardly friendly and nonviolent Point Break surfer attitude. Then Texas succeeds from the union, and seeks propping from rogue states in the Middle and Far East. Then after showing outward signs of friendship to their neighbors, McConaughey launches an unprecedented nuclear strike against Baton Rouge and a series of naked landgrabs towards Kansas. Before you know it Brad Pitt needs to learn the sacred art of Texas fighting at the hands of Willie Nelson in a Remo Williams montage that ends with Mathew McConaughey and Brad Pitt fighting it out Highlander style during a lighting storm while the Alamo burns down around them.
When I say that sometimes my thoughts scare me, people instinctively think that I am clinically depressed and it’s a cry for help and in these cases I’m not sure the truth would make them feel any better. Moments like these though tell me my imagination does still work. “Reassured” isn’t the right word, but it’s the one that comes to mind.
Believe me I wanted to regale you with witticisms of how my muse has taken her leave of me, but all I can think about right now is a conversation I had with my friend in which we tried to remember the words to the theme song for Jem and our favorite Mr. T “I pity the foo” dot dot dot moments. By the way, our current leader is the episode in which B.A. Barracus said “I pity the fool who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to his momma!” That is just needlessly awesome.
But that thought processes tells me that my imagination isn’t dead. If I measure my individuality by what I take from commonly experienced thing then the fact that I had way to close to an encyclopedic knowledge of A-Team quotes and M*A*S*H* episodes tells me that my personal muse is alive, well, and focused with laser like intensity on the trivialities of life. I remember growing up how teachers would marvel at the fact that I could remember every Shel Silverstien poem that I came across, yet whatever lesson plan they put before me couldn’t maintain residence in my head. I reasoned with them that there was only so much room for stuff in my noggin and to be honest, Atari was there first. They instead handed down the ruling that I was not applying myself, which was true, but the real reason that stuff didn’t stick is still true today. Specifically, I cannot shut off my brain enough to refocus on the things that do not captivate my imagination, no matter how important they are.
Recently I was sat on the receiving end of a very important looking desk talking to an insurance agent regarding the level of coverage I should carry on my home and all I could think of is you fool! I am not the person you should be talking to about this. You should be speaking to someone much more centered and gown up. Someone who knows where all there bills are at any given time and when they are due, and to whom they should be paid, and in whatever form of payment they take. No no no, I have been sitting her looking at your mouth move and thinking about the fact that It’s Wednesday and that the new comics come out today. Then this very nice lady asks me if I understood everything we had just discussed and I am immediately ten years old again and sat in front of my Special Education instructor telling the exact same lie “Yes ma’am.”
This phenomenon even explains why I am so horrible with names. Unless your name is cool, like a badass Native American sobriquet such as “He of the Wolverine Fury” or “Laughing Vagina”, I probably wont remember it. That doesn’t mean I don’t like you, only that your name isn’t nearly as interesting to me than trivial details about you yourself. That is how I identify to people my head - the odd little facts about that person that rolls into the totality of your socialization with that person. In fact I wish that’s how I could legitimately identify people in conversation.
Someone who isn’t me: “Zach, who are you what are you doing tonight?”
Me: “Oh, I’m hanging out with Lesbian, Abandonment Issues, and Naughty Tattoo. It’s dollar draft night at Pastimes.”
Yet, there are times someone can say something, something very random and my mind takes it and fucking runs. One time somebody off handedly mentioned that since Brad Pitt was considered for a gubernatorial race in Louisiana, that maybe Matthew McConaughey should run for governor of Texas. At this my brain immediately chased a set of scenarios that included McConaughey going mad with power and consolidating his authority into a centralized fascist dictatorship that is juxtapose to his outwardly friendly and nonviolent Point Break surfer attitude. Then Texas succeeds from the union, and seeks propping from rogue states in the Middle and Far East. Then after showing outward signs of friendship to their neighbors, McConaughey launches an unprecedented nuclear strike against Baton Rouge and a series of naked landgrabs towards Kansas. Before you know it Brad Pitt needs to learn the sacred art of Texas fighting at the hands of Willie Nelson in a Remo Williams montage that ends with Mathew McConaughey and Brad Pitt fighting it out Highlander style during a lighting storm while the Alamo burns down around them.
When I say that sometimes my thoughts scare me, people instinctively think that I am clinically depressed and it’s a cry for help and in these cases I’m not sure the truth would make them feel any better. Moments like these though tell me my imagination does still work. “Reassured” isn’t the right word, but it’s the one that comes to mind.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Gentry
While I don’t remember it, I clearly at some point agreed to receive a series of desultory magazines sent to my address. This selection of rags is quite random and sometimes I get a gem (Newsweek) and sometimes a giant question mark (Parenting). This is how I came to be a regular recipient of GQ, and unlike the back issues of Plane and Pilot and Better Homes & Gardens I actually enjoy reading this one. While I would more accurately consider myself a dude far more than I would gentlemen, I do occasionally like to roll a bit of civility and tact that one associates with the polished man.
It seems a bit contradictory that a schlep like me would trouble himself with even minor trappings of refinery, especially when considering that my second favorite pastime is to mercilessly attack pretension whenever I see it rear its carefully coiffed head. Amongst my favorite targets are the holy trinity of posers; arthouse blank verse poets, vainglorious fashonistas, and dickheads who claim to understand The Wall Street Journal. And absolutely nothing that trips my bullshitometer more than going into a coffee house just to see some hipster with a shiny belt buckle and nut-hugger jeans tucked into vintage hightops prattle off an unbelievably convoluted drink order that mentions soy twice.
I do, however, draw the distinction between pomposity and class. For even though I am just as likely to end the evening at seven eleven at four thirty in the morning calling the clerk ‘sacred brother’ while I try to explain the plotline to The Sopranos, I start the evening with the same routine. That routine includes carefully laying out and suiting up my nighttime survival kit; a pocket square, a lighter, a pen, some extra cash, and a good luck charm in addition to the usual carryon; mp3 player, cellphone, and sketch journal. Conspicuously absent from this list are condoms, and that is because for as often as they are needed I can just as easily jump into the red phone booth and sidestep into the alternate dimension where my bullshit actually constitutes charm. Most people aren’t aware that I am carrying these things but when the opportunity arises, and I am able to produce a handkerchief or silver plated zippo to a young lady in need, I hope it communicates that I am an interesting and subtly refined person. Of course it could just as easily be screaming “huge freaking anglophile and possibly homosexual”.
Being in the Midwest the term “gentlemen” or “refined” generally carries with it a negative connotation. I grew up and currently live in the shadow of the largest manufacturing and industrial complex in the northern hemisphere and as such the blue collars look upon those terms with great distain. Gentlemen are stuck up, they don’t work, they perfume their hands. Sometimes I imagine that when I say to my mill friends that I like to consider myself something of a gent, they look at me as if I suddenly transformed into a sixteenth century dandy with a tall powdered wig, laced cuffs, and a perfumed hankie that I hold in front of my mouth as I speak in a loud falsetto.
The truth is that I consider the term gentlemen to mean a man of culture and taste, and that is not something to be ashamed of. I like good wine, whiskey and beers, not because it is a vogue hobby, but because someone walked me through the processes of looking at and enjoying these things. They pointed out the differences and subtle character in each one in terms that I could understand and now when I drink them I experience new things that contribute significantly to my enjoyment. I like pop art because it is simply aesthetically pleasing, not because the hallowed pages of GQ informed me I should. I like these things even though I know for a fact I regularly engage in behavior that would be scoffed at by the gentlemen community as a whole. I don’t think gentlemen are supposed to own all three major video game consoles at any one time. And I am reasonably sure that most people who call themselves refined don’t have a cat that they claim watches over their sleeping form to make sure nobody sodomizes them in the night.
Like just “alternative”, “spiritual”, and a myriad of other monikers one could label themselves, I take what aspects of the term “gentlemen” that appeal to me and leave the rest to the hardcore. This salad bar approach has served me exceptionally well during the ongoing construction of Mr. Ebner because it allows me to dodge definition, and definition inherently contains limitations. Sure, sometimes I flip through GQ and let myself wonder how cool it would be to have that suit, umbrella, and haircut. But then I also consider that the possession of those things would also make me the consummate GQ guy, and that would make it impossible for me to also be the comic book guy or the guy teaching himself to juggle. My life would suck if I were just one thing.
It seems a bit contradictory that a schlep like me would trouble himself with even minor trappings of refinery, especially when considering that my second favorite pastime is to mercilessly attack pretension whenever I see it rear its carefully coiffed head. Amongst my favorite targets are the holy trinity of posers; arthouse blank verse poets, vainglorious fashonistas, and dickheads who claim to understand The Wall Street Journal. And absolutely nothing that trips my bullshitometer more than going into a coffee house just to see some hipster with a shiny belt buckle and nut-hugger jeans tucked into vintage hightops prattle off an unbelievably convoluted drink order that mentions soy twice.
I do, however, draw the distinction between pomposity and class. For even though I am just as likely to end the evening at seven eleven at four thirty in the morning calling the clerk ‘sacred brother’ while I try to explain the plotline to The Sopranos, I start the evening with the same routine. That routine includes carefully laying out and suiting up my nighttime survival kit; a pocket square, a lighter, a pen, some extra cash, and a good luck charm in addition to the usual carryon; mp3 player, cellphone, and sketch journal. Conspicuously absent from this list are condoms, and that is because for as often as they are needed I can just as easily jump into the red phone booth and sidestep into the alternate dimension where my bullshit actually constitutes charm. Most people aren’t aware that I am carrying these things but when the opportunity arises, and I am able to produce a handkerchief or silver plated zippo to a young lady in need, I hope it communicates that I am an interesting and subtly refined person. Of course it could just as easily be screaming “huge freaking anglophile and possibly homosexual”.
Being in the Midwest the term “gentlemen” or “refined” generally carries with it a negative connotation. I grew up and currently live in the shadow of the largest manufacturing and industrial complex in the northern hemisphere and as such the blue collars look upon those terms with great distain. Gentlemen are stuck up, they don’t work, they perfume their hands. Sometimes I imagine that when I say to my mill friends that I like to consider myself something of a gent, they look at me as if I suddenly transformed into a sixteenth century dandy with a tall powdered wig, laced cuffs, and a perfumed hankie that I hold in front of my mouth as I speak in a loud falsetto.
The truth is that I consider the term gentlemen to mean a man of culture and taste, and that is not something to be ashamed of. I like good wine, whiskey and beers, not because it is a vogue hobby, but because someone walked me through the processes of looking at and enjoying these things. They pointed out the differences and subtle character in each one in terms that I could understand and now when I drink them I experience new things that contribute significantly to my enjoyment. I like pop art because it is simply aesthetically pleasing, not because the hallowed pages of GQ informed me I should. I like these things even though I know for a fact I regularly engage in behavior that would be scoffed at by the gentlemen community as a whole. I don’t think gentlemen are supposed to own all three major video game consoles at any one time. And I am reasonably sure that most people who call themselves refined don’t have a cat that they claim watches over their sleeping form to make sure nobody sodomizes them in the night.
Like just “alternative”, “spiritual”, and a myriad of other monikers one could label themselves, I take what aspects of the term “gentlemen” that appeal to me and leave the rest to the hardcore. This salad bar approach has served me exceptionally well during the ongoing construction of Mr. Ebner because it allows me to dodge definition, and definition inherently contains limitations. Sure, sometimes I flip through GQ and let myself wonder how cool it would be to have that suit, umbrella, and haircut. But then I also consider that the possession of those things would also make me the consummate GQ guy, and that would make it impossible for me to also be the comic book guy or the guy teaching himself to juggle. My life would suck if I were just one thing.
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Match
It was longer ago than I care to admit that I was sat in a bar that doesn’t exist anymore across the table from a beautiful young lady whose name, literally, meant wisdom. Of course, when you first meet someone their names don’t mean as much because all you know of them are your immediate experiences garnered from that meeting. So for all intents and purposes, her name was apple martini & black hair and my name was dark beer & no lighter.
I was living with two roommates at the time and private time became something of a valued rarity, so armed with eighteen cigarettes and a copy of Naked, I made for my favorite pub to find a few quiet moments to myself. I had no outward projection that night. I wasn’t sat at the bar striking up conversations nor was I wearing a vestige of kitsch to spark notice. That night was an argyle sweater and a cozy booth positioned strategically close to jukebox. The order of the evening was quiet detachment and light duty alcoholism.
When she asked me for a light I was still in Normandy meeting David Sedaris’s neighbors, and her voice forced me back to the present. She was beautiful in the way you think to describe the word. I wouldn’t say hot because I have always found the word largely carnal, but not cute either as it wouldn’t do justice to her figure. She had almond shaped eyes and olive tone skin which screamed Mediterranean. She had propped one elbow on the top of the opposite booth and the other held an unlit Marlboro light, which awoke me from my momentary stupor. I muttered “sure” and struck a wooden match from the box I had been using. The matches, I explained, where because I occasionally smoked cigars and was loath to use butane. But even as I said the words I couldn’t help but feel incredibly self conscious as a poser should feel. She graciously laughed it off and asked me if I was responsible for what was playing – Connection by Elastica – I said yes mainly because I couldn’t think of a better lie. She nodded her approval without breaking contact with the narrow and mischievous looking eyes that always drive me wild. At this point her name was beautiful twice and mine was suddenly aware he didn’t shave.
Instead of asking me if she could sit, she asked me what I was reading and helped herself to the opposite bench; I inwardly nodded at a rare assertiveness that comes from graceful confidence rather than conceit. She and I spoke of trashy novels and other guilty pleasures, and I couldn’t catch any glimpse of façade. I saw no crack in the persona she was presenting to me. This astoundingly honest and devilishly whimsical person sat across the table was completely legitimate. Normally I find people of a certain level of physical attractiveness develop a domineering personality that, more often than not, comes off as boorish. I think this is due to fact that their sense of humor or opinions must compete with their bodies for the same attention. She didn’t force her charms out ahead of her body, she simply let them emanate from somewhere behind it. It made me think of how often I try to project a more winsome version of myself whenever I meet new people by prattling off some prerecorded anecdotes or displaying a parlor trick. I suddenly became very envious of my aplomb new friend. Her name was Clive Cussler fan and my name was St. Elmo’s Fire.
She excused herself to go use the restroom and I let myself exhale for the first time in what seemed like days. I scanned the bar for a group of people that might be missing their friend but it was only the usual collection of off duty white collars and law students. I took a quick inventory of my drink and situation. I stuck one of her Marlboros in my mouth and in grabbing the matchbox I noticed that she wrote a personal message and her email address on it, probably when I went to refill our glasses. Luck of this magnitude had absolutely no precedent with me and I had no idea how to react to it. This was a plot to a tawdry movie starring a British male lead and an actress trying to broaden her appeal. Be it from damage or inborn condition, I have never been able to recognize the presence of love by any other means than the negative space left in its absence. The immediate and immense attraction I felt literally existed in a place outside of my experience set and the effect was frightening. She came back from the restroom and asked me what I was thinking about, I said “a scary movie.” Her name was email I was already writing in my head and my name was clearly dodged question.
Forty seven minutes after meeting her, her friend finally arrived. Her friend turned out to be a six foot tall man with a military haircut. She introduced him as her boyfriend and mercifully a momentary spike in the ambient room noise drowned out his name. He held out his hand with genuine warmth and - remembering now -I like to think that I returned the gesture. We were all still standing as he told the story of how they had met which, predictably, was a chance encounter in shop three years earlier. He punctuated the story with the words “I knew this was the girl that I was going to try my best to marry.” Her look lingered on him with unabashed affection. Never being one to miss my cue I flagged down a waitress and ordered another appletini and two neat scotches. We all shared a wordless minute while the drinks came, but when they did I proposed a toast to their nuptials and good health. I made a lighthearted comment that fish and third wheels stink after three minutes and began to gather my effects. She said that I couldn’t go – “You’re my light!” “It’s cool,” I told her “I left the matches.”
It was very recently I was sitting in a bar on the corner of Lincolnway and Napoleon Street across the table from two girls who where telling me that I should abandon my anachronistic notions of romanticism. The one with blue eyes said that sort of thing doesn’t really exist. I told her I would rather be lonely than cynical.
I would have used this story as evidence but I knew I would be incapable presenting it with the intended effect. That night seemed surreal to me because it was, but by the time I had heard my songs play and closed my tab the world went right back to making sense. We lived a brief fiction, true, but it’s the fiction I would attempt to make the story of my life. Her name was new watermark and my name became refuse to settle for less.
This is the reason I name all the beautiful and important things in my life Sophia.
I was living with two roommates at the time and private time became something of a valued rarity, so armed with eighteen cigarettes and a copy of Naked, I made for my favorite pub to find a few quiet moments to myself. I had no outward projection that night. I wasn’t sat at the bar striking up conversations nor was I wearing a vestige of kitsch to spark notice. That night was an argyle sweater and a cozy booth positioned strategically close to jukebox. The order of the evening was quiet detachment and light duty alcoholism.
When she asked me for a light I was still in Normandy meeting David Sedaris’s neighbors, and her voice forced me back to the present. She was beautiful in the way you think to describe the word. I wouldn’t say hot because I have always found the word largely carnal, but not cute either as it wouldn’t do justice to her figure. She had almond shaped eyes and olive tone skin which screamed Mediterranean. She had propped one elbow on the top of the opposite booth and the other held an unlit Marlboro light, which awoke me from my momentary stupor. I muttered “sure” and struck a wooden match from the box I had been using. The matches, I explained, where because I occasionally smoked cigars and was loath to use butane. But even as I said the words I couldn’t help but feel incredibly self conscious as a poser should feel. She graciously laughed it off and asked me if I was responsible for what was playing – Connection by Elastica – I said yes mainly because I couldn’t think of a better lie. She nodded her approval without breaking contact with the narrow and mischievous looking eyes that always drive me wild. At this point her name was beautiful twice and mine was suddenly aware he didn’t shave.
Instead of asking me if she could sit, she asked me what I was reading and helped herself to the opposite bench; I inwardly nodded at a rare assertiveness that comes from graceful confidence rather than conceit. She and I spoke of trashy novels and other guilty pleasures, and I couldn’t catch any glimpse of façade. I saw no crack in the persona she was presenting to me. This astoundingly honest and devilishly whimsical person sat across the table was completely legitimate. Normally I find people of a certain level of physical attractiveness develop a domineering personality that, more often than not, comes off as boorish. I think this is due to fact that their sense of humor or opinions must compete with their bodies for the same attention. She didn’t force her charms out ahead of her body, she simply let them emanate from somewhere behind it. It made me think of how often I try to project a more winsome version of myself whenever I meet new people by prattling off some prerecorded anecdotes or displaying a parlor trick. I suddenly became very envious of my aplomb new friend. Her name was Clive Cussler fan and my name was St. Elmo’s Fire.
She excused herself to go use the restroom and I let myself exhale for the first time in what seemed like days. I scanned the bar for a group of people that might be missing their friend but it was only the usual collection of off duty white collars and law students. I took a quick inventory of my drink and situation. I stuck one of her Marlboros in my mouth and in grabbing the matchbox I noticed that she wrote a personal message and her email address on it, probably when I went to refill our glasses. Luck of this magnitude had absolutely no precedent with me and I had no idea how to react to it. This was a plot to a tawdry movie starring a British male lead and an actress trying to broaden her appeal. Be it from damage or inborn condition, I have never been able to recognize the presence of love by any other means than the negative space left in its absence. The immediate and immense attraction I felt literally existed in a place outside of my experience set and the effect was frightening. She came back from the restroom and asked me what I was thinking about, I said “a scary movie.” Her name was email I was already writing in my head and my name was clearly dodged question.
Forty seven minutes after meeting her, her friend finally arrived. Her friend turned out to be a six foot tall man with a military haircut. She introduced him as her boyfriend and mercifully a momentary spike in the ambient room noise drowned out his name. He held out his hand with genuine warmth and - remembering now -I like to think that I returned the gesture. We were all still standing as he told the story of how they had met which, predictably, was a chance encounter in shop three years earlier. He punctuated the story with the words “I knew this was the girl that I was going to try my best to marry.” Her look lingered on him with unabashed affection. Never being one to miss my cue I flagged down a waitress and ordered another appletini and two neat scotches. We all shared a wordless minute while the drinks came, but when they did I proposed a toast to their nuptials and good health. I made a lighthearted comment that fish and third wheels stink after three minutes and began to gather my effects. She said that I couldn’t go – “You’re my light!” “It’s cool,” I told her “I left the matches.”
It was very recently I was sitting in a bar on the corner of Lincolnway and Napoleon Street across the table from two girls who where telling me that I should abandon my anachronistic notions of romanticism. The one with blue eyes said that sort of thing doesn’t really exist. I told her I would rather be lonely than cynical.
I would have used this story as evidence but I knew I would be incapable presenting it with the intended effect. That night seemed surreal to me because it was, but by the time I had heard my songs play and closed my tab the world went right back to making sense. We lived a brief fiction, true, but it’s the fiction I would attempt to make the story of my life. Her name was new watermark and my name became refuse to settle for less.
This is the reason I name all the beautiful and important things in my life Sophia.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Solver
Of the 5,176,349 –estimated- questions I am asked/decisions I am expected to make each and every day, I think I can maybe answer confidently 3… tops. It’s not that I am indecisive, far from it, actually I am the guy you love to stand behind at Starbucks because my order is memorized and the instructions clear with the correct change out and at the ready. No, my inability to arrive to satisfactory conclusions is due largely to the fact that I am in a leadership role without being a natural born leader.
Whenever I am pulled away from a project I am working on to answer a question that should have been deflected due to either its’ preposterous nature (such as asking if we serve a food that doesn’t exist. Re: Alaskan Crawfish) or one in which the answer is inherent in the question itself (“Does our CD player play laser discs?”) my blood pressure spikes a little. By mid morning my diastolic has hit such a fever pitch I try to refocus the energy into thoughts that kill.
A big part of what I do is preparing food that will be sold at a casual dining café. In the course of my duties I have found that any douche bag can sprinkle Ms. Dash on a steak and call it ‘seasoned’. But if you are the kind of douche bag that actually takes the time to grind toasted peppercorns in a mortar and pestle in order to release the natural oils that allow whatever spice blend its added to cling to brisket more completely during the curing process, then you are a douche bag that takes barbecue seriously. I am just such a douche bag. So it is common practice for me to layout the proper ingredients and utensils that I will need, cue up a playlist, crack my knuckles and bow before my honored prey. I then enter a trance in which my eyes glass over and the world becomes a neat series of ordered steps that when followed with care and precision produces end products any red blooded carnivore can truly be proud of. Anything that breaks me from my reverie is sure to be met with at best mild annoyance and at worst something hot and/or sharp thrown with deadly accuracy.
Homicidal misanthropy may not be the best quality for someone in a role of a decision maker, yet it’s the position I have somehow Forrest Gumpped my way into. This sitcom set up has inspired me to explore the nature of authority and its fickle mistress, responsibility.
The first thing that came to mind is just how haphazardly fate seems to assign authority. Sometimes the one with the biggest hat is the best qualified, sometimes they inherited the hat, and sometimes they are wearing it only because it looks like they should. This scatter plot of causality is on full display and in living color all around us. I once worked for a guy that I thought was incapable of communicating in any method save the mind numbingly inefficient tongue of execu-speak. Even at fifteen, I found myself imagining the Rube Goldberg –esq bureaucratic apparatus that would intentionally put this person in a position of authority. Roughly at the same time we had another supervisor who was confident in his decisions and arrived to them quickly then communicated them concisely – a natural born leader. It wasn’t until years later that I was able to tell that miniboss B actually arrived to a shitload of erroneous conclusions and was simply putting on a show. As a consequence, he remained in the lowly position, impressing only high school summer help. I also found out that Execu-speak went through a vigorous training system that required years of dedication and his method of management left such an impact on me that I find myself emulating some of the same style 1.5 decades later.
So the second thing that came to my mind is the fact that I am a very poor judge of who should be wearing hats.
Whenever I am pulled away from a project I am working on to answer a question that should have been deflected due to either its’ preposterous nature (such as asking if we serve a food that doesn’t exist. Re: Alaskan Crawfish) or one in which the answer is inherent in the question itself (“Does our CD player play laser discs?”) my blood pressure spikes a little. By mid morning my diastolic has hit such a fever pitch I try to refocus the energy into thoughts that kill.
A big part of what I do is preparing food that will be sold at a casual dining café. In the course of my duties I have found that any douche bag can sprinkle Ms. Dash on a steak and call it ‘seasoned’. But if you are the kind of douche bag that actually takes the time to grind toasted peppercorns in a mortar and pestle in order to release the natural oils that allow whatever spice blend its added to cling to brisket more completely during the curing process, then you are a douche bag that takes barbecue seriously. I am just such a douche bag. So it is common practice for me to layout the proper ingredients and utensils that I will need, cue up a playlist, crack my knuckles and bow before my honored prey. I then enter a trance in which my eyes glass over and the world becomes a neat series of ordered steps that when followed with care and precision produces end products any red blooded carnivore can truly be proud of. Anything that breaks me from my reverie is sure to be met with at best mild annoyance and at worst something hot and/or sharp thrown with deadly accuracy.
Homicidal misanthropy may not be the best quality for someone in a role of a decision maker, yet it’s the position I have somehow Forrest Gumpped my way into. This sitcom set up has inspired me to explore the nature of authority and its fickle mistress, responsibility.
The first thing that came to mind is just how haphazardly fate seems to assign authority. Sometimes the one with the biggest hat is the best qualified, sometimes they inherited the hat, and sometimes they are wearing it only because it looks like they should. This scatter plot of causality is on full display and in living color all around us. I once worked for a guy that I thought was incapable of communicating in any method save the mind numbingly inefficient tongue of execu-speak. Even at fifteen, I found myself imagining the Rube Goldberg –esq bureaucratic apparatus that would intentionally put this person in a position of authority. Roughly at the same time we had another supervisor who was confident in his decisions and arrived to them quickly then communicated them concisely – a natural born leader. It wasn’t until years later that I was able to tell that miniboss B actually arrived to a shitload of erroneous conclusions and was simply putting on a show. As a consequence, he remained in the lowly position, impressing only high school summer help. I also found out that Execu-speak went through a vigorous training system that required years of dedication and his method of management left such an impact on me that I find myself emulating some of the same style 1.5 decades later.
So the second thing that came to my mind is the fact that I am a very poor judge of who should be wearing hats.
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Workout
Due to a few complications with the fairer sex, some disillusionment at work, and a particularly obstinate portion of Halo 3’s singe player campaign, I have been experiencing quite a bit of frustration recently. When this happens the coping mechanism that I usually employ involves whiskey in a restorative practice I call “working out my issues with Dr. Glenmerangie”, but every now and again I find that it can be very therapeutic to simply go to the gym and lift heavy shit for a while.
Much to the surprise of those who know me by my frequent and often back to back appearances at the local icehouses, I am a fully paid member of a local gym and have been for the past three years. What should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone is that I only went for about five months, and have only maintained my membership because canceling adds air of finality to an ongoing shame. Sometimes I will make overtures towards going back to the fitness club; buying a new pair of workout pants or do some online research on various exercises. But then I discover that there is absolutely nothing more comfortable to nap in than workout pants and I can’t sit at a computer for too long without googling something naughty.
I’m never even motivated to go to the gym as a matter of health. The last thing I did solely for the benefit of my physical well being was to quit smoking and all that served to do was balloon me from 147 to 188 pounds. I literally gained twenty percent of my previous “unhealthy” weight and arranged in into unsightly gut rolls around my abdomen. There also seems to be a knowledge set that goes along with regular workouts. Whenever I am at the club I see people following their pre described motions with a fluidity and confidence honed from years of habitual workouts. For me, going to the gym is not unlike sex; I don’t do it frequently, I am never at it long enough to do any good, I’m pretty sure my form is awkward, and I have no idea if I am using this particular machine correctly, but through it all I am always proud of myself for making the attempt.
A strange perversity exists in the fact that I would go to a gym because I am displeased with my body, only to find that the place is lined with mirrors. Workout music is also a key factor in the exercise experience and it is the mirror phenomenon that has led me to identify one of my favorite songs as strangely appropriate to the situation. As evident of the fact that I am the occasional butt of a cosmic joke, sometimes when I am gracelessly operating a machine that has oddly placed pads and an alien looking pulley system a member of the Men’s Swedish Olympic biathlon team with blonde hair and 0% body fat will stand right next to me in the reflection and begin to work a weight stack that I thought was only there for show. Little does Bjorn Borg know that in my ears, my seemingly innocuous ipod is piping in Depeche Mode, and David Gahan is currently reminding me that “I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.”
There is, however, something vastly different about using exercise as a form of exorcism. Whenever life has me bound into my tight little ball of nerves, it almost invariably involves the things in my world in which I have the least amount of control. In these cases there is nothing I can do to immediately rectify my situation and so I slip into the familiar pattern of insomnia, mild depression, and frequent viewings of Dr. No. The alternative, I have found, is simply to make your body feel as worked up as your mind until the whole of your person acquires a blissful, spent feeling that makes your bed your bestess friend in the whole wide world. The beauty of this approach to exercise is that you pay no attention to the lasting benefits of whatever workout you are doing. The goal is simply exhaustion. Let the fitness aficionados wonder why you are military pressing the squat machine in a reverse lotus position or cast side long glances as you push the entire nautilus machine in circles around the weight room, just as long as you end up feeling absolutely depleted you have done your bit. Now all that’s left to do is go home and collapse in a sweaty mess on your bedcovers and smile at the fact that your bodies cry for sleep is louder than your brains protests about shit you can’t solve.
Much to the surprise of those who know me by my frequent and often back to back appearances at the local icehouses, I am a fully paid member of a local gym and have been for the past three years. What should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone is that I only went for about five months, and have only maintained my membership because canceling adds air of finality to an ongoing shame. Sometimes I will make overtures towards going back to the fitness club; buying a new pair of workout pants or do some online research on various exercises. But then I discover that there is absolutely nothing more comfortable to nap in than workout pants and I can’t sit at a computer for too long without googling something naughty.
I’m never even motivated to go to the gym as a matter of health. The last thing I did solely for the benefit of my physical well being was to quit smoking and all that served to do was balloon me from 147 to 188 pounds. I literally gained twenty percent of my previous “unhealthy” weight and arranged in into unsightly gut rolls around my abdomen. There also seems to be a knowledge set that goes along with regular workouts. Whenever I am at the club I see people following their pre described motions with a fluidity and confidence honed from years of habitual workouts. For me, going to the gym is not unlike sex; I don’t do it frequently, I am never at it long enough to do any good, I’m pretty sure my form is awkward, and I have no idea if I am using this particular machine correctly, but through it all I am always proud of myself for making the attempt.
A strange perversity exists in the fact that I would go to a gym because I am displeased with my body, only to find that the place is lined with mirrors. Workout music is also a key factor in the exercise experience and it is the mirror phenomenon that has led me to identify one of my favorite songs as strangely appropriate to the situation. As evident of the fact that I am the occasional butt of a cosmic joke, sometimes when I am gracelessly operating a machine that has oddly placed pads and an alien looking pulley system a member of the Men’s Swedish Olympic biathlon team with blonde hair and 0% body fat will stand right next to me in the reflection and begin to work a weight stack that I thought was only there for show. Little does Bjorn Borg know that in my ears, my seemingly innocuous ipod is piping in Depeche Mode, and David Gahan is currently reminding me that “I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.”
There is, however, something vastly different about using exercise as a form of exorcism. Whenever life has me bound into my tight little ball of nerves, it almost invariably involves the things in my world in which I have the least amount of control. In these cases there is nothing I can do to immediately rectify my situation and so I slip into the familiar pattern of insomnia, mild depression, and frequent viewings of Dr. No. The alternative, I have found, is simply to make your body feel as worked up as your mind until the whole of your person acquires a blissful, spent feeling that makes your bed your bestess friend in the whole wide world. The beauty of this approach to exercise is that you pay no attention to the lasting benefits of whatever workout you are doing. The goal is simply exhaustion. Let the fitness aficionados wonder why you are military pressing the squat machine in a reverse lotus position or cast side long glances as you push the entire nautilus machine in circles around the weight room, just as long as you end up feeling absolutely depleted you have done your bit. Now all that’s left to do is go home and collapse in a sweaty mess on your bedcovers and smile at the fact that your bodies cry for sleep is louder than your brains protests about shit you can’t solve.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Kickoff
I have been sitting at this computer for hours. The project at the onset was to write three thirty second radio commercials for the café and produce two full page color ads for the local rags. So far I have arranged the margins in illustrator. I have spent the remainder of my morning arranging playlists, tweeting, emailing, and fruitlessly instant messaging people to try to start a conversation about anything. When I found myself actually thinking “I really should update my myspace page” I knew my boredom hit the kind of terminal velocity that is generally reserved for carpet shopping.
Tool once cautioned us in their 1998 opus “Stinkfist” that “Boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear.” Of course that song is an invitation to jamming fingers up some dude’s ass. Now I have been very very bored in my life, and not once had I considered that the cure to that boredom had anything to do with convincing someone to let me go wrist-deep up their dirt button. I don’t even know how to start that conversation let alone close that deal. I think I can be charming at times but I am nowhere near that convincing. That requires stores of personality that simply cannot be filled by my personal well, which is fed by aquifers of video games and regular visits or urban dictionary. Bottom line, if Maynard James Keenan was singing the truth I am shit (PUN!) out of luck.
But this is a toxic kind of boredom. This is the kind of boredom that actually makes you dumber. It is exactly this kind of boredom that has directly contributed to the creation, proliferation, and sensational success of Tyler Perry movies. I am going to admit that I have never actually seen one but I will say that based on what I have been able to determine from the box art and titles alone I will avoid them like a chancre. I place them in a special category right alongside Larry the Cable Guy movies in that they celebrate all the worse things about modern American culture and attempt to make the unacceptable behavior of some the standard of decency by lowing the collective bar rather than challenge us to live up to the lofty standards set forth by our more civilized past. Then I shut myself in my mantuary like Don Cantankerous Judgmental McCranky, draw the blinds and laugh at socially damaging movies of entirely different genres. I mean, come on. The dude abides.
Doubt the destructive power of boredom? Look no further than The Godfather Part III. We had two movies that were absolutely amazing and can, and have been, watched time and time and time and time again and shown to my three year old nephew as exemplar of how real men resolve confrontation. Then Frances Ford Coppola got bored. Now we have to reconcile the fact that Michael became a wuss by forgiving Annie Hall and pining for her, not to mention the god awful Sofia Coppola cousin-lovin’ subplot. In the span of two hours they had forever stained the otherwise pristine escutcheon of The Godfather into something resembling a story arc from The Bold and the Beautiful. It felt like they dug up Mario Puzo’s corpse and raped it over and over again with fire.
Boredom is your brains way of saying STIMULATE ME. So it is curious that when you sit on your stool in front of your desk and complain in high pitched falsetto that you are indeed bored, people invariably suggest that you do something that is also boring. “Well if you are so bored, why don’t you clean your desk?” Because that doesn’t solve the freaking problem now does it? That activity wouldn’t alter the situation away from boredom. It would simply change the activity that is causing the boredom. If people where really interested in making the act of desk cleaning a tempo changing activity they would suggest it when you are in the middle of something fun and exciting. Whoo! This activity sure is fun! And exciting! How about we get rid of those catalogues you don’t look at and clear away the old coffee mugs?!
Maybe I should take up blogging.
Tool once cautioned us in their 1998 opus “Stinkfist” that “Boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear.” Of course that song is an invitation to jamming fingers up some dude’s ass. Now I have been very very bored in my life, and not once had I considered that the cure to that boredom had anything to do with convincing someone to let me go wrist-deep up their dirt button. I don’t even know how to start that conversation let alone close that deal. I think I can be charming at times but I am nowhere near that convincing. That requires stores of personality that simply cannot be filled by my personal well, which is fed by aquifers of video games and regular visits or urban dictionary. Bottom line, if Maynard James Keenan was singing the truth I am shit (PUN!) out of luck.
But this is a toxic kind of boredom. This is the kind of boredom that actually makes you dumber. It is exactly this kind of boredom that has directly contributed to the creation, proliferation, and sensational success of Tyler Perry movies. I am going to admit that I have never actually seen one but I will say that based on what I have been able to determine from the box art and titles alone I will avoid them like a chancre. I place them in a special category right alongside Larry the Cable Guy movies in that they celebrate all the worse things about modern American culture and attempt to make the unacceptable behavior of some the standard of decency by lowing the collective bar rather than challenge us to live up to the lofty standards set forth by our more civilized past. Then I shut myself in my mantuary like Don Cantankerous Judgmental McCranky, draw the blinds and laugh at socially damaging movies of entirely different genres. I mean, come on. The dude abides.
Doubt the destructive power of boredom? Look no further than The Godfather Part III. We had two movies that were absolutely amazing and can, and have been, watched time and time and time and time again and shown to my three year old nephew as exemplar of how real men resolve confrontation. Then Frances Ford Coppola got bored. Now we have to reconcile the fact that Michael became a wuss by forgiving Annie Hall and pining for her, not to mention the god awful Sofia Coppola cousin-lovin’ subplot. In the span of two hours they had forever stained the otherwise pristine escutcheon of The Godfather into something resembling a story arc from The Bold and the Beautiful. It felt like they dug up Mario Puzo’s corpse and raped it over and over again with fire.
Boredom is your brains way of saying STIMULATE ME. So it is curious that when you sit on your stool in front of your desk and complain in high pitched falsetto that you are indeed bored, people invariably suggest that you do something that is also boring. “Well if you are so bored, why don’t you clean your desk?” Because that doesn’t solve the freaking problem now does it? That activity wouldn’t alter the situation away from boredom. It would simply change the activity that is causing the boredom. If people where really interested in making the act of desk cleaning a tempo changing activity they would suggest it when you are in the middle of something fun and exciting. Whoo! This activity sure is fun! And exciting! How about we get rid of those catalogues you don’t look at and clear away the old coffee mugs?!
Maybe I should take up blogging.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
