Thursday, October 25, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
#149 - Backseat Parenting
Backseat Parenting
10/15/12 (#149)
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
#148 - Left, Right, and Wrong
Left, Right, and Wrong
9/18/12 (#148)
Every election is purported to be an opportunity to change the direction of the country, to finally get on a real path to prosperity. But recent history reveals a frustrating pattern: The Dems win, they spend more and solve little, so the pendulum swings, the GOP wins, and they spend more and solve little, so the cycle repeats. Worse, both sides sometimes don't even TRY to fix things, they simply promote their own ambitions and endeavor to block the opponent's agenda. (If my daughter's fourth-grade class had a "mock congress" that behaved the way our elected politicians do, the teacher would intervene and say, "You seem to have misunderstood the assignment. I didn't ask you to be petulant divas, I asked you to work together to find a compromise.")
But those are the key terms of our public discourse. Politics is an increasingly perverse game of revenue enhancement, with politicians arguing about gay marriage and the definition of rape while the nation buckles under $16 trillion debt. Watching the two parties is like watching a couple argue over what color to paint the kitchen while the foreclosure notice is sitting unopened in their mail pile. We have allowed our politicians to become the equivalent of reality TV stars, and in too many cases, their goal is nothing more than securing a role in next season's show. I'm exhausted even being a witness to this spectacle, let alone a participant.
Walt Whitman, speaking as America in Song of Myself, said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" America once celebrated itself as a melting pot, but more and more, people seem to seek homogeny. Look at Ron Paul's journey to Tampa and the RNC. Convention officials did everything they could to shut out Paul's supporters, to silence their voices. This isn't even partisan politics — they're all Republicans, yet factions in the party made tremendous effort to silence other factions of the party. The irony of using decidedly un-democratic tactics as a fulcrum to hoist your candidate for a democratic election is so bald-faced that it should have been lambasted by every person at that convention, and in America. Are we to believe that silencing dissenting voices is somehow fighting the good fight? Would we praise our children if this is how they managed to get ahead in school?
Our fellow citizens are not our opponents. They are not the enemy. We are all Americans, and shame on us for allowing the conversation to escalate to where we self-righteously pass judgment on another person's patriotism. My latest favorite is posting an image of the US flag and saying "I'm not embarrassed to post this. Are you?" So you define patriotism by your own standard, then anyone who doesn't meet your standard is a sub-par American? If I don't do what you do, it's presumed I'm embarrassed?
I'll trump the flag-photo posters and remind us all of what it says in the Pledge of Allegiance: "One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."* Indivisible? Are we collectively fulfilling this pledge when we declare liberals to be idiots (because all liberals are the same, just like "women" and "Latinos" and "gays" are completely homogenous demographics ) and call conservatives suckers (because anyone who doesn't come to the same conclusions that we do is obviously a pawn to some diabolical machine?)
I believe that everyone wants to see our nation thrive, and that everyone is genuine in their expression. I applaud those who are passionate about their views and care about the future of our nation, but many have let that passion cloud their perception. If we encounter data that underscores our beliefs, it is valuable information; if it contradicts our beliefs, the data is deceptive. If a candidate espouses our values, we can forgive them for failings; if not, everything they do is deemed suspect. It calls to mind the proverb, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" — which serves better as a proverb than a platform.
It is frustrating that the government has managed to establish itself as the only way to get things done, yet partisan bickering makes it nearly impossible to get things done. It's frustrating that the government has its hands in absolutely everything — as a friend who emigrated from Laos once told me, "America talks a lot about freedom, but you aren't free at all. If you want to get married, you need the government to make it legal; if you want to build a fence around your yard, you need the city's approval; if you even want to have a yard sale to sell your old things, you have to get a permit." We give a lot of lip service to America's freedom while our elected officials overtly or unconsciously work to limit those freedoms every day. (Of course, it's okay to limit freedoms on things we don't care about — just don't touch the things that matter to us personally.)
I am not against the the idea of the federal government: the armed forces and the interstate highway systems alone make me willing to support the concept. But we have accepted the ridiculous state of partisan politics as par for the course, and not enough people are calling it out as such. I expect better of us as citizens, and I believe we should expect more of our politicians. We should demand more from them.
But there's the catch-22: the problem isn't the government, it's us. We have become increasingly selfish, intolerant, even belligerent, and anyone who benefits from discord (including political parties and political action committees and the media) takes advantage of that. We have become a nation divided, and for that, we blame the opposition, not ourselves. We sing the praises of America's forefathers, but we don't want to act with the strength and character and cooperation that defined them.
I have hope for America (and I'm not embarrassed to say it), but I have genuine concern that this partisan, money-fueled government is merely a reflection of a national partisan mindset. We tolerate politicians buying votes by promising government projects, we elect and re-elect candidates whose lack of understanding of the issues they oversee is demonstrated by their public statements. We have accepted that a person can win an election not on the merits of their own ideas, but because there were enough people willing to vote against their opponent.
Margaret Thatcher said, "Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't." That's analogous to my idea of America as a great nation: it's not enough to say America is great — we have to behave with greatness. We have to stop reveling in the petty, disruptive infighting that permeates our national discourse and focus on solutions that demonstrate the legendary spirit that has defined our greatness for the last 240 years. I don't believe those solutions will come from so-called leaders who promise to steadfastly promote a particular agenda when they get to Congress. "I will not compromise" shouldn't be seen as a strength, it should be questioned as a failing of one's flexibility.
Ever heard the phrase, "You're only as good as your last game"? It means that no matter what you're history, your reputation depends on what you do today. America has a rich and storied history, one that warrants a claim to greatness. But we can't simply stand on the shoulders of giants — we need to continue to be great. And being great as a nation requires being great as individuals, committed to the ideas and ideals upon which this nation was founded.
Let's start with one word: Indivisible.
Think we can do that?
* quoting the original pledge, as "under god" was added 62 years after it was written and I'd rather talk about us than god for the moment
Monday, June 25, 2012
#147 - The Lyrical Offenses of "Hey Jealousy"
The Lyrical Offenses of "Hey Jealousy"
6/25/12 (#147)
My friend Ben, who I like and admire, recently attempted to sever our friendship by admitting to having fond memories of The Gin Blossoms. This is hard for me to accept because the band was borne from a tainted era of generic American "alternative" bands. If you lived through so-called modern rock radio in the 90s, you know the crop of crap I'm talking about — it was an endless potpourri of upbeat innocuousness sung by that annoying prick in your high school math class. The bands were generally interchangeable: you could slip a Dada disc into your friend's Better Than Ezra case and the subterfuge would likely never be discovered; if someone went to see a Marcy's Playground show and Blind Melon took the stage instead, would they be disappointed? Would they even notice? Ditto for The Gin Blossoms. Even the band's own mothers sometimes mistook them for Dishwalla.
Don't get me wrong, I will grant that "Hey Jealousy" is undeniably, even unmercifully catchy. (See the video here.) But if we measure quality by the ability to create an earworm that burrows into the listener's skull and leave them so crippled that they frantically seek out mattress-store jingles as a means of relief, then roll over Beethoven, because Katy Perry has some news to deliver. Ben's mention of the band reanimated that insidious melodic virus in my head, and after de-friending him on social media (including LinkedIn, because I could never work with someone who might say, "Hey, know what will make this workday go faster? New Miserable Experience!") I could feel old questions rising up within me, questions that confront me every time I listen to "Hey Jealousy":
- Is Jealousy a person? The syntax of the lyrics makes it seem so, but perhaps he's speaking of an emotional abstract, sort of in a Chuck Palahniuk-esque "I am Jack's wanking nostalgia" sort of way. Though neither way makes much sense, so this is more of a rhetorical question.
- Have these guys ever had the cops chase them around? Let's be honest, this band seems a bit wussy, what with the well-washed shoulder-length hair that makes them all look like the actors listed as "Rock Band Members 1-5" in a Disney movie. And frankly, while the video features a vintage 60s Ford or some other retro-approved gas-guzzler, this band is pure Toyota Corolla, and cops don't chase Corollas — cops catch Corollas. Ten-to-one says that if The Gin Blossoms were pulled over by the police, at least one of them would say, "Shit, my dad's gonna freak. I'm still on his insurance!"
- Considering the vacuousness of the lyrics, couldn't you have written a third verse rather than repeating the first? Before you assert that many songs repeat verses, here's how the repeated-verse device usually works: The first verse seems to mean one thing; the second verse adds a twist; the first verse is then repeated, but has a different meaning because of the new information. For example:
Verse 1: I hate going to Jenny's house.
See what happened there? Verse 3 is a repeat, but it's more poignant because of what you learned elsewhere in the song. That doesn't happen in Hey Jealousy. Instead, a drunkard tells you he's in no shape for driving, and then drunkenly says it again 90 seconds later because he apparently doesn't remember saying it.
Verse 2: I have always ached for Jenny, but she likes girls. Like, like-likes.
Verse 3: I hate going to Jenny's house. - What the hell is a Gin Blossom, anyway? Is that some Southwest cactus thing, or is it like Concrete Blonde, a juxtaposition of hard and soft words? Watching the video, I doubt these guys drink a whole lot of gin. Though Wine Cooler Blossoms is admittedly long.
- Does the singer really think he's making a plausible case for regaining Jealousy's affections? A quick examination of a few particular lines reveals some serious chinks in the singer's Ring-Ding wrapper armor:
- "If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago, I might not be alone" — ahhh, so sweet. Rather than emphasizing your previous inability to recognize someone's value, just tell them you don't want to be alone. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to be a convenient port in the storm?
- "All I really want is to be with you, feeling like I matter too" — Listen pal, time to brush up on Wooing 101: Make the other person feel special; telling them YOU want to feel special makes you seem like a high-maintenance douche.
- "You can trust me not to think, and not to sleep around" — Wow, you are setting the bar so high. How could a person ever live up to such a chivalric declaration?
- "If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down" — This lazy pronouncement of slackerdom would be awful even without the caveat, but note that he says "you MIGHT not be let down." So even if you DON'T expect too much (and let's be honest, Romeo, no one is by this point in the song) this jackass STILL might not live up to those low expectations. Gosh, what a prize!
I know The Gin Blossoms aren't the only chumps who parleyed a catchy riff into a few years of steady blasting from frat house windows; I know that the canon of banal pop lyrics is vast enough that it's hard to single out one band as special; I know that many of America's youth have succumbed to the notion that growing one's hair out is a sure-fire remedy for blue balls. The Gin Blossoms didn't invent any of that — but they are the essence of that, the overlapping center of the Venn diagram of laughable rock clichés, and I'd wash my hands of them forever if I could just get that goddam song out of my head.
©2012 wpreagan
Sunday, June 17, 2012
#146 - Pandora's Boombox
Pandora's Boombox
6/17/12 (#146)
Frankly, it is nothing short of amazing — and I'm happy. Science fiction Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That's how I feel about Pandora. My daughter thinks that Pandora is the norm, that immediate access to a personalized music stream is how you listen to music; but I know better — because I have known a reality other than this one.
Monday, June 4, 2012
#145 - Unspeakable Things
Unspeakable Things
6/4/12 (#145)
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
#144 - Beauty Consultant for Hire
Beauty Consultant For Hire
3/28/12 (#144)
I want to change careers. It would be a big shift, but I believe I will make a fantastic beauty consultant. Not like the animated mannequins at high-end department stores who prey on people's insecurities by demonstrating how they can mask miniscule "flaws" in the interest of so-called self-improvement, and certainly not like the plastic surgeons who multiply that make-up counter pitch to exponentially more permanent and costly extremes. No, my services will be much simpler: For the smallest possible fee that would still allow me to feed my family, I would meet with people professionally and point out every beautiful thing about them.
A career built on being complimentary? Don't be too quick to dismiss it, because there are two critical factors that make this a plausible business model:
First, I honestly think most people are beautiful. This doesn't mean they fit some preconceived template for attractiveness like the stringent guidelines employed by the advertising industry — it means they're beautiful in their own right, on their own terms. For me, it's as simple as this: When you see a person, imagine what the person who loves them loves most about them. Maybe it's the warmth in a woman's eyes or the readiness of a man's smile, the breadth of their shoulders or the grace of their gait, the confidence in their posture or the effervescence of their laugh. I don't think anyone is beautiful in exactly the same way someone else is beautiful, but that doesn't mean they aren't every bit as beautiful as the next person, and the next.
Second, so many people seem painfully self-aware of their supposed flaws. You can see it in the way they apply their make-up or use clothing as a disguise, how they cut their hair to cover their face or keep their smile tight to hide what's behind it. Maybe some of what I see is my imagination, but I recognize the ruses - I've done the same things myself, because I consider my best features to be between my ears, not on my face. I know the vulnerability one feels when a smile is met with a deliberate glance away, when we invest more effort than we should into aspiring to what only feels like adequacy, let alone excellence. In short, I know what it means to be human. And I'm smart enough to realize that being human is enough.
I would be amazing at the job, primarily because I would approach it with complete abandon. I would never lie to my clients, because I wouldn't have to — I would simply accentuate the positives that people too often deny in themselves. The real beauty, not the blueprint imposed by inaptly-named "beauty magazines."
The goal is not to convince people that they are closer than they think to some fictional ideal they have set in their sights. Pursuing an external definition of attractiveness is the opposite of what I want to achieve. My aim is to expose that fiction as a fraud, to reveal to them what is obvious to me: they are already beautiful, and any time spent worrying otherwise is time wasted. I don't presume it will be an easy conversion, but I believe I have the facts on my side.
While I really do believe that almost everyone is beautiful, there are still ways that people make themselves unattractive. Arrogance is a genuinely ugly trait, and no amount of make-up can cover it up; ditto on hatred, because drawing ugly lines in your heart also creates ugly lines on your face. (I know no one who finds scowl lines enticing.) But as for the rest of the species, I use the food analogy: there are absolutely no similarities between pizza and apples and ice cream, and I appreciate every one of them. I don't wish they were more like each other — I celebrate how different they all are. People have big noses and small noses, perfect teeth and crooked teeth, balding heads and hairy arms and curvaceous thighs and flat chests and furrowed brows and flirty smiles, and there's something genuinely compelling in every feature if you look at what's there, not what's missing. To hell with anyone who tells you otherwise — you (yes you, dear reader) are genuinely beautiful, and I'm not just offering platitudes. You really are, so-called flaws and all.
(Wait, this business model isn't going to work if I keep giving this away.)
©2012 wpreagan
Saturday, January 28, 2012
#143 - Dishing It Out
Dishing It Out
1/28/12 (#143)
Why have dishes and silverware if you're not going to use them?
That was the inside joke at our house to justify a sink cluttered with dirty plates and bowls, coffee mugs stuffed with so much flatware they resembled metallic hedgehogs or some found-art installation. My wife and I both dislike washing dishes, so for years, we simply wouldn't do it until we had to. When one of us would inevitably be forced to stir coffee with a butter knife or contemplate eating cereal with a serving ladle, we would resign ourselves to the task and invest two or three hours into cleaning and returning every item to its respective shelf or drawer. It was a massive undertaking, but it only takes one serving of coffee from a Tupperware container to know that you've reached the end of your dishware tether.
While we were equally willing to build mock city skylines with piles of dishes of varying heights, I am better able to tolerate dismantling the towers — it satisfies my latent obsessive/compulsive tendencies, the dish rack becoming a blank canvas and filling every square inch an art form. An hour into excavating the porcelain midden we formerly used as our sink, the dish rack bowed under the weight of its contents, items propped and dangling with such precarious complexity that it called to mind the finale of a Cirque de Soleil show. At this point I would back away slowly and say to my wife in my best Nigel Tufnell, "Don't touch it. Don't even point at it."
When I was staying at my Mom's house this past summer, I noticed that she washed the dishes every night. Once the food-consumption portion of the evening was done (which for her meant "dinner", while in our house that means "post-prime-time chip raid") she would quickly and efficiently clean the kitchen before settling down to relax for the evening. As a result, every morning, the kitchen was spotless and inviting. Her favorite coffee mug was sitting next to the coffee maker, not buried under the rubble of a three-course meal. I know, it was a simple, deliberate routine that made this happen, yet every morning it seemed like magic.
Of course, applying this simple, deliberate routine to my own home was akin to telling a would-be dieter, "So you just eat healthier food and less of it." Yes, simple to describe — the challenge is in the execution. I have things I want to write, Words with Friends games to play, bad TV I need to watch then scoff at — there simply wasn't time for washing dishes every day. Anyone who would argue otherwise does not understand the depths of my laziness. (To help you put it in perspective, I watch reruns of Chopped. I know what dishes they're creating, I know who wins, and there is nothing to be gained from watching it. But it is so much easier to watch it than to get up and do something productive.)
By the beginning of Winter, an opportunity for changing my mindset finally arrived — my wife's birthday. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'm not a great gift-giver. I fret over what to get her every year, wanting to give her something that's creative, thoughtful, useful, and not an item of clutter. Along with the creative gift (read: clutter) that my daughter and I made for her, I also made her a pledge: She would not have to wash dishes for an entire year. This might not be a fun gift to pull out of box, but if ever there was a gift that keeps on giving, this was it. Needless to say, she loved the idea of the gift, even if she was skeptical about delivery.
But I'm delivering. It required a complete lifestyle change, but knowing I have a few of my mom's genes in me, I knew it was possible. I abandoned my previous ignore-as-long-as-possible approach and made dish washing part of my daily ritual. The gift was intended to benefit my wife, but I've realized essential benefits for myself:
- I'm smarter, which has nothing to do with dishes but everything to do with the audio books I listen to while I wash. It is so nice to have a warm voice whispering some writer's brilliant words into my ears, transporting me to some faraway place where no one is scrubbing meat residue from the bottom of a no-it's-not-non-stick pan.
- I'm not dumber, which is how I often feel when I watch television. I'm not against TV as a media form, as there are many thought-provoking and informative shows available to the viewer. But in my case, I'm just as likely to watch Wipeout, the obstacle-course competition that celebrates contestants being bludgeoned by giant padded apparatuses. (Mindless? Yes. Fun? Also yes.)
- There's magic in the house, just like there was at my Mom's house. Every morning, I step into the kitchen and revel in the cleanliness, knowing we won't need to move a pile of plates to find space for making our daughter's lunch. You might think this would eventually cease to be noteworthy, but 60 days in, it is a daily delight. And since I'm not the type to take the good things in my life for granted, I expect this will remain a delight.
It hasn't been a seamless transition — my hands are getting dry and cracked, and I'm struggling to find a dish glove that affords the dexterity I prefer when washing dishes. But the bottom line is this: My wife is happier, and isn't that the ultimate goal of a birthday gift?
You may be expecting a feel-good-movie ending to this essay, a thoughtful summarization of how the value I've found in this finite, focused task has expanded to other parts of my life. Nope. My office desk still resembles a paper-only time capsule, my workshop looks the before picture on a power tool safety poster, and the basement continues to look like an amateur audition for Hoarders.
But c'mon, my favorite coffee mug is always clean. How much magic can one house accommodate?
©2012 wpreagan
Monday, January 9, 2012
#142 - Men In Pink
Men In Pink
1/9/12 (#142)
I have gender issues. Not with being a man (I'm smart enough to I appreciate the good fortune my chromosomal composition has afforded me in America) but with the way our culture continues to define gender, and by reflex, the expectations of each gender. Specifically, what it is to be a "man".
For instance, I wear pink shirts. I like pink shirts. Not as much as blue or white shirts, but enough that I'm glad to have the option to add that color to the palette of my life. That shouldn't be worthy of note, any more than liking yellow shirts, yet at the office recently a woman said, "I like your shirt. It takes a confident man to wear a pink shirt."
Actually, it doesn't. If I could bottle self-doubt, I could make a fortune — though the product seems to be in plentiful supply, so I can't imagine who would buy it. What it takes to wear a pink shirt is fatigue with blue and white and plaid and whatever other shirts a man has in his closet. It's not just me — I work with other guys who wear pink shirts, and if you believe some people's prevailing wisdom, we're either a troupe of swaggering mavericks who boldly thumb our noses at conventional perceptions of manliness, or we're a bunch of dandies. In fact, I DO thumb my nose at the archaic yet common conventions of masculinity in our society — but it has nothing to do with a pink shirt. Because a pink shirt is just a shirt that happens to be pink. I'm not making a statement, I'm simply aware that with ivory-colored khakis and a brown suit jacket, a pink shirt looks quite nice.
I was recently in a Facebook "conversation" (my euphemism for the exchange of opposing viewpoints that follow many posts) about women who ask their men to get tampons or hair dye at the store, and one female commenter stated that any man who would buy these things "doesn't have a man card." This strikes me as a juvenile approach to both menstrual cycles and grocery shopping. I have no problem buying tampons — I know the brand and box my wife prefers, and I don't feel a need to disguise the product in a larger pile of groceries. That doesn't make me less of a man, nor more of a man - it makes me a shopper. If tampons are on the list, it would be ridiculous for me to tell my wife she needs to make a special trip to the store after I've returned with all of the other groceries because I am honor-bound by my Y chromosome to avoid the feminine hygiene aisle.
It was that exchange that enlightened me to a flaw in my thinking: Historically, I have blamed the ongoing delineation of gender roles on men. I thought feminism was working to make women genuine equals, and it was vestiges of the old-boy network that perpetuated the narrow idea of "manly" behavior. This bias was based on my personal observation that many men remain very much hung up on being "manly" - choosing a manly drink at the bar (because what kind of pussy would order a drink with grenadine in it?) or driving a manly car (which explains why VW is trying to define their new Beetle as manly) or refusing to wear a pink shirt. I find these attitudes misguided, but they're common, and I've come to begrudgingly accept it. My error was in thinking that I was taking the women's side on this, because I've been noticing lately that women are just as likely to have a skewed gender perspective.
I remember my wife (before she was my wife) pointing out a "starter" toolkit at one of the big box stores, made for someone who wanted to have basic tools in their home: hammer, pliers, screwdrivers, saw, wire cutters, and an assortment of nails and screws. What made this set noteworthy? Every handle was pink, and they were all encased in a box labeled "Her Toolkit." (In a flowing font that looked like it had been lifted from the front of a cheerleading outfit.) My wife laughed because she owned a black-handled, non-gender-specific hammer, because she never perceived a hammer as an outlet to express her femininity - she simply wanted something that could drive a nail into the drywall. The idea of someone marketing a pink-handled hammer to her was absurd. Of course, she only felt that way because it was absurd.
Another example: a woman called my friend's hardware store and asked to talk with a deck specialist. They sent the call to the resident desk specialist, an experienced woman with a deep knowledge of materials, construction, and local zoning ordinances. The caller asked again to speak with a desk specialist. "That's me," the salesperson insisted, "how can I help?" In short order, it became clear that the caller didn't want to speak to the smartest desk specialist in the store - she wanted to speak to a male deck specialist. Because men really know that kind of stuff, you know? Satisfying the caller meant transferring the line to a less-qualified male employee. Fortunately, they had such a person on staff.
I know that I'm not exposing some seedy, secret underbelly of American culture. This is par-for-the-course even in the 21st century, and that's exactly why I'm speaking of it. These attitudes get reinforced every day, and too many people seem to shrug it off as "just the way things are." We can blame marketers who create ad campaigns like Dr. Pepper 10's inane "It's not for women" or beer ads that contribute catchphrases like "man card" to the cultural dialogue; we can blame Hollywood for perpetuating gender stereotypes under the guise of "that's what audiences respond to"; we can blame anyone and everyone, but there comes a time when we have to accept some responsibility ourselves. Yes, it's the way things are, but it's not the way things ought to be.
With all the negativity that life can throw at us - job insecurity, health scares, resource depletion, domestic violence, terrorism, poverty, natural disasters, insert your personal demons here - does it really matter what color shirt a man wears or who's buying the tampons? Gentlemen, if you like vodka on the rocks, by all means, drink up - but don't choke it down because your preferred Tequila Sunrise makes you "look" like a pansy; and ladies, recognize that a man who faithfully adheres to the testosterone playbook may only be showing his studiousness, not his strength. Rather than worrying about who's wearing the proverbial pants, how about we all put on whatever we want to wear and get to work addressing the things that really matter.
©2012 wpreagan