I guess I've seen it all. I'm hardened, jaded, numbed. I saw "Avatar" last night and, meh. It was OK, I guess. I thought I'd be blown away by the 3D, but like everything, I got used to it pretty quickly. Everything good, that is, gets old fast. Everything awful sticks with me forever.
Speaking of things that are awful, at every goddamn movie I go to nowadays I'm surrounded by a BUNCH OF FUCKING IDIOTS WHO NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! I hate it with such passion that I had to resort to all-caps and exclamation marks. Every time they yammer, always at regular speaking voices (is whispering a lost art?), I get torn out of the action. And shushing people never has any effect. I shush them throughout the movie, and they just keep on regardless.
And it's never even something that you could possibly want to hear. It's never "You know, the parallels between the Na'mi and Native Americans are obvious, but I wonder if the destruction of the Na'mi Lifetree is meant to remind viewers of the destruction of the Twin Towers?" Instead it's always "Aw, he's dead!" Yeah, brilliant, Eisenstein! What tipped you off, the fact that his eyes are closed and he's crumpled and bleeding on the ground and there's a delicate mood of tragedy in the air that you just destroyed?
And people always say that it's black people ruining movies by talking. Not true, as comedian Brian Posehn pointed out. He tells a story about going to see "Freddy vs. Jason" and hearing some black dude yell out "Look out bitch, he got a knife!" That's enhancing a movie that otherwise would have no real entertainment value. I had a similar experience when I went to see the horrible Britney Spears vehicle "Crossroads" ( some people I was with wanted to see it, by the way). While I was watching and hating that movie, some young black girls went up to the screen and started dancing along with Britney. That made that movie much more fun.
No, ruining a movie is when you're at "Hotel Rwanda," and you're suddenly hit by a shocking shot of hundreds of massacred people, and just as the horror sinks in, the old lady behind you says "Oh, they're all dead!" That happened to me, and it took all my strength to keep myself from braining her with my box of Jujubees.
I mean, there are some movies where you can talk. At comedies and kids' movies, go to town. Especially at kids' movies, it's part of the show. You expect kids to shriek and run around, because that's what kids are born to do.
But here's another thing -- don't bring kids to grown-up movies. PG-13 means it's not for young children. Not because the content will shock them, but because we don't want them there. The ratings aren't to protect the kids -- they're to protect adults from kids. Why do you think moviemakers throw a curseword in every other sentence? Because one single "fuck" gets you an automatic R rating. True story -- stupid, but true. And it's a great thing. Last time I saw "Hamlet" in the theater, it was perhaps a bit off-putting the way Hamlet kept saying things like "Alas, poor Yorick. I fucking knew him, Horatio. Fuckin' A, man." But it sure as hell kept the noisy kids out.
But anyway. I don't like sounding like a grumpy old man, but it does seem like the chatter in theaters has gotten worse. It's always been a problem, but I'm guessing nowadays people see so many movies at home, and apparently chatter like hyenas there, that they get used to it and do it in theaters. And there's also the texting and the cell phone calls and the kids with those earrings and the five-dollar cokes and why do people have to drive so fast nowadays and grumble grumble grumble ....
I am quite fearful of becoming a grumpy old man, by the way. I already basically am one, and I wish there was some way I could turn off these irritations and just be a mellow dude. I've tried everything to try and be cool, but still, every time someone yells "Who's that guy?" in a theater, it stabs my brain. If I'm trying not to think about it, it seems to hurt worse when it happens.
So I've taken to sitting in the back row whenever possible, because it's harder to hear people that way. And I try to always go to movies long after they're hot shit, so the theater is relatively empty. But I wish there were some way to get people to change.
I think we should abandon health care reform and the environmental crisis and all that shit and start a nationwide campaign to ban movie theater chatter. Or maybe terrorism can help here. Not the violent kind, mind you -- I was thinking maybe there was some way you could rouse a whole sleeper cell of anti-movie-chatter people to do something annoying but not illegal to people who talk, like put gum in ther hair or something. But it would have to get across that they got it because they were talking in the theater. Hmmm. Some sort of sticker that says "STOP TALKING IN THE THEATER" that's hard to get off? But they'd have to not notice when it happens and not know where it came from. This is tough.
The point would be that the word would get out that this annoying thing would keep happening to people who talk in theaters, and maybe there would be some news stories, and people would either learn to not talk or they would stay home for fear of getting the sticker or whatever. And that would really get the attention of the moviehouse owners, and maybe they would have ushers telling people to shut up, like I think they used to like a million years ago.
Anyway, I give up on that. The original point of this was that I feel like I've seen it all, and I haven't seen a movie that really shook me to the core in a long time. I guess I'm jaded -- but at the same time, I still love documentaries. Even TV shows that involve real people in some way tend to be more affecting to me than the grandest fictional film. I can shed tears at the drop of a hat at a TV show in which some real person says something sweet about some other real person. But when someone in a fictional movie does the same thing, it's sort of like "Eh, I don't know, I felt that his delivery was a bit clunky there." I think I don't like fiction any more.
You know, people crap on reality shows as a matter of course, and sure, some really suck. But as a whole, they're a damn sight better than the sitcoms and sappy dramas that used to pollute the TV airwaves. Maybe we love reality shows because we're so overdosed on fictional narratives that we're starting to get inured to them. The mechanics of fictional storytelling are so firmly established, with even the variations being a matter of course, that the only thing that can really thrill us or move us is reality (or, at least heavily edited reality). And you know, maybe that's not a bad thing. As documentaries and reality shows get more sophisticated and demonstrate better narratives, maybe there's not much reason to invent new lies.
Sigh. I used to be such a movie freak, too. Kinda sad to lose that. But you know, maybe I don't need an escape as much any more. My life is pretty good right now, better than it's ever been, really. When I didn't have the love of my life and generally didn't like myself very much, it was much more important to live vicariously through movies. Now my own life is fun enough to give me the kicks I need.
See, I can spin things in a happy way! Maybe I should start chatting amiably with the people behind me in the theaters. Oooh, now that could work. Just embrace it and roll with it instead. When they yell out "Who's that guy?" I can just spin around and say "That's the leader of the evil organization! Turns out he was a robot! Hey, what's your name? Can we be friends? I really like licorice. Do you have any?"
I think that qualifies as a happy ending. Roll credits.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
More Awesomer Flags!
I did a little investigation into flags after Ed's exposé on good and boring ones a few weeks ago. One thing I noticed is that as the administrative divisions get smaller, the variety in the flags increases. At the national level, as Ed pointed out, there are a lot of seen-one-seen-'em-all tricolors. (Although, in defense of the Netherlands in particular, they seem to have used the first tricolored flag in history. So even though it's dull, at least it was original at the time.) And while there are some very good ones, hardly any of them feature semi-automatic rifles.
Go down just one level, though - to the states, regions, and oblasts - and you're confronted with a riot of colors, shapes, and designs: from the super boring to the beautiful to the silly to the creepy to the huh? For example....
SUPER BORING
Half the states' flags in the U.S. are super boring. A blue field with the state seal on it. Here's Vermont:
And Maine:
And Idaho:
Some of the states realized that making their flags indistinguishable was a stupid way of having a symbol. But instead of creating new, interesting flags, most of the states that had this realization merely added their states' names to the flag, begging the question: why have a symbol at all, when you have to type out the name of the thing that you're supposedly symbolizing. Wisconsin is a good example of this phenomenon:
I'm surprised no one's gone out and just had a blue rectangle with giant block letters that says, "THIS IS THE FLAG OF KENTUCKY":
That would be as symbolic, and as aesthetically pleasing, as what they do now.
BEAUTIFUL
Some subnational flags are truly beautiful. They combine a pleasing palette with a coherent design and composition. Queen Elizabeth II's personal flag in Barbados is one that really struck me:
It's just beautiful. I also liked several of Taiwan's counties' flags. Here's Yilan County:
Some of the geometric designs can be very pretty, too. I've always liked Maryland's flag:
Newer to me were the flags of Antwerp and Chuvashia (in Russia). They're both geometrically shaped, but retain their distinctiveness and attractiveness, too:
SILLY
Not many flags qualify as silly. Usually, you can see what they're going for, and even if they don't quite make it, you just say, "That's not a very well-designed flag." In the case of South Korea's regions, however, all you can say is, "There goes a silly, silly flag." I give you, as People's Exhibit One, the flag of South Gyeongsang:
The other one that is a little weird is the Isle of Man. Their symbol is three running legs, all connected at the thigh, with no body attached:
If you saw that in real life, you'd be terrified. So why put it on your flag for everyone to see? Well, maybe because the only people who are really going to see it are the 80,000 or so Manx who live there. I think that's part of why the smaller polities tend to have more individual-looking flags - they only have to appeal to a small population.
HUH?
There are a few flags that I came across that really did not make any sense. They obviously signify something, but I'm at a total loss to think of what. Any help with these ones is greatly appreciated.
First up is Nunavut, Canada's newest territory. Their flag is slightly asymmetrical and yet visually pleasing to my eye. I liked it when they first came out with it. I just have no idea what it depicts:
And last is the strangest flag I think I've ever come across. It's another Russian oblast (go to the Wikipedia list of Russian flags - they really have some fascinating ones). This one's named Voronezh, and I will pay you money if you can tell me what the heck is happening on this one:
Okay, thus concludes today's journey through subnational flags.
Go down just one level, though - to the states, regions, and oblasts - and you're confronted with a riot of colors, shapes, and designs: from the super boring to the beautiful to the silly to the creepy to the huh? For example....
SUPER BORING
Half the states' flags in the U.S. are super boring. A blue field with the state seal on it. Here's Vermont:
And Maine:
And Idaho:
Some of the states realized that making their flags indistinguishable was a stupid way of having a symbol. But instead of creating new, interesting flags, most of the states that had this realization merely added their states' names to the flag, begging the question: why have a symbol at all, when you have to type out the name of the thing that you're supposedly symbolizing. Wisconsin is a good example of this phenomenon:
I'm surprised no one's gone out and just had a blue rectangle with giant block letters that says, "THIS IS THE FLAG OF KENTUCKY":
That would be as symbolic, and as aesthetically pleasing, as what they do now.
BEAUTIFUL
Some subnational flags are truly beautiful. They combine a pleasing palette with a coherent design and composition. Queen Elizabeth II's personal flag in Barbados is one that really struck me:
It's just beautiful. I also liked several of Taiwan's counties' flags. Here's Yilan County:
Some of the geometric designs can be very pretty, too. I've always liked Maryland's flag:
Newer to me were the flags of Antwerp and Chuvashia (in Russia). They're both geometrically shaped, but retain their distinctiveness and attractiveness, too:
SILLY
Not many flags qualify as silly. Usually, you can see what they're going for, and even if they don't quite make it, you just say, "That's not a very well-designed flag." In the case of South Korea's regions, however, all you can say is, "There goes a silly, silly flag." I give you, as People's Exhibit One, the flag of South Gyeongsang:
This is vexillogical inanity at its utmost. It's a bad advertising image, for sure. And if that were all, you could forget it and move on. But they made it their flag! Can you imagine all the little kids in South Gyeongsang starting their day at school? "I pledge allegiance to South Gyeongsang, and the little Es that make some cartoon eyes. And to the random verb, written in English...." Come on, South Gyeongsang, flag designing is serious stuff! Try a little harder next time.
CREEPY
Some subnational flags are a little creepy. There seems to be, for example, a subgenre of flags featuring disembodied heads. I think that's odd and somewhat unsettling. Here's the flag of Penza Oblast (again, in Russia):
Who wants a stylized floating head of Jesus on their flag? Well, Penzans, I guess. It just makes me uncomfortable. And Corsica's flag isn't much better:
Apparently, throughout history they've switched back and forth between blindfolding the head and leaving its eyes open, as it is now. Either way, it's creepy.
The other one that is a little weird is the Isle of Man. Their symbol is three running legs, all connected at the thigh, with no body attached:
If you saw that in real life, you'd be terrified. So why put it on your flag for everyone to see? Well, maybe because the only people who are really going to see it are the 80,000 or so Manx who live there. I think that's part of why the smaller polities tend to have more individual-looking flags - they only have to appeal to a small population.
HUH?
There are a few flags that I came across that really did not make any sense. They obviously signify something, but I'm at a total loss to think of what. Any help with these ones is greatly appreciated.
First up is Nunavut, Canada's newest territory. Their flag is slightly asymmetrical and yet visually pleasing to my eye. I liked it when they first came out with it. I just have no idea what it depicts:
And last is the strangest flag I think I've ever come across. It's another Russian oblast (go to the Wikipedia list of Russian flags - they really have some fascinating ones). This one's named Voronezh, and I will pay you money if you can tell me what the heck is happening on this one:
Okay, thus concludes today's journey through subnational flags.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
This Just in: Athlete Has AFFAIR!!!!!!!!!!!111
ST. PAUL, MN -- The nation was shocked to the point of pants-shitting this week when it was revealed that a fabulously wealthy, famous and attractive professional athlete was having an affair. There is no precedent for such marital infidelity in the history of professional athletics.
"How could we have possibly predicted this would happen?" said typical American moron Naive McWhuuuuu?. "Naturally, we all assume that professional athletes are paragons of virtue -- chaste as monks and humble as clinical depressives. To see something like this happen ... well, why would we ever want to watch or participate in sports again?"
Among most of the morons interviewed, the primary source of confusion is how this highly desirable athlete, deemed as "fuckable on sight" by approximately 3 billion women and gay men across the world, could have possibly have had sexual relations with a woman who was not his wife. The logistics of such affairs have confounded American morons, since the athlete spends a majority of time away from home, constantly surrounded by legions of worshipful female fans and sycophantic male enablers.
The athlete's wife shared the nation's displeasure, expressing her rage by beating the shit out of said athlete's car, or something like that. This reporter didn't really pay a lot of attention to the details, since there are approximately 10 million things occurring that are much, much more relevant to his life, ranging from the health-care debate that promises to radically rework a sixth of the nation's economy, all the way down to the color and shape of his latest bowel movement.
"It looked like four longish, chocolate-brown ones," said this reporter, on condition of anonymity. "Not that I'm obsessed with my own poop or have to monitor it for a gastrointestinal disorder or anything. My point is just that as unimportant as the size and shape of my poop is, it's still more important to me than the sex lives of professional athletes. That was the idea there. Maybe not the best example, but I'm too lazy to think of a better one."
The name of the athlete under suspicion of infidelity has been withheld from this story, out of respect for the private lives of actual, real-life human beings who do not deserve having their painful experiences paraded in front of a nation of brainless gawkers like a freak show.
"How could we have possibly predicted this would happen?" said typical American moron Naive McWhuuuuu?. "Naturally, we all assume that professional athletes are paragons of virtue -- chaste as monks and humble as clinical depressives. To see something like this happen ... well, why would we ever want to watch or participate in sports again?"
Among most of the morons interviewed, the primary source of confusion is how this highly desirable athlete, deemed as "fuckable on sight" by approximately 3 billion women and gay men across the world, could have possibly have had sexual relations with a woman who was not his wife. The logistics of such affairs have confounded American morons, since the athlete spends a majority of time away from home, constantly surrounded by legions of worshipful female fans and sycophantic male enablers.
The athlete's wife shared the nation's displeasure, expressing her rage by beating the shit out of said athlete's car, or something like that. This reporter didn't really pay a lot of attention to the details, since there are approximately 10 million things occurring that are much, much more relevant to his life, ranging from the health-care debate that promises to radically rework a sixth of the nation's economy, all the way down to the color and shape of his latest bowel movement.
"It looked like four longish, chocolate-brown ones," said this reporter, on condition of anonymity. "Not that I'm obsessed with my own poop or have to monitor it for a gastrointestinal disorder or anything. My point is just that as unimportant as the size and shape of my poop is, it's still more important to me than the sex lives of professional athletes. That was the idea there. Maybe not the best example, but I'm too lazy to think of a better one."
The name of the athlete under suspicion of infidelity has been withheld from this story, out of respect for the private lives of actual, real-life human beings who do not deserve having their painful experiences paraded in front of a nation of brainless gawkers like a freak show.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
More on Education!
Well, I got such overwhelming support for my last post on education that I just had to share more! The people have spoken, and they want more of my ill-informed, half-baked ideas!
Actually, this is going to be a more measured, contemplative thing. I was just talking with Amy through the chat feature in Facebook Scrabble (a wonderful forum for political discourse of all kinds) and I got to thinking more and more about education. It's especially relevant to me personally since I work in education now.
And I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, the more I think that we waste too much time and money in this country trying to force-feed a liberal arts education down the throat of every child, in both high school and college. It comes from a wonderful, egalitarian principle, that all people become better citizens of the world when they read classics, understand biology, know a foreign language, etc. etc.
And it's true, they do. I loved my liberal arts education, and wouldn't trade it for anything. But in the thrall of this idea, I think this country may have forgotten to teach the practical stuff necessary to just survive as an adult.
I don't like drawing conclusions about the world from my own, necessarily limited experiences, but I'm going to do it anyway. When I graduated from college, I knew tons about French New Wave directors and American Indian literature. Which is great stuff to know.
What I didn't know was how credit cards worked. I refused to get one when I was in college, feeling that they were evil tools of the capitalist hegemony. And I was right, they are. The problem was that if you don't get one of those evil tools of capitalist hegemony, you can't participate in capitalist hegemony, which means you can't buy stuff. It was hell trying to get my first credit card, and my credit rating still suffers because I waited too long.
And my life with credit cards has been one unpleasant surprise after another. It wasn't just a matter of reading the fine print -- I couldn't understand the fine print. I didn't really know how APRs worked until I got my first punishing service charge. I didn't know that they could charge different APRs for different types of debts, and that when you pay money, they apply it to the lower APR first ... and so forth.
And don't just go and glibly say "parents should teach their kids this stuff." Parents "should" do a lot of things. They're expected to do just about everything. Maybe they'll find time to teach their kids about APRs after they work their full-time jobs, get nutritious food on the table, spend "quality time" with them, strap kids through the age of 18 into safety seats, tell them about the birds and the bees and how they like to fuck ... and besides, they might not really understand APRs either.
And moreover, I'm not a fan of "should" arguments in general. Saying that someone should be doing something doesn't make it happen. Will telling parents they should sit their kids down and talk about APRs make it happen? Maybe, but not as well as making it mandatory in schools. We want results, not buck-passing.
But there's a lot more that kids should learn before becoming adults. How about the issues of the day? Rather than learning about the Edict of Nantes and Linnean classification in high school, maybe I should have been learning about what the federal deficit really means? The whole bit about possibly defaulting on our debt and how much our federal government pays in interest on the debt every year -- that's important stuff to know! Whatever happened to civics classes? I never had a single one. If education is in the business of making better citizens, shouldn't they inform those citizens about the basics of the issues of the day?
The more I get interested in politics, the more I realize how many people are basing their views on a lot of misinformation and a few insufficient bits of real, substantive information. Take government spending, since it's my favorite thing in the whole wide world to talk about. A lot of people think the solution is just that the government needs to "tighten its belt" and cut unnecessary programs and stop paying women for their aborted fetuses which the government then grind up and put in vaccinations that are designed to make all kids autistic or whatever the hell they think. Wouldn't we all be better citizens if we all learned exactly what the government spends its money on? I had to seek this out -- before I saw this I had no idea either. This is 2006, which admittedly is a lot different than now, but you'll get the idea:
20.7%: Social Security
19.7%: National defense
12.4%: Medicare
8.5%: Interest on debt
6.8%: Medicaid
4.7%: Other income security (I don't know what that means)
4.5%: Education, employment and social services
3.9%: Other retirement and disability
2.8%: Health
2.7%: Transportation
2.6%: Veteran's benefits
2.1%: Community development
2.0%: Food and nutrition assistance
1.5%: Justice system
1.4%: Housing assistance
1.4%: Earned Income Tax Credit
1.3%: Supplemental Security Income
1.2%: Natural resources and the environment
1.2%: Unemployment
1.1%: International affairs (including foreign aid)
1.0%: Agriculture
0.9%: Science, space and technology
0.8%: Family support (including TANF, whatever the hell that is)
0.7%: General government
0.2%: Commerce and housing credit
I went out with a girl once who said her daddy didn't believe in taxes because he worked hard to build a business and succeed and his tax dollars would just go to lazy people who weren't willing to be the shining beacon of virtue that he was. I kinda wish that she or he had known how little of his taxes actually went to help people that he apparently would rather let starve (and then go commit crime to survive, and bring up the crime rate and make life worse for everyone ... ANYWAY, I promised myself I wouldn't go on about taxes again. This is supposed to be about education, Chris! Focus!)
The point is that the above should be mandatory learning for every high school student. How can you be an informed voter, voting on how the government spends its money, when you have almost no knowledge of what the government actually spends its money on? Isn't this stuff more important than forcing kids to plow through the dull swamp of "The Scarlet Letter"?
OK, maybe I shouldn't be posing one type of knowledge against the other. What we need is more knowledge all around. That's why the very straightforward and simple answer to our education problem in this country is ....
NO. MORE. SUMMER. VACATION.
OK, maybe you get a few weeks off in July so that each year your family can take a stifling, painful car trip to the Grand Canyon and learn to hate each other again. But when you think about it, it is more than a little insane that we give kids three months off of school for no good reason.
For any political issue, I always find it fruitful to compare what we do to what they go in other developed nations, and no other nation comes anywhere close to how much time off we give our kids from school. And meanwhile, no other developed nation works its adults harder. It's no wonder kids start out lazy and often take a few kicks in the pants by Life before acquiring the work ethic to join the working world. Laziness is what they've become accustomed to.
Think of how much more we could teach kids if we had another three months each year. We could teach them all the Pythagorean Theorems and Iliads and all the stuff we teach them now, PLUS, we could teach them how to balance a checkbook and how home mortgages work. Maybe if schools had taught that sort of thing for the past 30 years, we wouldn't be in the financial mess we're in now.
I hear you saying, but Ed! I mean, Chris! What about helping your family with the summer harvest? And yes, that was the reason we started the big summer vacation in the first place. But last time I checked, there were only three farmers left in this country, and each farmed 30,000,000 acres of corn, and all of it was turned into corn syrup to make soft drinks that made people fat. So maybe that's not such a good reason any more.
But what about the vital summer camp industry? Well, I personally hated every summer camp I was ever forced into, so this whole plan is actually a fiendish attempt to avenge my childhood traumas.
But what about teachers? They already work like dogs for low pay and the only real perk they get is those three months a year when they can decide they're finally going to write that novel about the secretly passionate high school English teacher whose natural artistic sensibilities are crushed by a stifling bureaucracy -- but instead they find themselves using the whole summer to eat frozen pizza and watch "Oprah." Well yes, I do sympathize there. As an accession to them, make the school day shorter. That way, they don't have to work quite as doggishly during the year. Spread that pain out a bit. Maybe give them raises or something too. Buy them off, basically.
And perhaps most important, another thing you can teach kids with all this extra time each year is exactly what the working world is like. What are the jobs? What do people do? I had no idea when I left college. I knew that some people worked in publishing, since I was an English major. I definitely knew tons about the life of professors. And like a lot of liberal arts kids, I figured I would like to be a professor. It looked awesome. Then, to that end, I went on to get even more education that I didn't end up using. In truth, I was too ignorant and frightened of the corporate world. Now I work for a corporation, and it turns out it's not half bad.
I think a lot more vocational training should be in the high schools. I think when you turn 16, you should be able to opt out of any more math and biology and English classes and start learning the ropes in some trade. It can be anything from garage mechanic to paralegal.
I see the failings of our educational system a lot more sharply nowadays, since I work for what is essentially a trade school. We call it a "career college," because we don't want to be confused with those places that Sally Struthers had ads for back in the day that would offer classes in gun repair and panhandling, but still, the best analogy is of a trade school. We offer associate and bachelor's degrees in things like Business Administration and Veterinary Technology and Information Technology and Accounting and Medical Assistant. They're all fields that always have job openings, and that offer pretty solid careers as professionals of some sort.
And we have a hell of a time getting recent high school grads in the door. They all think they have to go off to State U and drink a lot of beer and squeak through without learning anything. Then they graduate with degrees in 14th century basket weaving and start working at coffeeshops, or drop out and start working at coffeeshops. Then in their mid-20s, with a family in tow and a crappy full-time job, they realize they need a real career. So they come to us, and we train them to be accountants and paralegals and business administrators and suchlike.
The adult learners are coming to our schools in droves these days, and I'm happy for them. I'm continually impressed by them, as they sacrifice what little free time they have to bring a better future for their families. But I wish they had gone through all this earlier, when they had fewer other responsibilities. I can't help but think the success of my company is a symptom of failures in the conventional system. Shouldn't these folks have learned about what jobs are available and how to get them in high school, instead of having their brains fed with dreams of keg parties and all-nighters producing dreadful papers about Kafka? Couldn't they have had one class that kind of made them little mini-interns at various real-life organizations, so they'd see what real people do for a living? Maybe they'll think of majors like Accounting or Information Technology earlier, ones that can lead to jobs, instead of going to college with no clue, taking a whole bunch of classes, deciding Sociology is the least painful, bluffing through it, and then being left with a degree but no idea how to use it.
As the loyal readers of my long, tedious rants might be aware, I am a big-government liberal. So I feel a little weird about the fact that I work for a for-profit company that provides education. And one that is, frankly, kicking the ass of the government version. We're rolling in dough, opening new campuses all the time. Our graduates get financial aid at a much higher rate than students at state or private schools (partly because we work very hard to help them get it, and partly because they tend to be poorer). Our graduates also go on to good jobs in their chosen fields after graduation at a much higher rates than students from state or private schools. We are as practical in our approach to education as all-git-out, hiring working professionals to teach the students what it's really like to work these jobs, and what they need to know to do so. And it works.
I don't often like to admit that private enterprise can beat out public, government-run stuff at the same game, but that's exactly what we're doing. And I think it's largely because we're taking a sector of the population who is never going to become a bunch of professors or lawyers or doctors and such, and giving them a direct line to solid, respectable careers.
I think there's a lesson here for public education, namely to get more kids in line for practical, career-focused education at a younger age. This means putting them on a different track than the ones set out for the honors-roll kids, exposing them to a wide range of career possibilities when they're 16 instead of letting them waste time until they're 27. Then get them into a training program like ours, one that's all about how to do a job. Then they can go out and do it.
But even if you don't do any of that, for the love of God, get rid the summer vacation. It's a ridiculous waste of time.
Actually, this is going to be a more measured, contemplative thing. I was just talking with Amy through the chat feature in Facebook Scrabble (a wonderful forum for political discourse of all kinds) and I got to thinking more and more about education. It's especially relevant to me personally since I work in education now.
And I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, the more I think that we waste too much time and money in this country trying to force-feed a liberal arts education down the throat of every child, in both high school and college. It comes from a wonderful, egalitarian principle, that all people become better citizens of the world when they read classics, understand biology, know a foreign language, etc. etc.
And it's true, they do. I loved my liberal arts education, and wouldn't trade it for anything. But in the thrall of this idea, I think this country may have forgotten to teach the practical stuff necessary to just survive as an adult.
I don't like drawing conclusions about the world from my own, necessarily limited experiences, but I'm going to do it anyway. When I graduated from college, I knew tons about French New Wave directors and American Indian literature. Which is great stuff to know.
What I didn't know was how credit cards worked. I refused to get one when I was in college, feeling that they were evil tools of the capitalist hegemony. And I was right, they are. The problem was that if you don't get one of those evil tools of capitalist hegemony, you can't participate in capitalist hegemony, which means you can't buy stuff. It was hell trying to get my first credit card, and my credit rating still suffers because I waited too long.
And my life with credit cards has been one unpleasant surprise after another. It wasn't just a matter of reading the fine print -- I couldn't understand the fine print. I didn't really know how APRs worked until I got my first punishing service charge. I didn't know that they could charge different APRs for different types of debts, and that when you pay money, they apply it to the lower APR first ... and so forth.
And don't just go and glibly say "parents should teach their kids this stuff." Parents "should" do a lot of things. They're expected to do just about everything. Maybe they'll find time to teach their kids about APRs after they work their full-time jobs, get nutritious food on the table, spend "quality time" with them, strap kids through the age of 18 into safety seats, tell them about the birds and the bees and how they like to fuck ... and besides, they might not really understand APRs either.
And moreover, I'm not a fan of "should" arguments in general. Saying that someone should be doing something doesn't make it happen. Will telling parents they should sit their kids down and talk about APRs make it happen? Maybe, but not as well as making it mandatory in schools. We want results, not buck-passing.
But there's a lot more that kids should learn before becoming adults. How about the issues of the day? Rather than learning about the Edict of Nantes and Linnean classification in high school, maybe I should have been learning about what the federal deficit really means? The whole bit about possibly defaulting on our debt and how much our federal government pays in interest on the debt every year -- that's important stuff to know! Whatever happened to civics classes? I never had a single one. If education is in the business of making better citizens, shouldn't they inform those citizens about the basics of the issues of the day?
The more I get interested in politics, the more I realize how many people are basing their views on a lot of misinformation and a few insufficient bits of real, substantive information. Take government spending, since it's my favorite thing in the whole wide world to talk about. A lot of people think the solution is just that the government needs to "tighten its belt" and cut unnecessary programs and stop paying women for their aborted fetuses which the government then grind up and put in vaccinations that are designed to make all kids autistic or whatever the hell they think. Wouldn't we all be better citizens if we all learned exactly what the government spends its money on? I had to seek this out -- before I saw this I had no idea either. This is 2006, which admittedly is a lot different than now, but you'll get the idea:
20.7%: Social Security
19.7%: National defense
12.4%: Medicare
8.5%: Interest on debt
6.8%: Medicaid
4.7%: Other income security (I don't know what that means)
4.5%: Education, employment and social services
3.9%: Other retirement and disability
2.8%: Health
2.7%: Transportation
2.6%: Veteran's benefits
2.1%: Community development
2.0%: Food and nutrition assistance
1.5%: Justice system
1.4%: Housing assistance
1.4%: Earned Income Tax Credit
1.3%: Supplemental Security Income
1.2%: Natural resources and the environment
1.2%: Unemployment
1.1%: International affairs (including foreign aid)
1.0%: Agriculture
0.9%: Science, space and technology
0.8%: Family support (including TANF, whatever the hell that is)
0.7%: General government
0.2%: Commerce and housing credit
I went out with a girl once who said her daddy didn't believe in taxes because he worked hard to build a business and succeed and his tax dollars would just go to lazy people who weren't willing to be the shining beacon of virtue that he was. I kinda wish that she or he had known how little of his taxes actually went to help people that he apparently would rather let starve (and then go commit crime to survive, and bring up the crime rate and make life worse for everyone ... ANYWAY, I promised myself I wouldn't go on about taxes again. This is supposed to be about education, Chris! Focus!)
The point is that the above should be mandatory learning for every high school student. How can you be an informed voter, voting on how the government spends its money, when you have almost no knowledge of what the government actually spends its money on? Isn't this stuff more important than forcing kids to plow through the dull swamp of "The Scarlet Letter"?
OK, maybe I shouldn't be posing one type of knowledge against the other. What we need is more knowledge all around. That's why the very straightforward and simple answer to our education problem in this country is ....
NO. MORE. SUMMER. VACATION.
OK, maybe you get a few weeks off in July so that each year your family can take a stifling, painful car trip to the Grand Canyon and learn to hate each other again. But when you think about it, it is more than a little insane that we give kids three months off of school for no good reason.
For any political issue, I always find it fruitful to compare what we do to what they go in other developed nations, and no other nation comes anywhere close to how much time off we give our kids from school. And meanwhile, no other developed nation works its adults harder. It's no wonder kids start out lazy and often take a few kicks in the pants by Life before acquiring the work ethic to join the working world. Laziness is what they've become accustomed to.
Think of how much more we could teach kids if we had another three months each year. We could teach them all the Pythagorean Theorems and Iliads and all the stuff we teach them now, PLUS, we could teach them how to balance a checkbook and how home mortgages work. Maybe if schools had taught that sort of thing for the past 30 years, we wouldn't be in the financial mess we're in now.
I hear you saying, but Ed! I mean, Chris! What about helping your family with the summer harvest? And yes, that was the reason we started the big summer vacation in the first place. But last time I checked, there were only three farmers left in this country, and each farmed 30,000,000 acres of corn, and all of it was turned into corn syrup to make soft drinks that made people fat. So maybe that's not such a good reason any more.
But what about the vital summer camp industry? Well, I personally hated every summer camp I was ever forced into, so this whole plan is actually a fiendish attempt to avenge my childhood traumas.
But what about teachers? They already work like dogs for low pay and the only real perk they get is those three months a year when they can decide they're finally going to write that novel about the secretly passionate high school English teacher whose natural artistic sensibilities are crushed by a stifling bureaucracy -- but instead they find themselves using the whole summer to eat frozen pizza and watch "Oprah." Well yes, I do sympathize there. As an accession to them, make the school day shorter. That way, they don't have to work quite as doggishly during the year. Spread that pain out a bit. Maybe give them raises or something too. Buy them off, basically.
And perhaps most important, another thing you can teach kids with all this extra time each year is exactly what the working world is like. What are the jobs? What do people do? I had no idea when I left college. I knew that some people worked in publishing, since I was an English major. I definitely knew tons about the life of professors. And like a lot of liberal arts kids, I figured I would like to be a professor. It looked awesome. Then, to that end, I went on to get even more education that I didn't end up using. In truth, I was too ignorant and frightened of the corporate world. Now I work for a corporation, and it turns out it's not half bad.
I think a lot more vocational training should be in the high schools. I think when you turn 16, you should be able to opt out of any more math and biology and English classes and start learning the ropes in some trade. It can be anything from garage mechanic to paralegal.
I see the failings of our educational system a lot more sharply nowadays, since I work for what is essentially a trade school. We call it a "career college," because we don't want to be confused with those places that Sally Struthers had ads for back in the day that would offer classes in gun repair and panhandling, but still, the best analogy is of a trade school. We offer associate and bachelor's degrees in things like Business Administration and Veterinary Technology and Information Technology and Accounting and Medical Assistant. They're all fields that always have job openings, and that offer pretty solid careers as professionals of some sort.
And we have a hell of a time getting recent high school grads in the door. They all think they have to go off to State U and drink a lot of beer and squeak through without learning anything. Then they graduate with degrees in 14th century basket weaving and start working at coffeeshops, or drop out and start working at coffeeshops. Then in their mid-20s, with a family in tow and a crappy full-time job, they realize they need a real career. So they come to us, and we train them to be accountants and paralegals and business administrators and suchlike.
The adult learners are coming to our schools in droves these days, and I'm happy for them. I'm continually impressed by them, as they sacrifice what little free time they have to bring a better future for their families. But I wish they had gone through all this earlier, when they had fewer other responsibilities. I can't help but think the success of my company is a symptom of failures in the conventional system. Shouldn't these folks have learned about what jobs are available and how to get them in high school, instead of having their brains fed with dreams of keg parties and all-nighters producing dreadful papers about Kafka? Couldn't they have had one class that kind of made them little mini-interns at various real-life organizations, so they'd see what real people do for a living? Maybe they'll think of majors like Accounting or Information Technology earlier, ones that can lead to jobs, instead of going to college with no clue, taking a whole bunch of classes, deciding Sociology is the least painful, bluffing through it, and then being left with a degree but no idea how to use it.
As the loyal readers of my long, tedious rants might be aware, I am a big-government liberal. So I feel a little weird about the fact that I work for a for-profit company that provides education. And one that is, frankly, kicking the ass of the government version. We're rolling in dough, opening new campuses all the time. Our graduates get financial aid at a much higher rate than students at state or private schools (partly because we work very hard to help them get it, and partly because they tend to be poorer). Our graduates also go on to good jobs in their chosen fields after graduation at a much higher rates than students from state or private schools. We are as practical in our approach to education as all-git-out, hiring working professionals to teach the students what it's really like to work these jobs, and what they need to know to do so. And it works.
I don't often like to admit that private enterprise can beat out public, government-run stuff at the same game, but that's exactly what we're doing. And I think it's largely because we're taking a sector of the population who is never going to become a bunch of professors or lawyers or doctors and such, and giving them a direct line to solid, respectable careers.
I think there's a lesson here for public education, namely to get more kids in line for practical, career-focused education at a younger age. This means putting them on a different track than the ones set out for the honors-roll kids, exposing them to a wide range of career possibilities when they're 16 instead of letting them waste time until they're 27. Then get them into a training program like ours, one that's all about how to do a job. Then they can go out and do it.
But even if you don't do any of that, for the love of God, get rid the summer vacation. It's a ridiculous waste of time.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thought I Had That I Just Had to Share ...
... since I'm all fired up and it's the weekend and I've had a few beers and oh crap, there goes Uncle Chris, you know how he gets at every family reunion after a few beers ... (and again, I would like to emphasize that my name is Chris, not Ed, and I'm not sure why people keep calling me Ed) ... the problem with this country is simple. Too many Mexicans. They keep taking our jobs. Cuz see, I've worked my whole life just to get the chance to clean the houses of wealthy Californians, and there those Mexicans go ... no wait, that wasn't it. What was it?
Oh yeah, the problem with this country ... the problem with this country is that we don't have good citizens. OK, I actually just heard Thomas Friedman say this on "Charlie Rose." But it's true. It's not the fault of the leaders. The leaders, some of them at least, are knowledgeable and well-educated. They know what will solve our problems. The problem is that we're not good enough citizens to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to solve our problems. We will vote the leaders out of office if they even threaten possibly thinking about making us make sacrifices for the good of the country. We are just that selfish. We talk a lot about loving America in this country, but we don't prove our love. Love means sacrifice, and Americans don't sacrifice. I love America, but goddammit, I hate Americans.
OK, now's when I go through all the solutions to all our problems. All of them require sacrifice of the part of Americans (usually monetary, but hey, that's what gets things done in this world).
Climate Change: The answer is electric cars and nuclear power. If power plants were run through nuclear power instead of coal, they wouldn't spew all those earth-killing greenhouse gases. And if all cars were electric, they'd just use that nuclear power instead of burning earth-killing gasoline.
I know, nuclear waste stinks, but finding some god-fosaken wasteland to bury it in (look in the Southwest -- from what I can tell it's nothing but God-forsaken wasteland) is a lot better than cooking ourselves to death through global warming. And I wish I could tell you that solar power and wind power and happiness power and love power and all the other alternative powers would do it just as well, but as far as I understand, they just don't add up. They wouldn't produce enough energy.
Why Won't We Do It? Electric cars cost money. And nuclear power plants cost tax money to create. And a long time ago, a few ridiculously antiquated nuclear power plants hurt people. So that's very scary. And plus, I forgot to mention that it costs money. And that's money we could be spending on iPhone apps that make fart noises!
The National Debt: Start a million-dollar income tax bracket. You know how there are those tax brackets, where you pay a higher percent of your income depending on how much you make? Here's the full chart for single adults, stolen from Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge:
If you make between $0 – $8,350, your marginal tax rate is 10%
If you make between $8,351– $33,950, your marginal tax rate is 15%
If you make between $33,951 – $82,250, your marginal tax rate is 25%
If you make between $82,251 – $171,550, your marginal tax rate is 28%
If you make between $171,551 – $372,950, you marginal tax rate is 33%
If you make above $372,951, your marginal tax rate is 35%
Hold on, what's that last one? If you make above $372,951, you pay 35%, no matter what? So after that point, you're home free? Why? So if you're Alex Rodriguez, and you make $33 million a year, you get paid at the same rate as some surgeon who makes $372,952? If the graduated, progressive tax bracket system is good enough for the first 90% of incomes (or whatever $0 to $372,951 constitutes), why doesn't it keep going? Especially since that once you get beyond $372,952, it's pretty much all gravy? How much gravy does a person need?
And don't give me that crap about higher tax rates stifling incentives to innovate or to get rich or whatever. I'm not talking about making everyone have the same take-home pay. I'm not even talking about a bracket above 50%. Let's keep things in perspective here. If you raised Alex Rodriguez's marginal tax rate to 40%, say, is he really going to be like, "Wait, man, I can't even pay for my toddler's tummy tuck on that shit! Forget it, I'm going to quit baseball and go fulfill my true dream of cleaning the houses of wealthy Californians." No, what he'll actually do is take home $19.8 million instead of $21.45 million, not really notice much difference, and the government will get an extra $1.65 million that it can use to feed poor children. Or, uh, pay off the debt. I forgot about that part. It's important, for some reason which I never admittedly entirely understood. (I think because the Chinese will stop buying or U.S. bonds or something if we default. And because we pay a huge chunk of the federal budget in interest that could go to better things. It's all very complicated. But I don't want complicated right now. I want overly simplistic solutions to immensely complex problems. It's got more punch that way.)
Why Won't We Do It? Wait, you want to raise taxes? HITLER!!!! I'm a good ol' boy who makes $20,000 a year down at the feed store, so therefore any thought of possibly raising some tax of any kind, even if it would not affect me at all and would actually bring great benefit to me and everyone I know, is fascism! I am teabagger, and I believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution clearly states in Amendment 25, and I quote, "Fuck everyone else. I like money. Plus, guns."
Gun control: You know what? I'm not even going to touch this one. Fuck it. Have your guns. Take all the goddamn guns you want and go shoot yourselves in the head. If that's really all you care about, enjoy. As long as you don't shoot them off in the cities, where rational people live, go ahead and have a big gun-fuck party. Maybe then you'll kill each other off and you won't breed another generation of dumb ignorant fucks that doesn't have the goddamn sense to vote for anything that matters because you're so fucking paranoid that someone's going to possibly come near to approaching in any way your only tiny miserable moments of illusory power in those fleeting seconds when you make a BIG NOISE and watch STUFF BLOW UP all AWESOME AND SHIT ...
Sorry. Maybe I went a bit far there. I just tend to get a tad frustrated when I hear that gun stores are running out of ammo because ignorant fuckers are paranoid that just because a Democrat's in office holy shit! They's gonna go afta' our guns! Guess what, dumb-ass, no one's talking about guns. No one cares any more about guns. There is a whole ocean of bigger fish to fry than your stupid guns. There's the adequate health care coverage that you don't have. There's the economy that is leaving you either unemployed or barely scratching together a living. There's the climate change that is going to quickly make your home, and yes, your hunting grounds, unliveable. But since you don't know enough to pick your ass off a burning stove, we're going to have to haul you kicking and screaming into a happier future for you and your family ...
Stupid Americans. America would be such a great country if it weren't for all the Americans. Grumble grumble grumble. I need another beer.
Oh yeah, the problem with this country ... the problem with this country is that we don't have good citizens. OK, I actually just heard Thomas Friedman say this on "Charlie Rose." But it's true. It's not the fault of the leaders. The leaders, some of them at least, are knowledgeable and well-educated. They know what will solve our problems. The problem is that we're not good enough citizens to make the short-term sacrifices necessary to solve our problems. We will vote the leaders out of office if they even threaten possibly thinking about making us make sacrifices for the good of the country. We are just that selfish. We talk a lot about loving America in this country, but we don't prove our love. Love means sacrifice, and Americans don't sacrifice. I love America, but goddammit, I hate Americans.
OK, now's when I go through all the solutions to all our problems. All of them require sacrifice of the part of Americans (usually monetary, but hey, that's what gets things done in this world).
Climate Change: The answer is electric cars and nuclear power. If power plants were run through nuclear power instead of coal, they wouldn't spew all those earth-killing greenhouse gases. And if all cars were electric, they'd just use that nuclear power instead of burning earth-killing gasoline.
I know, nuclear waste stinks, but finding some god-fosaken wasteland to bury it in (look in the Southwest -- from what I can tell it's nothing but God-forsaken wasteland) is a lot better than cooking ourselves to death through global warming. And I wish I could tell you that solar power and wind power and happiness power and love power and all the other alternative powers would do it just as well, but as far as I understand, they just don't add up. They wouldn't produce enough energy.
Why Won't We Do It? Electric cars cost money. And nuclear power plants cost tax money to create. And a long time ago, a few ridiculously antiquated nuclear power plants hurt people. So that's very scary. And plus, I forgot to mention that it costs money. And that's money we could be spending on iPhone apps that make fart noises!
The National Debt: Start a million-dollar income tax bracket. You know how there are those tax brackets, where you pay a higher percent of your income depending on how much you make? Here's the full chart for single adults, stolen from Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge:
If you make between $0 – $8,350, your marginal tax rate is 10%
If you make between $8,351– $33,950, your marginal tax rate is 15%
If you make between $33,951 – $82,250, your marginal tax rate is 25%
If you make between $82,251 – $171,550, your marginal tax rate is 28%
If you make between $171,551 – $372,950, you marginal tax rate is 33%
If you make above $372,951, your marginal tax rate is 35%
Hold on, what's that last one? If you make above $372,951, you pay 35%, no matter what? So after that point, you're home free? Why? So if you're Alex Rodriguez, and you make $33 million a year, you get paid at the same rate as some surgeon who makes $372,952? If the graduated, progressive tax bracket system is good enough for the first 90% of incomes (or whatever $0 to $372,951 constitutes), why doesn't it keep going? Especially since that once you get beyond $372,952, it's pretty much all gravy? How much gravy does a person need?
And don't give me that crap about higher tax rates stifling incentives to innovate or to get rich or whatever. I'm not talking about making everyone have the same take-home pay. I'm not even talking about a bracket above 50%. Let's keep things in perspective here. If you raised Alex Rodriguez's marginal tax rate to 40%, say, is he really going to be like, "Wait, man, I can't even pay for my toddler's tummy tuck on that shit! Forget it, I'm going to quit baseball and go fulfill my true dream of cleaning the houses of wealthy Californians." No, what he'll actually do is take home $19.8 million instead of $21.45 million, not really notice much difference, and the government will get an extra $1.65 million that it can use to feed poor children. Or, uh, pay off the debt. I forgot about that part. It's important, for some reason which I never admittedly entirely understood. (I think because the Chinese will stop buying or U.S. bonds or something if we default. And because we pay a huge chunk of the federal budget in interest that could go to better things. It's all very complicated. But I don't want complicated right now. I want overly simplistic solutions to immensely complex problems. It's got more punch that way.)
Why Won't We Do It? Wait, you want to raise taxes? HITLER!!!! I'm a good ol' boy who makes $20,000 a year down at the feed store, so therefore any thought of possibly raising some tax of any kind, even if it would not affect me at all and would actually bring great benefit to me and everyone I know, is fascism! I am teabagger, and I believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution clearly states in Amendment 25, and I quote, "Fuck everyone else. I like money. Plus, guns."
Gun control: You know what? I'm not even going to touch this one. Fuck it. Have your guns. Take all the goddamn guns you want and go shoot yourselves in the head. If that's really all you care about, enjoy. As long as you don't shoot them off in the cities, where rational people live, go ahead and have a big gun-fuck party. Maybe then you'll kill each other off and you won't breed another generation of dumb ignorant fucks that doesn't have the goddamn sense to vote for anything that matters because you're so fucking paranoid that someone's going to possibly come near to approaching in any way your only tiny miserable moments of illusory power in those fleeting seconds when you make a BIG NOISE and watch STUFF BLOW UP all AWESOME AND SHIT ...
Sorry. Maybe I went a bit far there. I just tend to get a tad frustrated when I hear that gun stores are running out of ammo because ignorant fuckers are paranoid that just because a Democrat's in office holy shit! They's gonna go afta' our guns! Guess what, dumb-ass, no one's talking about guns. No one cares any more about guns. There is a whole ocean of bigger fish to fry than your stupid guns. There's the adequate health care coverage that you don't have. There's the economy that is leaving you either unemployed or barely scratching together a living. There's the climate change that is going to quickly make your home, and yes, your hunting grounds, unliveable. But since you don't know enough to pick your ass off a burning stove, we're going to have to haul you kicking and screaming into a happier future for you and your family ...
Stupid Americans. America would be such a great country if it weren't for all the Americans. Grumble grumble grumble. I need another beer.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
America Responds! or, Joe's Comment About Charitable Giving Got Too Long, So Now It's Its Own Post
Hmm. I'm afraid I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with my right honourable friend.
In the first instance, my friend is operating under the misapprehension that "real" charities don't squirrel away their money and live off the interest. Au contraire, my good man. Take a glance at Forbes' list of the top 200 charities in the U.S. Last year, there were 21 charities with net assets over one billion dollars. That’s the stuff they’ve kept over the years, squirrel-like. They regularly (when the stock market doesn't crash, of course) earn tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in investment income each year, which they use to help fund their operations, while the principal sits in Scrooge McDuck’s swimming pool.
And speaking of ducks (or geese, actually)…. An argument could be made that neither these charities nor colleges should be encouraged to become financial geese - building up a huge nest egg and just sitting on it, while goslings of investment income emerge every year to do the work of the gander. My honourable friend would have you slaughter that goose each year, and feast upon its donated flesh. But what, I ask, is more valuable: the present value of today's single goose, which must be replaced in its entirety every year, or tomorrow's limitless flock of goslings, born of one cared-for, always-growing, and well-endowed goose? I leave that to the economists to debate.
(Note to the reader: ignore the foregoing paragraph, if you want; I’m afraid it’s rather strained and doesn’t make sense. But I still like it, so I left it in. If you want to read a thoughtful analysis of encouraging nonprofits to reduce their surpluses by taxing them, take a gander at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6567/07-21-UntaxedBus.pdf.)
And non-profits abound that ask for donations beyond an initial fee. I like the zoo. They charge me twenty dollars to see the hippopotamuses. Then they ask me to spend fifty dollars to join the Zoological Society. What for? I already gave them my money. If I want to see another hippo, fine - I'll go back and hand over another appleduster (new slang for a twenty dollar bill). Why should I keep paying for something I already got the benefit from?
Well, donations don’t have to be seen as retroactively increased payments for something you already bought. You can give money to the zoo or a college because you have warm, fuzzy feelings today about the good times you had there. Or you can give to them because you want the zoo or your college to be around for the next generation – and hopefully in better shape than when you went there.
The fact is, fees (and tuitions) usually only cover a smallish percent of institutional costs. Most established charities depend on some balance of fees, grants by foundations and governments, and investment income (which would be replaced by gooseflesh in Ed’s endowment-less scheme). And of course, donations by people like you. If people didn't donate to the zoo by joining the Zoological Society, they might have to start killing endangered animals because they ran out of money to buy Okapi Chow.
Of course, no one forces anyone to donate extra money to a fee-charging charity. (Except of course for the Mobsters' Fund for We Won't Break Your Elbows If You Give Us A Lot of Money Right Now.) You give to the ones you like, according to how much you have and want to give. If you hate okapis, don’t join the zoo. If you think the zoo has started to spend too much money on muskrat enclosures, stop giving them money. If you don’t think your college should be spending money on stairmasters, don’t give them anything.
And not to nitpick, but people can donate to the government, too. Not usually as a “here’s double my tax bill, made out to The Government”, but go to any National Parks website, and you can donate your money directly to that government-run entity.
As for need-blindness, there are few colleges who remain totally need-blind these days. But my understanding is that most places are still something like 80-90% need-blind, meaning that they take financial ability into account only for borderline admittees and wait-list kids. And they meet the full need of anyone that they do admit. So money for scholarships is still useful.
Bottom line is, colleges are worthy recipients of charitable giving. And each dollar you give saves the life of an okapi. So please, give today.
In the first instance, my friend is operating under the misapprehension that "real" charities don't squirrel away their money and live off the interest. Au contraire, my good man. Take a glance at Forbes' list of the top 200 charities in the U.S. Last year, there were 21 charities with net assets over one billion dollars. That’s the stuff they’ve kept over the years, squirrel-like. They regularly (when the stock market doesn't crash, of course) earn tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in investment income each year, which they use to help fund their operations, while the principal sits in Scrooge McDuck’s swimming pool.
And speaking of ducks (or geese, actually)…. An argument could be made that neither these charities nor colleges should be encouraged to become financial geese - building up a huge nest egg and just sitting on it, while goslings of investment income emerge every year to do the work of the gander. My honourable friend would have you slaughter that goose each year, and feast upon its donated flesh. But what, I ask, is more valuable: the present value of today's single goose, which must be replaced in its entirety every year, or tomorrow's limitless flock of goslings, born of one cared-for, always-growing, and well-endowed goose? I leave that to the economists to debate.
(Note to the reader: ignore the foregoing paragraph, if you want; I’m afraid it’s rather strained and doesn’t make sense. But I still like it, so I left it in. If you want to read a thoughtful analysis of encouraging nonprofits to reduce their surpluses by taxing them, take a gander at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6567/07-21-UntaxedBus.pdf.)
And non-profits abound that ask for donations beyond an initial fee. I like the zoo. They charge me twenty dollars to see the hippopotamuses. Then they ask me to spend fifty dollars to join the Zoological Society. What for? I already gave them my money. If I want to see another hippo, fine - I'll go back and hand over another appleduster (new slang for a twenty dollar bill). Why should I keep paying for something I already got the benefit from?
Well, donations don’t have to be seen as retroactively increased payments for something you already bought. You can give money to the zoo or a college because you have warm, fuzzy feelings today about the good times you had there. Or you can give to them because you want the zoo or your college to be around for the next generation – and hopefully in better shape than when you went there.
The fact is, fees (and tuitions) usually only cover a smallish percent of institutional costs. Most established charities depend on some balance of fees, grants by foundations and governments, and investment income (which would be replaced by gooseflesh in Ed’s endowment-less scheme). And of course, donations by people like you. If people didn't donate to the zoo by joining the Zoological Society, they might have to start killing endangered animals because they ran out of money to buy Okapi Chow.
Of course, no one forces anyone to donate extra money to a fee-charging charity. (Except of course for the Mobsters' Fund for We Won't Break Your Elbows If You Give Us A Lot of Money Right Now.) You give to the ones you like, according to how much you have and want to give. If you hate okapis, don’t join the zoo. If you think the zoo has started to spend too much money on muskrat enclosures, stop giving them money. If you don’t think your college should be spending money on stairmasters, don’t give them anything.
And not to nitpick, but people can donate to the government, too. Not usually as a “here’s double my tax bill, made out to The Government”, but go to any National Parks website, and you can donate your money directly to that government-run entity.
As for need-blindness, there are few colleges who remain totally need-blind these days. But my understanding is that most places are still something like 80-90% need-blind, meaning that they take financial ability into account only for borderline admittees and wait-list kids. And they meet the full need of anyone that they do admit. So money for scholarships is still useful.
Bottom line is, colleges are worthy recipients of charitable giving. And each dollar you give saves the life of an okapi. So please, give today.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Things I Hate: Giving Money to My Alma Mater
I loved college. It was a wonderful experience. I made some lifelong friends, learned a ton, and generally, it was top-notch, top-drawer, top-shelf, top-flight, top-hat, Topper-Returns, Top-of-the-Pops ... tops.
And I paid handsomely for it. Well, I didn't pay for it -- my dead great aunt did. Either way, I don't see much point in continuing to pay for it.
I know, there are plenty of kids who couldn't afford to pay for college without some assistance. Thing is, my school isn't very interested in them any more. My school gave up on need-blind admissions when I was a sophomore. To me, that's discrimination in favor of the rich. That's one reason I don't give.
Another is that that my school, like most, is actually loaded with dough. They're so rich that they have big wads of cash just sitting in the bank, and they operate by skimming off the top of it. The call it an "endowment," which makes it sound nice, but it's really just a big hoard of money that they should be using to run the school. That money could go towards scholarships. Or maybe reduce tuition so that normal people can actually afford to go. Do other charitable organizations have the luxury of just squirreling money away and living off of interest rather than using it to fund their operations? Do even the richest for-profit businesses get to do that? (I actually don't know, but I would imagine they wouldn't.)
But yet my college keeps coming to us alumni, hat in hand, saying how they need more money. Yeah, sure, and next I'll make out a check to Microsoft. In 2001, my school lost its shirt in the dot-com crash. This left it only a quarter-billion in its endowment. Only a quarter-billion! Mercy me! How do they put gas in their cars?
And despite losing their shirt, relatively speaking, they still had plenty of money to bring about a lot of unecessary improvements. They redid dorm interiors that were already perfectly fine. They added another cafeteria, despite the fact that I don't remember ever feeling I couldn't find a seat in any of the old ones. They added a huge exercise facility even though they already had two, and the school was full of nerds who shouldn't be exercising anyway.
So this is what my charity dollar is supposed to go towards? Giving rich kids fancier places to work out? I could feed a kid in Africa, combat global warming, contribute to AIDS research ... or give a dorm room a new chair. Somehow, I kinda think I'd do more good giving to the kid in Africa. Maybe that's just me.
In fact, comparing a wealthy and successful college to real charities is unfair to the real charities. Real charities don't get to charge exorbitant tuitions -- they make almost all of their money from donations. Colleges are really more like sports teams. They're tons of fun, you love them, they're part of who you are ... and you pay what they charge, and that should be it. As much as I love the Minnesota Twins, I don't think I'll be donating money to them any time soon.
I'll grant that colleges have a higher purpose than sports teams do. But hey, so do governments. We love our alma mater, so we voluntarily pay even more than we're charged, long after we stopping being a member. We also love our towns, our states, our countries -- yet we take every possible angle we can to avoid paying even the regular amount that they ask of us in taxes. And that's while we are still a member of those places, still benefitting from their work. And forget about giving them something extra.
In short, it will be a great day when our governments get all the money they need and our private colleges have to have a bake sale to buy a building.
And I paid handsomely for it. Well, I didn't pay for it -- my dead great aunt did. Either way, I don't see much point in continuing to pay for it.
I know, there are plenty of kids who couldn't afford to pay for college without some assistance. Thing is, my school isn't very interested in them any more. My school gave up on need-blind admissions when I was a sophomore. To me, that's discrimination in favor of the rich. That's one reason I don't give.
Another is that that my school, like most, is actually loaded with dough. They're so rich that they have big wads of cash just sitting in the bank, and they operate by skimming off the top of it. The call it an "endowment," which makes it sound nice, but it's really just a big hoard of money that they should be using to run the school. That money could go towards scholarships. Or maybe reduce tuition so that normal people can actually afford to go. Do other charitable organizations have the luxury of just squirreling money away and living off of interest rather than using it to fund their operations? Do even the richest for-profit businesses get to do that? (I actually don't know, but I would imagine they wouldn't.)
But yet my college keeps coming to us alumni, hat in hand, saying how they need more money. Yeah, sure, and next I'll make out a check to Microsoft. In 2001, my school lost its shirt in the dot-com crash. This left it only a quarter-billion in its endowment. Only a quarter-billion! Mercy me! How do they put gas in their cars?
And despite losing their shirt, relatively speaking, they still had plenty of money to bring about a lot of unecessary improvements. They redid dorm interiors that were already perfectly fine. They added another cafeteria, despite the fact that I don't remember ever feeling I couldn't find a seat in any of the old ones. They added a huge exercise facility even though they already had two, and the school was full of nerds who shouldn't be exercising anyway.
So this is what my charity dollar is supposed to go towards? Giving rich kids fancier places to work out? I could feed a kid in Africa, combat global warming, contribute to AIDS research ... or give a dorm room a new chair. Somehow, I kinda think I'd do more good giving to the kid in Africa. Maybe that's just me.
In fact, comparing a wealthy and successful college to real charities is unfair to the real charities. Real charities don't get to charge exorbitant tuitions -- they make almost all of their money from donations. Colleges are really more like sports teams. They're tons of fun, you love them, they're part of who you are ... and you pay what they charge, and that should be it. As much as I love the Minnesota Twins, I don't think I'll be donating money to them any time soon.
I'll grant that colleges have a higher purpose than sports teams do. But hey, so do governments. We love our alma mater, so we voluntarily pay even more than we're charged, long after we stopping being a member. We also love our towns, our states, our countries -- yet we take every possible angle we can to avoid paying even the regular amount that they ask of us in taxes. And that's while we are still a member of those places, still benefitting from their work. And forget about giving them something extra.
In short, it will be a great day when our governments get all the money they need and our private colleges have to have a bake sale to buy a building.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
My Hard-Hitting Critique of Flags
I love flags. Even if they're kinda useless nowadays. In the days before people could read, they had very practical uses: Flags were the only way to identify yourself as coming from a particular country. People also couldn't talk or hear in those days, so all communication was done through flags. Every nobleman had a flagbearer who would carry about 5,000 different flags, one for each word in the English language at the time. Even the best flag-waver would take about a half hour in between each word to shuffle through his flag collection and find the next flag, so each sentence took about a day. Lots of awkward pauses in those days. If you were a peasant and couldn't afford a flagbearer, you would communicate through punches to the face.
No, not really! Ha ha ha. But flags were a lot more of a practical necessity in those days. And people didn't get all "sacred-relic"-y about their country's flag like they do now. True story: Few people in the United States saw a single American flag for many years after it was adopted, because it really weren't seen as being terribly important. Several years after its adoption, Ben Franklin was quoted as describing the flag wrong, saying it had 13 stripes of red, white and blue instead of red and white. He'd likely seen one or two by then, but just wasn't a big thing at the time. They certainly didn't worry about flag being burnt or touching the ground or being wrapped around penises or whatever people are upset about today. That whole farcically overwrought and overcomplicated flag-folding ceremony was created in the 1970s. Point is, only recently have Americans been all spazzy about the flag.
But anyway, flags are fun. And the American flag is the funnest. It really is the best flag, and I say that not just because I'm a flag-waving, jingoistic, xenophobic white supremacist. It's a unique flag, yet not bizarre. There's lots of good symbolism in there -- the 50 stars for the 50 states, the 13 stripes for the 13 colonies, the white for white people, the red for the blood of white people, the blue for the blood of rich white people. And it's nice-looking too. Here it is:
I bet it's immediately recognizable to just about everyone in the world. In the marketing biz, we call that "good branding." Then we feel icky for using the word "branding," and we reevaluate our choices in life. Then we realize that we have no discernable talent of any kind, so marketing was basically our only option. Then we cry all the way to the bank.
And I really think that should be the number-one qualification for a flag. Attractiveness is important too, but number one in my book is recognizability. If it's easy to remember that a certain flag stands for a certain country, then it's a good flag.
So what would be a counterexample? Basically every flag in Europe. European countries suck at making flags, much as they suck in creating health-care systems, moral values, and people. (Remember, I'm a jingoistic xenophobe.) Pop quiz, hot shot: What country proudly (?) bears this standard atop their mighty whorehouses and "coffeeshops"?
Nope, not France -- France has the same exact colors, except its stripes are vertical instead of horizontal. It's Holland, or, as it's actually called, the Netherlands. What, you didn't recognize it? Maybe because it looks almost exactly like every other fucking flag in Europe?
Here's another pop quiz: what so-called "country" is so perpetually ashamed of itself that it created this flag, apparently in the hope that they would be mistaken for other countries and that no one would notice them ever again?
You guessed it, it's the world's shittiest country, Luxembourg. Luxembourg and the Netherlands even border each other, folks. The Netherlands was so unoriginal that it did the tri-color thing, like every other European country, and used the same colors as France -- and then Luxem-fucking-bourg upped the ante for unoriginality to the stratosphere by using the same flag as its neighbor! They just made one color slightly lighter! That's so unoriginal that it's almost amazingly original!
So both those flags are absolute failures. People who aren't Joe will never come across the Luxembourg flag and be like, "Oh shit, Luxembourg's in the house!" They will instead be all "Is that France's flag? No wait, its stripes are vertical. Eh, it's probably one of those shitty European countries that doesn't even try to pretend that it has enough national pride to make a flag that normal people (i.e., not Joe) can recognize." It's like if the Netherlands had instead called itself Franceland, and then Luxembourg had called itself Francelande.
So where are the good flags? Not Africa, I'll tell you that. As if it wasn't bad enough that they have so many black people there (reminder: I am a racist), their flags are even worse than Europe's. They all use the same freakin' colors, and just arrange them slightly differently. For instance, here's Ghana:
I know, it's like, SO Ghana, isn't it? You think Ghana, and you think about a star, with red, yellow and green stripes. You would never look at that and be all, oh, hey, Guinea-Bissau! However, if you saw this flag ...
... you'd be all, "oh, snap, it's Guinea-Bissau!" A star with red, yellow and green stripes! And it's so symbolic the way one of the stipes is vertical. People in Guinea-Bissau are known for walking while vertical. It's kind of the thing down there.
No, not really! Ha ha ha. But flags were a lot more of a practical necessity in those days. And people didn't get all "sacred-relic"-y about their country's flag like they do now. True story: Few people in the United States saw a single American flag for many years after it was adopted, because it really weren't seen as being terribly important. Several years after its adoption, Ben Franklin was quoted as describing the flag wrong, saying it had 13 stripes of red, white and blue instead of red and white. He'd likely seen one or two by then, but just wasn't a big thing at the time. They certainly didn't worry about flag being burnt or touching the ground or being wrapped around penises or whatever people are upset about today. That whole farcically overwrought and overcomplicated flag-folding ceremony was created in the 1970s. Point is, only recently have Americans been all spazzy about the flag.
But anyway, flags are fun. And the American flag is the funnest. It really is the best flag, and I say that not just because I'm a flag-waving, jingoistic, xenophobic white supremacist. It's a unique flag, yet not bizarre. There's lots of good symbolism in there -- the 50 stars for the 50 states, the 13 stripes for the 13 colonies, the white for white people, the red for the blood of white people, the blue for the blood of rich white people. And it's nice-looking too. Here it is:
I bet it's immediately recognizable to just about everyone in the world. In the marketing biz, we call that "good branding." Then we feel icky for using the word "branding," and we reevaluate our choices in life. Then we realize that we have no discernable talent of any kind, so marketing was basically our only option. Then we cry all the way to the bank.
And I really think that should be the number-one qualification for a flag. Attractiveness is important too, but number one in my book is recognizability. If it's easy to remember that a certain flag stands for a certain country, then it's a good flag.
So what would be a counterexample? Basically every flag in Europe. European countries suck at making flags, much as they suck in creating health-care systems, moral values, and people. (Remember, I'm a jingoistic xenophobe.) Pop quiz, hot shot: What country proudly (?) bears this standard atop their mighty whorehouses and "coffeeshops"?
Nope, not France -- France has the same exact colors, except its stripes are vertical instead of horizontal. It's Holland, or, as it's actually called, the Netherlands. What, you didn't recognize it? Maybe because it looks almost exactly like every other fucking flag in Europe?
Here's another pop quiz: what so-called "country" is so perpetually ashamed of itself that it created this flag, apparently in the hope that they would be mistaken for other countries and that no one would notice them ever again?
You guessed it, it's the world's shittiest country, Luxembourg. Luxembourg and the Netherlands even border each other, folks. The Netherlands was so unoriginal that it did the tri-color thing, like every other European country, and used the same colors as France -- and then Luxem-fucking-bourg upped the ante for unoriginality to the stratosphere by using the same flag as its neighbor! They just made one color slightly lighter! That's so unoriginal that it's almost amazingly original!
So both those flags are absolute failures. People who aren't Joe will never come across the Luxembourg flag and be like, "Oh shit, Luxembourg's in the house!" They will instead be all "Is that France's flag? No wait, its stripes are vertical. Eh, it's probably one of those shitty European countries that doesn't even try to pretend that it has enough national pride to make a flag that normal people (i.e., not Joe) can recognize." It's like if the Netherlands had instead called itself Franceland, and then Luxembourg had called itself Francelande.
So where are the good flags? Not Africa, I'll tell you that. As if it wasn't bad enough that they have so many black people there (reminder: I am a racist), their flags are even worse than Europe's. They all use the same freakin' colors, and just arrange them slightly differently. For instance, here's Ghana:
I know, it's like, SO Ghana, isn't it? You think Ghana, and you think about a star, with red, yellow and green stripes. You would never look at that and be all, oh, hey, Guinea-Bissau! However, if you saw this flag ...
... you'd be all, "oh, snap, it's Guinea-Bissau!" A star with red, yellow and green stripes! And it's so symbolic the way one of the stipes is vertical. People in Guinea-Bissau are known for walking while vertical. It's kind of the thing down there.
And you know, my farcical "Franceland" thing is actually the reality here, because look at Guinea's flag:
Sigh. So you have countries called "Guinea" and "Guinea-Bissau." Already, you're starting with a big similarity problem right there. Then these countries each choose almost the same flag. It's like identical twins who dress the same. Don't you guys want to even try to carve out your own identities? If not, then hell, we're wasting time and money keeping you guys as separate countries. We need to conserve ambassadors and embassy buildings -- did you not you see the Al Gore movie? You're wasting valuable paper and chairs at U.N. meetings by insisting on being different countries.
You know, maybe I actually hate flags. Flags seem to willfully contradict my main qualifications: that they be memorable, unique, and blatantly symbolic. I know that the colors in the African flags are symbolic of Pan-Africanism, but couldn't you think of better symbols than just colors? Colors are very busy things: They are on everything in the world, and each color can symbolize life, death, nature, freedom, ham, and every other possible thing imaginable depending on who you are and where you're from. Can't you go with more concrete and obvious symbols? Can't you be more like Swaziland?
Now there's a fuckin' flag! It's got that kick-ass shield and those spears in the middle, plus a bunch of leaves or pinecones or Tribbles or whatever those things are. Swaziland has no self-esteem problems: With this flag, they're saying to me, "Hey, we're Swaziland, and if you don't like it, we will stab you!" As opposed to Luxembourg or Guinea, who are all "ooh, colors are pretty."
Plus, I think it has a nice look to it. The above representation is not a great one -- usually they use a nice light blue that goes well with the other colors and makes it look like something that a professional artist may have created. I mean seriously, imagine what awesome country flags professional artists could create. They would be attractive, recognizable, unique -- why instead, did most countries just pick a few colors and smack 'em together, with nary a thought toward aesthetics?
But anyway, the all-time greatest flag is Nepal's. They really knew how to "think outside the box" ... literally! (By the way, I am available to speak at your next corporate event. My presentation, "Marketing Lessons from Flag Design: Think Outside the Same Goddamn Boxes of Color That Everyone Else Uses," has inspired countless people to improve their ROI efficiency and upflow their innovationability. Contact me today!)
Yeah, buddy! The people at Nepal said "Hey guys, why don't we innovate? Why don't we break the paradigm and promote a brand identity of young, hip, different, EXTREME?!" So that's what they did, and they have since become the market leader in Nepalese products.
And it's symbolic, too. The sun represents the fact that they have sunlight there. The sun on top of the crescent symbolizes the fact that their Muslims think the sun rises and sets just for them. And the whole shape of the flag symbolizes the extremely pointy breasts that all Nepalese women have.
But I should emphasize that to have a passable flag, you don't have to go as far as Nepal did. You can just put some object in the middle. Mexico's flag (which you should know well, so I'm not putting it in here) is a fine one, I think. Nothing earth-shattering -- basically just Italy's flag with a bird in the middle -- but it's enough to make it memorable. If the Netherlands had stuck a picture in the middle of its flag of a man smoking a joint while being fellated by a prostitute, I would have no problem with it whatsoever.
(For further flag-looking-at: Other good flags include the Marshall Islands, Kenya, Kosovo, Dominica, Seychelles, Montenegro, and St. Lucia. Bad ones include Mali, Lithuana, Hungary, Poland, Indonesia and Monaco (same exact flag for those two), and all those goddamn Scandinavian countries that I can never keep straight. Sweden I can get every time. The rest I can never remember.)
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Movies I Dreamt Up
My dreams take all forms. (Again, I must remind you that by "dreams" I do not mean aspirations. I only use that word when referring to the stuff my brain conjures up when I'm asleep.) When I'm not dreaming painful scenarios that drag my emotions over past failures, I often dream up movie ideas. My brain will make up some weird scenario, and then at some point in mid-dream I realize it's a movie, and as I'm dreaming, I'll form it into a better movie. It's kind of awesome really. I've also come up with songs in my sleep that I was able to remember the next morning. I've never been able to write a song in waking life.
Anyway, here are a few recent movies I dreamt up:
1. "Back to High School"
Glib version of the explanation: Like that Drew Barrymore movie, except better.
It's sorta kinda a lot like that Drew Barrymore movie where a grown-up goes back to high school as an undercover reporter, except a little different. So it starts with our heroine, who we'll call Emily (just to pick a random name), going through high school. This will be a pretty quick introductory segment, in which we run through all the typical characters and themes of all "high school sucks" movies -- there are the popular, rich, mean girls tormenting Emily, there's the charming, cute jock who doesn't have any interest in her, there's the nerd boy who pays attention to her but turns out to be a sex-obsessed jerk, and it's all generally a miserable experience.
All the above is stuffed in one day in which Emily is tired of blending into the woodwork and decides to break out of her shell by wearing these wacky socks that her mother gave her, and that she loves. But instead of getting her noticed in a good way, she gets ridiculed mercilessly. For the rest of high school, she's derisively known as "Socks" Macarthur. (Her last name's Macarthur. That's what my dream told me, so it must be a portentous sign from God.)
So anyway, Emily goes to college, and has a blast. Now she breaks out the wacky socks and everyone loves them. She again becomes known as "Socks," but this time it's a fun nickname. Now instead of wallowing in a crippling fear of people, she relishes their company.
While in college, she becomes fascinated with computers, and creates a few iPhone apps (or something like that -- something in science or technology) that she's then able to market and make a mint off of. After she graduates, she's pretty well set for a while. She's immensely happy.
But she keeps having dreams about how awful high school was. She meets with a therapist, who tells her that there's not much she can do about that one -- there's no aversion therapy for high school. At this point, Socks has become a bit of a perfectionist, obsessed with having a perfect life and no fears or scars. So she says, heck, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
So she goes ... back to high school! (OK, I realize this is a bit cheesy. But it could be fun. And the movie's kinda meant for kids.) She creates a fake identity for herself and enrolls in a different high school. (Maybe some comedy can be mined from having her college buddies pose as her parents. Socks is young-looking, and maybe she gets some bald dude with a beard from college to pose as her dad. Probably shouldn't make her boyfriend do it. That's too icky.)
In high school, she meets exactly the same archetypes as she knew in her high school. At first, she's a bit cowed, but then gathers herself, and acts very confident. She wears her crazy socks all the time. Of course, she gets made of, but she is able to shoot back now, and she becomes pretty popular, one of those rare popular kids who is friends with everyone. This time she actually gets to know all these archetypical characters -- jocks, sex-obsessed nerds, popular girls, etc. Her motives are kinda evil, to befriend them and then find a way to give them a good comeuppance, or at least get them to change from being so terrible to each other. But the more she gets to know them, the more she sees that they're packed with insecurities too, and are just better at hiding them. The popular girl, it turns out, had to fend off sexual advances from a teacher. The nerd has an oppressive family. Et cetera. She ends up being a genuine friend to them, helping them with their problems, but then when they start ganging up on a wallflower girl that reminds her of herself, she can't help herself. She ends up taking revenge on them, and of course it turns out horribly, making things much worse. She tries to atone for what she did, but by then someone discovers her fraud, and she's kicked out. Then everyone feels they've been defrauded and she's demonized and shunned.
She gets a criminal conviction but no jail time (she never did anything icky with any of the high school kids, always telling them she had a boyfriend from another school, which she actually does, and maybe her real boyfriend comes and meets them, and they're just awed by him), and returns to adult life. But maybe eventually, something makes the kids come see her at her cool apartment and there's some sort of tearful admittance that they have changed for the better because of her. So there's sort of a happy ending, somehow. Maybe in the end she becomes a school psychologist. I haven't worked out all the details.
2. "Wall Street Hustlers"
Glib version of the explanation: Chris Rock version of "Wall Street"
OK, I can't really describe this one and not look like an asshole, since I'm a white man. I'll just sound like I'm trying to put on a minstrel show or in some other way be insulting to African-Americans. So I'll resolve this problem by acting all black and shit.
Yo, bitch, what up? Mothafuckin' E to the D here to kick the ballistics on the ultimate balla comedy in the hizzay!!! Peep this .... oh Jesus, I am a horrible human being. I apologize with all my soul to everyone who is African-American, has ever met anyone African-American, or has ever heard of African-Americans. I'm so sorry.
But not sorry enough to not try again. OK, so there's this ghetto businessman who is ruling many of the illicit trades in the neighborhood. Let's call him Joe (just to pick a random name). He's cornered the market on marijuana. But he doesn't sell coke or crack or anything else, because he feels that those destroy the community, and a destroyed community is a dangerous one, and thus bad for business. Marijuana, he says half-jokingly, helps the community, making everyone relax. That's good business. He puts everything in terms of whether it's good or bad for business. He's a charmer, genuinely likable and not smarmy or evil, but he's also a ruthless capitalist, doing whatever it takes to maintain his monopoly. He is an extremely wise businessman, but a mostly amoral one. In a very charming way.
In the beginning he is challenged by an upstart who barges into his office and is shocked by un-fancy it is. Joe lets loose one of his many maxims, something about never looking like you have money. He wears very simple clothes that make him go mostly unnoticed. But he's rolling in money. The pictures on his wall are of Donald Trump, Michael Milken, Ken Lay -- his heroes.
So anyway, this upstart makes bold pronouncements about taking him over, and Joe flashes a genuine smile and says "Well, I welcome the competition! Competition is what makes the system great!" He then asks the upstart about his business plan. Of course, the upstart doesn't really have one. What areas are you going to go into? No idea, but he just spews more bluster instead of answering. How do you intend to get loyalty from the dealers and suppliers? No idea. Joe reveals that he gets their loyalty by always giving them a solid cut and treating them fairly. He even provides health insurance and a 401(k) (which would be a bit of a laugh line). When things get out of hand, which the inevitably do, he has an enforcement team, led by Big Mike, a man who then appears from the shadows and is very large and intimidating. So anyway, the opening scene is mainly meant to establish that Joe is an expert businessman and to set up how he does his thing.
Eventually the upstart goes away, and Joe's smile drops. He's tired of this shit. He wants to move to the next level, to go legit, maybe run some restaurants or other businesses so he can deal with professionals instead of blowhards. People like Trump, or Ken Lay.
Soon after he meets up with old friend from the neighborhood, Chris. Chris was a mathematical genius who got out of the ghetto on a scholarship and ended up working for a major bank. Recently, however, when the financial mess hit, Chris was fired, digraced, and came back to the ghetto.
Despite Chris' fall, Joe is inspired by his rise. Banking! There are no banks in their neighborhood. People go miles out of their way for a bank or just stash their money in mattresses, which often get stolen. Joe, with Chris' help, opens up a bank. It's a different kind of bank, with intense security. Maybe the upstart, who of course never did anything, comes in and tries to rob the place. He pulls out a gun on the teller, and the teller pulls out her own. As does everyone else in the bank. (OK, now you see where the offensiveness comes in. I've been telling it as straightforward as possible, avoiding the jokes, which are often about applying the ghetto world to the "straight" world, but it's hard to do that without playing on stereotypes of ghettos that I'm really not allowed to play on, as a white man. But you get the idea. A black screenwriter could do better on this.)
So anwyay, the bank is a success, and Joe and Chris quickly start opening other franchises. They start to gain some press. Reporters start asking uncomfortable questions about where Joe got all his money to begin with. Chris buts in and starts talking about credit default swaps and derivitatives and such, and that placates everyone. Afterwards, Joe says "What was all that? I don't know what any of that means." and Chris says,"Neither do I. Neither do they. Doesn't matter. It's all a hustle." You get the idea.
So quickly Joe and Chris start building a financial empire, getting into investment banking and all sorts of things. Then maybe they meet the real tycoons, and Joe is of course enthralled. But when he sees what they do, he gradually becomes more and more horrified. They talk casually of laying off thousands just to boost the stock price a bit so that they can then sell their own stashes for a profit. Or they talk of investments like buying up rivers from indigenous South American populations so they an use them for a new type of bottled water. Joe discovers his conscience, and threatens to expose all of their awful deals. The tycoons laugh and tell them that these deals are all well-known, and nobody cares.
Then the tycoons, just to be safe, expose Joe as getting his start in marijuana sales, and Joe is arrested and his businesses destroyed. Maybe at the trial he makes an impassioned speech, asking which is worse -- selling a mostly harmless drug in order to make a system of banks that help the community, or using your riches to destroy communities and people for the sake of gaining slightly more riches. He becomes a folk hero, taking every interview he can get and talking about this stuff. And then there's some happy ending. I don't know what.
So maybe these movies are a bit preachy. I'm so political these days that it would be hard for them not to be. But both would be comedies, with all this stuff underneath it all. What do you think? Neither would be great art, but they could be fun.
Anyway, here are a few recent movies I dreamt up:
1. "Back to High School"
Glib version of the explanation: Like that Drew Barrymore movie, except better.
It's sorta kinda a lot like that Drew Barrymore movie where a grown-up goes back to high school as an undercover reporter, except a little different. So it starts with our heroine, who we'll call Emily (just to pick a random name), going through high school. This will be a pretty quick introductory segment, in which we run through all the typical characters and themes of all "high school sucks" movies -- there are the popular, rich, mean girls tormenting Emily, there's the charming, cute jock who doesn't have any interest in her, there's the nerd boy who pays attention to her but turns out to be a sex-obsessed jerk, and it's all generally a miserable experience.
All the above is stuffed in one day in which Emily is tired of blending into the woodwork and decides to break out of her shell by wearing these wacky socks that her mother gave her, and that she loves. But instead of getting her noticed in a good way, she gets ridiculed mercilessly. For the rest of high school, she's derisively known as "Socks" Macarthur. (Her last name's Macarthur. That's what my dream told me, so it must be a portentous sign from God.)
So anyway, Emily goes to college, and has a blast. Now she breaks out the wacky socks and everyone loves them. She again becomes known as "Socks," but this time it's a fun nickname. Now instead of wallowing in a crippling fear of people, she relishes their company.
While in college, she becomes fascinated with computers, and creates a few iPhone apps (or something like that -- something in science or technology) that she's then able to market and make a mint off of. After she graduates, she's pretty well set for a while. She's immensely happy.
But she keeps having dreams about how awful high school was. She meets with a therapist, who tells her that there's not much she can do about that one -- there's no aversion therapy for high school. At this point, Socks has become a bit of a perfectionist, obsessed with having a perfect life and no fears or scars. So she says, heck, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
So she goes ... back to high school! (OK, I realize this is a bit cheesy. But it could be fun. And the movie's kinda meant for kids.) She creates a fake identity for herself and enrolls in a different high school. (Maybe some comedy can be mined from having her college buddies pose as her parents. Socks is young-looking, and maybe she gets some bald dude with a beard from college to pose as her dad. Probably shouldn't make her boyfriend do it. That's too icky.)
In high school, she meets exactly the same archetypes as she knew in her high school. At first, she's a bit cowed, but then gathers herself, and acts very confident. She wears her crazy socks all the time. Of course, she gets made of, but she is able to shoot back now, and she becomes pretty popular, one of those rare popular kids who is friends with everyone. This time she actually gets to know all these archetypical characters -- jocks, sex-obsessed nerds, popular girls, etc. Her motives are kinda evil, to befriend them and then find a way to give them a good comeuppance, or at least get them to change from being so terrible to each other. But the more she gets to know them, the more she sees that they're packed with insecurities too, and are just better at hiding them. The popular girl, it turns out, had to fend off sexual advances from a teacher. The nerd has an oppressive family. Et cetera. She ends up being a genuine friend to them, helping them with their problems, but then when they start ganging up on a wallflower girl that reminds her of herself, she can't help herself. She ends up taking revenge on them, and of course it turns out horribly, making things much worse. She tries to atone for what she did, but by then someone discovers her fraud, and she's kicked out. Then everyone feels they've been defrauded and she's demonized and shunned.
She gets a criminal conviction but no jail time (she never did anything icky with any of the high school kids, always telling them she had a boyfriend from another school, which she actually does, and maybe her real boyfriend comes and meets them, and they're just awed by him), and returns to adult life. But maybe eventually, something makes the kids come see her at her cool apartment and there's some sort of tearful admittance that they have changed for the better because of her. So there's sort of a happy ending, somehow. Maybe in the end she becomes a school psychologist. I haven't worked out all the details.
2. "Wall Street Hustlers"
Glib version of the explanation: Chris Rock version of "Wall Street"
OK, I can't really describe this one and not look like an asshole, since I'm a white man. I'll just sound like I'm trying to put on a minstrel show or in some other way be insulting to African-Americans. So I'll resolve this problem by acting all black and shit.
Yo, bitch, what up? Mothafuckin' E to the D here to kick the ballistics on the ultimate balla comedy in the hizzay!!! Peep this .... oh Jesus, I am a horrible human being. I apologize with all my soul to everyone who is African-American, has ever met anyone African-American, or has ever heard of African-Americans. I'm so sorry.
But not sorry enough to not try again. OK, so there's this ghetto businessman who is ruling many of the illicit trades in the neighborhood. Let's call him Joe (just to pick a random name). He's cornered the market on marijuana. But he doesn't sell coke or crack or anything else, because he feels that those destroy the community, and a destroyed community is a dangerous one, and thus bad for business. Marijuana, he says half-jokingly, helps the community, making everyone relax. That's good business. He puts everything in terms of whether it's good or bad for business. He's a charmer, genuinely likable and not smarmy or evil, but he's also a ruthless capitalist, doing whatever it takes to maintain his monopoly. He is an extremely wise businessman, but a mostly amoral one. In a very charming way.
In the beginning he is challenged by an upstart who barges into his office and is shocked by un-fancy it is. Joe lets loose one of his many maxims, something about never looking like you have money. He wears very simple clothes that make him go mostly unnoticed. But he's rolling in money. The pictures on his wall are of Donald Trump, Michael Milken, Ken Lay -- his heroes.
So anyway, this upstart makes bold pronouncements about taking him over, and Joe flashes a genuine smile and says "Well, I welcome the competition! Competition is what makes the system great!" He then asks the upstart about his business plan. Of course, the upstart doesn't really have one. What areas are you going to go into? No idea, but he just spews more bluster instead of answering. How do you intend to get loyalty from the dealers and suppliers? No idea. Joe reveals that he gets their loyalty by always giving them a solid cut and treating them fairly. He even provides health insurance and a 401(k) (which would be a bit of a laugh line). When things get out of hand, which the inevitably do, he has an enforcement team, led by Big Mike, a man who then appears from the shadows and is very large and intimidating. So anyway, the opening scene is mainly meant to establish that Joe is an expert businessman and to set up how he does his thing.
Eventually the upstart goes away, and Joe's smile drops. He's tired of this shit. He wants to move to the next level, to go legit, maybe run some restaurants or other businesses so he can deal with professionals instead of blowhards. People like Trump, or Ken Lay.
Soon after he meets up with old friend from the neighborhood, Chris. Chris was a mathematical genius who got out of the ghetto on a scholarship and ended up working for a major bank. Recently, however, when the financial mess hit, Chris was fired, digraced, and came back to the ghetto.
Despite Chris' fall, Joe is inspired by his rise. Banking! There are no banks in their neighborhood. People go miles out of their way for a bank or just stash their money in mattresses, which often get stolen. Joe, with Chris' help, opens up a bank. It's a different kind of bank, with intense security. Maybe the upstart, who of course never did anything, comes in and tries to rob the place. He pulls out a gun on the teller, and the teller pulls out her own. As does everyone else in the bank. (OK, now you see where the offensiveness comes in. I've been telling it as straightforward as possible, avoiding the jokes, which are often about applying the ghetto world to the "straight" world, but it's hard to do that without playing on stereotypes of ghettos that I'm really not allowed to play on, as a white man. But you get the idea. A black screenwriter could do better on this.)
So anwyay, the bank is a success, and Joe and Chris quickly start opening other franchises. They start to gain some press. Reporters start asking uncomfortable questions about where Joe got all his money to begin with. Chris buts in and starts talking about credit default swaps and derivitatives and such, and that placates everyone. Afterwards, Joe says "What was all that? I don't know what any of that means." and Chris says,"Neither do I. Neither do they. Doesn't matter. It's all a hustle." You get the idea.
So quickly Joe and Chris start building a financial empire, getting into investment banking and all sorts of things. Then maybe they meet the real tycoons, and Joe is of course enthralled. But when he sees what they do, he gradually becomes more and more horrified. They talk casually of laying off thousands just to boost the stock price a bit so that they can then sell their own stashes for a profit. Or they talk of investments like buying up rivers from indigenous South American populations so they an use them for a new type of bottled water. Joe discovers his conscience, and threatens to expose all of their awful deals. The tycoons laugh and tell them that these deals are all well-known, and nobody cares.
Then the tycoons, just to be safe, expose Joe as getting his start in marijuana sales, and Joe is arrested and his businesses destroyed. Maybe at the trial he makes an impassioned speech, asking which is worse -- selling a mostly harmless drug in order to make a system of banks that help the community, or using your riches to destroy communities and people for the sake of gaining slightly more riches. He becomes a folk hero, taking every interview he can get and talking about this stuff. And then there's some happy ending. I don't know what.
So maybe these movies are a bit preachy. I'm so political these days that it would be hard for them not to be. But both would be comedies, with all this stuff underneath it all. What do you think? Neither would be great art, but they could be fun.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Things I Hate: The Simpsons
I should clarify. The first seven seasons of "The Simpsons" comprised the best run of TV shows in history. The following 24 years (or whatever) have been dogshit. So 7 years of the best TV ever plus 47 years of detestable shows = hate.
I was reminded of this recently when I made the mistake of watching a recent episode. It started just fine, had twists and turns and satire ... and ended up completely emotionally hollow. Characters were reduced to caricatures and cranked through the pointlessly insane motions of the plot. Not a single moment felt attached to reality or had the least bit of heart. It was all a cynical exercise in churning through jokes.
And older "Simpsons" episodes did have heart. Each started from a place of common understanding, some situation that any family can relate to. The family dog has puppies. The bratty kid goes too far when he shoplifts. The father betrays his wife's trust one too many times and is kicked out. From these starting points, the episodes would often go in hilariously bizarre, absurd directions, but they would usually do it temporarily, and then return to a grounding of relatable human behavior. The last few moments would usually have some sort of sweetness to it. I've cried at many an old "Simpsons" episode. Remember when Homer meets his mom again after decades of estrangement, and when she goes back on the lam, he sits on his car and looks at the stars? It gives me chills just thinking about it.
Nowadays, the show is too busy speeding through the joke-manufacturing machinery of the plot to reveal any emotion or human insights. Instead of starting from relatable premises like "Homer has heart surgery" or "Lisa becomes a vegetarian," now an episode will be "Homer becomes a paparazzo." What? Why? So the "Simpsons" writers can make fun of celebrity culture, basically. And hey, who else on TV is doing that? (Answer: Everybody. There are entire channels that do nothing else.)
Of course, the classic episodes were far from 100% sunshine and light -- they were probably 99% cynicism and negativity. But it was a wonderfully insightful brand of cynical negativity. I don't know if this is the best example, but here goes: In one episode, Bart got one of those little spongy things that you put in water and it's supposed to grow to a big dinosaur. He, of course, imagines it will immediately sprout into a 20-foot-tall T. Rex and start eating Lisa. So he excitedly sprays the hose on it, and it slowly grows about two inches and then coasts into the sewer. I remember going through the exact same experience when I was a kid. It was a funny, pleasant shock to see it on screen.
Granted, the new episodes will have funny moments now and then. Sometimes one will have some sort of tiny insight like the one I just described. But to get to those moments you have to wade through lots of labored, contrived, two-bit satire of innocuous pop culture phenomena. That's the other thing -- they constantly lambaste showbiz nowadays, picking easy targets that even the schmucks on VH-1 can make fun of: Paris Hilton, boy bands, etc. And in the process, they always make fun of Americans for being obsessed with it all -- but by expending so much energy ridiculing the most insignifcant little Hollywood trends, the "Simpsons" writers are clearly just as obsessed, if not more. And by the way, satirizing pop culture ephemera guarantees that your show won't age gracefully. Nobody watches old Rich Little clips any more.
But you can't criticize "Simpsons" episodes without inviting the "Worst. Episode. Ever." response from its defenders. That's the one where they make fun of hyper-critical "Simpsons" fanboys who really need to get a life. And I have seen said fanboys in action on "Simpsons" fan sites, picking apart some of the classic episodes and damning them for a few imagined flaws. That's not what I'm doing here. Apart from most of the first season, in which the show was really just getting its sea legs, I think the first seven seasons are uniformly brilliant. I have my favorites ("Lisa the Vegetarian," "Lisa's Rival" -- I guess I like Lisa), but I really don't have much criticism for any of them.
My point is here that I'm not being petty or grumpy-old-man-ish -- I'm just lamenting the fact that the greatest show ever has become a depressing shell of its former self during the past 150 years or so. It's like if Usain Bolt followed his record-breaking run with 72 solid hours of victory laps. No, it's actually sadder than that -- it's like if Orson Welles gave up on making the greatest movies ever and instead settled for being broken, morbidly obese commercial pitchman ... oh, wait.
And Fox will never stop cranking out the episodes until people stop watching. And people probably won't stop watching, because shitty Simpsons is still better than half the crap on TV. That, and people are idiots. So the Simpsons, as a show, as an entity, will continue on its path from going from the best show in TV history to being the worst. Sigh.
I was reminded of this recently when I made the mistake of watching a recent episode. It started just fine, had twists and turns and satire ... and ended up completely emotionally hollow. Characters were reduced to caricatures and cranked through the pointlessly insane motions of the plot. Not a single moment felt attached to reality or had the least bit of heart. It was all a cynical exercise in churning through jokes.
And older "Simpsons" episodes did have heart. Each started from a place of common understanding, some situation that any family can relate to. The family dog has puppies. The bratty kid goes too far when he shoplifts. The father betrays his wife's trust one too many times and is kicked out. From these starting points, the episodes would often go in hilariously bizarre, absurd directions, but they would usually do it temporarily, and then return to a grounding of relatable human behavior. The last few moments would usually have some sort of sweetness to it. I've cried at many an old "Simpsons" episode. Remember when Homer meets his mom again after decades of estrangement, and when she goes back on the lam, he sits on his car and looks at the stars? It gives me chills just thinking about it.
Nowadays, the show is too busy speeding through the joke-manufacturing machinery of the plot to reveal any emotion or human insights. Instead of starting from relatable premises like "Homer has heart surgery" or "Lisa becomes a vegetarian," now an episode will be "Homer becomes a paparazzo." What? Why? So the "Simpsons" writers can make fun of celebrity culture, basically. And hey, who else on TV is doing that? (Answer: Everybody. There are entire channels that do nothing else.)
Of course, the classic episodes were far from 100% sunshine and light -- they were probably 99% cynicism and negativity. But it was a wonderfully insightful brand of cynical negativity. I don't know if this is the best example, but here goes: In one episode, Bart got one of those little spongy things that you put in water and it's supposed to grow to a big dinosaur. He, of course, imagines it will immediately sprout into a 20-foot-tall T. Rex and start eating Lisa. So he excitedly sprays the hose on it, and it slowly grows about two inches and then coasts into the sewer. I remember going through the exact same experience when I was a kid. It was a funny, pleasant shock to see it on screen.
Granted, the new episodes will have funny moments now and then. Sometimes one will have some sort of tiny insight like the one I just described. But to get to those moments you have to wade through lots of labored, contrived, two-bit satire of innocuous pop culture phenomena. That's the other thing -- they constantly lambaste showbiz nowadays, picking easy targets that even the schmucks on VH-1 can make fun of: Paris Hilton, boy bands, etc. And in the process, they always make fun of Americans for being obsessed with it all -- but by expending so much energy ridiculing the most insignifcant little Hollywood trends, the "Simpsons" writers are clearly just as obsessed, if not more. And by the way, satirizing pop culture ephemera guarantees that your show won't age gracefully. Nobody watches old Rich Little clips any more.
But you can't criticize "Simpsons" episodes without inviting the "Worst. Episode. Ever." response from its defenders. That's the one where they make fun of hyper-critical "Simpsons" fanboys who really need to get a life. And I have seen said fanboys in action on "Simpsons" fan sites, picking apart some of the classic episodes and damning them for a few imagined flaws. That's not what I'm doing here. Apart from most of the first season, in which the show was really just getting its sea legs, I think the first seven seasons are uniformly brilliant. I have my favorites ("Lisa the Vegetarian," "Lisa's Rival" -- I guess I like Lisa), but I really don't have much criticism for any of them.
My point is here that I'm not being petty or grumpy-old-man-ish -- I'm just lamenting the fact that the greatest show ever has become a depressing shell of its former self during the past 150 years or so. It's like if Usain Bolt followed his record-breaking run with 72 solid hours of victory laps. No, it's actually sadder than that -- it's like if Orson Welles gave up on making the greatest movies ever and instead settled for being broken, morbidly obese commercial pitchman ... oh, wait.
And Fox will never stop cranking out the episodes until people stop watching. And people probably won't stop watching, because shitty Simpsons is still better than half the crap on TV. That, and people are idiots. So the Simpsons, as a show, as an entity, will continue on its path from going from the best show in TV history to being the worst. Sigh.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I Made a Palindrome!
Stab for a car of bats!
This is especially exciting for me because this is a phrase I use all the time! When I exhort people to stab things, I often dangle the incentive of a car full of bats. I can't believe that I never realized it was a palindrome before!
OK, it's not the most sensical palindrome ever. The all-time best, for my money, is "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama." Another famous one is "Able was I ere I saw Elba." But I never liked that one because every word is a word that is a palindrome of another word -- there are no long sequences where you're like, "wait, is that actually a palindrome?"Anyone can do one of these every-word-is-a-palindrome palindromes ... let's see ... "We flog racecar golf, ew!" See? Lame.
When I was in high school, a friend and I would try to make palindromes in our spare time. (We were the coolest kids on school, obviously. We also made flip books of the Large Marge scene in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." Instead of say, dating. I look back on those days with absolutely no nostalgia.) But we never came up with anything even as good as the bat-stabbing one. They were always more like "Have a kumquat, Tauqmukaevah!" And then we'd explain that Tauqmukaevah was a fellow who liked kumquats. I think we might have tried this for a day or two before we gave up.
So what do YOU think of my awesome palindrome? Remember, your comment must be in the form of a palindrome.
This is especially exciting for me because this is a phrase I use all the time! When I exhort people to stab things, I often dangle the incentive of a car full of bats. I can't believe that I never realized it was a palindrome before!
OK, it's not the most sensical palindrome ever. The all-time best, for my money, is "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama." Another famous one is "Able was I ere I saw Elba." But I never liked that one because every word is a word that is a palindrome of another word -- there are no long sequences where you're like, "wait, is that actually a palindrome?"Anyone can do one of these every-word-is-a-palindrome palindromes ... let's see ... "We flog racecar golf, ew!" See? Lame.
When I was in high school, a friend and I would try to make palindromes in our spare time. (We were the coolest kids on school, obviously. We also made flip books of the Large Marge scene in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." Instead of say, dating. I look back on those days with absolutely no nostalgia.) But we never came up with anything even as good as the bat-stabbing one. They were always more like "Have a kumquat, Tauqmukaevah!" And then we'd explain that Tauqmukaevah was a fellow who liked kumquats. I think we might have tried this for a day or two before we gave up.
So what do YOU think of my awesome palindrome? Remember, your comment must be in the form of a palindrome.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Quick Thought
I've often wondered if we humans are making life so complicated that eventually we won't even be able to navigate our own lives. Every time we find a problem, we add another layer of complexity to solve it. Eventuially the over-complexity becomes a bigger problem than any of the original problems, but we for some reason just can't stop adding to it.
It's like the tax code. We discover that rich people are getting out of paying income taxes, so we add the Alternative Minimum Tax. But oh wait, now there's a penalty for being married. Let's add another thing that fixes that. Eventually it gets to the point where no one can really keep it all straight, and it's hell to try to muddle your way through it each April.
I think that the recent economic collapse is in part due to this phenomenon. As I understand it, mortgages were broken up and sold as derivatives. Then they were packaged with other bits, and futures were sold against them, and then came credit default swaps and other crazy crap, Eventually it got to the point when no one really knew what they were buying or what they were selling. The financial sector made a system that even they couldn't understand, and ended up making very bad, ill-informed decisions as a result. The whole thing collapsed when the exponentially growing complexity surpassed the finite capacity of human beings to understand it.
You deal with this when you deal with health insurance too -- in that case, though, I believe the overcomplications are intentional. Between deductibles and coinsurance and limits and acres of fine print about what's covered and what isn't under what circumstances, they intentionally make everything so complicated that you can't really sign on knowing exactly what you're getting. And then when disaster happens, all they have to do is say, "Well, because of your deductible and coinsurance, you have to pay 90% of the first $5000 and then 25% of the next $3 and then all future expenses in perpetuity, because the full amount only covered on Tuesdays in autumn. It's in the contract that you signed, dummy. What are you going to do, sue? Like you have the time."
And they count on the fact that we either aren't smart enough to grasp it all or don't have the time to sit down and figure it all out. I've seen many news reports about people who got outrageous denials of coverage (one I remember was a woman who fell and broke her arm, and they claimed it was a pre-existing condition -- no joke), and then those people worked what amounted to second jobs to fight the denials. Eventually they won, but what about all the people who don't have the time or smarts to do battle against massive companies that marshal the best minds in the country to find extremely clever ways to screw policyholders out of money? Because that's where their profit motive lies, folks: in not paying your claims, not helping you when you're hurt, not doing the service you essentially contracted them for. They do it all through the time-honored practice of "delay, deny, defend." They put you through crazy hoops, delaying payment, denying coverage, and then defending it in court, all in the hopes you'll give up and just pay it yourself rather than fight. It works like a charm.
I'm not saying health insurance companies are evil -- they're just trying to make a profit. Therefore, they shouldn't be allowed to make profits. The profit motive works for many, many things, but not for health insurance. They make more money when they provide their customers with less. It would like a food producer that profits when it starves people. The answer is to take away the profit motive and make all health insurance companies non-profits. Or make it all run by the government. Hey, we all know that the government isn't perfect, but I'll take a messy, bureaucratic government system over a system that strongly incentivizes screwing consumers any day.
OK, this was not meant to turn into a tirade about health insurance. Sometimes my passionate hatred of health insurance overwhelms me, sorry. Back to the point: In this developed world of ours, are we just piling on more and more systems to navigate and things to learn so fast that eventually we'll reach an event horizon in which no one can get out of bed in the morning? Do we all need to give up, move to Walden Pond and grow peas? What do you think?
It's like the tax code. We discover that rich people are getting out of paying income taxes, so we add the Alternative Minimum Tax. But oh wait, now there's a penalty for being married. Let's add another thing that fixes that. Eventually it gets to the point where no one can really keep it all straight, and it's hell to try to muddle your way through it each April.
I think that the recent economic collapse is in part due to this phenomenon. As I understand it, mortgages were broken up and sold as derivatives. Then they were packaged with other bits, and futures were sold against them, and then came credit default swaps and other crazy crap, Eventually it got to the point when no one really knew what they were buying or what they were selling. The financial sector made a system that even they couldn't understand, and ended up making very bad, ill-informed decisions as a result. The whole thing collapsed when the exponentially growing complexity surpassed the finite capacity of human beings to understand it.
You deal with this when you deal with health insurance too -- in that case, though, I believe the overcomplications are intentional. Between deductibles and coinsurance and limits and acres of fine print about what's covered and what isn't under what circumstances, they intentionally make everything so complicated that you can't really sign on knowing exactly what you're getting. And then when disaster happens, all they have to do is say, "Well, because of your deductible and coinsurance, you have to pay 90% of the first $5000 and then 25% of the next $3 and then all future expenses in perpetuity, because the full amount only covered on Tuesdays in autumn. It's in the contract that you signed, dummy. What are you going to do, sue? Like you have the time."
And they count on the fact that we either aren't smart enough to grasp it all or don't have the time to sit down and figure it all out. I've seen many news reports about people who got outrageous denials of coverage (one I remember was a woman who fell and broke her arm, and they claimed it was a pre-existing condition -- no joke), and then those people worked what amounted to second jobs to fight the denials. Eventually they won, but what about all the people who don't have the time or smarts to do battle against massive companies that marshal the best minds in the country to find extremely clever ways to screw policyholders out of money? Because that's where their profit motive lies, folks: in not paying your claims, not helping you when you're hurt, not doing the service you essentially contracted them for. They do it all through the time-honored practice of "delay, deny, defend." They put you through crazy hoops, delaying payment, denying coverage, and then defending it in court, all in the hopes you'll give up and just pay it yourself rather than fight. It works like a charm.
I'm not saying health insurance companies are evil -- they're just trying to make a profit. Therefore, they shouldn't be allowed to make profits. The profit motive works for many, many things, but not for health insurance. They make more money when they provide their customers with less. It would like a food producer that profits when it starves people. The answer is to take away the profit motive and make all health insurance companies non-profits. Or make it all run by the government. Hey, we all know that the government isn't perfect, but I'll take a messy, bureaucratic government system over a system that strongly incentivizes screwing consumers any day.
OK, this was not meant to turn into a tirade about health insurance. Sometimes my passionate hatred of health insurance overwhelms me, sorry. Back to the point: In this developed world of ours, are we just piling on more and more systems to navigate and things to learn so fast that eventually we'll reach an event horizon in which no one can get out of bed in the morning? Do we all need to give up, move to Walden Pond and grow peas? What do you think?
Friday, October 2, 2009
Amy's Irrational Fears and the Irrational Fear-o-Meter
I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more irrational my fears become. Are irrational fears a byproduct of age? I assume it has something to do with me hearing about other people’s disasters. The longer I live, the more I hear about disasters. Here’s me in 2006: “Nah, bridges never collapse.” And here’s me in late 2007: “Whoa. Watch out for bridges!” Are these budding fears useful or a hindrance? Downhill skiing, while still a fun activity, is hinting at its dangers with each passing experience. When I’m on the chair lift, I think about how much it would hurt to fall off. When I’m scraping my way down the hill, I think about how little I’d like my knee to bend the wrong way until it snaps. Is aging killing my very few joys in life now or is it just making me more careful? I don’t know. Let’s examine some of these fears in-depth:
Fear Number One: My Kitchen Cupboards Can’t Take It Anymore And Come Crashing Down. This is a tough one. I think I have, among other things, 12 dish sets in one upper cupboard above my sink. That’s 12 big plates, 12 little plates, 12 annoyingly big bowls, and 12 seldom-used saucers. The other things are more bowls, some little dishes I swiped from work, and some big heavy decorative dishes my mom gave me. That’s a lot of weight for one small cupboard above a sink. What’s holding that cupboard up? A couple of screws? I don’t see the kind of supports I’d like to see, like the things holding bridges up (even defective ones). As far as I know, my cupboards are just stuck to the wall with some Elmer’s. Why isn’t everyone concerned about this?
Irrationality Level: High. Totally irrational, though? I think not. My friend Lindsey’s ktichen cuboard fell off the wall once, unprovoked. Therefore, it can happen!
Fear Number Two: Mountain Lions. I live in Boulder and there are mountain lions here. I’ve never seen one and I don’t even know if I’ve ever met anyone who has ever seen one, but we know they’re lurking out here somewhere. And they eat people! Maybe they’re in my back yard right now! (As an aside, I really don’t think it should be “backyard.” I think it should be “back yard” and that’s what I’m going to use). I check my back yard every day for mountain lions and while I haven’t seen one yet, I’m not going to stop checking.
Irrationality Level: Medium. I mean, some kid was attacked about four years ago in Boulder and a few weeks ago in Oregon. It can happen!
Fear Number Three: Deciding to Try to Survive for a Summer in a Bus in Alaska and Eating a Poisonous Sweet Pea Plant and Dying Alone of Starvation. Those of you who have read and/or seen Into the Wild will notice that I have too. Since then, I have found myself feeling nervous about somehow accidentally ending up in that situation and I really, really, really don’t want to do that. None of it. I don’t want to live in a bus, I don’t want to eat a poisonous plant, and I don’t want to die of involuntary starvation. I should add a sub-fear, here, which is of eating anything poisonous, even if it’s not in Alaska. I couldn’t even eat this arugula salad I once ordered at a hoity-toity restaurant because it tasted like poison. But anyway, there it is. I really don’t want this to happen to me and just thinking about it gives me the willies.
Irrationality Level: OK, Really High. But you know what, it really did happen! Just not to me.
Fear Number Four: My Front Bicycle Tire Falls Off When I’m Riding Down a Hill. Like the cupboards, what is holding that tire on? Just a little metal? Who put this bike together? Who was the last person to put that wheel on? Me? For heaven’s sake, I don’t know anything about bikes. Who let me put a tire on a bike? Do I KNOW that I did it right? I mean, I think I did it right, it’s really not that hard, but did I tighten the thingies enough? Too much? Is the wheel going to sieze up and stop turning because it’s too tight?
Irrationality Level: I’d Say Medium-Low. Because when I was in high school, it did happen! to a kid I knew and he really got a bad road rash on his face.
Irrational Fear Number Five: My Cell Phone In My Front Pants Pocket Will Give Me Ovarian Cancer. This one eats at me every day. Hopefully not literally. We all know that cell phones give off a little radiation. How much? I don’t know. How much will give you cancer? I don’t know. Does anyone know if these levels are safe? I mean, people used to drink radium thinking it would keep them healthy. Now we know that’s a bad idea. In 30 years, will we look back on our cell phones as cancer cubes (even though they’re never cubes, but “cancer rectangular prisms” is awkward)? I’ve actually thought about carrying my cell phone in my back pocket, thinking that butt cancer would be better. But Farrah Fawcett had a really bad time with anal cancer and we all know how that ended, so that’s probably not a good alternative. (Hey! Maybe a cell phone in the back pocket is how she got it! Did anyone look into that possibility?) A purse would be better, but I hate purses. Getting rid of it would be the best of all, but it really is convenient sometimes. So what do I do? Do you suppose they sell little lead-lined pouches? I just have no answers to this problem. Thankfully, I don’t use my cell phone very much, so I’m strangely not worried about brain cancer.
Irrationality Level: Dammit, Low. Low! I think it’s Low! I think it could happen!
So there we have five of my least-rational fears. What do you think? Is this the first step to becoming the Little Old Lady Who Only Drives a Buick on Sundays or do these fears have merit? It is a case of older-and-wiser or growing instability? I think what gives me some hope and confidence is that I know there are people, maybe even sometime contributers to this blog, who have irrational bee fears. I don’t have an irrational bee fear. They can crawl all over me and I don’t care. Oh, but I am afraid of brown recluse spiders hiding in the fingers of old work gloves and biting me when I put them on. Laugh if you will, I don’t care. It can happen!
Fear Number One: My Kitchen Cupboards Can’t Take It Anymore And Come Crashing Down. This is a tough one. I think I have, among other things, 12 dish sets in one upper cupboard above my sink. That’s 12 big plates, 12 little plates, 12 annoyingly big bowls, and 12 seldom-used saucers. The other things are more bowls, some little dishes I swiped from work, and some big heavy decorative dishes my mom gave me. That’s a lot of weight for one small cupboard above a sink. What’s holding that cupboard up? A couple of screws? I don’t see the kind of supports I’d like to see, like the things holding bridges up (even defective ones). As far as I know, my cupboards are just stuck to the wall with some Elmer’s. Why isn’t everyone concerned about this?
Irrationality Level: High. Totally irrational, though? I think not. My friend Lindsey’s ktichen cuboard fell off the wall once, unprovoked. Therefore, it can happen!
Fear Number Two: Mountain Lions. I live in Boulder and there are mountain lions here. I’ve never seen one and I don’t even know if I’ve ever met anyone who has ever seen one, but we know they’re lurking out here somewhere. And they eat people! Maybe they’re in my back yard right now! (As an aside, I really don’t think it should be “backyard.” I think it should be “back yard” and that’s what I’m going to use). I check my back yard every day for mountain lions and while I haven’t seen one yet, I’m not going to stop checking.
Irrationality Level: Medium. I mean, some kid was attacked about four years ago in Boulder and a few weeks ago in Oregon. It can happen!
Fear Number Three: Deciding to Try to Survive for a Summer in a Bus in Alaska and Eating a Poisonous Sweet Pea Plant and Dying Alone of Starvation. Those of you who have read and/or seen Into the Wild will notice that I have too. Since then, I have found myself feeling nervous about somehow accidentally ending up in that situation and I really, really, really don’t want to do that. None of it. I don’t want to live in a bus, I don’t want to eat a poisonous plant, and I don’t want to die of involuntary starvation. I should add a sub-fear, here, which is of eating anything poisonous, even if it’s not in Alaska. I couldn’t even eat this arugula salad I once ordered at a hoity-toity restaurant because it tasted like poison. But anyway, there it is. I really don’t want this to happen to me and just thinking about it gives me the willies.
Irrationality Level: OK, Really High. But you know what, it really did happen! Just not to me.
Fear Number Four: My Front Bicycle Tire Falls Off When I’m Riding Down a Hill. Like the cupboards, what is holding that tire on? Just a little metal? Who put this bike together? Who was the last person to put that wheel on? Me? For heaven’s sake, I don’t know anything about bikes. Who let me put a tire on a bike? Do I KNOW that I did it right? I mean, I think I did it right, it’s really not that hard, but did I tighten the thingies enough? Too much? Is the wheel going to sieze up and stop turning because it’s too tight?
Irrationality Level: I’d Say Medium-Low. Because when I was in high school, it did happen! to a kid I knew and he really got a bad road rash on his face.
Irrational Fear Number Five: My Cell Phone In My Front Pants Pocket Will Give Me Ovarian Cancer. This one eats at me every day. Hopefully not literally. We all know that cell phones give off a little radiation. How much? I don’t know. How much will give you cancer? I don’t know. Does anyone know if these levels are safe? I mean, people used to drink radium thinking it would keep them healthy. Now we know that’s a bad idea. In 30 years, will we look back on our cell phones as cancer cubes (even though they’re never cubes, but “cancer rectangular prisms” is awkward)? I’ve actually thought about carrying my cell phone in my back pocket, thinking that butt cancer would be better. But Farrah Fawcett had a really bad time with anal cancer and we all know how that ended, so that’s probably not a good alternative. (Hey! Maybe a cell phone in the back pocket is how she got it! Did anyone look into that possibility?) A purse would be better, but I hate purses. Getting rid of it would be the best of all, but it really is convenient sometimes. So what do I do? Do you suppose they sell little lead-lined pouches? I just have no answers to this problem. Thankfully, I don’t use my cell phone very much, so I’m strangely not worried about brain cancer.
Irrationality Level: Dammit, Low. Low! I think it’s Low! I think it could happen!
So there we have five of my least-rational fears. What do you think? Is this the first step to becoming the Little Old Lady Who Only Drives a Buick on Sundays or do these fears have merit? It is a case of older-and-wiser or growing instability? I think what gives me some hope and confidence is that I know there are people, maybe even sometime contributers to this blog, who have irrational bee fears. I don’t have an irrational bee fear. They can crawl all over me and I don’t care. Oh, but I am afraid of brown recluse spiders hiding in the fingers of old work gloves and biting me when I put them on. Laugh if you will, I don’t care. It can happen!
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