In my ongoing contemplation regarding biblical anecdotes as mythic explanations of biological occurrences, I am struck, "Why does Joseph get no play in the Bible?" I mean this guy is totally smacked. He must have been the most easy going, forgiving man that ever lived, we’ll at least the second. Think what this poor guy must have had to endure beginning with Mary coming home pregnant and being all, “Now Joe, I know this looks bad but I can explain.” But he was a carpenter, he worked on a construction site, can you imagine the grief he took from his carpenter buddies on the job as he is trying to explain this?
Joseph shaking his head nonchalantly “Oh no man, you got it all wrong, it’s totally cool, it was God.”
The other carpenters are like, “So what you’re saying is your “virgin” (perhaps the first use of air quotes ever) fiancée is pregnant with God’s progeny.”
Joseph: “Exactly.”
Carpenters: “So you’re saying God banged your fiancée”
Joseph: “No, no, no, this angel Gabriel, I don’t know his last name, came down from heaven,”
Joseph is gesticulating with arms stretched upward but getting flustered,
“and….well….did something…,” (doing spirit fingers) “…some magicky thing, but there was no touching, seriously, and like a minute later she was…ahhh, you know…with Messiah.”
There is a long pause until one of the carpenters with his head tilted to one side looking perplexed says, “So..., en vitro?”
“No man totally, totally untouched.” Joseph says clearly annoyed
Carpenters: “Was it in a sterile area?”
Joseph: “Well I’m not sure if it was sterile but it was very, very clean.”
Carpenters: “So what happens now?”
Joseph: “Well, we know it’s a boy,” grumblings of approval, “and I think we have to go to Bethlehem sometime in December.”
Carpeners: “Oi, is it ever busy that time of year you should book ahead.”
Joseph: “I’ve never had a problem before I usually just book a room when we arrive. Anyway after he is born I’ll raise him like my own, teach him the trade, emphasizing how to join wood at a 90 degree angle, until he decides to go forth preaching love and forgiveness.”
Carpenters: “Cool.”
Joseph: “Yeah, but the Romans will kill him for that.”
Carpenters: “Yikes.”
Joseph: "But he’ll rise from the dead on the third day."
Carpenters: "So wait a minute, is he dead or alive now?"
Joseph: "Well both."
Carpenters: "So is he a zombie Christ?"
Joseph: "More like a Holy Ghost."
A collective “ahhhhh” is uttered by the carpenters.
"See he has to die so he can become God,” Joseph continues to explain
Carpenters: "But he is God’s son"
Joseph: "Right."
Carpenters: "So wait a minute, is he God or the son of God?"
Joseph: "Well both…and like I said a Holy Ghost too."
Carpenters: “Then is he dethroning God, replacing him or like mushing into him?”
Joseph: “Mushing I think”
Carpenters: “So let's see if we have this straight. Your still technically undefiled fiancée is pregnant with the son of God via the angel Gabriel who did some magicky angely no touching stuff. Mary will bear the Messiah, who will preach about love until the Romans kill him at which point he will rise from the dead and become God, who is his father, through some sort of mushing process and live in the kingdom of heaven."
Joseph: "Yep."
Carpenters: "Seems like being a Jew will get pretty complicated."
Joseph: "Well about that….”
After some more explanation one of the carpenters-actually the construction manager who had wandered over to see if there was some sort of union work stopage going on says,
“This seems like an amazing business plan to gain traction for a fledgling religion.”
Joseph: “Sure does, but it’s really the marketing plan, I think the business plan will have more to do with making folks give ten percent of there gross adjusted income and then having a few wars, albeit Holy ones, controlling the masses through strong association with the prevailing political entity and some good old fashioned empire building in an effort to add overall value to God by more efficiently preaching a message of love.”
Carpenters: “So gotta name yet?”
Monday, December 15, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sales: How dumb people get rich or Contemporary Darwinian theory
I am looking at the VP of sales for some company that makes something stupid that some other stupid companies use in their completely flawed businesses. Just to be clear by “the VP” I of course mean one of 20 or 30 at this guy’s company who sell something they understand nothing about to people who know even less and I wonder how much longer before the country’s economy actually implodes like the house of cards it is. (author’s note-this was written in Early September 2008 approx. 2 weeks before the 9/19 proposed Fed. bailout of the capital markets)
The VP, who speaking mostly in retarded business jargon from the “Bi-directional exchange of value” handbook, is telling me about his kid. As he prattles on I am thinking, “But you’re so stupid how did your kid get into Stanford?” Imagining his wife must be responsible for the prodigious talents of this young man I ask about her, “So what does your wife do?” “Oh, she’s a mortgage originator.” Well that sure didn’t settle it; she’s a mortgage broker in the state that leads the developed world in creating the worst notes ever written. Then it occurs to me. Athletic scholarship. This is easy now although he is an idiot I can’t just say, “Oh did he get an athletic scholarship” it’s just cruel so I make some reference to the quarter million or so dollars he is about to be relieved of as he underwrites his son’s education. “Nope,” he says shaking his head from side to side, “full ride. My boy is a lacrosse genius.” I just repeat, “Lacrosse genius,” as I nod my head while smiling in a way that often makes my friends uneasy, but nothing nasty is to follow I’m just pleased the world makes sense to me again.
How do dumb people get rich? Acknowledging wealth in certain environments, by creating security and stability, is a necessary component of survival and continuation of species. Sales is proof of Darwinian theory in industrialized and technologically advanced societies. Geeks, creatives and all around smart people should essentially dominate wholesale in this environment leaving jocks and charming but dumb people with chameleonic personalities to languish. But this is not the case, everyone has a rich uncle with tons of money that he is basically unsure how he acquired but is happy he can now do his part to help republican candidates of all flavors. In theory there is no need for that uncle to exist anymore and he should have been eaten, however he was able to sell IBM mainframes with the computational power of air to universities in the sixties and seventies making handsome commissions but more importantly taking massive stock grants. He will explain, “IBM don’t even make nothin’ no more now that they sold that little computer makin’ business to the chinamen.” Any efforts to explain the lucrative nature of consulting, managed services and custom business solutions results in his arms waving as you simultaneously replay the business jargon you just spewed bringing back visions of the economic house of cards.
This of course gets you back to the urban apocalypse. But at least you are prepared.
Sales is the great equalizer in societies where creativity and brilliance is the major economic driver, the lacrosse genius will attend a top tier school making connections with other jocks that will serve him a lifetime as they all go on to sell things to each other in a self perpetuating cycle that without would leave the gene pool filled with too many Dungeons and Dragons players and people suffering from suicidal ideation that can’t run fast or lift heavy things.
This is also why the smartest girl in the class, who only cared about grades, drama club and becoming either Bronte sister will go on to marry the a guy who played football and shotgunned 16oz beers at State U. but is now a broker at Legg Mason. He doesn’t work all that hard now that he’s built his book giving him time to golf which helps him get new clients so he actually makes more money by working less. What transpired to keep her from marrying an economist with a degree in medieval literature and several years of modern dance experience who works for some non-profit where he develops predictive models for expediting food and water to third world countries during natural disasters is unclear but I believe it is an evolutionary trigger that keeps the gene pool from condensing. It didn't have to be a stockbroker she might have had the biker gene, well all women have the biker gene for some period of time. Specifically the biker gene is the, “he is hot, potentially dangerous and fucks me so hard my spine occasionally goes numb-but in a good way.” The actual biker population has thinned substantially and those that remain are generally posers therefore the role of biker in contemporary society is usually occupied by musicians, rogue poets or other brooding, disenfranchised, self-proclaimed geniuses who will never meet her parents. Some of these may however clean-up well go to business school and reenter the population under the guise of normalcy perhaps even fooling some ivy league graduate into marrying them and thus continue the evolutionary cycle in precisely the manner in which it is supposed to while confirming the theory of camouflage in the natural selection process as a causal method of increasing the genetic diversity of species.
Consider careers in real estate, pharmaceutical sales and anything on the brokerage side of the financial market—not the quants, they are a teaspoon of testosterone away from the non-profit modeling guy but when they are not crashing hedge funds with poorly timed swings in natural gas futures still spend way too much time on the playstation. These are the careers that in the event of the urban apocalypse, for which I am prepared, would ensure the continuity of species. Because the sales people would be able to run, hunt and build shelter moreover in the event elements of the food chain were so compromised it became necessary to resort to cannibalism the stockbrokers and realtors would have no problem eating other people in order to survive helping the rest of us acclimate to the taste of human flesh. I feel confident they would start with the lawyers.
Ummm….corporate counsel burgers. Maybe the apocalypse won’t be so bad.
The VP, who speaking mostly in retarded business jargon from the “Bi-directional exchange of value” handbook, is telling me about his kid. As he prattles on I am thinking, “But you’re so stupid how did your kid get into Stanford?” Imagining his wife must be responsible for the prodigious talents of this young man I ask about her, “So what does your wife do?” “Oh, she’s a mortgage originator.” Well that sure didn’t settle it; she’s a mortgage broker in the state that leads the developed world in creating the worst notes ever written. Then it occurs to me. Athletic scholarship. This is easy now although he is an idiot I can’t just say, “Oh did he get an athletic scholarship” it’s just cruel so I make some reference to the quarter million or so dollars he is about to be relieved of as he underwrites his son’s education. “Nope,” he says shaking his head from side to side, “full ride. My boy is a lacrosse genius.” I just repeat, “Lacrosse genius,” as I nod my head while smiling in a way that often makes my friends uneasy, but nothing nasty is to follow I’m just pleased the world makes sense to me again.
How do dumb people get rich? Acknowledging wealth in certain environments, by creating security and stability, is a necessary component of survival and continuation of species. Sales is proof of Darwinian theory in industrialized and technologically advanced societies. Geeks, creatives and all around smart people should essentially dominate wholesale in this environment leaving jocks and charming but dumb people with chameleonic personalities to languish. But this is not the case, everyone has a rich uncle with tons of money that he is basically unsure how he acquired but is happy he can now do his part to help republican candidates of all flavors. In theory there is no need for that uncle to exist anymore and he should have been eaten, however he was able to sell IBM mainframes with the computational power of air to universities in the sixties and seventies making handsome commissions but more importantly taking massive stock grants. He will explain, “IBM don’t even make nothin’ no more now that they sold that little computer makin’ business to the chinamen.” Any efforts to explain the lucrative nature of consulting, managed services and custom business solutions results in his arms waving as you simultaneously replay the business jargon you just spewed bringing back visions of the economic house of cards.
This of course gets you back to the urban apocalypse. But at least you are prepared.
Sales is the great equalizer in societies where creativity and brilliance is the major economic driver, the lacrosse genius will attend a top tier school making connections with other jocks that will serve him a lifetime as they all go on to sell things to each other in a self perpetuating cycle that without would leave the gene pool filled with too many Dungeons and Dragons players and people suffering from suicidal ideation that can’t run fast or lift heavy things.
This is also why the smartest girl in the class, who only cared about grades, drama club and becoming either Bronte sister will go on to marry the a guy who played football and shotgunned 16oz beers at State U. but is now a broker at Legg Mason. He doesn’t work all that hard now that he’s built his book giving him time to golf which helps him get new clients so he actually makes more money by working less. What transpired to keep her from marrying an economist with a degree in medieval literature and several years of modern dance experience who works for some non-profit where he develops predictive models for expediting food and water to third world countries during natural disasters is unclear but I believe it is an evolutionary trigger that keeps the gene pool from condensing. It didn't have to be a stockbroker she might have had the biker gene, well all women have the biker gene for some period of time. Specifically the biker gene is the, “he is hot, potentially dangerous and fucks me so hard my spine occasionally goes numb-but in a good way.” The actual biker population has thinned substantially and those that remain are generally posers therefore the role of biker in contemporary society is usually occupied by musicians, rogue poets or other brooding, disenfranchised, self-proclaimed geniuses who will never meet her parents. Some of these may however clean-up well go to business school and reenter the population under the guise of normalcy perhaps even fooling some ivy league graduate into marrying them and thus continue the evolutionary cycle in precisely the manner in which it is supposed to while confirming the theory of camouflage in the natural selection process as a causal method of increasing the genetic diversity of species.
Consider careers in real estate, pharmaceutical sales and anything on the brokerage side of the financial market—not the quants, they are a teaspoon of testosterone away from the non-profit modeling guy but when they are not crashing hedge funds with poorly timed swings in natural gas futures still spend way too much time on the playstation. These are the careers that in the event of the urban apocalypse, for which I am prepared, would ensure the continuity of species. Because the sales people would be able to run, hunt and build shelter moreover in the event elements of the food chain were so compromised it became necessary to resort to cannibalism the stockbrokers and realtors would have no problem eating other people in order to survive helping the rest of us acclimate to the taste of human flesh. I feel confident they would start with the lawyers.
Ummm….corporate counsel burgers. Maybe the apocalypse won’t be so bad.
The Gift Return of the Prodigal Son
I am a terrible son. I am an only child, my parents were born on the same day. I do not know when their birthday is, other than in the month of February. Never have. Their anniversary, May…maybe.
I do not have DNR power of attorney for my parents.
My wife left a voice message saying she is getting cards for mother’s day should she pick one up for my Mother. Duh. Half the reason men get married is to alleviate the responsibility of buying gifts, sending cards, in general remembering things that they are supposed to, however in my case this takes on new dimension as I simply never did any of those things anyway. Marriage by default should not just allay my previously shirked responsibilities as a son…in theory it will make me better.
My wife calls to follow-up on this as I have forgotten to call her back about it. Like I said, in theory. I say of course get a card---thinking we are done. She goes on to ask if I have just decided to send flowers and if so have I already done that online. Puzzled and sensing this is a rapidly deteriorating, I say no.
She says, “Should I,” drawing out the “I” with an upward lilt, “look for something for her.”
Sweaty now and unsure of how to respond I say, “Ahhhhh, yes”
She fires back, “OK, then would she like stationary, does she journal, artisan-crafted jewelry is always nice……
“artisan-crafted Jewelry,” I yell in some combination of auction and multiple choice response….”about $30 worth” this is good I have made a decisive call, I am involved, I care.
“Well there’s nothing for $30…” she says.
Now mind you I am working, not doing anything important because most jobs today are, as observed by children, basically writing stuff, emailing and talking on the phone-pretty much what they do. What the children do not understand is that this is to solve problems and create opportunities in a bi-directional exchange of value. So I am focused--as much as my ADHD addled brain can be.
This gets me thinking how much I love those ads for ADHD from a few years ago talk about a solution looking for a problem. The low, serious voice over guy- “Have you ever been watching television and suddenly changed the channel. Have you ever had a thought in your head and out of nowhere another thought enters. You could be one of millions of people suffering…..” This while an image of a woman in a meeting is rubbing her forehead looking perplexed and/or agitated.
Jeez I have been watching TV and suddenly changed the channel and I have been thinking one thing and then had another thought enter my mind, and I assume I have rubbed my head while being both perplexed and agitated at a big whole heck of a lot of meetings. Surely this indicates I need amphetamines to conquer this debilitating malady.
How is it possible to air that ad. Seriously….and who falls for it, pausing I realize I have a half dozen friends on the stuff—who rave about it. Note to self: check strike price on Novartis and make doctor’s appt.
“Focus!” my wife yells as she tells me there is nothing for $30. In my desperate desire to get back to whatever problem solving or opportunity creating thing I am wholly engrossed by I say,
“It doesn’t matter, Jesus Christ Marcie it just doesn’t matter, get whatever you think is right, I am a terrible son I have never purchased a mother’s day gift for her, ever. No matter what it is she will know you bought it so pick something you want to get her.”
“OK”, my wife says slowly in a flat tone that indicates this spewed confessional drivel just revealed more to her about me than the past 2.5 years we have spent together ever could have. Worse, she is clearly confused as she simultaneously pities and hates me because she sees my self absorption runs so pathologically deep that it extends to the very core of my being. Not just in the cute edgy guy way she initially found sexy believing I would eventually become a great father, provider and all around good man. No, the seriously messed up way that makes her feel sorry for me and then for herself for marrying me which then makes her resent me because she is now stuck with me. But this is progress: hatred, pity, and resentment, the traditional places where all familial gift buying begins.
I was graced several hours later with a box containing the ugliest earrings I have ever seen made from something close to but not exactly fishing tackle and some unidentifiable baby blue rock thing. God-awful. This presented my next serious quandary, now there are a lot of factors at play here like, does she actually think my mother will like baby blue mystery substrate fishing tackle earrings or is she trying to teach me something. This for a recently married man is a quagmire, a proving ground, because it brings into play the wife/mother first loyalty thing. Now if my wife actually thinks my mother will like these heinous, made by one of god’s children, craft objects I need to intervene quickly and make clear what does and does not constitute an acceptable gift to my mother. If I do not we open the door to truckloads of craft objects made by hippies and “special” people. On the other hand if my wife is taking me to task and saying you need to man-up here and be a better son and get your mother a real gift because you should be ashamed of this piece of crap-what is the correct response. This is as tough a test as can be devised.
In life I have often heard it said, and believe to be true, that the right thing to do is the harder thing to do. I of course knowing the stakes took the path of least resistance, the low road perhaps. I let it ride. The shameful earrings were mailed out for the contrived holiday and received without so much as a blip. The non-acknowledgment is my mother’s not so subtle way of saying it is better to not give than to give crap my loving son lest ye wife do thine bidding. I do not think it was a test on my wife’s part. All this however made me recognize my responsibility and in the future will be more mindful, thoughtful and involved. I will be a better son-at least in theory.
See marriage is making me better.
I do not have DNR power of attorney for my parents.
My wife left a voice message saying she is getting cards for mother’s day should she pick one up for my Mother. Duh. Half the reason men get married is to alleviate the responsibility of buying gifts, sending cards, in general remembering things that they are supposed to, however in my case this takes on new dimension as I simply never did any of those things anyway. Marriage by default should not just allay my previously shirked responsibilities as a son…in theory it will make me better.
My wife calls to follow-up on this as I have forgotten to call her back about it. Like I said, in theory. I say of course get a card---thinking we are done. She goes on to ask if I have just decided to send flowers and if so have I already done that online. Puzzled and sensing this is a rapidly deteriorating, I say no.
She says, “Should I,” drawing out the “I” with an upward lilt, “look for something for her.”
Sweaty now and unsure of how to respond I say, “Ahhhhh, yes”
She fires back, “OK, then would she like stationary, does she journal, artisan-crafted jewelry is always nice……
“artisan-crafted Jewelry,” I yell in some combination of auction and multiple choice response….”about $30 worth” this is good I have made a decisive call, I am involved, I care.
“Well there’s nothing for $30…” she says.
Now mind you I am working, not doing anything important because most jobs today are, as observed by children, basically writing stuff, emailing and talking on the phone-pretty much what they do. What the children do not understand is that this is to solve problems and create opportunities in a bi-directional exchange of value. So I am focused--as much as my ADHD addled brain can be.
This gets me thinking how much I love those ads for ADHD from a few years ago talk about a solution looking for a problem. The low, serious voice over guy- “Have you ever been watching television and suddenly changed the channel. Have you ever had a thought in your head and out of nowhere another thought enters. You could be one of millions of people suffering…..” This while an image of a woman in a meeting is rubbing her forehead looking perplexed and/or agitated.
Jeez I have been watching TV and suddenly changed the channel and I have been thinking one thing and then had another thought enter my mind, and I assume I have rubbed my head while being both perplexed and agitated at a big whole heck of a lot of meetings. Surely this indicates I need amphetamines to conquer this debilitating malady.
How is it possible to air that ad. Seriously….and who falls for it, pausing I realize I have a half dozen friends on the stuff—who rave about it. Note to self: check strike price on Novartis and make doctor’s appt.
“Focus!” my wife yells as she tells me there is nothing for $30. In my desperate desire to get back to whatever problem solving or opportunity creating thing I am wholly engrossed by I say,
“It doesn’t matter, Jesus Christ Marcie it just doesn’t matter, get whatever you think is right, I am a terrible son I have never purchased a mother’s day gift for her, ever. No matter what it is she will know you bought it so pick something you want to get her.”
“OK”, my wife says slowly in a flat tone that indicates this spewed confessional drivel just revealed more to her about me than the past 2.5 years we have spent together ever could have. Worse, she is clearly confused as she simultaneously pities and hates me because she sees my self absorption runs so pathologically deep that it extends to the very core of my being. Not just in the cute edgy guy way she initially found sexy believing I would eventually become a great father, provider and all around good man. No, the seriously messed up way that makes her feel sorry for me and then for herself for marrying me which then makes her resent me because she is now stuck with me. But this is progress: hatred, pity, and resentment, the traditional places where all familial gift buying begins.
I was graced several hours later with a box containing the ugliest earrings I have ever seen made from something close to but not exactly fishing tackle and some unidentifiable baby blue rock thing. God-awful. This presented my next serious quandary, now there are a lot of factors at play here like, does she actually think my mother will like baby blue mystery substrate fishing tackle earrings or is she trying to teach me something. This for a recently married man is a quagmire, a proving ground, because it brings into play the wife/mother first loyalty thing. Now if my wife actually thinks my mother will like these heinous, made by one of god’s children, craft objects I need to intervene quickly and make clear what does and does not constitute an acceptable gift to my mother. If I do not we open the door to truckloads of craft objects made by hippies and “special” people. On the other hand if my wife is taking me to task and saying you need to man-up here and be a better son and get your mother a real gift because you should be ashamed of this piece of crap-what is the correct response. This is as tough a test as can be devised.
In life I have often heard it said, and believe to be true, that the right thing to do is the harder thing to do. I of course knowing the stakes took the path of least resistance, the low road perhaps. I let it ride. The shameful earrings were mailed out for the contrived holiday and received without so much as a blip. The non-acknowledgment is my mother’s not so subtle way of saying it is better to not give than to give crap my loving son lest ye wife do thine bidding. I do not think it was a test on my wife’s part. All this however made me recognize my responsibility and in the future will be more mindful, thoughtful and involved. I will be a better son-at least in theory.
See marriage is making me better.
Byzantine Institutional Bureaucracy
I am sending an email to find out the status of a budget item for a final report I owe. I have asked for this ten business days ago. I have been told for six of those days “tomorrow.” It was four numbers, I gave them the four numbers they just needed to enter the four numbers I gave them into a form I had also provided. Oh I hear you. Because they have to do it. Because it’s the rule.
I work at a large research university; let’s call it MIT. Having come form a world where to get something done meant doing it I was astonished early on to discover what true institutional bureaucracy was-a Chinese puzzle box of competing, contradicting and redundant fiefdoms. In the first year I was developing my project I kept it as far away from the Institute’s administrative process as I could. I used to tell people my affiliation with the institute was me running along the side of the building grazing it gently with my fingertips. I certainly needed the clout the MIT brand provided I just didn’t want my nimble young project consumed by the Byzantine bureaucratic quagmire that lay inside waiting to crush it.
Although now I am worn down and bitter which seems to be the thing bureaucracies do most efficiently I was not always that way. In the early days on the occasion I was required to use the institute’s protocols to get something done I was merely fascinated by the process. Like watching ants carry stuff. If say my heating unit were not functioning properly I would have to call the administrative office speaking first with an underling before clawing my way to the department’s head administrator. The request, “Please help me, I am freezing and will perish soon as the heating unit is not working,” had to be verified as legitimate. This required someone from the administrative office to accompany me back to my office, jiggle something, return and say, “The heating unit is not working.” This had a bizarre effect as first I am stunned that I need to be chaperoned by an 18 year old temp who stands as the gatekeeper to my comfort and second that I am grateful when they confirm my complaint as legitimate. “Oh thank you kind sir and may I compliment your regal Iron Maiden concert tee, for it is your generous overture which allows my pathetic quips be seen as legitimate.” Confused I shake of my Stockholm syndrome. Upon regaining my faculties I had to assume the verification process was to quell the drumbeat of false claims issued by people whose real agenda is to have men wearing dusty clothes in their office who discuss snowmobiles.
I see this often and it is always a wonderful and entertaining contrast to watch especially at a place like MIT. You have a down to earth, union guy and a nuclear physicist discussing plumbing. In fairness they are each experts in the problem. There is a stilted conversation about traffic or weather, the professor trying to seem natural and like he is enjoying the exchange but he is talking to the guy that beat the crap out of him in grades 2-9. All he really wants to think about is his research on fluid dynamics that will solve rising sea levels by creating floating levees around vulnerable arcapelogos and that his chainmail is repaired for this weekends Battle of Grunswald where his shire is heavily favored. On the other side you have this good guy who knows he is not dealing with exactly his ilk because this guy sort of reminds him of that retard he used to beat the crap out of for wearing a cape. Discussions of football and ATVs are out of question except as examples kinetic transfer. But mostly he wishes his buddy were there so he could excuse himself to poop because the buffalo wings and rice krispy treats he had for lunch weren’t getting along.
So I receive an email from my office asking me to describe the problem so they can describe the problem to someone in another office who will complete the form that describes the problem so the person who decides who needs to fix the problem can describe the problem to the person assigned to fix it. Since I had just been chaperoned by someone I thought perhaps that person could verify the no heat thing to the other person in the room who just sent me the email and who heard me say I had no heat before the whole confirmation process began. Alas, no.
I describe the problem in my email reply.
The heater does not seem to be functioning, I turn it on and instead of warm air the air is cool consequently I do not have heat.
I have learned it is important to be specific but not be too detailed in the description. Too simple a report like “no heat” gets a flurry of useful suggestions such as, “ did you turn it on” Not being the eighty year old sitting in front of their first Dell, I respond “yes the power button has been activated.” On the other hand provide too much information or get too specific you arouse suspicion “I believe the problem is related to a release value malfunctioning causing a vapor lock in the supply line.” Now the gatekeeper becomes a bit caddy thinking to him or herself, “so you think you know something about HVAC-guess you’re a real smart guy well maybe you can just fix it yourself” leaving you at the bottom of the list and when help finally does arrive they’ve sent the new guy who learned the trade while in prison. He will tell you all about his time inside in a way that is both sweet and oddly subservient but that leaves you thoroughly on edge as you are keenly aware this man would gouge your eyes out with his thumbs if you moved too quickly.
Now of course you only know about the vapor lock issue not because of your fluid dynamics prowess like nuclear physicist next door but because it happens about eight times a year. To implement a lasting fix requires the expenditure of some amount of money that exceeds that line item in some standards guide produced by the US Navy by $108. To green light that requires some massive amount of paper work because the $108 must come from a different account under the watchful eye of some other gatekeepers who hold a grudge against your department for some perceived slight in recognizing their authority in addressing matters just such as this. That may have been me.
Corporate structures and their uglier cousin institutional bureaucracies were developed to establish protocols for repeatable tasks and too create systems that removed inefficiencies by reducing mistakes.
To remove inefficiency.
I estimate based on my lost time, the mechanics time and time required to push it through the system that each of these band-aid fixes costs about $500. It happens eight times a year and has gone on for 3 years. $12,000.
Oh good, I am told I will have my budget report tomorrow. Perfect.
I work at a large research university; let’s call it MIT. Having come form a world where to get something done meant doing it I was astonished early on to discover what true institutional bureaucracy was-a Chinese puzzle box of competing, contradicting and redundant fiefdoms. In the first year I was developing my project I kept it as far away from the Institute’s administrative process as I could. I used to tell people my affiliation with the institute was me running along the side of the building grazing it gently with my fingertips. I certainly needed the clout the MIT brand provided I just didn’t want my nimble young project consumed by the Byzantine bureaucratic quagmire that lay inside waiting to crush it.
Although now I am worn down and bitter which seems to be the thing bureaucracies do most efficiently I was not always that way. In the early days on the occasion I was required to use the institute’s protocols to get something done I was merely fascinated by the process. Like watching ants carry stuff. If say my heating unit were not functioning properly I would have to call the administrative office speaking first with an underling before clawing my way to the department’s head administrator. The request, “Please help me, I am freezing and will perish soon as the heating unit is not working,” had to be verified as legitimate. This required someone from the administrative office to accompany me back to my office, jiggle something, return and say, “The heating unit is not working.” This had a bizarre effect as first I am stunned that I need to be chaperoned by an 18 year old temp who stands as the gatekeeper to my comfort and second that I am grateful when they confirm my complaint as legitimate. “Oh thank you kind sir and may I compliment your regal Iron Maiden concert tee, for it is your generous overture which allows my pathetic quips be seen as legitimate.” Confused I shake of my Stockholm syndrome. Upon regaining my faculties I had to assume the verification process was to quell the drumbeat of false claims issued by people whose real agenda is to have men wearing dusty clothes in their office who discuss snowmobiles.
I see this often and it is always a wonderful and entertaining contrast to watch especially at a place like MIT. You have a down to earth, union guy and a nuclear physicist discussing plumbing. In fairness they are each experts in the problem. There is a stilted conversation about traffic or weather, the professor trying to seem natural and like he is enjoying the exchange but he is talking to the guy that beat the crap out of him in grades 2-9. All he really wants to think about is his research on fluid dynamics that will solve rising sea levels by creating floating levees around vulnerable arcapelogos and that his chainmail is repaired for this weekends Battle of Grunswald where his shire is heavily favored. On the other side you have this good guy who knows he is not dealing with exactly his ilk because this guy sort of reminds him of that retard he used to beat the crap out of for wearing a cape. Discussions of football and ATVs are out of question except as examples kinetic transfer. But mostly he wishes his buddy were there so he could excuse himself to poop because the buffalo wings and rice krispy treats he had for lunch weren’t getting along.
So I receive an email from my office asking me to describe the problem so they can describe the problem to someone in another office who will complete the form that describes the problem so the person who decides who needs to fix the problem can describe the problem to the person assigned to fix it. Since I had just been chaperoned by someone I thought perhaps that person could verify the no heat thing to the other person in the room who just sent me the email and who heard me say I had no heat before the whole confirmation process began. Alas, no.
I describe the problem in my email reply.
The heater does not seem to be functioning, I turn it on and instead of warm air the air is cool consequently I do not have heat.
I have learned it is important to be specific but not be too detailed in the description. Too simple a report like “no heat” gets a flurry of useful suggestions such as, “ did you turn it on” Not being the eighty year old sitting in front of their first Dell, I respond “yes the power button has been activated.” On the other hand provide too much information or get too specific you arouse suspicion “I believe the problem is related to a release value malfunctioning causing a vapor lock in the supply line.” Now the gatekeeper becomes a bit caddy thinking to him or herself, “so you think you know something about HVAC-guess you’re a real smart guy well maybe you can just fix it yourself” leaving you at the bottom of the list and when help finally does arrive they’ve sent the new guy who learned the trade while in prison. He will tell you all about his time inside in a way that is both sweet and oddly subservient but that leaves you thoroughly on edge as you are keenly aware this man would gouge your eyes out with his thumbs if you moved too quickly.
Now of course you only know about the vapor lock issue not because of your fluid dynamics prowess like nuclear physicist next door but because it happens about eight times a year. To implement a lasting fix requires the expenditure of some amount of money that exceeds that line item in some standards guide produced by the US Navy by $108. To green light that requires some massive amount of paper work because the $108 must come from a different account under the watchful eye of some other gatekeepers who hold a grudge against your department for some perceived slight in recognizing their authority in addressing matters just such as this. That may have been me.
Corporate structures and their uglier cousin institutional bureaucracies were developed to establish protocols for repeatable tasks and too create systems that removed inefficiencies by reducing mistakes.
To remove inefficiency.
I estimate based on my lost time, the mechanics time and time required to push it through the system that each of these band-aid fixes costs about $500. It happens eight times a year and has gone on for 3 years. $12,000.
Oh good, I am told I will have my budget report tomorrow. Perfect.
Monday, July 14, 2008
A Tenuous Relationship
I had a routine physical recently. Now I can’t stand doctors. I don't think they really know much more than you or I or anyone attuned to their body and yet they play it like they do with that ridiculous doctor arrogance. In reality doctors are more like garage mechanics with biology degrees. I saw an interview once where a doctor was telling an interviewer that in the body most things heal themselves. I have adhered to that notion, eaten well, stayed fit and learned the art of minor home surgery for a variety of ailments-while developing my own, I believe much more practical, theories on human health. But I occasionally have some questions for my internist-we, need I say, have a tenuous relationship.
I wanted to know my testosterone level so I could, as I told my doctor, “establish a baseline.” This is so the minute I am less horny or tired or whatever condition I think can be explained by a precipitous dip in testosterone levels, I can get juice legally. As I am in the examination room explaining this to my doctor she is not buying it. We move on.
“Hold old are you?”
“41,” I reply.
“In the early forties we usually do a prostate exam.”
I instantly loose it, I explain that the prostate exam occurs at age 45; everybody knows that, I have 4 more years.
“Well we like to do it in the early 40’s so we can” she pauses and adds, “establish a baseline.”
As I said it is a tenuous relationship.
I go on to explain that men are prepared for this from an early age, it is a milestone-not one recognized by “hey, I get to have my prostate checked in 5 years” but “thank god I don’t have to have my prostate checked for 5 more years.” The stories are horrifying, from descriptions of the various positions-on back with legs in lady stirrups, all fours or the most horrific, on knees with chest on exam table and ass straight up ---oh dear god the horror….the horror.
I actually managed to charm her, she laughs and gives me a pass. However now I am intrigued and my wife is out of town.
Observe this pathology; my doctor is a woman because several years ago when I had to choose my doctor, as discussed I knew the day would come when that person would stick their finger up my ass. Knowing this I chose a female doctor-simply because if a finger, other than my own (for strictly hygienic reasons), is going up my ass I would rather have it be attached to a female then a male. I should have known but just didn’t anticipate it being a matronly Chinese woman.
We begin, I am now in the green open-back paper smock, clearly made by the same folks who make the rain gear handed out at university graduations—which is a really garbage bag with arm holes. She asks me to lie on my side and pull my knees up to my chest. “OK” she tells me, “I am going to use a lot of lube and it will be cold.” She does, it is. “I am inserting my finger,” I didn't need her to tell me that, surprisingly this was not a problem as she really did use a lot of lube, “I am circling the anus to check for (I think she said fissures) and now I am touching the prostate.” Which caused an electric sensation to shoot through me. Not a pleasant one, but tolerable. “and we’re done.”
She tells me to sit up; I slide upright. While she puts drops on the-was just in my asshole 10 seconds ago-finger and tells me she is checking the fecal matter for colorectal something or other I missed because I am thinking there’s my shit on your finger, but I just showered—I am ashamed.
Now she hands me the box of tissues and says, “clean yourself up, get dressed and come see me in my office.” As she is telling me this I am taking a few tissues feeling a bit, oh I don’t know, odd. She says, “no, the whole box,” with a firm but reassuring tone that just made me melt.
Moments later in her office I sit across from her at her desk in one of two chairs that were not in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement, which I corrected before I sat down. I am surprisingly OK with the fact that this woman just anally penetrated me. I am however arranging her furniture to be more Feng Shui. We go on to discuss family medical history and the fact that I have low good cholesterol but fortunately very low bad cholesterol. She tells me the low good cholesterol will be a factor in heart disease but there is nothing I can do about it. We are looking at her computer and I ask another question about one of the results on my blood test and she seemed perplexed causing her to open a browser and google it where she proceeds to click the Wikipedia result. No, really.
Now this is about the third time this has happened to my wife, a friend or me. Where the doctor, whom you just tossed what you believe to be an easy one, has googled the question. Shit, I can do that. I often do, running down the list of symptoms until I have either mad cow or perimenopause. I know I should be all hey it's the democratization of information and isn't it great doctors finally have access to blah blah blah. This stands as absolute confirmation that doctors don't know jack more than any concerned citizen. I remind my doctor her kind were still using leeches 50 years ago. To which she replies we actually never stopped.
My wife got very ill on our honeymoon because some drunk Vikings did not cook chicken long enough. She spent a month shitting and was on a course of no less than 4 kinds of antibiotics including Cipro-the one for anthrax, before a blood test finally revealed she had something called Campylobacter jejuni—which is essentially e. coli. Her doctor googles this and finally gets the right anti-biotic on the web, the regular open web not some special physician’s pharmacological matrixed network—and writes the script from the results of a google query.
Now I imagine there were about 187,000 results returned in about 0.6 seconds, which one did she use. She did, however, get the right one.
Did I say tenuous?
I wanted to know my testosterone level so I could, as I told my doctor, “establish a baseline.” This is so the minute I am less horny or tired or whatever condition I think can be explained by a precipitous dip in testosterone levels, I can get juice legally. As I am in the examination room explaining this to my doctor she is not buying it. We move on.
“Hold old are you?”
“41,” I reply.
“In the early forties we usually do a prostate exam.”
I instantly loose it, I explain that the prostate exam occurs at age 45; everybody knows that, I have 4 more years.
“Well we like to do it in the early 40’s so we can” she pauses and adds, “establish a baseline.”
As I said it is a tenuous relationship.
I go on to explain that men are prepared for this from an early age, it is a milestone-not one recognized by “hey, I get to have my prostate checked in 5 years” but “thank god I don’t have to have my prostate checked for 5 more years.” The stories are horrifying, from descriptions of the various positions-on back with legs in lady stirrups, all fours or the most horrific, on knees with chest on exam table and ass straight up ---oh dear god the horror….the horror.
I actually managed to charm her, she laughs and gives me a pass. However now I am intrigued and my wife is out of town.
Observe this pathology; my doctor is a woman because several years ago when I had to choose my doctor, as discussed I knew the day would come when that person would stick their finger up my ass. Knowing this I chose a female doctor-simply because if a finger, other than my own (for strictly hygienic reasons), is going up my ass I would rather have it be attached to a female then a male. I should have known but just didn’t anticipate it being a matronly Chinese woman.
We begin, I am now in the green open-back paper smock, clearly made by the same folks who make the rain gear handed out at university graduations—which is a really garbage bag with arm holes. She asks me to lie on my side and pull my knees up to my chest. “OK” she tells me, “I am going to use a lot of lube and it will be cold.” She does, it is. “I am inserting my finger,” I didn't need her to tell me that, surprisingly this was not a problem as she really did use a lot of lube, “I am circling the anus to check for (I think she said fissures) and now I am touching the prostate.” Which caused an electric sensation to shoot through me. Not a pleasant one, but tolerable. “and we’re done.”
She tells me to sit up; I slide upright. While she puts drops on the-was just in my asshole 10 seconds ago-finger and tells me she is checking the fecal matter for colorectal something or other I missed because I am thinking there’s my shit on your finger, but I just showered—I am ashamed.
Now she hands me the box of tissues and says, “clean yourself up, get dressed and come see me in my office.” As she is telling me this I am taking a few tissues feeling a bit, oh I don’t know, odd. She says, “no, the whole box,” with a firm but reassuring tone that just made me melt.
Moments later in her office I sit across from her at her desk in one of two chairs that were not in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement, which I corrected before I sat down. I am surprisingly OK with the fact that this woman just anally penetrated me. I am however arranging her furniture to be more Feng Shui. We go on to discuss family medical history and the fact that I have low good cholesterol but fortunately very low bad cholesterol. She tells me the low good cholesterol will be a factor in heart disease but there is nothing I can do about it. We are looking at her computer and I ask another question about one of the results on my blood test and she seemed perplexed causing her to open a browser and google it where she proceeds to click the Wikipedia result. No, really.
Now this is about the third time this has happened to my wife, a friend or me. Where the doctor, whom you just tossed what you believe to be an easy one, has googled the question. Shit, I can do that. I often do, running down the list of symptoms until I have either mad cow or perimenopause. I know I should be all hey it's the democratization of information and isn't it great doctors finally have access to blah blah blah. This stands as absolute confirmation that doctors don't know jack more than any concerned citizen. I remind my doctor her kind were still using leeches 50 years ago. To which she replies we actually never stopped.
My wife got very ill on our honeymoon because some drunk Vikings did not cook chicken long enough. She spent a month shitting and was on a course of no less than 4 kinds of antibiotics including Cipro-the one for anthrax, before a blood test finally revealed she had something called Campylobacter jejuni—which is essentially e. coli. Her doctor googles this and finally gets the right anti-biotic on the web, the regular open web not some special physician’s pharmacological matrixed network—and writes the script from the results of a google query.
Now I imagine there were about 187,000 results returned in about 0.6 seconds, which one did she use. She did, however, get the right one.
Did I say tenuous?
Monday, June 16, 2008
A Drop of Ink in the Snow Globe
I was, and may still be addicted to chaos. That is to say, calm, steady, measured periods of time lasting more than about a year just seem to ruin my---leaning forward into this life with all the fight in my heart and head, adrenaline riddled, narrow-eyed, bring the war posture, which I used think of as my defining characteristic. That, you say, may be a good thing and I say you would be right. The disclaimer is this; I loose my way without some level of maniacal drive, craven blood-lust and sheer excitement and when I loose my way the fear that I manage to keep at bay by remaining in this teeth-nashing and frothy state catches up to me. A little at first like slowing down in a sail boat with a dingy in tow, the dingy bumps against the hull but then it starts to chafe, scratching the paint a nick becomes a gouge and eventually a hole, filling everything inside it capsizes and goes under.
That is what fear will do to me if I idle for too long—truly the devil’s tools. When the fear starts to set in my first reaction is to create chaos. It should also be understood that chaos is just drama, only it sounds manlier. It is not. It is however often more destructive if only because men are basically destructive. So I want chaos, why, because it fills the void, it distracts the fear, but more importantly it allows me to put myself squarely in the middle of disaster, disaster that I design—which puts me in control of everything around me. In the best cases I put everything back in order orchestrating my salvation. I am my savior. Yes, I want to dangle myself over the fires just so I can pull myself away. Actually, I want to find the kindling, gather the hardwood, start the fire—take it in for a moment-assess it’s blaze worthiness-then douse it with a thousand gallons of jet fuel. Then and only then when I am sure I have saturated everything flammable with as much accelerant as I can, I throw myself atop the pyre in order to design a brilliant extraction plan for myself.
Self-destructive, oh yes. Insane, perhaps but maybe not so much as it seems. If you learn to understand your place in the world by being in control, in an excited state, in the middle of the action where you are the most important component that connects everything else. If that is how you know you are safe and have value in a world that is almost entirely out of your control then it starts to be a coping mechanism. Albeit a kind of retarded one but an extremely effective way to assuage all that assails us upon the realization that we are alone in a hostel world. It is like using noise to cancel noise or detonating an explosive device in order to extinguish a raging chemical fire. See, maybe not so nuts after all.
The problem arises when you start to build a world where all the stuff is in the right place. You have rescued and reinvented yourself enough times to have created a life that makes sense. In other words a lot of the stuff that you used to need to create the chaos to avoid dealing with or feeling has been dealt with—it's just you now—well, you and those feelings: self-doubt, insecurity, inadequacy—which are just different shades of fear anyway. So now chaos really looks, well, chaotic and it becomes unacceptable as a coping device and that becomes a problem. You are missing the excitement of conducting your symphony that puts you squarely in control--godlike.
You are suffering from the, “Geez, my life is really great; got the job, spouse, money, house….this is great but kinda boring and I am a little nervous and afraid…hmmm….what to do, what to do… I know, I will burn this life to the motherfucking ground,” syndrome.
But, you're older now; you don’t get another do over. This is it, the scorched earth policy is not a viable protocol anymore. You burn this one down and living under a bridge drinking Listerine eating stale bread with packets of ketchup and duck sauce is the next stop. It is not cute anymore, remember this existential crisis is just teen angst plus time and economics. So, no affairs, no embezzling, and certainly no being a little bitch and giving your pistol a blowjob. Nope, you gotta make something else happen....you gotta make this work. And you gotta get OK with the fact that this really is it, more importantly that you are OK and being just OK is OK-at least sometimes. I haven’t got an answer but I know it requires being still with no chaos canceling chaos initiatives for long enough that you move through some of the stuff that wakes you up at 3:23 in the morning.
Oh yes, you will be one twitchy kitty cat while you sit still. On the other hand fucking your son’s third grade teacher and moving to Australia to wildcat for shale oil deposits in search of fortune is not acceptable. At 24 sure, 34 maybe but probably an asshole move, 44 no fucking way, 54 you are seriously retarded.
Don't put ink in the snow globe.
That is how I have always envisioned it. Life is chaos-like a snow globe, all can be beautiful and suddenly a magnitude 8.8 tremor comes along and rocks your world and the sky really is falling. Your natural impulse is to create chaos you can control in response to chaos you can’t. You put a drop of ink in the snow globe and like a black jellyfish it slowly descends and envelops everything. The snow alone is going to settle-like most situations in life, but the ink you added requires an entirely different clean-up and it lingers, it never really gets clean, just less dirty and then you start to get used to it. Don’t get used to it.
No one gets out of this life clean, no one, no matter what. So try, just try...not to put ink in the snow globe.
That is what fear will do to me if I idle for too long—truly the devil’s tools. When the fear starts to set in my first reaction is to create chaos. It should also be understood that chaos is just drama, only it sounds manlier. It is not. It is however often more destructive if only because men are basically destructive. So I want chaos, why, because it fills the void, it distracts the fear, but more importantly it allows me to put myself squarely in the middle of disaster, disaster that I design—which puts me in control of everything around me. In the best cases I put everything back in order orchestrating my salvation. I am my savior. Yes, I want to dangle myself over the fires just so I can pull myself away. Actually, I want to find the kindling, gather the hardwood, start the fire—take it in for a moment-assess it’s blaze worthiness-then douse it with a thousand gallons of jet fuel. Then and only then when I am sure I have saturated everything flammable with as much accelerant as I can, I throw myself atop the pyre in order to design a brilliant extraction plan for myself.
Self-destructive, oh yes. Insane, perhaps but maybe not so much as it seems. If you learn to understand your place in the world by being in control, in an excited state, in the middle of the action where you are the most important component that connects everything else. If that is how you know you are safe and have value in a world that is almost entirely out of your control then it starts to be a coping mechanism. Albeit a kind of retarded one but an extremely effective way to assuage all that assails us upon the realization that we are alone in a hostel world. It is like using noise to cancel noise or detonating an explosive device in order to extinguish a raging chemical fire. See, maybe not so nuts after all.
The problem arises when you start to build a world where all the stuff is in the right place. You have rescued and reinvented yourself enough times to have created a life that makes sense. In other words a lot of the stuff that you used to need to create the chaos to avoid dealing with or feeling has been dealt with—it's just you now—well, you and those feelings: self-doubt, insecurity, inadequacy—which are just different shades of fear anyway. So now chaos really looks, well, chaotic and it becomes unacceptable as a coping device and that becomes a problem. You are missing the excitement of conducting your symphony that puts you squarely in control--godlike.
You are suffering from the, “Geez, my life is really great; got the job, spouse, money, house….this is great but kinda boring and I am a little nervous and afraid…hmmm….what to do, what to do… I know, I will burn this life to the motherfucking ground,” syndrome.
But, you're older now; you don’t get another do over. This is it, the scorched earth policy is not a viable protocol anymore. You burn this one down and living under a bridge drinking Listerine eating stale bread with packets of ketchup and duck sauce is the next stop. It is not cute anymore, remember this existential crisis is just teen angst plus time and economics. So, no affairs, no embezzling, and certainly no being a little bitch and giving your pistol a blowjob. Nope, you gotta make something else happen....you gotta make this work. And you gotta get OK with the fact that this really is it, more importantly that you are OK and being just OK is OK-at least sometimes. I haven’t got an answer but I know it requires being still with no chaos canceling chaos initiatives for long enough that you move through some of the stuff that wakes you up at 3:23 in the morning.
Oh yes, you will be one twitchy kitty cat while you sit still. On the other hand fucking your son’s third grade teacher and moving to Australia to wildcat for shale oil deposits in search of fortune is not acceptable. At 24 sure, 34 maybe but probably an asshole move, 44 no fucking way, 54 you are seriously retarded.
Don't put ink in the snow globe.
That is how I have always envisioned it. Life is chaos-like a snow globe, all can be beautiful and suddenly a magnitude 8.8 tremor comes along and rocks your world and the sky really is falling. Your natural impulse is to create chaos you can control in response to chaos you can’t. You put a drop of ink in the snow globe and like a black jellyfish it slowly descends and envelops everything. The snow alone is going to settle-like most situations in life, but the ink you added requires an entirely different clean-up and it lingers, it never really gets clean, just less dirty and then you start to get used to it. Don’t get used to it.
No one gets out of this life clean, no one, no matter what. So try, just try...not to put ink in the snow globe.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
It really is all about sex and death
So if our crazy all starts from the same place, some biological imperative, what makes mine different than yours? Your basic instinct, like mine, is to survive. But survival has two aspects, there is the first part---that is the not dying part but the second and much more colorful part is the continuing the species part---rounding out the whole biological imperative. Survival means more than just not being eaten it means procreation, establishing lineage and continuity to ensure the survival of the species. You are after all just another virus.
Here is a simple equation to illustrate the concept:
Survival = Fear of Annihilation multiplied by Sex + Death
S=FA(Sx+D)
Your crazy is a function of your basic biology, in fact it seems pretty necessary, yet everybody has his or her own style, depth and shade of crazy. Crazy that gets uniquely distilled in each of us by our environments-which is to say our exposure to other people’s crazy.
For example, your first serious girlfriend got drunk at a party and lost her virginity to the school soccer star a week before you were supposed to loose it with each other, decorated his neck with hickies and on Monday you made fun of him in front of the entire class, all of whom knew the source the hickies—all, of course, but you. When you eventually do find out about the tryst, you loose all trust and faith in people, experience a sense of vulnerability (Original Sin tie-in: love object becomes food) and humiliation (Original Sin tie-in: Wow do I look like a dick, I am less than a man, I will never get laid-no sex=death) so profound that you began a fuck war-that is to say a battle royale of infidelity that would go on to shape your entire world view on relationships and how they should evolve. This created your belief in a parallel moral universe, one where you were immune from the rigors of the day-to-day moral universe where the simple folk dwell, you then begin the slow compartmentalization of people and situations that ultimately allows you to section off feelings into manageable segments thereby mitigating any potential emotional risk by creating near total control of the interactions in these relationships.
You know, stuff like that.
Anyway a broad example there just about everyone has experienced to illustrate how environment-i.e. other people’s crazy takes the basic crazy and colors it yours.
So everything really is all about sex and death-the Victorians, and the Druids, and the whores at the temple gates before them knew it-they just didn't know why.
Here is a simple equation to illustrate the concept:
Survival = Fear of Annihilation multiplied by Sex + Death
S=FA(Sx+D)
Your crazy is a function of your basic biology, in fact it seems pretty necessary, yet everybody has his or her own style, depth and shade of crazy. Crazy that gets uniquely distilled in each of us by our environments-which is to say our exposure to other people’s crazy.
For example, your first serious girlfriend got drunk at a party and lost her virginity to the school soccer star a week before you were supposed to loose it with each other, decorated his neck with hickies and on Monday you made fun of him in front of the entire class, all of whom knew the source the hickies—all, of course, but you. When you eventually do find out about the tryst, you loose all trust and faith in people, experience a sense of vulnerability (Original Sin tie-in: love object becomes food) and humiliation (Original Sin tie-in: Wow do I look like a dick, I am less than a man, I will never get laid-no sex=death) so profound that you began a fuck war-that is to say a battle royale of infidelity that would go on to shape your entire world view on relationships and how they should evolve. This created your belief in a parallel moral universe, one where you were immune from the rigors of the day-to-day moral universe where the simple folk dwell, you then begin the slow compartmentalization of people and situations that ultimately allows you to section off feelings into manageable segments thereby mitigating any potential emotional risk by creating near total control of the interactions in these relationships.
You know, stuff like that.
Anyway a broad example there just about everyone has experienced to illustrate how environment-i.e. other people’s crazy takes the basic crazy and colors it yours.
So everything really is all about sex and death-the Victorians, and the Druids, and the whores at the temple gates before them knew it-they just didn't know why.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Acceptable Lechery
I watched a guy in his mid fifties turn and stare at a girl’s ass as she walked by him. She was this beautiful Latina girl about 24. This guy was some kind of sales guy, a guy that would make Arthur Miller shudder, the kind you don't see a lot of in the city but often enough to recognize. They wear slacks, what exactly defines slacks and where they come from I am unsure, I just know they exist and these guys all wear them. Always a shirt and tie-but the kind that come in a box set from a discount retailer, you will never see ties like that anywhere but bundled with a shirt in a box and these ties are also worn by television weathermen working in small mid-western markets. The best part of the their attire is instead of a sport coat they always wear a nylon windbreaker with some awful logo for the company they represent stitched on the right breast like, “Synlon-excellence in industrial fluid delivery” Rounding out the look are bad shoes, really bad shoes, either something that looks like 80’s era Capezio jazz shoes or a thera-sneaker-oxford monstrosity with a thick rubber sole-they are a hair’s breadth from having Velcro straps. Invariably these shoes have been worn so long that the cheap leather has softened and stretched the to the point where parts of the shoe hang over the sole in a grotesque, anthropomorphic way.
So I watch this guy, a component of some out-moded shadow economy I can’t comprehend, with his giant three ring binder under one arm holding an overstuffed vinyl attaché in the other check out this girls ass, turning his head shamelessly as she walked by. I shuddered. It was simply too lascivious for me pushing me far beyond my female objectification comfort zone. It was just gross. After observing this, and having this reaction, as I am checking out her ass, I begin to ponder where I fall on that scale of acceptable lechery. How long before I’m that guy. Am I already that guy-sartorial crimes withstanding.
I recall being at dinner with a friend when I was about 20 and he was about the age I am now. The waitress comes over to the table and makes some remark that I pick out some part of and reply to with some perhaps indelicate innuendo. She giggles, we flirt and she walks off smiling. Upon her return she says something that my friend then responds to playfully, she looks at him stone-faced, if not openly annoyed and asks for his order. When she left my friend looked at me and says you see the difference, at your age it’s cute-you're a smartass at my age you’re just an asshole.
I have never forgotten that because as I get older I look for that moment of open rebuke, signs of my wiles and charm sliding into assholeness. Granted I am youthful in appearance, well dressed, still arguably have my “hottie” days, and I have stretched the latitude that brings further than most, but I must accept those days are indeed numbered.
So I watch this guy, a component of some out-moded shadow economy I can’t comprehend, with his giant three ring binder under one arm holding an overstuffed vinyl attaché in the other check out this girls ass, turning his head shamelessly as she walked by. I shuddered. It was simply too lascivious for me pushing me far beyond my female objectification comfort zone. It was just gross. After observing this, and having this reaction, as I am checking out her ass, I begin to ponder where I fall on that scale of acceptable lechery. How long before I’m that guy. Am I already that guy-sartorial crimes withstanding.
I recall being at dinner with a friend when I was about 20 and he was about the age I am now. The waitress comes over to the table and makes some remark that I pick out some part of and reply to with some perhaps indelicate innuendo. She giggles, we flirt and she walks off smiling. Upon her return she says something that my friend then responds to playfully, she looks at him stone-faced, if not openly annoyed and asks for his order. When she left my friend looked at me and says you see the difference, at your age it’s cute-you're a smartass at my age you’re just an asshole.
I have never forgotten that because as I get older I look for that moment of open rebuke, signs of my wiles and charm sliding into assholeness. Granted I am youthful in appearance, well dressed, still arguably have my “hottie” days, and I have stretched the latitude that brings further than most, but I must accept those days are indeed numbered.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Were you walking with the wounded or wounded while walking
I am unfixable so how did I get this way? Well searching for the “it” usually gets the same boring answer, the one that makes your mother cringe when you tell her you going to see a shrink, saying, “they are going to tell you it’s my fault” pauses for a moment and asks, “is it?”
Hmmm.
So years later it does eventually come down to the realization that—yeah it is her fault, your dad’s too, they each bring their own level of whack to your pre-verbal pure. Imbuing you with their fears and insecurities, which you go on to carefully craft into something uniquely yours and that you will pass on in some form to your own progeny. But it’s not really their fault because their parents gave it to them and your great-grand parents to your grandparents and all the way back to prehistoric man and if you want from multi-cell organisms to single cell creatures to the stardust in the primordial ooze.
This trans-generational transfer of fear and insecurity is simply based on the most primal instinct any living organism owns—survival---therefore the biggest fear any organism has is fear of annihilation-everything we do, all that we are, starts and ends with it.
Envision a prehistoric scene, a baby is laying in a cave on a fur of some sort, happy as its mother coddles it, now the moment the mother has to go off to tend to some other matter about the cave that baby is no longer the love object, that baby is food. So without her “love” i.e. protection-that baby is bear food and be sure that baby knows it-it’s instinct, it’s in there. That fear, that sense of insecurity is there, imprinted-on a cellular level, and it is not going away. That fear is in us, so really we are hardwired with 30,000 years of crazy that got us here.
The entire concept of Original Sin I am dirty because of Adam and Eve’s lapse, taken out of the biblical metaphor becomes a much more viable concept when creating a corollary to fear of annihilation as something that is carried in us from some genesis point-Eden or stardust-your call.
Now I’m not trying to assuage a millennia or so of Christian guilt, I am just positing a parallel theory that takes a provocative religious concept and tethers it to biological moorings. If Original Sin, or something that is in all of us, is really the instinct for survival manifesting itself most profoundly as fear of annihilation and fear of annihilation still lives at the bottom of every fear and therefore every action/reaction you display which colors a whole rainbow of mal-adaptive or crazy behavior.
So you are crazy, but it’s what got you this far, and yes, it is your mom’s fault.
Hmmm.
So years later it does eventually come down to the realization that—yeah it is her fault, your dad’s too, they each bring their own level of whack to your pre-verbal pure. Imbuing you with their fears and insecurities, which you go on to carefully craft into something uniquely yours and that you will pass on in some form to your own progeny. But it’s not really their fault because their parents gave it to them and your great-grand parents to your grandparents and all the way back to prehistoric man and if you want from multi-cell organisms to single cell creatures to the stardust in the primordial ooze.
This trans-generational transfer of fear and insecurity is simply based on the most primal instinct any living organism owns—survival---therefore the biggest fear any organism has is fear of annihilation-everything we do, all that we are, starts and ends with it.
Envision a prehistoric scene, a baby is laying in a cave on a fur of some sort, happy as its mother coddles it, now the moment the mother has to go off to tend to some other matter about the cave that baby is no longer the love object, that baby is food. So without her “love” i.e. protection-that baby is bear food and be sure that baby knows it-it’s instinct, it’s in there. That fear, that sense of insecurity is there, imprinted-on a cellular level, and it is not going away. That fear is in us, so really we are hardwired with 30,000 years of crazy that got us here.
The entire concept of Original Sin I am dirty because of Adam and Eve’s lapse, taken out of the biblical metaphor becomes a much more viable concept when creating a corollary to fear of annihilation as something that is carried in us from some genesis point-Eden or stardust-your call.
Now I’m not trying to assuage a millennia or so of Christian guilt, I am just positing a parallel theory that takes a provocative religious concept and tethers it to biological moorings. If Original Sin, or something that is in all of us, is really the instinct for survival manifesting itself most profoundly as fear of annihilation and fear of annihilation still lives at the bottom of every fear and therefore every action/reaction you display which colors a whole rainbow of mal-adaptive or crazy behavior.
So you are crazy, but it’s what got you this far, and yes, it is your mom’s fault.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Everything is wrong to me but everything is what I need
The morning had started at 5:30 because of my obsessive compulsive drive to keep a 40 something body at sub 8% body fat and looking like a 20 something body which acknowledges in my world, fitness and well-being as merely a by-product of vanity. All was on track as I pushed through a somnambulant haze with caffeine, until the application of toothpaste ran awry somehow bending a toothbrush bristle with enough force that it catapulted a microscopic bit of toothpaste into my eye causing me to writhe spasmodically with one hand over the burning, minty eye the other giving the finger to the heavens. “What the fuck, how does that even motherfucking happen” I whisper in a guttural throaty tone through my clenched and still unbrushed teeth, it is a deliberately low hiss as to not to arouse my sleeping wife—yes it was a quiet anger. While quiet enough to leave my wife undisturbed it did however begin to stoke my own, as of yet unprovoked but ever smoldering rage as I felt the little flashes of fire dance across the coals.
After packing all my nutrition potions-proteins, specialized fats and other requisite foodstuffs in my bag, finishing my third cup of coffee I was making my dawn jaunt for the subway to get to the gym. It is a twelve-minute walk through urban neighborhoods that comprise a bizarre collection of working poor in subsidized housing, students in $3000 a month flats, professional folks and the people out of time-the elderly who have owned their homes since Eisenhower was in office, a few cleaned-up hippies who still run Marxist societies, tenet rights organizations and other well-intentioned poorly run ineffective causes. People who you can’t tell if they are trapped, lost, or simply confused and I always wonder what they are thinking.
I was one of a very few folks out on a street that would be bumper to bumper with traffic in less than an hour but now it was just me and a smattering of other early risers and two cars. Two cars one of which found the need to honk on an otherwise deserted street. A jarring, unbelievably loud squelch of a honk in this otherwise serene scene-this sound electrified the caffeine in my bloodstream causing me to shake my head and bring my shoulders to my ears while my elbows clenched my sides. Why. Seriously, why is this person honking at 6 AM on a deserted street? I ponder this as I stare hatefully at the driver, has the honking affected positive change for the person, changed something that displeased them more to their liking? ….why, I continue to think, you stupid motherfucker, why…so yes that honk has effected something, but nothing positive.
……….and the embers are stoked…..
The indictments begin.
I begin a mental conversation over an email word choice with one of my two bosses, who are actually more like colleagues, the one with whom I have an extraordinarily complicated relationship who lives on Japan at the moment. This ends with me spewing a string of profanities at him out loud. Ashamed I look around to make sure no one has caught this, unsure of what I would do if someone had. How do you even play that off…you know…like you’re not crazy.
With no witnesses to shame me into humility and better behavior the indictments continue, every owner of every dead plant containing planter, each piece of litter-indicting both litterer and those who fail to care for their property. Leading to anger at the drunk retarded mayhem causing college students-probably because I'm jealous that they can be drunk retarded mayhem causing college students and then there are the generally ignorant folks who seem to think it is ok to throw their trash anywhere or do they consider it a control issue, some kind of mostly impotent power-play like when a group of teenagers walk with deliberate slowness across a street, they stop traffic, they are in control, they have power even if only for a moment.
I see no parallels in my life at all. None.
Then I mock a barking dog---I mean I mock a dog—I squinch my face up looking at the dog who is on a porch and use the universal high pitched, lower lip protruding, mock voice and proceed to make two barking sounds.
It is 6:15 in the morning and I am making fun of a dog, are you fucking kidding me.
After packing all my nutrition potions-proteins, specialized fats and other requisite foodstuffs in my bag, finishing my third cup of coffee I was making my dawn jaunt for the subway to get to the gym. It is a twelve-minute walk through urban neighborhoods that comprise a bizarre collection of working poor in subsidized housing, students in $3000 a month flats, professional folks and the people out of time-the elderly who have owned their homes since Eisenhower was in office, a few cleaned-up hippies who still run Marxist societies, tenet rights organizations and other well-intentioned poorly run ineffective causes. People who you can’t tell if they are trapped, lost, or simply confused and I always wonder what they are thinking.
I was one of a very few folks out on a street that would be bumper to bumper with traffic in less than an hour but now it was just me and a smattering of other early risers and two cars. Two cars one of which found the need to honk on an otherwise deserted street. A jarring, unbelievably loud squelch of a honk in this otherwise serene scene-this sound electrified the caffeine in my bloodstream causing me to shake my head and bring my shoulders to my ears while my elbows clenched my sides. Why. Seriously, why is this person honking at 6 AM on a deserted street? I ponder this as I stare hatefully at the driver, has the honking affected positive change for the person, changed something that displeased them more to their liking? ….why, I continue to think, you stupid motherfucker, why…so yes that honk has effected something, but nothing positive.
……….and the embers are stoked…..
The indictments begin.
I begin a mental conversation over an email word choice with one of my two bosses, who are actually more like colleagues, the one with whom I have an extraordinarily complicated relationship who lives on Japan at the moment. This ends with me spewing a string of profanities at him out loud. Ashamed I look around to make sure no one has caught this, unsure of what I would do if someone had. How do you even play that off…you know…like you’re not crazy.
With no witnesses to shame me into humility and better behavior the indictments continue, every owner of every dead plant containing planter, each piece of litter-indicting both litterer and those who fail to care for their property. Leading to anger at the drunk retarded mayhem causing college students-probably because I'm jealous that they can be drunk retarded mayhem causing college students and then there are the generally ignorant folks who seem to think it is ok to throw their trash anywhere or do they consider it a control issue, some kind of mostly impotent power-play like when a group of teenagers walk with deliberate slowness across a street, they stop traffic, they are in control, they have power even if only for a moment.
I see no parallels in my life at all. None.
Then I mock a barking dog---I mean I mock a dog—I squinch my face up looking at the dog who is on a porch and use the universal high pitched, lower lip protruding, mock voice and proceed to make two barking sounds.
It is 6:15 in the morning and I am making fun of a dog, are you fucking kidding me.
Unfixable
It was there on the subway, a few minutes after the morning rush hour had ended, I found myself sliding into the same mental state I had known since I was a child. An awful default mode built on fear and ego the two parts of my conscious that conspire, to form an unholy cabal from which only wicked things come.
And these wicked things whisper me my truth.
Now it varies mind you and it has become more refined and specific with age but runs something like----Everything in my life is wrong and always will be and as much as I try I can't and don't know how to fix any of it---because I don't even know what “it” is. I am trapped with no way out and no way to change. All I know is it has always been this way and it will always be like this and I just want to be dead. Conjuring the mantras I have been compelled to chant in my head for years, the plea “kill me” and the jihad “burn it down” I slowly lower my head. My blood pressure spikes, my eyes squint and turn the color of coal and my heart fills with hate as I raise my head with a deep inhale wondering what is to become of me, how did I get this way and how have I possibly made it this far.
Yeah, it was one of those commutes.
It was in that moment between stops on the train, feeling that same feeling, thinking those same thoughts, knowing I could follow that feeling all the way back to beginning of my life, thinking about all I had done in an attempt to relieve myself of it, that I knew it would always be there, it was never going away.
Unconsciously and unaware I uttered aloud—“unfixable.” And I knew it was true, I knew I was unfixable.
The feeling was old but the word was new and that creepy sense of having a feeling of yours name itself, grammatically challenged as it may be---after all that therapy I would have thought my feelings would be more literate--was enough to send a shudder through me as I stood on the swaying train, holding nothing but a coffee. Because it is saying to me, as the clever name suggests, “I am here, I am not going anywhere and as much as you workout, work, fuck or otherwise ignore, avoid or push me into some dusty corner I am part of you, actually, I am you.”
“I am you…I am unfixable.”
There it is. The inescapable truth, that moving target of a feeling you have had since you were a kid just named itself, and you know you are seriously fucked.
And these wicked things whisper me my truth.
Now it varies mind you and it has become more refined and specific with age but runs something like----Everything in my life is wrong and always will be and as much as I try I can't and don't know how to fix any of it---because I don't even know what “it” is. I am trapped with no way out and no way to change. All I know is it has always been this way and it will always be like this and I just want to be dead. Conjuring the mantras I have been compelled to chant in my head for years, the plea “kill me” and the jihad “burn it down” I slowly lower my head. My blood pressure spikes, my eyes squint and turn the color of coal and my heart fills with hate as I raise my head with a deep inhale wondering what is to become of me, how did I get this way and how have I possibly made it this far.
Yeah, it was one of those commutes.
It was in that moment between stops on the train, feeling that same feeling, thinking those same thoughts, knowing I could follow that feeling all the way back to beginning of my life, thinking about all I had done in an attempt to relieve myself of it, that I knew it would always be there, it was never going away.
Unconsciously and unaware I uttered aloud—“unfixable.” And I knew it was true, I knew I was unfixable.
The feeling was old but the word was new and that creepy sense of having a feeling of yours name itself, grammatically challenged as it may be---after all that therapy I would have thought my feelings would be more literate--was enough to send a shudder through me as I stood on the swaying train, holding nothing but a coffee. Because it is saying to me, as the clever name suggests, “I am here, I am not going anywhere and as much as you workout, work, fuck or otherwise ignore, avoid or push me into some dusty corner I am part of you, actually, I am you.”
“I am you…I am unfixable.”
There it is. The inescapable truth, that moving target of a feeling you have had since you were a kid just named itself, and you know you are seriously fucked.
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