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.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
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.
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