Because if you say "lightning" it sounds exciting! Rather than, say, a tedious list of minor annoyances! Excitement, dammit!
Jeans pockets: Man, I hate jeans pockets. See, I'm an adult. That means I have to put more in my pockets than, say, a single paper clip. Ergo, I need more room in my pockets than the amount required for a single paper clip. And a need to access those paper-clip-plus materials through an opening large enough to accommodate a human-sized hand.
I understand that jeans pockets are supposed to be tiny, with a miniscule opening, because your typical jeans-wearer undergoes innumerable rough-and-tumble activities daily, such as riding buckin' broncos, fightin' gators, revisin' spreadsheets, and so forth. Facing such a square-jawed, two-fisted, penis-pumpin' existence, you need your goods tightly ensconsed in hard, unpliable fabric with no access except via extremely long and nimble fingernails, which of course all self-respectin' cowboys own. I know that whenever I wear jeans, I'm in my preposterously gigantic American truck hauling large blocks of something in slow motion as Bob Seger yells in the background. Then later I sit around a campfire with my closest entirely male compadres drinkin' some flavorless American beer and laughing deep, throaty guffaws. Then the gay sex. AmericCUHH!!! Eatin' from a SINgle BOWL!
But between you and me and that disgusting thing on the wall, there are times (shudder) when I wear jeans (shudder, shudder) and am not doing anything remotely physical (Shame! Dishonor! Hari-kari right now! I'm dead!). I would survive, believe it or don't, if my jeans pockets could hold objects large enough to conform to the principles of Newtonian mechanics. And I would prefer to be able to access them without taking the jaws of life to my crotch.
Pockets inside pockets: A related issue, obviously. Especially in right-side front pockets in jeans, you often get a pocket within a pocket, pressed against the skin, which is designed to help you lose spare change and then launder it. The idea, I suppose, is that without these, you would have a chaotic, sloshing soup of objects flying around your capacious jeans pockets, and only by collecting the change in the even-smaller pockets within pockets can you ensure that each attempt to reach for your wallet doesn't explode into a dangerous buckshot of small coins that then impales passersby.
I honestly don't know why they stop there. They need pockets within pockets within pockets, so that the few spare molecules that naturally shear off of coins as part of the immutable process of entropy can be neatly inserted into pockets-2 and then lost and laundered.
You know, maybe this is all a conspiracy by foreign governments, to keep our loose change lost and unspent, thereby pulling cash from the money supply and dragging down the American economy. I think that this insane theory I just made up is absolutely, uncontrovertibly true, and it is now clear that pockets within pockets are a socialist conspiracy enacted by President Obama to make Glenn Beck cry. Where's my blackboard?
White things: Why do we have things that are white? What are we trying to prove? That we have so much money that we can waste it on things that can easily get dirty and ruined? That we enjoy spending half our lives cleaning? Anything white attracts dirt and stains within a few seconds and then immediately looks awful. Everything white should be banned, from clothing, to walls, to people.
Food noise: This one's not so rational, I admit. My sister can attest to the terror of living with someone with this particular affliction. I can't stand the sound of people eating. Even the smallest smack will drive me into a rage. It's not a good trait.
As for why I am this way, it's probably because of a deep and torturous resentment of my father, who ate like a pig on speed. Or maybe it's sexual. Both, maybe. Whatever. Regardless, there's no very good explanation of the unholy sickness I feel upon hearing people eat. But there is no doubt in my mind that my irrational and out-of-proportion emotional reactions are entirely someone else's fault, and that I am in no way responsible. That's just how it works.
It's at the point where I'm wondering why exactly human beings need to eat amongst each other. I should probably add that one to this list.
Eating with other people: I know, eating with people is supposed to be awesome. We get to listen to each other chew, and uh ... I suppose we can talk, when we get the chance. But think about it: When else in life is your mouth less conducive to conversation than when you're eating? In our day-to-day lives, it's the only time our mouths are fully occupied, and yet we expect to be able to launch a chatting bonanza during dinner. It makes as much sense as having a party at the dentist's office.
I'm all for spending time with people and talking. But I would prefer each dinner party to consist of people coming over and having drinks (which do require occupation of the mouth, but for shorter durations, with just a few inoffensive swallows instead of a chew-chew-chew-smack-gulp ... ooh, I feel sick), and then each person can move into a different room and silently consume food with the lights off and Leonard Cohen playing mournfully in the background. Then everyone can reconvene in a bright and cheerful living room, compare notes on the dinner, drink some more, and play Wii Rock Band (that's how all my dinner parties end nowadays).
Gum chewing: Gum chewing was specifically designed to make me kill myself. It's a socialist conspiracy to make me cry. It's chewing that never, ever stops, just keeps chomping and smacking and chomping and smacking like a brain-dead cow until I grab the person's face, reach in to his smelly, gaping maw, take the gum out, shove it in his eyes, and then rip out his tongue for good measure and eat it. Noisily, with lots of smacking.
Snorts, but not farts, sneezes or burps: Again, I recognize that this is completely irrational, but I can't stand it when people snort in public. It just makes me thing of festering yellow-green mucous yearning to be released from the body and be thrown away and burned and stomped on, but instead being cordially and noisily invited to return to the body and fester, converting the viscera into an inchoate swamp of bubbling, putrid sickness.
But farts don't bother me. Farts are funny. Seriously! This one time? I was at this party? And this dude farted, like, real loud? It was awesome!
It's true, you know, farts are actually very funny. I actually took a course in American Indian literature that confirmed that farts are universally and verifiably funny, and that was in college, where knowledge is true, so there. The first story we read in the class, in fact, was a story meant to be passed down through the oral tradition, so writing it down was stupid, but whatever: It involved the trickster coyote, and he was farting a lot, and it was supposed to cause the kids in the crowd to giggle, so there.
Burps are the same thing. The louder the funnier. And they release the sickness into the atmosphere instead of allowing them to collect inside and poison the bodily humors into an imbalance of phlegmatic disposition. And the same for sneezes, which is why I hate ...
Sneeze stiflers: These are the people who try to do a cute little "pfft!" and hold their sneezes in. They think it's cute and dainty, but to me it says "I don't want to let these poisonous allergens go! I love them lots and lots! I actually want them to grow inside me and sprout little boughs of diseased, dripping coagulations of germs, which will then turn my viscera into an inchoate swamp of putrid sickness! Word!"
Instead, you must let your sneezes out with a powerful and manly KACHOOOO! That proves that the toxins have been forcibly expelled! You have thus rid them from your chest, discharging them with the force of Thor's mighty hammer cleaving the skulls of the unworthy! Now you must go on to drive trucks full of large heavy things in slow motion whil Bob Seger screams about America! RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR(etc.)!!!!!!
People who laugh loudly at their own jokes: Granted, you can laugh a wee bit at your own jokes. I don't, but many do, and that's fine. It's the people that explode into uproarious laughter immediately after telling their own jokes that bother me. It's pushy and forceful; it's like saying "premise premise premise punchline and now LAUGH DAMMIT!!!!!!" You pretty much have to laugh when people do that because it's too awkward to leave that person going into hysterics by themselves. So you give a polite ho ho ho and get on with life, but you leave feeling a bit manipulated.
Words on walls: Because I'm a married man and I'm whipped like a dead donkey, I end up watching more than a few interior design shows on TV. In a lot of them, they write things on the walls in ostensibly pleasing light purple fonts, things like "peace" and "live life out loud" and "fuck y'all bitches" and stuff like that.
It's extremely tacky, in my book. If you want to create a mood with a room's decor, it might be a wee bit obvious to plaster the sentiment you're going for on the wall in big block letters. If that were how it worked, you could just create an art installation that was a piece of paper tacked on a wall that said "HOLY COW THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ART RIGHT HERE. MAN OH MAN, IT'S DEEP IN A WAY THAT ORDINARY PEOPLE CAN'T COMPREHEND. BUT YOU, AS PART OF THE SOPHISTICATED URBAN ELITE, CAN FULLY APPRECIATE IT AS BEING A NEW STEP FORWARD IN ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND SHIT LIKE THAT. NOW THAT YOU'VE SPENT A RESPECTABLE AMOUNT OF TIME STARING AT THIS WITH A SERIOUS LOOK ON YOUR FACE, YOU CAN GO TALK TO THAT ARTSY CHICK AND TRY TO GET LAID."
Musical guests on "Saturday Night Live": I just finished watching "Saturday Night Live," something I haven't done for years, and you know what? It was pretty funny. Except for the part where it all fell flat for 15 minutes because of the stupid musical guest. Wow, a guy yelling into a mic and playing a guitar. Never seen that before.
It wasn't fun when I was young and actually sort of kind of hip (not really). I would watch "Saturday Night Live" every Saturday night (alone, always, but that's a different and much more boring and sad story), and it those days it would even be musicians I had heard of. And even then, the musical guest's appearance was the time to flip over to "Star Search" and hope that it was time for the spokesmodel competition.
You know what? It's not that much fun to watch people play music. In person, it can be fun, because it's loud and there are girls there. At home, on TV, it's really not that great.
Listening to music while doing something else: Whoo, that's fun. Playing music, especially in Wii Rock Band: oodles upon shitloads upon metric tons of fun. But watching other people play music on TV? There's a reason MTV doesn't actually play videos, and hasn't for about 15 years now. They quickly realized that watching people play music isn't that great. If you get a Lady Gaga, who lards her mediocre synth-pop with buckets of weirdo conteporary-art bullshit, that can be OK. Or a rap video in which the music serves as a forgettable backdrop for watching asses shake -- that again can serve some purpose. But a bunch of white guys, on a stage in New York, screaming songs that sound much better on studio versions that I can get on demand from iTunes for $.99 ... yeah, you know what, I have 200 channels. I'm betting that somewhere in there there's something more engaging than that.
That now completes the list of all of the things that I hate. All my future posts will be glowing explorations of things that are great, like cute kitties and pie and the love of a good woman. The end.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Things I Hate: Lawns
Lawns are awful, awful things. Think about how much destruction lawns cause. No, wait, don't think of it, because I'm going to tell you:
1. Pollution: Supposedly, lawn mowers are some of the worst polluters around. I heard once that mowing one acre puts as many greenhouse gases in the air as taking a cross-country trip in a hybrid. Now while that's probably not true, it does make you think about exactly how much global warming has been caused by this completely unnecessary activity. No one has ever been fed by a mown lawn. No one has ever died because their lawn wasn't mown. It's pointless.
Why exactly do we need lawns? Because our neighbors will complain if we don't maintain them. Why will they complain? Because it supposedly doesn't look nice to have an unmown lawn. By that logic, if everyone decided that chopping off your pinkie fingers looks great, I would have to do that too. Fuck y'all. I don't depend on your opinion of me to maintain my self-worth.
And personally, I think well-mown lawns look revolting. I look at a sea of uniform grass and think about how many toxic chemicals went into the groundwater to create the same look you could achieve by painting a blacktop green.
Lawns look like what happens when anal retentive serial plant beheaders go wild. Why do people think they look nice? It's the same plant, over and over, at exactly the same length. What could be more dull to look at? Why not just install Astroturf while you're at it?
You know what's nice to look at? Nature. People even go hiking in it just to look at it. Imagine that, walking in circle for hours just to look at stuff. And here's the thing about the nature they tend to look at: It doesn't tend to be large swathes of monoculture, like lawns are. It instead tends to be intricate tapestries of colors and textures, comprising the wide range of plants that live in harmony. It's a thing called ecological diversity, and it's kind of vital for the survival of life as we know it on this planet. If nature just produced rows and rows of identical, artifically stunted grasses, we never would have come about in the first place.
I honestly think there's some control-freakiness going on in the minds of those lunatics who care about their lawns. It's like, "This is the land I OWN! I must CONTROL every INCH OF IT, or the COMMUNISTS WIN!" Of course, what could be more communist than a world in which one species fills every inch at exactly the same size and length ...
2. Pain in the ass: Mowing lawns sucks. It's dirty, sweaty work that results in shards of severed plants sticking to every inch of your skin. Guys who enjoy mowing lawns really should channel that energy into something constructive, something that helps people instead of hurting the planet. If they have to be alone with a machine as they do it, they could maybe build something. They could maybe do anything a little less mindless than pushing a pollution-spewing cart back and forth across a scrap of land.
The worst, though, are the people with riding lawn mowers. So wait, you're so lazy and/or feeble that you can't even push a cart back and forth for a few hours. So your solution is to strap some blades to an especially toxic engine and drive around? It puts me in mind of a person who is too fat too walk driving through a buffet in a Rascal. It's gluttony at an epic, Caligula-type level, where you're so spoiled that you're killing yourself through self-indulgence.
OK, maybe that was a bit of a reach. And maybe you have a large property, and need a riding lawn mower to mow it all. That then begs the question: Do you really need to mow it all? If you get a big boner from looking at long rows of identical short green stalks, fine, do that in part of the area. But why not the let the rest of it go to nature? Then maybe a wide range of plants could live there. And maybe animals! And maybe that patch of earth could support life instead of destroying it! Just a thought.
1. Pollution: Supposedly, lawn mowers are some of the worst polluters around. I heard once that mowing one acre puts as many greenhouse gases in the air as taking a cross-country trip in a hybrid. Now while that's probably not true, it does make you think about exactly how much global warming has been caused by this completely unnecessary activity. No one has ever been fed by a mown lawn. No one has ever died because their lawn wasn't mown. It's pointless.
Why exactly do we need lawns? Because our neighbors will complain if we don't maintain them. Why will they complain? Because it supposedly doesn't look nice to have an unmown lawn. By that logic, if everyone decided that chopping off your pinkie fingers looks great, I would have to do that too. Fuck y'all. I don't depend on your opinion of me to maintain my self-worth.
And personally, I think well-mown lawns look revolting. I look at a sea of uniform grass and think about how many toxic chemicals went into the groundwater to create the same look you could achieve by painting a blacktop green.
Lawns look like what happens when anal retentive serial plant beheaders go wild. Why do people think they look nice? It's the same plant, over and over, at exactly the same length. What could be more dull to look at? Why not just install Astroturf while you're at it?
You know what's nice to look at? Nature. People even go hiking in it just to look at it. Imagine that, walking in circle for hours just to look at stuff. And here's the thing about the nature they tend to look at: It doesn't tend to be large swathes of monoculture, like lawns are. It instead tends to be intricate tapestries of colors and textures, comprising the wide range of plants that live in harmony. It's a thing called ecological diversity, and it's kind of vital for the survival of life as we know it on this planet. If nature just produced rows and rows of identical, artifically stunted grasses, we never would have come about in the first place.
I honestly think there's some control-freakiness going on in the minds of those lunatics who care about their lawns. It's like, "This is the land I OWN! I must CONTROL every INCH OF IT, or the COMMUNISTS WIN!" Of course, what could be more communist than a world in which one species fills every inch at exactly the same size and length ...
2. Pain in the ass: Mowing lawns sucks. It's dirty, sweaty work that results in shards of severed plants sticking to every inch of your skin. Guys who enjoy mowing lawns really should channel that energy into something constructive, something that helps people instead of hurting the planet. If they have to be alone with a machine as they do it, they could maybe build something. They could maybe do anything a little less mindless than pushing a pollution-spewing cart back and forth across a scrap of land.
The worst, though, are the people with riding lawn mowers. So wait, you're so lazy and/or feeble that you can't even push a cart back and forth for a few hours. So your solution is to strap some blades to an especially toxic engine and drive around? It puts me in mind of a person who is too fat too walk driving through a buffet in a Rascal. It's gluttony at an epic, Caligula-type level, where you're so spoiled that you're killing yourself through self-indulgence.
OK, maybe that was a bit of a reach. And maybe you have a large property, and need a riding lawn mower to mow it all. That then begs the question: Do you really need to mow it all? If you get a big boner from looking at long rows of identical short green stalks, fine, do that in part of the area. But why not the let the rest of it go to nature? Then maybe a wide range of plants could live there. And maybe animals! And maybe that patch of earth could support life instead of destroying it! Just a thought.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Natural Childbirth: How Morally Superior Does It Make You?
I is done had some young ‘uns and now that Ed is havin’ a young ‘un, I now feel as though I’ve been invited, albeit indirectly, to share my feelings about natural childbirth. And just so you know, I stole the title from The Onion.
Childbirth...a natural process, as old as our species itself! Can anyone imagine anything more wholesome and earth-friendly than birthing at home, in one’s bed (or on a bed of straw in, say, a stable), perhaps with the assistance of a wizened matron or two? Maybe the straining mother-to-be is practicing hypno-birthing, reaching deep within her consciousness to find the inner peace that will sweep her away from the pain and into a euphoric mental meadow of birthing bliss. Maybe, after a reasonable period of howls and pants, a tired smile spreads across the happy mother’s face as the healthy baby cries for the first time and is placed upon her welcoming breast to suckle its first drink of life. Or maybe everyone dies. Oh, wait...that can’t happen, right? I mean, not if it’s natural...
I live in a place where you’re considered a total failure of a mother if you did not manage to birth your baby without any painkilling drugs or medical intervention. Well, OK, maybe “total failure” is a bit strong, but without a doubt, there is an unspoken sentiment of “you must not really care about your child if you poisoned your body with all those drugs” that radiates from what I think is actually a minority of loud, womb-thumping women. These are the women who start “ban the bags” campaigns to try to pass laws prohibiting formula companies from giving out free samples. They’re mothers who will spend $24.95 for 4 ounces of all-natural, food-grade sun block for their children and who use slings, for heaven’s sake, and not bjorns for their 24-hour-a-day baby-wearing. And, as long as I’ve pushed the stereotype this far, I might as well throw in that they probably assume their baby is gifted. Anyway, these are the women who make the uncertain, expecting, first-time mothers feel guilty for wanting an epidural and dammit, that’s just not right.
Part of it is the term, “natural,” that gets me, as though “natural” is inherently superior. Let’s think of a few natural things...carrots (not bad) and bees (they’re cool) and ticks (well, hm, ticks must be valuable as food for something), and malaria and rabbits eating their babies when they feel threatened and mother cats inbreeding with their son cats (happened in my own house!) and hot lava that’s no longer in our molten core and leprosy...certainly, they’re all facets of nature, but are they all preferable to a human-made alternative? Of course not. Why should childbirth be any different?
And let’s think of other things that can be done “naturally.” Like amputation – haven’t we all seen some movie where a Civil War soldier takes a messy swig of whiskey and pops a branch in his mouth before the doc saws off the leg? Our how about a double mastectomy? John Adams’s poor daughter had a “natural” double mastectomy to slice away the cancer that would eventually kill her. I’d like to see a womb-thumper choose that option.
The point is that there’s no shame in pain relief. There is no badge of merit handed out to those of us who endured the most pain while pushing out a baby. Millions of healthy babies have been born to happily numb mothers and have gone on to do great things in life. And, frankly, the birth is about the tiniest, least significant part of having a kid, so go ahead and have that young ‘un, Ed, even “naturally,” if the pain really floats your boat. But for chrissakes, if you want the epidural, just say so, and with relish. Because you, yes, you! have the power to stop the pain! And then take your Vicodin for your recovery pain. And drink your stout beer to enhance your milk supply. And then drink some wine to make the baby sleep all night. Happy parenting!
Childbirth...a natural process, as old as our species itself! Can anyone imagine anything more wholesome and earth-friendly than birthing at home, in one’s bed (or on a bed of straw in, say, a stable), perhaps with the assistance of a wizened matron or two? Maybe the straining mother-to-be is practicing hypno-birthing, reaching deep within her consciousness to find the inner peace that will sweep her away from the pain and into a euphoric mental meadow of birthing bliss. Maybe, after a reasonable period of howls and pants, a tired smile spreads across the happy mother’s face as the healthy baby cries for the first time and is placed upon her welcoming breast to suckle its first drink of life. Or maybe everyone dies. Oh, wait...that can’t happen, right? I mean, not if it’s natural...
I live in a place where you’re considered a total failure of a mother if you did not manage to birth your baby without any painkilling drugs or medical intervention. Well, OK, maybe “total failure” is a bit strong, but without a doubt, there is an unspoken sentiment of “you must not really care about your child if you poisoned your body with all those drugs” that radiates from what I think is actually a minority of loud, womb-thumping women. These are the women who start “ban the bags” campaigns to try to pass laws prohibiting formula companies from giving out free samples. They’re mothers who will spend $24.95 for 4 ounces of all-natural, food-grade sun block for their children and who use slings, for heaven’s sake, and not bjorns for their 24-hour-a-day baby-wearing. And, as long as I’ve pushed the stereotype this far, I might as well throw in that they probably assume their baby is gifted. Anyway, these are the women who make the uncertain, expecting, first-time mothers feel guilty for wanting an epidural and dammit, that’s just not right.
Part of it is the term, “natural,” that gets me, as though “natural” is inherently superior. Let’s think of a few natural things...carrots (not bad) and bees (they’re cool) and ticks (well, hm, ticks must be valuable as food for something), and malaria and rabbits eating their babies when they feel threatened and mother cats inbreeding with their son cats (happened in my own house!) and hot lava that’s no longer in our molten core and leprosy...certainly, they’re all facets of nature, but are they all preferable to a human-made alternative? Of course not. Why should childbirth be any different?
And let’s think of other things that can be done “naturally.” Like amputation – haven’t we all seen some movie where a Civil War soldier takes a messy swig of whiskey and pops a branch in his mouth before the doc saws off the leg? Our how about a double mastectomy? John Adams’s poor daughter had a “natural” double mastectomy to slice away the cancer that would eventually kill her. I’d like to see a womb-thumper choose that option.
The point is that there’s no shame in pain relief. There is no badge of merit handed out to those of us who endured the most pain while pushing out a baby. Millions of healthy babies have been born to happily numb mothers and have gone on to do great things in life. And, frankly, the birth is about the tiniest, least significant part of having a kid, so go ahead and have that young ‘un, Ed, even “naturally,” if the pain really floats your boat. But for chrissakes, if you want the epidural, just say so, and with relish. Because you, yes, you! have the power to stop the pain! And then take your Vicodin for your recovery pain. And drink your stout beer to enhance your milk supply. And then drink some wine to make the baby sleep all night. Happy parenting!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
I Am Royalty
We are having a child. And the child's name will of course reflect its status as a member of the English royal family. We have decided she shall be christened "Eleanor I, by the Grace of God, Queen of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lady of Ireland and the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head, Dykhuizen." Amongst playmates she may affectionately be referred to as "E.I.G.G.Q.E.F.D.F.L.I.C.E.E.S.H." She may not be referred to with the vulgar appellation "Ellie." Such calumny shall be considered an affront against God's representative upon Earth, and justice shall swiftly be brought upon the guilty party.
The nature of said punishment will depend upon the progress of my newly engaged effort to restore Eleanor to the throne as the rightful heir to Henry III. As you all are of course aware, I am the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King Henry III. I am one of only ten million or so people to be able to make such a claim.
My task is then simple: Gather an army, hie myself to England, and kill everyone with a better claim to the throne. While such a task may have appeared Herculean in the days of my vaunted forefather, advances in modern weaponry make this a relatively easy task. For too long, the House of Minnesota has been ignored in affairs of state! Once more unto the breach, my good men (and women, because my marauding horde is an Equal Opportunity Employer)!
However, in my extensive studies of my illustrious ancestors (I read two books), I must say I've gained new appreciation for democracy. We may occasionally elect an idiot, but hell, at least we don't have wars to decide it. And even George W. Bush looks like a Rhodes scholar compared to some of England's past rulers. To wit:
Henry VI, who ruled England for about half of the 1400s, was pretty clearly what we would call nowadays "developmentally disabled." He was the immediate successor to Henry V, who was the one played by Kenneth Branagh and says "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ... come upon this field of glory to kick ass and drink beer, and we're all out of beer ... we must protect this hoooouuuse!" Then he went on to win the Battle of Agincourt, defeating Mothra in ten rounds. I think that was how it went, anyway. I was reading all this as I was watching late-night TV, so I'm not sure I got it all right.
Point is, his son Henry VI had quite a legacy to live up to. And boy, did he ever not. He was not only born into the Hundred Years' War against France; he was also heir to the Wars of the Roses, in which different branches of the royal family, those of York and Lancaster, killed each other regularly and traded the throne back and forth. Meanwhile, Henry VI was terrified by war, which is a problem when you're the commander-in-chief of two of them. He was reportedly very meek and gentle, in a way that would be cute if he were a greeter at Wal-Mart, but extremely dangerous for someone trying to lead England. He would blush whenever anyone mentioned sex and sincerely believed his son was created by the Holy Spirit. His solution to the Wars of the Roses was to stage what he called a "loveday," in which members of the York and Lacanster clans would all have a public ceremony together. Mind you, these were people who killed each other's children, a lot. Their beefs are not likely to be smoothed over by a public smooch-fest. Henry thought they would.
The end result of Henry VI's incompetence was that England lost all the gains in France made by Henry V, with Joan of Arc being the symbol of the reconquest. Meanwhile, for the most part, the Wars of the Roses only killed of the members of the nobility, leaving peasants and middle-class folks out of it -- that is, until King Henry's forces looted and pillaged a bunch of towns of Southern England. Imagine that for a second -- imagine if the Republicans and Democrats were killing each other over who would be in power. I think our first reaction would be "Yeah! Cool! Is it on TV?" But then imagine if the Republicans, under their retarded leader George W. Bush, decided to just raze and burn Iowa for no good reason. I think even Fox News would have to turn against them then.
King Henry VI came along for all this countryside brutality, but was likely oblivious, allegedly laughing and singing in his private camp during the carnage. The people of London reacted to the spree by literally shutting the door on Henry and the Lancastrians (they had real doors to cities then, with real keys -- hence the term "the key to the city") and declaring a new king, Edward IV.
Normally things weren't as bad as all this -- normally it would just take one civil war to figure out who the next leader would be. Just a few hundred lives lost over a year or two, something like that. In general, though, we see the danger of letting someone be king just because his father was. Well, we see it, but the English didn't. They kept on with the tradition, because they didn't know anything else.
So imagine what a huge step forward it was to try democracy instead. These days, it's old hat, but then democracy was revolutionary in a way that is hard for us to fathom. It was radical. It was a intellectual, long-shot idea based on cutting-edge theory that turned out to be extremely right.
So that's what I hope we all celebrated over Independence Day: radical solutions to longstanding problems, solutions based on the latest in intellectual thought. That's our true legacy, that willingness to try something that's very new and is based on the creativity of the most probing minds. Innovation, in business-speak. Let's try to keep that in mind before we hate on Obama and the Democrats for trying an innovative solution on health care, or before we reflexively crap on other new ideas in immigration, energy policy, etc. The country is seeming a little afraid of change lately, and fear of change is not what we were founded on.
The nature of said punishment will depend upon the progress of my newly engaged effort to restore Eleanor to the throne as the rightful heir to Henry III. As you all are of course aware, I am the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King Henry III. I am one of only ten million or so people to be able to make such a claim.
My task is then simple: Gather an army, hie myself to England, and kill everyone with a better claim to the throne. While such a task may have appeared Herculean in the days of my vaunted forefather, advances in modern weaponry make this a relatively easy task. For too long, the House of Minnesota has been ignored in affairs of state! Once more unto the breach, my good men (and women, because my marauding horde is an Equal Opportunity Employer)!
However, in my extensive studies of my illustrious ancestors (I read two books), I must say I've gained new appreciation for democracy. We may occasionally elect an idiot, but hell, at least we don't have wars to decide it. And even George W. Bush looks like a Rhodes scholar compared to some of England's past rulers. To wit:
Henry VI, who ruled England for about half of the 1400s, was pretty clearly what we would call nowadays "developmentally disabled." He was the immediate successor to Henry V, who was the one played by Kenneth Branagh and says "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ... come upon this field of glory to kick ass and drink beer, and we're all out of beer ... we must protect this hoooouuuse!" Then he went on to win the Battle of Agincourt, defeating Mothra in ten rounds. I think that was how it went, anyway. I was reading all this as I was watching late-night TV, so I'm not sure I got it all right.
Point is, his son Henry VI had quite a legacy to live up to. And boy, did he ever not. He was not only born into the Hundred Years' War against France; he was also heir to the Wars of the Roses, in which different branches of the royal family, those of York and Lancaster, killed each other regularly and traded the throne back and forth. Meanwhile, Henry VI was terrified by war, which is a problem when you're the commander-in-chief of two of them. He was reportedly very meek and gentle, in a way that would be cute if he were a greeter at Wal-Mart, but extremely dangerous for someone trying to lead England. He would blush whenever anyone mentioned sex and sincerely believed his son was created by the Holy Spirit. His solution to the Wars of the Roses was to stage what he called a "loveday," in which members of the York and Lacanster clans would all have a public ceremony together. Mind you, these were people who killed each other's children, a lot. Their beefs are not likely to be smoothed over by a public smooch-fest. Henry thought they would.
The end result of Henry VI's incompetence was that England lost all the gains in France made by Henry V, with Joan of Arc being the symbol of the reconquest. Meanwhile, for the most part, the Wars of the Roses only killed of the members of the nobility, leaving peasants and middle-class folks out of it -- that is, until King Henry's forces looted and pillaged a bunch of towns of Southern England. Imagine that for a second -- imagine if the Republicans and Democrats were killing each other over who would be in power. I think our first reaction would be "Yeah! Cool! Is it on TV?" But then imagine if the Republicans, under their retarded leader George W. Bush, decided to just raze and burn Iowa for no good reason. I think even Fox News would have to turn against them then.
King Henry VI came along for all this countryside brutality, but was likely oblivious, allegedly laughing and singing in his private camp during the carnage. The people of London reacted to the spree by literally shutting the door on Henry and the Lancastrians (they had real doors to cities then, with real keys -- hence the term "the key to the city") and declaring a new king, Edward IV.
Normally things weren't as bad as all this -- normally it would just take one civil war to figure out who the next leader would be. Just a few hundred lives lost over a year or two, something like that. In general, though, we see the danger of letting someone be king just because his father was. Well, we see it, but the English didn't. They kept on with the tradition, because they didn't know anything else.
So imagine what a huge step forward it was to try democracy instead. These days, it's old hat, but then democracy was revolutionary in a way that is hard for us to fathom. It was radical. It was a intellectual, long-shot idea based on cutting-edge theory that turned out to be extremely right.
So that's what I hope we all celebrated over Independence Day: radical solutions to longstanding problems, solutions based on the latest in intellectual thought. That's our true legacy, that willingness to try something that's very new and is based on the creativity of the most probing minds. Innovation, in business-speak. Let's try to keep that in mind before we hate on Obama and the Democrats for trying an innovative solution on health care, or before we reflexively crap on other new ideas in immigration, energy policy, etc. The country is seeming a little afraid of change lately, and fear of change is not what we were founded on.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Ethnicity is a Vegetable, Part One: The Vegetable Part of It
Ed is havin' a young 'un. This is now how posts on this blog start, I see. And instead of investigating/whining about some part of society that bugs us for inscrutable reasons, we now have the noble duty to warn Ed's young foetus about parts of society that bug us for inscrutable reasons. Warning is much nobler than whining, right?
So, let's begin, shall we? Why don't you hop up on Uncle Joe's lap, young foetus, and listen to a tale filled with dread, wonder, and, ultimately, actually, neither of those two.
Today's exercise in edification will attempt to answer this question: What is ethnicity? As an analogy/delay tactic, I will put off that question, and ask another: What is a vegetable? By way of contrast, and in order to completely lose my entire audience before the end of the third paragraph, I will first ask one more question: What is a fruit?
What Is a Fruit?
This one's the easy one. A fruit, saith Merriam-Webster, is a ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents. Done. QED. Cogito ergo sum. We all know dozens of examples: apples, oranges, bananas. Weirder ones like kiwifruit, pomegranates, and starfruit are nonetheless easily recognizable as fruit: hard outside, fleshy/juicy inside, and seeds. So, there you go - that's fruit.
Next, we move on to....wait, what's that, little foetus? Isn't a tomato really a fruit? Oh, little one - you have so much to learn about this wonderful world! A tomato's a vegetable, of course. Which leads me to my next question:
What Is a.....hmm? little one? You say a tomato is hard outside, juicy inside, with seeds? Well, sure, but it's still a vegetable, which as you might have guessed was my next ques.... Say what? You brought your personal botanist over? My, but you are an impertinent little foetus! And your botanist says that a tomato is a ripened ovary of the tomato plant? Well, if that's true, then that would make a tomato a fruit, and....what's that botanist? It is? Well, if you go by that definition, then so are cucumbers, green peppers, green peas, and...and...wow. Okay. So lots of things we call vegetables are biologically fruits. Interesting. That now leads me, much more tentatively than before, to my next question:
What Is a Vegetable?
This one, it turns out, is actually easier to answer. A vegetable is something green that we eat as a side dish at dinner. Ha ha, right? But not really - that is almost exactly what our dictionary friends say. M-W calls it a usually herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal.
But that's just the dictionary; let's see what our botanist friend has to say. Oh, dear botanist friend, can you tell me what a vegetable is? You know, scientifically? Now, don't be shy - I may not be a trained scientist, but I'm sure you can put it in layman's terms, right? So, go ahead. Please. I'm not....hey! Where are you going? Little foetus, your friend just ran away! I guess it's up to me. And I say that in the end, a vegetable is a plant that people call, or use as, a vegetable. So a tomato is a vegetable after all. And a cucumber. And lettuce, and carrots, and mushrooms. That makes me feel much better.
Now we can move on to the actual question of the blog, which is....now what? Mushrooms aren't plants, they're funguses? So what? Oh - I said that vegetables were plants. Fine. Vegetables are plants and funguses that we call veg....yes? Yes, I've had sushi wrapped in seaweed. Yes, I'd call seaweed a vegetable. But seaweed isn't a plant, it's algae? Wonderful. Next you'll tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too! Ha! (please don't tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too....)
Oh boy, I'm feeling a little woozy. I think I have to make this a two-part post. Off my lap, tiny proto-half-Ed, and back in utero for you!
So, let's begin, shall we? Why don't you hop up on Uncle Joe's lap, young foetus, and listen to a tale filled with dread, wonder, and, ultimately, actually, neither of those two.
Today's exercise in edification will attempt to answer this question: What is ethnicity? As an analogy/delay tactic, I will put off that question, and ask another: What is a vegetable? By way of contrast, and in order to completely lose my entire audience before the end of the third paragraph, I will first ask one more question: What is a fruit?
What Is a Fruit?
This one's the easy one. A fruit, saith Merriam-Webster, is a ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents. Done. QED. Cogito ergo sum. We all know dozens of examples: apples, oranges, bananas. Weirder ones like kiwifruit, pomegranates, and starfruit are nonetheless easily recognizable as fruit: hard outside, fleshy/juicy inside, and seeds. So, there you go - that's fruit.
Next, we move on to....wait, what's that, little foetus? Isn't a tomato really a fruit? Oh, little one - you have so much to learn about this wonderful world! A tomato's a vegetable, of course. Which leads me to my next question:
What Is a.....hmm? little one? You say a tomato is hard outside, juicy inside, with seeds? Well, sure, but it's still a vegetable, which as you might have guessed was my next ques.... Say what? You brought your personal botanist over? My, but you are an impertinent little foetus! And your botanist says that a tomato is a ripened ovary of the tomato plant? Well, if that's true, then that would make a tomato a fruit, and....what's that botanist? It is? Well, if you go by that definition, then so are cucumbers, green peppers, green peas, and...and...wow. Okay. So lots of things we call vegetables are biologically fruits. Interesting. That now leads me, much more tentatively than before, to my next question:
What Is a Vegetable?
This one, it turns out, is actually easier to answer. A vegetable is something green that we eat as a side dish at dinner. Ha ha, right? But not really - that is almost exactly what our dictionary friends say. M-W calls it a usually herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal.
But that's just the dictionary; let's see what our botanist friend has to say. Oh, dear botanist friend, can you tell me what a vegetable is? You know, scientifically? Now, don't be shy - I may not be a trained scientist, but I'm sure you can put it in layman's terms, right? So, go ahead. Please. I'm not....hey! Where are you going? Little foetus, your friend just ran away! I guess it's up to me. And I say that in the end, a vegetable is a plant that people call, or use as, a vegetable. So a tomato is a vegetable after all. And a cucumber. And lettuce, and carrots, and mushrooms. That makes me feel much better.
Now we can move on to the actual question of the blog, which is....now what? Mushrooms aren't plants, they're funguses? So what? Oh - I said that vegetables were plants. Fine. Vegetables are plants and funguses that we call veg....yes? Yes, I've had sushi wrapped in seaweed. Yes, I'd call seaweed a vegetable. But seaweed isn't a plant, it's algae? Wonderful. Next you'll tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too! Ha! (please don't tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too....)
Oh boy, I'm feeling a little woozy. I think I have to make this a two-part post. Off my lap, tiny proto-half-Ed, and back in utero for you!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Cursewords I Can't Live Without
I is havin' a young 'un. And as part of my newfound responsibility, I'll need to clean up my act. No more having three beers in a single night. No more staying up until midnight playing Scrabble online. No more injecting heroin into my eyeball. Yup, my hedonistic lifestyle's gotta change.
But I don't know if I can give up cursing. As a kid I was defiantly anti-cursing, and said a prayer of apology every time I even thought of a curseword. Nowadays I realize that there is a rainbow of self-expression in those naughty words, and I'm not sure I can live without some of them.
Some can go. "Fuckin'" is usually unnecessary. It adds little more than emphasis, as in "That was fuckin' ridiculous!" You don't lose much meaning by just saying "That was completely ridiculous!" I'm not going to miss that one.
But there are some naughty or slightly naughty terms that are downright irreplacable. For example:
Half-assed: I challenge you to give me a term that conveys the same spirit of obligatory, apathetic endeavor as does "half-assed." "Low-effort"? That doesn't really communicate the requisite disdain for the person in question. "Half-baked"? Again, not enough disdain.
Like most cursewords or terms, it makes no sense when taken literally. Why would something low-effort require just half of your ass, and a full effort require all of it? Are that many pursuits so dependent on the entire use of the ass? (Keep it clean, people.)
But that's sort of the beauty of it. I personally love it when a term is able to communicate something so well despite its literal meaning -- in this case, "concerning a section of the gluteus maximus" -- having so little to do with the meaning that it has taken on in our culture.
This is actually one of the few words involving "ass" that I find to be useful. Americans apparently have an ass fetish, because we affix "ass" onto every word we can come up with: dumb-ass, smart-ass, weird-ass, crazy-ass, etc. As with "fuckin'", little is typically added besides emphasis. (Well, "smart-ass" is kind of useful. I suppose you could say "smart alec" instead. But that smells like one of these lame-ass cleaned-up versions of regular curses, like "Gosh!" or "Geez!" instead of "God!" It's kind of a "letter of the law but no the spirit" thing, you know? It's like, do you really think God's going to be like, "Well, since you didn't quite say the entire word, you get by on a technicality." No, He's going to smite you either way. Everyone gets smoten eventually. So live it up while you can, motherfuckers!)
Bullshit: There are many ways to talk about half-truths, but none really communicates anything similar to what "bullshit" so poetically expresses. "Bullshit" is not just a lie -- it's a whole world of lies, a rich tapestry of falsehood, intended to make the speaker look brilliant and wonderful. In fact, this one professor dude once came on "The Daily Show" hawking his book, called "Bullshit," which explored the rich veins of connotation and denotation captured in this wonderful word. So smart people recognize the value of "bullshit" too. So there.
Again, the literal meaning (bovine waste product) has little or nothing to do with the meaning that it has taken on. And again, a big part the word's utility it wrapped up in the disdain it communicates. I would assume that that's true of every curseword or term. And maybe that's why they're so popular -- we don't have enough clean words in the English language that convey sufficient hatred.
Nigga, please: OK, I never actually say this one. Nor should I. "Nigga" is a word that has a different meaning depending on the race of the speaker. My particular race (white) has such a long and brutal history of using the word as a weapon that I don't know if we should ever be allowed to use it, regardless of our intentions. From our mouths it will always have at least a partial meaning of "you are not even human." That's powerful stuff, and not to be played around with.
But, man, I still secretly wish I could say "nigga, please." It has nothing to do with black people, really. When this phrase is used properly, it's just poetry. It's such a perfect way to tell someone "Look, you're not fooling anyone." But there's more than that. "Nigga, please" has in it the wisdom of someone who's seen it all -- most of it unpleasant -- and has come out the other side not only strong, but strong enough to call out everyone who is obviously full of crap, very publicly, and very rightfully. After you say "nigga, please," everyone is kinda like, "Yeah, you're right! Thank God you said that."
But there is also a little bit of warmth in "nigga, please." Maybe that's the true genius in it. There's a hint of letting the other person in on it, leaving them just enough room to burst out laughing and say "OK, yeah. You're right. I'm full of crap, I'm sorry." Then we can all get on with life.
So where does that leave us? I don't know. I suppose just that cursewords can often capture things that legitimate language just can't, and it's a shame that we can't say them whenever we like. But then, maybe if we did, the words would lose those unique meanings. Maybe they need to be saved for those times when we need to break taboos to get our points across. Hmm.
But I don't know if I can give up cursing. As a kid I was defiantly anti-cursing, and said a prayer of apology every time I even thought of a curseword. Nowadays I realize that there is a rainbow of self-expression in those naughty words, and I'm not sure I can live without some of them.
Some can go. "Fuckin'" is usually unnecessary. It adds little more than emphasis, as in "That was fuckin' ridiculous!" You don't lose much meaning by just saying "That was completely ridiculous!" I'm not going to miss that one.
But there are some naughty or slightly naughty terms that are downright irreplacable. For example:
Half-assed: I challenge you to give me a term that conveys the same spirit of obligatory, apathetic endeavor as does "half-assed." "Low-effort"? That doesn't really communicate the requisite disdain for the person in question. "Half-baked"? Again, not enough disdain.
Like most cursewords or terms, it makes no sense when taken literally. Why would something low-effort require just half of your ass, and a full effort require all of it? Are that many pursuits so dependent on the entire use of the ass? (Keep it clean, people.)
But that's sort of the beauty of it. I personally love it when a term is able to communicate something so well despite its literal meaning -- in this case, "concerning a section of the gluteus maximus" -- having so little to do with the meaning that it has taken on in our culture.
This is actually one of the few words involving "ass" that I find to be useful. Americans apparently have an ass fetish, because we affix "ass" onto every word we can come up with: dumb-ass, smart-ass, weird-ass, crazy-ass, etc. As with "fuckin'", little is typically added besides emphasis. (Well, "smart-ass" is kind of useful. I suppose you could say "smart alec" instead. But that smells like one of these lame-ass cleaned-up versions of regular curses, like "Gosh!" or "Geez!" instead of "God!" It's kind of a "letter of the law but no the spirit" thing, you know? It's like, do you really think God's going to be like, "Well, since you didn't quite say the entire word, you get by on a technicality." No, He's going to smite you either way. Everyone gets smoten eventually. So live it up while you can, motherfuckers!)
Bullshit: There are many ways to talk about half-truths, but none really communicates anything similar to what "bullshit" so poetically expresses. "Bullshit" is not just a lie -- it's a whole world of lies, a rich tapestry of falsehood, intended to make the speaker look brilliant and wonderful. In fact, this one professor dude once came on "The Daily Show" hawking his book, called "Bullshit," which explored the rich veins of connotation and denotation captured in this wonderful word. So smart people recognize the value of "bullshit" too. So there.
Again, the literal meaning (bovine waste product) has little or nothing to do with the meaning that it has taken on. And again, a big part the word's utility it wrapped up in the disdain it communicates. I would assume that that's true of every curseword or term. And maybe that's why they're so popular -- we don't have enough clean words in the English language that convey sufficient hatred.
Nigga, please: OK, I never actually say this one. Nor should I. "Nigga" is a word that has a different meaning depending on the race of the speaker. My particular race (white) has such a long and brutal history of using the word as a weapon that I don't know if we should ever be allowed to use it, regardless of our intentions. From our mouths it will always have at least a partial meaning of "you are not even human." That's powerful stuff, and not to be played around with.
But, man, I still secretly wish I could say "nigga, please." It has nothing to do with black people, really. When this phrase is used properly, it's just poetry. It's such a perfect way to tell someone "Look, you're not fooling anyone." But there's more than that. "Nigga, please" has in it the wisdom of someone who's seen it all -- most of it unpleasant -- and has come out the other side not only strong, but strong enough to call out everyone who is obviously full of crap, very publicly, and very rightfully. After you say "nigga, please," everyone is kinda like, "Yeah, you're right! Thank God you said that."
But there is also a little bit of warmth in "nigga, please." Maybe that's the true genius in it. There's a hint of letting the other person in on it, leaving them just enough room to burst out laughing and say "OK, yeah. You're right. I'm full of crap, I'm sorry." Then we can all get on with life.
So where does that leave us? I don't know. I suppose just that cursewords can often capture things that legitimate language just can't, and it's a shame that we can't say them whenever we like. But then, maybe if we did, the words would lose those unique meanings. Maybe they need to be saved for those times when we need to break taboos to get our points across. Hmm.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Stuff I'm Going to Teach My Kid
I is havin' a young 'un. Well, my wife is, actually. I'm little more than a bystander and occasional advisor. I'm a fan, I suppose. I'm a big-time fan of my wife and her baby, and I spend a lot of my free time rooting for them.
The baby is currently called Figgy Plumbum, because for a while, he/she was between the size of a fig and a plum, according to the baby books. Actually, he/she/it is more the size of an apple right now, so I suppose we should change his/her/its/their name to Figgy Applebum. My plan is to have a different name for him/her/it/them/whose every time he/she/it/they/we/how gets larger. So be the time he/she/it/they/wheretofore/inasmuch gets to be the size of a breadbox, we'll be telling Breadbox to get the hell over here. When he/she/it/why/tired-of-this gets to be a teenager, we'll call him/her Leopard on Its Hind Legs. You get the idea.
I've been very excited about having a kid as long as I can remember. Mainly because I want a person to control. Apparently, slavery is no longer legal (thank you, federal government, for controlling our lives!), so a baby is the best route for human domination. And I've got a lot of lessons to brand into lil' Figgy's fertile brain.
Lesson No. 1. Get a credit card in college. I was a headstrong and defiant young adult. Not in the sense of actually doing anything revolutionary, of course. I was more in the vein of not doing things that normal people just do. I didn't like insurance, for example. Still don't. It seems pansy-ass to me. "Oh, what if my house burns down? Better get fire insurance. Oh, what if my ears fall off? Better get ear insurance." You spend all your life and money hedging yourself against terrible things -- that's the life of a paranoid little weiner, not a grown adult who realizes that risk is a part of life. And you know you always come out badly in the deal, because look at the crazy profits insurance companies make. And look how hard it is to get them to actually pay when you need them to, to actually do the only service that you're paying them so much money to do. Why not just put that money in a savings account instead? Then that money could cover you for any number of disasters, not just one type. And you'll have more money, because you're not paying so much to the insurance company to cover their "taking people's money" costs. Moreover, the chance that you're going to have a fire in which your ears fall off before that savings account builds up sufficiently is vanishingly small. And that's the thing -- any disaster is possible. It's a matter of how probable it is. Life is about playing the percentages, and there is a very small-percentage chance that an ear-severing fire will overtake my condo, so I refuse to worry about it.
Anyway. Got off track there. That's not a lesson I'm going to teach my kid. Yes, you do need auto insurance and health insurance and life insurance, sigh. Just don't go into the insurance industry or I will kill you and then disown you and then kill you again for good measure.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, credit cards. Listen up, kid, I got a story here. Go get me another beer first. And in a glass this time, dipshit!
OK, gimme that beer. Now listen up! Credit cards. Get one in college. When you're in college, the credit card companies are falling all over themselves to get the chance to get in line to purchase a ticket to be considered to be allowed to give you a credit card. But as soon as you're out of college and don't have a very good job (because no one does straight out of college), they suddenly become Entertainment Tonight to your former boy band full of 40-year-olds. That is, you've suddenly gone from flavor of the month to begging for change outside of Baskin Robbins. You're old news, hotshot! Fizzo! Floparoonie! Plummetini! Collapsiogo! Not-doing-terribly-well-aroski-meier!
Me, I was all righteously indignant about credit cards (see: insurance). I thought credit cards were a plot to get me to spend beyond my means. And then I'd have to pay extra money to the credit card company each month, and that money would compound indefinitely until I end up paying twice for everything. And they'd jigger the rules whenever they felt like it to keep me paying.
And all of this is true, of course. But, like insurance, they're a necessary evil. As long as you're smart about it, you can win against the credit card companies. Ditto for insurance, sort of.
So get a credit card in college. Don't use it unless you need to. I ain't going to be there to bail you out when you overspend. Hell, look at this shitty apartment -- you think I got the scratch to bail out your skinny little ass? Ever since your mother left me and I lost my job and my ears fell off in that fire, I ... OK, cancel that vision of the future; it's too depressing.
Lesson Number 2. Never, ever, ever, ever room with an attractive person of a complementary sexual persuasion. Even if they're of the opposite sexual persuasion you should think twice. In fact, best to not room with anyone. Avoid people altogether. Live as a hermit in the woods. Make sure you have a good internet connection, though, so I can email you funny jokes. Here's one: What do you call a lawyer who is eaten an alligator? A: I don't know, but it's probably something bad! Ha!
But most of all, don't room with a friend who you could conceivably in some universe have a romantic attachment to. It's one of the most painful things in the world. Especially when you fall for that person big-time, he/she/it rejects you, and you have to go home each night and greet that rejection with a smile. And you get to watch he/she/it go on dates/go into a back room with far inferior mates. And you have to pretend to continue to be the person's friend, while simultaneously and covertly trying to convince that person of how awesome you are, and how he/she should change his/her mind. But of course they don't, because you're "a friend." That is, you're nice but unattractive. And your convincing imitation of a good, caring person will only get your love object to value your friendship even more. So then you spend more agonizing hours with that person as a friend. You end up anxious all the time, especially when you're around the person. But you think you're in love with the person, so you have to keep trying.
In short, it's absolute torture. The first time it happened to me, after college, it was awful. Then I immediately moved into another place with another attractive woman. Of course the exact same thing happened. But this time, my body started to reject my behavior. I was so anxious all the time that I developed a bad stomach condition. I'd get up each morning and puke bile into the toilet. I went through a bunch of tests and ended up on some prescription antacids. But I was still anxious all the time and couldn't eat anything that wasn't very bland, or my stomach would just hurt worse. (It's a good diet plan, by the way. I lost a lot of weight. My stomach almost ate itself, but hey, I looked slightly thinner temporarily!)
That's enough lessons for now. Daddy's tired. Now you can go eatch Elmo.
The baby is currently called Figgy Plumbum, because for a while, he/she was between the size of a fig and a plum, according to the baby books. Actually, he/she/it is more the size of an apple right now, so I suppose we should change his/her/its/their name to Figgy Applebum. My plan is to have a different name for him/her/it/them/whose every time he/she/it/they/we/how gets larger. So be the time he/she/it/they/wheretofore/inasmuch gets to be the size of a breadbox, we'll be telling Breadbox to get the hell over here. When he/she/it/why/tired-of-this gets to be a teenager, we'll call him/her Leopard on Its Hind Legs. You get the idea.
I've been very excited about having a kid as long as I can remember. Mainly because I want a person to control. Apparently, slavery is no longer legal (thank you, federal government, for controlling our lives!), so a baby is the best route for human domination. And I've got a lot of lessons to brand into lil' Figgy's fertile brain.
Lesson No. 1. Get a credit card in college. I was a headstrong and defiant young adult. Not in the sense of actually doing anything revolutionary, of course. I was more in the vein of not doing things that normal people just do. I didn't like insurance, for example. Still don't. It seems pansy-ass to me. "Oh, what if my house burns down? Better get fire insurance. Oh, what if my ears fall off? Better get ear insurance." You spend all your life and money hedging yourself against terrible things -- that's the life of a paranoid little weiner, not a grown adult who realizes that risk is a part of life. And you know you always come out badly in the deal, because look at the crazy profits insurance companies make. And look how hard it is to get them to actually pay when you need them to, to actually do the only service that you're paying them so much money to do. Why not just put that money in a savings account instead? Then that money could cover you for any number of disasters, not just one type. And you'll have more money, because you're not paying so much to the insurance company to cover their "taking people's money" costs. Moreover, the chance that you're going to have a fire in which your ears fall off before that savings account builds up sufficiently is vanishingly small. And that's the thing -- any disaster is possible. It's a matter of how probable it is. Life is about playing the percentages, and there is a very small-percentage chance that an ear-severing fire will overtake my condo, so I refuse to worry about it.
Anyway. Got off track there. That's not a lesson I'm going to teach my kid. Yes, you do need auto insurance and health insurance and life insurance, sigh. Just don't go into the insurance industry or I will kill you and then disown you and then kill you again for good measure.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, credit cards. Listen up, kid, I got a story here. Go get me another beer first. And in a glass this time, dipshit!
OK, gimme that beer. Now listen up! Credit cards. Get one in college. When you're in college, the credit card companies are falling all over themselves to get the chance to get in line to purchase a ticket to be considered to be allowed to give you a credit card. But as soon as you're out of college and don't have a very good job (because no one does straight out of college), they suddenly become Entertainment Tonight to your former boy band full of 40-year-olds. That is, you've suddenly gone from flavor of the month to begging for change outside of Baskin Robbins. You're old news, hotshot! Fizzo! Floparoonie! Plummetini! Collapsiogo! Not-doing-terribly-well-aroski-meier!
Me, I was all righteously indignant about credit cards (see: insurance). I thought credit cards were a plot to get me to spend beyond my means. And then I'd have to pay extra money to the credit card company each month, and that money would compound indefinitely until I end up paying twice for everything. And they'd jigger the rules whenever they felt like it to keep me paying.
And all of this is true, of course. But, like insurance, they're a necessary evil. As long as you're smart about it, you can win against the credit card companies. Ditto for insurance, sort of.
So get a credit card in college. Don't use it unless you need to. I ain't going to be there to bail you out when you overspend. Hell, look at this shitty apartment -- you think I got the scratch to bail out your skinny little ass? Ever since your mother left me and I lost my job and my ears fell off in that fire, I ... OK, cancel that vision of the future; it's too depressing.
Lesson Number 2. Never, ever, ever, ever room with an attractive person of a complementary sexual persuasion. Even if they're of the opposite sexual persuasion you should think twice. In fact, best to not room with anyone. Avoid people altogether. Live as a hermit in the woods. Make sure you have a good internet connection, though, so I can email you funny jokes. Here's one: What do you call a lawyer who is eaten an alligator? A: I don't know, but it's probably something bad! Ha!
But most of all, don't room with a friend who you could conceivably in some universe have a romantic attachment to. It's one of the most painful things in the world. Especially when you fall for that person big-time, he/she/it rejects you, and you have to go home each night and greet that rejection with a smile. And you get to watch he/she/it go on dates/go into a back room with far inferior mates. And you have to pretend to continue to be the person's friend, while simultaneously and covertly trying to convince that person of how awesome you are, and how he/she should change his/her mind. But of course they don't, because you're "a friend." That is, you're nice but unattractive. And your convincing imitation of a good, caring person will only get your love object to value your friendship even more. So then you spend more agonizing hours with that person as a friend. You end up anxious all the time, especially when you're around the person. But you think you're in love with the person, so you have to keep trying.
In short, it's absolute torture. The first time it happened to me, after college, it was awful. Then I immediately moved into another place with another attractive woman. Of course the exact same thing happened. But this time, my body started to reject my behavior. I was so anxious all the time that I developed a bad stomach condition. I'd get up each morning and puke bile into the toilet. I went through a bunch of tests and ended up on some prescription antacids. But I was still anxious all the time and couldn't eat anything that wasn't very bland, or my stomach would just hurt worse. (It's a good diet plan, by the way. I lost a lot of weight. My stomach almost ate itself, but hey, I looked slightly thinner temporarily!)
That's enough lessons for now. Daddy's tired. Now you can go eatch Elmo.
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