I was alone at the cafe twenty minutes ago; now there are three others. Two of the three brought bibles, the third reads a thick maths book while holding a thick calculator.
Yesterday, a coworker went to the photo gallery of this site. “Your pictures won’t load,” he said. I confirmed this with a frown. “I like to look at your pictures when it’s dead like this at the office,” he explained (unnecessarily but welcome). “I should update that site during dead times like this at the office,” I responded (unnecessarily). From the refused pictures I realised the thirty-plus days since the last update here embraces my meeting a new person who agreed to date.
I notice that my writing output, either public or private, dwindles during times of personal changes. By that I mean, writing production reduces as uncertainty increases. Perhaps it’s a matter of trust? I don’t trust myself to write honestly; that i’ll express feelings poorly, immaturely, so express nothing at all. It’s some form of escapism. Virginia Woolf wrote that nothing ever happens until it is written down. She likely meant that for the wonderful things deserving posterity though it applies without a doubt to the situations one wishes could be forgotten.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
You must be tired
Derrick is in and out of doctor’s offices, newly starting physical therapy; he endures routine injections for pain management for a condition unrelated to the initial week-long hospital stay; the extended unemployment makes him stir crazy; a ceiling fan fell from its moorings to demolish his laptop laying defenceless on a coffee table below. He tells me these things and says, “you must be tired.”
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Two weeks including Canada
The summer term officially ended (for me) yesterday. Two weeks until the beginning (for me) of the Autumn term. Two weeks I should fill with productivity -- but won’t -- catch up on my reading -- but won’t -- could catch up on my travelling -- and will! Yes, when it’s leisure there’s not much cause to avoid. Derrick agreed to watch Ryu for a week whilst I head to Canada. A good ole’ fashioned American road trip, in Canada. Three days in Ottawa, three days in Toronto makes for a awfully decent potential vacation. I’ve not ever been to Ottawa. Why not see the country’s capital? I hear it’s dreadfully boring but I heard similar opinions about Canberra. Those turned out to be mostly true -- but! -- for a day, one can’t go wrong with sightseeing; plus, one shouldn’t pass any opportunity to hassle some Feds. Ottawa’s geography makes it an attractive destination, as it’s across a river from Quebec. Quebec, many may already be familiar, is France in Canada. Yes! Flannel wearing Canadians speaking French. C’est un bon monde! I’ve not practised French with any seriousness since Sophomore year in college. It’ll be a lot of fun to be, tangentially, in a French-speaking country. Maybe I’m not fair to Ottawa, singings its praises for what it cannot change: being near la Francophonie. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the very long drive to Ottawa from Detroit: 10hrs says Google Maps. Nobody break into my house!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Motherfuckers
Matt, Adam and I paid for our respective dinner at New Holland Brewery Thursday night without our respective credit cards. Debit cards, in the latter cases. She’s going to charge you for my pizza, Adam predicted. We have identical debit cards. I grimly agreed that the odds of a screw up were large, especially so considering we three invested the last 10 minutes cataloguing the waitress’ deficiencies.
(sidebar: the painfully handsome guy who comes into the cafe every day and is also a student at the seminary just made out with his waspish girlfriend. man, you can do so much better than her!)
The waitress returns to our table apologising... we knew it! Sir, do you have another form of payment. She’s looking at me. Adam and Matt look at me. I look blankly. Adam offers a story our cousin bank cards declining lately for their own reasons. I hand over my Chase card. She cheerfully takes it and wanders away into the back. Our conversation returns to the inexplicable nature of credit cards and their inexplicable habit of making people feel like deadbeats. Oh well, she’s back and it’s time to go. I’m sorry, sir. This card is expired. It expired in August. The $10 from my earlier ATM stop can’t be refused, right? What the fuck is going on?
Plans for the gym? Strike. Plans for coffee in Saugatuck? Nope. Plans for reading? Nuh-uh. Home to check credit cards? Yeeesssss.
To make a long story slightly less long, I discovered that somebody stole my checking account information. Two pending debits appear in my checking account: on for $22 from an Ihop and one for $220 from a Publix, in that order. Now, having lived in the South I happened to know that there are not any Publix on the Michigan side of Cincinnati. I also know that, having been the boyfriend of a vehement food snob, Ihop couldn’t *pay* me to eat $22 worth of their food, these two transactions are totally bogus. I called the emergency number on the back of debit card. The woman canceled the card with a formality I found odd only later. Then I called the credit union emergency number next. They advised going into the nearest branch at first open. The Holland office opens at 9a. It is currently 844a. C’mon.... C’mon!...
Having money stolen from you is pretty awful. What’s slightly less awful is that the amount isn’t very much by some standards. My colleague Ayman had thousands of dollars taken from his checking account. Some scheme operated by an organisation in England deducted pennies from his account, which he understandably didn’t notice, then removed the much larger amount days later. The salt rubbed into the wound though was that Ayman was on vacation in Lebanon when the fraud happened. His bank, as he tells it, took care of the situation by closing the account, opening a new one and returning the stolen money. Without knowing what my credit union will do in this situation, I can only hope that they behave with the due diligence as Ayman’s bank: they trace the transaction, close my account and give me back the stolen money. $240 may not be much money to some people but it’s a goddamn fortune for me. Oh! And the salt in my wounds is that the motherfuckers overdrew my checking account. Fuck you, thieves!
The manager of the local credit union branch confirmed that no less than five debits came through my account Thursday night from Palm Beach County, Florida. Each transaction required a separate printout for me to sign and date confirming their fraudulent nature. The manager then sent them via fax to what I assume is their fraud department in Grand Rapids where I further assume someone pushed buttons allowing the money be returned to my account.
On the whole this incident, while shitty, was largely painless. A new debit card is on its way and is expected next week. I cannot pay until it arrives. The book on order from Amazon rejected. What money taken was returned the same day. Props to the credit union for handling the incident with professionalism. I want to follow up with the branch manager on Monday out of curiosity as to how they’ll handle this situation. So far as they’re concerned, some people stole hundreds of dollars from them. It’s not only me saying “fuck you, thieves!” My credit union must be thinking “let’s file felony charges!”
(sidebar: the painfully handsome guy who comes into the cafe every day and is also a student at the seminary just made out with his waspish girlfriend. man, you can do so much better than her!)
The waitress returns to our table apologising... we knew it! Sir, do you have another form of payment. She’s looking at me. Adam and Matt look at me. I look blankly. Adam offers a story our cousin bank cards declining lately for their own reasons. I hand over my Chase card. She cheerfully takes it and wanders away into the back. Our conversation returns to the inexplicable nature of credit cards and their inexplicable habit of making people feel like deadbeats. Oh well, she’s back and it’s time to go. I’m sorry, sir. This card is expired. It expired in August. The $10 from my earlier ATM stop can’t be refused, right? What the fuck is going on?
Plans for the gym? Strike. Plans for coffee in Saugatuck? Nope. Plans for reading? Nuh-uh. Home to check credit cards? Yeeesssss.
To make a long story slightly less long, I discovered that somebody stole my checking account information. Two pending debits appear in my checking account: on for $22 from an Ihop and one for $220 from a Publix, in that order. Now, having lived in the South I happened to know that there are not any Publix on the Michigan side of Cincinnati. I also know that, having been the boyfriend of a vehement food snob, Ihop couldn’t *pay* me to eat $22 worth of their food, these two transactions are totally bogus. I called the emergency number on the back of debit card. The woman canceled the card with a formality I found odd only later. Then I called the credit union emergency number next. They advised going into the nearest branch at first open. The Holland office opens at 9a. It is currently 844a. C’mon.... C’mon!...
Having money stolen from you is pretty awful. What’s slightly less awful is that the amount isn’t very much by some standards. My colleague Ayman had thousands of dollars taken from his checking account. Some scheme operated by an organisation in England deducted pennies from his account, which he understandably didn’t notice, then removed the much larger amount days later. The salt rubbed into the wound though was that Ayman was on vacation in Lebanon when the fraud happened. His bank, as he tells it, took care of the situation by closing the account, opening a new one and returning the stolen money. Without knowing what my credit union will do in this situation, I can only hope that they behave with the due diligence as Ayman’s bank: they trace the transaction, close my account and give me back the stolen money. $240 may not be much money to some people but it’s a goddamn fortune for me. Oh! And the salt in my wounds is that the motherfuckers overdrew my checking account. Fuck you, thieves!
The manager of the local credit union branch confirmed that no less than five debits came through my account Thursday night from Palm Beach County, Florida. Each transaction required a separate printout for me to sign and date confirming their fraudulent nature. The manager then sent them via fax to what I assume is their fraud department in Grand Rapids where I further assume someone pushed buttons allowing the money be returned to my account.
On the whole this incident, while shitty, was largely painless. A new debit card is on its way and is expected next week. I cannot pay until it arrives. The book on order from Amazon rejected. What money taken was returned the same day. Props to the credit union for handling the incident with professionalism. I want to follow up with the branch manager on Monday out of curiosity as to how they’ll handle this situation. So far as they’re concerned, some people stole hundreds of dollars from them. It’s not only me saying “fuck you, thieves!” My credit union must be thinking “let’s file felony charges!”
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
May I pray for you?
My head was splitting. An occupational hazard of teaching is smelling fumes of dry-erase markers. The class was nearly finished anyway, so I cut my lecture short allowing them to leave. The headache heralded a migraine; difficult to look at the book, torture to think and speak. They filed out. One student stayed behind. He stood nearer the door to where I stood near the board packing things up. I hoped that whatever he needed would be simple, a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and better yet could be answered on the way to the car park. Stuffing papers and books into my bag I noticed two things, both of which alarm me and cast overboard the hope of a simple exchange. First, this guy is young; or, at least, he looks very young. Seemingly no more than seventeen but surely at least nineteen (it is a 200-level course, after all). That thought had not fully formed when the second hit me: he’s shaking. He walked over to the table strewn with my stuff with what I describe in hindsight a hesitant swiftness: moving with a speed that could fail at any moment. He comes to a stop, a stuttered termination of motion that matches his voice. He has a question but doesn’t know how to ask it. Say it, I suggest with what I hope is an assuring smile (who can say, when one has a headache? i could also have inadvertently sneered). Spit it out, don’t worry.
He asks about my headache. I point to the markers -- occupational hazard, I explain. The chemicals are unkind. He shakes, standing to my left. I have something to ask and I hope you won’t be offended. Okay. Let’s hear it.
I heard the voice of God.
Okay.
When you said that your head felt like it was “splitting open” (in the interest of editorial disclosure, I am terribly clever with imagery) I heard God’s voice tell me to pray for you. For the pain. Some people might be offended, and I’m not trying to offend you at all but it’s something I really need to ask. If I can pray for you.
Oh. Well, okay. I shift weight from foot to foot. But you don’t need my permission to pray.
He doesn’t look at all relieved. He continues to tremble and stare at the desk. Well, he said, I need to...
His hand is over my head, just touching my hair. I look at him. His eyes are still downcast. Several moments pass like this. Triangular. Finally he speaks: Lord, I pray that you will take Professor Martin’s headache....
90 minutes later, I had eaten dinner and walked the dog. Laying down for bed, I wondered whether to report this incident to the dean. Switching off the light, the regret of not taking two ibuprofen knocked against my temples.
He asks about my headache. I point to the markers -- occupational hazard, I explain. The chemicals are unkind. He shakes, standing to my left. I have something to ask and I hope you won’t be offended. Okay. Let’s hear it.
I heard the voice of God.
Okay.
When you said that your head felt like it was “splitting open” (in the interest of editorial disclosure, I am terribly clever with imagery) I heard God’s voice tell me to pray for you. For the pain. Some people might be offended, and I’m not trying to offend you at all but it’s something I really need to ask. If I can pray for you.
Oh. Well, okay. I shift weight from foot to foot. But you don’t need my permission to pray.
He doesn’t look at all relieved. He continues to tremble and stare at the desk. Well, he said, I need to...
His hand is over my head, just touching my hair. I look at him. His eyes are still downcast. Several moments pass like this. Triangular. Finally he speaks: Lord, I pray that you will take Professor Martin’s headache....
90 minutes later, I had eaten dinner and walked the dog. Laying down for bed, I wondered whether to report this incident to the dean. Switching off the light, the regret of not taking two ibuprofen knocked against my temples.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sigur Rós and sensibilities
In an unscientific survey conducted by me into my own grading habits, it was revealed that students receive noticeably higher grades when I listen to Sigur Rós. The how and the why remain elusive. The wide range of emotion? The strings? the vocals? Difficult to pinpoint. Anyway, speaking of students, this semester began well. I’m a little tired though.
The semester also brought back the Hope College students. This makes me happy because the they bring back a scholarly atmosphere to my local coffee haunt. Being around people reading books, studying and writing essays helps keep me focused on my own tasks. Breathing reminders that what I’m doing matters. During the summer it’s a smattering of older local folks and hordes of high school kids. High schoolers ought to be in cages when not in class or at a minimum-wage job. Do they accomplish anything other than pissing off everybody around them?
A handful of my students complained in their journals about Blackboard; specifically, that they don’t like it, they lack consistent access to a computer, and believing that I should teach its use. That all strikes me as the mewling of kittens. The college pays for a helpdesk to support IT and software problems. Ask them. Would these same students complain that their bosses at their jobs should teach them the work? What kills me most is one who wrote that I should change teaching practices to better suit his needs. Laugh. Privileged bastard. Who thinks like this? “No officer, I did not stop at the sign because it was not convenient for me to do so.” Write that on the ticket’s backside and send it off to the courthouse. The clerks always appreciate a good laugh.
Work on the house continues if the pace is jerk-and-stop. The passthrough between the living room and kitchen is cut. Hanging the drywall on the kitchen side hasn’t yet happened. No paint yet, either. Right now my kitchen is barely functional. I tore out the cabinets on the east side two months back and tore out the other side yesterday. I’m hoping that Adam will have time soon to help with the drywall and cut out the cabinets on the sink’s right side. I’m dying to get the kitchen into something functional... and ready for a bit of goddamn personality. At times I want to call a professional re-modelling organisation and throw a couple thousand dollars at them. I don’t have a couple thousand dollars to throw. People warned me about the perverse combination of glacial pace and piecemeal finances involved with owning a house. I wanted so much to disbelieve. The living room is a headache located in a far off future realm of terror that maybe will come ashore this winter. A big problem is that I lack a sense of style. A friend in Ann Arbor, who also recently bought a house, mentioned in conversation that some piece of furniture ‘didn’t match the house.’ He used it as a throw away comment but it panicked me. I thought the piece in question was lovely and would kill to have it. Did this mean I like the wrong things or that I have no sense of what works and does not?
A short stack of things are graded. A larger stack remains. Back into the beautiful sun, on the bike, to home. Ryu will want a walk and a short stack of chores need done.
The semester also brought back the Hope College students. This makes me happy because the they bring back a scholarly atmosphere to my local coffee haunt. Being around people reading books, studying and writing essays helps keep me focused on my own tasks. Breathing reminders that what I’m doing matters. During the summer it’s a smattering of older local folks and hordes of high school kids. High schoolers ought to be in cages when not in class or at a minimum-wage job. Do they accomplish anything other than pissing off everybody around them?
A handful of my students complained in their journals about Blackboard; specifically, that they don’t like it, they lack consistent access to a computer, and believing that I should teach its use. That all strikes me as the mewling of kittens. The college pays for a helpdesk to support IT and software problems. Ask them. Would these same students complain that their bosses at their jobs should teach them the work? What kills me most is one who wrote that I should change teaching practices to better suit his needs. Laugh. Privileged bastard. Who thinks like this? “No officer, I did not stop at the sign because it was not convenient for me to do so.” Write that on the ticket’s backside and send it off to the courthouse. The clerks always appreciate a good laugh.
Work on the house continues if the pace is jerk-and-stop. The passthrough between the living room and kitchen is cut. Hanging the drywall on the kitchen side hasn’t yet happened. No paint yet, either. Right now my kitchen is barely functional. I tore out the cabinets on the east side two months back and tore out the other side yesterday. I’m hoping that Adam will have time soon to help with the drywall and cut out the cabinets on the sink’s right side. I’m dying to get the kitchen into something functional... and ready for a bit of goddamn personality. At times I want to call a professional re-modelling organisation and throw a couple thousand dollars at them. I don’t have a couple thousand dollars to throw. People warned me about the perverse combination of glacial pace and piecemeal finances involved with owning a house. I wanted so much to disbelieve. The living room is a headache located in a far off future realm of terror that maybe will come ashore this winter. A big problem is that I lack a sense of style. A friend in Ann Arbor, who also recently bought a house, mentioned in conversation that some piece of furniture ‘didn’t match the house.’ He used it as a throw away comment but it panicked me. I thought the piece in question was lovely and would kill to have it. Did this mean I like the wrong things or that I have no sense of what works and does not?
A short stack of things are graded. A larger stack remains. Back into the beautiful sun, on the bike, to home. Ryu will want a walk and a short stack of chores need done.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Todaybour Day is a Labour Day
The hospital released Derrick this afternoon, sooner than either of us expected. Hospitals do that. They tamp down expectations so low that when exceeding them produces an asymmetrical happiness. They look like saints, take the gratitude with a stoicism I can’t begin to describe but dislike anyway, and off one goes to the parking garage. I don’t like hospitals. “To this end, we all must come,” I can’t help think. The old, infirm; the lame. This afternoon I saw a woman in her twenties weeping in the hallway. She perched in a vestibule that had more business as a bookshelf then a place of grief. Her hand over her mouth, was it there to muffle the sob or some more basic, instinctual gesture? I felt terrible for her. I looked at her as I passed. I owed it to her. To acknowledge her grief. I hear you and see you and I am so, so sorry for whatever has happened. A story I read (or heard on NPR?) years back taught me a lesson: that homeless people are, in fact, people that deserve recognition. “The worst thing a person could do,” a former homeless person said, “is to ignore me.” We are still people, he went on, and deserve the simplest gesture of recognising our existence. Being ignored was worse than being told “no” to a request for change or told to “get a job” or “get the fuck out of my way.” Those are words directed at a person and confirmed that person’s existence. I heard the woman maybe twenty seconds before I saw her. My back stiffened and I threw out my chest, the way I do if wanting to impress an attractive man walking the opposite way. I can do this. Do not look down. Don’t. She’s right there. Her eyes cast downward, her hand over her mouth, she sobbed. Seated upon the ridge, her feet dangled a good foot from the hospital corridor floor. She’s a child, I think to myself. I looked her full in the face in the moment allowed by my velocity and her immobility. Her eyes cast downward, hand over her mouth, she sobbed, and then I reached the door to the stairs. I did the right thing, regardless of her knowing or acknowledging. She and I were the youngest people in 3rd floor, north wing, at 115p on a Sunday holiday weekend mid-60s after a heavy fog and promising winds. What was I thinking about before I heard her aching?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Seeing South Africa
Tonight I saw the film ‘District 9’. It’s a “sci-fi thriller” that takes place in a contemporary Johannesburg hosting a refugee of aliens. Actual extraterrestrials, not the legal sort -- though the distinction is largely blurred as the film progresses. Anyway, I loved this film. It made me angry, embarrassed, regretful and lonely depending on the scene. Mostly, the film provoked an (I swear, this pun isn’t intentional) alienation: I miss South Africa despite never setting foot upon its soil or the soil of its mother continent. The characters’ strong English South African dialect, the Afrikaans names and phrases peppered into the dialogue (“tot siens, tot siens!”), the clicking of the Xhosa and Zulu speakers mixed with the clicking of the aliens. Where is Nico DeVilliers, I wondered? Where in Europe is the tall Afrikaner musician? Alles van die beste, my vriend.
Tonight I brought the most recent edition of Harpers to read. Ah, South Africa you’re there as well! A new short story by J.M. Coetzee; another essay from Breyten Breytenbach. Coetzee’s story makes me laugh -- the old, crazy man. When is your next novel? Will it be set in South Africa? I never finished reading ‘Slow Man,’ because it bored me to death. Can you maybe write -- for me -- another Elizabeth Costello? Breyten, I liked your March 2009 essay “Obamandela” so much that I felt a double thrill when the Very Old Man’s foundation nearly accused you of slander. You won’t mind, you terrifyingly smart ex-convict, that I use your ‘seven months pregnant’ joke. Ek kan, ja?. Mooi bly.
I miss South Africa, terribly. Ek nie kom van Suid-Afrika af. Ek leer die literatuur Suid-Afrikaanse in Amerika. Mooi bly.
Tot siens, tot siens!
Tonight I brought the most recent edition of Harpers to read. Ah, South Africa you’re there as well! A new short story by J.M. Coetzee; another essay from Breyten Breytenbach. Coetzee’s story makes me laugh -- the old, crazy man. When is your next novel? Will it be set in South Africa? I never finished reading ‘Slow Man,’ because it bored me to death. Can you maybe write -- for me -- another Elizabeth Costello? Breyten, I liked your March 2009 essay “Obamandela” so much that I felt a double thrill when the Very Old Man’s foundation nearly accused you of slander. You won’t mind, you terrifyingly smart ex-convict, that I use your ‘seven months pregnant’ joke. Ek kan, ja?. Mooi bly.
I miss South Africa, terribly. Ek nie kom van Suid-Afrika af. Ek leer die literatuur Suid-Afrikaanse in Amerika. Mooi bly.
Tot siens, tot siens!
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Addicted to nuts
I cannot stop eating. I cannot stop eating the almond/pecan concoction made by the True North snack company. This is not a shill. These nutty snacks come in adorable squares. Five of the squares is a single serving. Each day at the office I eat at least two servings. I lock the drawer in which they reside to prevent over-eating. They’re fucking addictive. Healthy and delicious? Hell, yes! Overdoing it? Shit, please no. I’ve never smoked or freebased heroin but I am reasonably sure that these nutty squares compete with those things in terms of a person absolutely needing to have it in their bodies.
A colleague had a bag of these in a box during a recent office move. I saw them, was very hungry, and sneaked out a few cubes. Immediately hooked, I snagged a handful, leaving behind an apologetic note and a request for purchasing information. Sorry for taking your snacks and where can I buy my own? She noticed a week later, agreeing to pick up two bags for me when she next went to Sam’s Club. A beautiful arrangement. I get delicious snacks while avoiding the horrible breathing Hell mouth of Sam’s Club. Everybody wins! I’m reminded that I’ve yet to reimburse her for the bags. I win!
A colleague had a bag of these in a box during a recent office move. I saw them, was very hungry, and sneaked out a few cubes. Immediately hooked, I snagged a handful, leaving behind an apologetic note and a request for purchasing information. Sorry for taking your snacks and where can I buy my own? She noticed a week later, agreeing to pick up two bags for me when she next went to Sam’s Club. A beautiful arrangement. I get delicious snacks while avoiding the horrible breathing Hell mouth of Sam’s Club. Everybody wins! I’m reminded that I’ve yet to reimburse her for the bags. I win!
Friday, August 7, 2009
Comparisons
I performed some perfunctory, grossly unscientific research into which foods are ‘fat burners.’ Supposedly, some foods are the metabolic versions of Devastator: individually they do exceedingly little but together they form a piss-your-pants terrifying juggernaut of fat annihilation. I plopped the words “foods that burn fat” into Google, which kicked back some depressing results: lots of generic, bland websites with loudly obvious URLS: www.burn-fat-now.com, www.e-diets.com and others. These domain names are designed not to promote education amongst the web-browsing public but, rather, to generate revenue for the site owners and their greasy-slick revenue-mongering advertisers. Some “scientifically proven” weight loss pill that the Norwegian population uses since 1930 to be beautiful; a vaguely Latin or Chinese berry mixture that “melts” one’s stubborn belly fat. Anyway, the sites did contain lists of food somewhere amongst the spam (no pun intended). The lists were not terribly surprising in their content. What surprised me was the scant overlap amongst them. It seems odd that sites culled together by Google’s search algorithm for this admittedly un-precise criteria had so little in common. Here’s a list of the foods the sites suggested burn away body fat, presented in no particular order: beets, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cherries, orange-flesh melons, whole grains including oats, berries, asparagus, soybeans, apples, eggs, low-fat milk and cheese, beans, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, ginger, citrus, bananas, and garlic. The three items that made the list which surprised are the spices. Cayenne pepper? Look. I know that correlation is not causation but nowhere in my humbly huge breadth of experience is there a link to svelte bodies and Cajun cooking. Ditto for cinnamon (Cinnabon, anyone?). Ginger seems fine (in the interest of disclosure, I ate ginger stir-fry vegetables for lunch today. Please support Spice of Thai restaurant by purchasing their delicious foodstuffs. Tell Sue that Don sent you. She will not give a discount for any reason, so do not try). Anyway, the list is obvious. Eat fruit and vegetables, say school lunch posters and middle-upper class moms everywhere. Adhering to eating only the foods on this list requires one to be vegetarian, so, ahem, shouldn’t I be as thick as a toothpick? (now, in the interest of fairness, one site did mention lean meat but with the caveat that lean meat is expensive and likely outside the budgets of most people.) What interests me is the few items which overlapped from site to site: whole grains / oatmeal, 1% milk, apples, berries and soybeans.
I eat these by quantity of buckets. Good for me!
I eat these by quantity of buckets. Good for me!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Lo más triste
In March, I met an old acquaintance for breakfast in Saugatuck, as is our custom when I am single and our gets-together raise no (unnecessary) suspicions. He’s a writer but trained as an engineer and travels the country often for both career needs. He’s an amiable guy, makes for good company. With whom else can I talk about writing and learn about publishing? That’s the format for breakfast: catch up on events either one cares to share, followed by what books we read since and what news of his developing manuscript. This March morning, he surprised me by picked up a conversation from the year prior. We discussed one of his characters -- which is to say that I interrogated him about the character -- while strolling along the Singapore Yacht wharf. The day shone brightly. The sun’s light poured from the sky; it bounced from the water and boat hulls. My acquaintance justified his character’s behaviour, as my mind wandered. Half-listening to an imaginary biography, half-staring across the Kalamazoo River he caught me out: what are you thinking about? Your character is going to kill himself, I said, not directly at him but at a vague point on the opposite shore. What?! No he isn’t.. wait, why do you think that? The tone of his voice, an uncommon mix of scandal and pleasant surprise, should have woken me fully to my surroundings; rather, it made me more introspective, curious of the forming thought I shared prematurely. He persisted through my silence. Do you know Virginia Woolf? No, he says, should I? Yes. Your character reminds me of Woolf’s character Mrs Dalloway. A perfectly normal, good and reasonable person living her good life and doing good things. She’s so normal that when one wonders -- 50 pages in -- why Woolf dedicates a novel to the maudlin personality, *bang* Dalloway says that she’ll kill herself. It’s something nobody in her world will expect. So more shocking for the lack of intended explanation. It simply takes place. No rhyme, reason. Your character reminds me of her. A normal life, no tangible sources of discontent and certainly no suffering; the bills are paid, the lovely accoutrements bought and shown, acquaintances maintained but undeveloped: somebody so suffocatingly good and normal, it cannot survive. Whatever else I said to the poor writer is lost from memory. In all fairness, the reaction came out of Mrs Dalloway than my companion’s character description. I was being unfair again. My character won’t kill himself. I don’t want to kill him, he said. Than give the poor bastard a reason to live. Let him access to something -- anything -- to which he can anchor his life, even if that anchor is a goddamn lie. Shit, give him religion, I said -- again, unfairly.
Return to this March. Return to the mediocre Saugatuck restaurant. Do you still struggle with those feelings, he asks. Not since I read “The Bell Jar.” Do you know it? He shakes his head. It kills me that this writer is unfamiliar with the classics. No judgement implied or intended, simple wonder. He gets a brief review of Sylvia Plath’s novel about a charming, sophisticated young college woman working up the social and economic ladder. Then, her life falls apart. It swings in vicious circles. Her centre cannot hold. The artifices of her identity snap at the joints. She repeatedly fails to kill herself and repeatedly fails to offer an explanation to the one question asked of her: why? Why do you want to kill yourself? Why do you feel like this? Why do you make your mother suffer worrying about you? I read this novel early summer of 2008 and almost entirely on the patio of Lemonjello’s in Holland. At times, the book drove me out of my seat to pace the small concrete space (Paul Mason’s stories collected in Head Cases also had this effect on me). Plath’s book felt from then on like a bulwark to the creeping voice urging terrible action. The protagonist... I read so damned much of myself in her: the tedium of living irrationally in a rational environment. Being a successful person by nearly all objective standards yet actively jettisoning those standards as suffocating traps. The poor, barely white-trash child makes good in the competitive , socially divisive world. No, I tell the writer with confidence. I don’t have those feelings any more. “The Bell Jar” accomplished what the therapy and medication did not. Having said that, this salad is so shitty it makes me suicidal to have to pay for it. We laugh. It looks like a shitty salad, he agrees.
I spoke too soon.
It’s happening again. That clarion voice speaking. You are going to kill yourself. Thursday at Meijer, while looking at peanut butter. It began a month ago, just before I signed the mortgage. Easily dismissed. If I die, who will pay the mortgage? The credit union would be furious. Chuckle, ha ha. Its intensity builds, as each time previous to this. Comparing peanut butter prices, the voice WHY NOT KILL YOURSELF was so loud that my head jerked sideways, the way it does when a fly comes near the ear, and then pinched the bridge of my nose as if to stifle a sneeze. These two movements, in rapid succession, disturbed me far more than the provoking thought. A perverse, psycho-somatic reaction. It keeps happening. The college administration would be furious if forced to find a replacement for my two already in progress summer courses.
I hope that the writer doesn’t ask me about this next time we have breakfast.
Return to this March. Return to the mediocre Saugatuck restaurant. Do you still struggle with those feelings, he asks. Not since I read “The Bell Jar.” Do you know it? He shakes his head. It kills me that this writer is unfamiliar with the classics. No judgement implied or intended, simple wonder. He gets a brief review of Sylvia Plath’s novel about a charming, sophisticated young college woman working up the social and economic ladder. Then, her life falls apart. It swings in vicious circles. Her centre cannot hold. The artifices of her identity snap at the joints. She repeatedly fails to kill herself and repeatedly fails to offer an explanation to the one question asked of her: why? Why do you want to kill yourself? Why do you feel like this? Why do you make your mother suffer worrying about you? I read this novel early summer of 2008 and almost entirely on the patio of Lemonjello’s in Holland. At times, the book drove me out of my seat to pace the small concrete space (Paul Mason’s stories collected in Head Cases also had this effect on me). Plath’s book felt from then on like a bulwark to the creeping voice urging terrible action. The protagonist... I read so damned much of myself in her: the tedium of living irrationally in a rational environment. Being a successful person by nearly all objective standards yet actively jettisoning those standards as suffocating traps. The poor, barely white-trash child makes good in the competitive , socially divisive world. No, I tell the writer with confidence. I don’t have those feelings any more. “The Bell Jar” accomplished what the therapy and medication did not. Having said that, this salad is so shitty it makes me suicidal to have to pay for it. We laugh. It looks like a shitty salad, he agrees.
I spoke too soon.
It’s happening again. That clarion voice speaking. You are going to kill yourself. Thursday at Meijer, while looking at peanut butter. It began a month ago, just before I signed the mortgage. Easily dismissed. If I die, who will pay the mortgage? The credit union would be furious. Chuckle, ha ha. Its intensity builds, as each time previous to this. Comparing peanut butter prices, the voice WHY NOT KILL YOURSELF was so loud that my head jerked sideways, the way it does when a fly comes near the ear, and then pinched the bridge of my nose as if to stifle a sneeze. These two movements, in rapid succession, disturbed me far more than the provoking thought. A perverse, psycho-somatic reaction. It keeps happening. The college administration would be furious if forced to find a replacement for my two already in progress summer courses.
I hope that the writer doesn’t ask me about this next time we have breakfast.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
You're not going to lose more, right?
The woman who manages my gym asks me this on Monday, followed after a beat of silence by, “I haven’t asked any of my members that before.” “I’m not trying to lose the weight. I stopped back in May.” Which is true. I’ve donated five bags of clothes to the local Salvation Army and homeless shelter -- all perfectly fine clothes that simply no longer fit. Pants at size 34 to 32, large and medium sized t-shirts, dress/collared shirts at size whatever those sizes are, medium sized underwear.... no, gross, those went into the garbage. I’m not so callous as to pawn off my dick support to the needy. Around mid-May, when the closing of my now house was certain, I noticed that the total effect of the donations was an entire closet space. More importantly, an empty closet space once housing my office-appropriate garb. In other words, I gave away all my fucking work clothes. Off to the local Gap Outlet I went, gift card in hand. $150, and a ‘feeling’ of numb shock later, I came home with for all intents a new wardrobe. For the first time since 10th grade, I owned (and fit into) a size 30 pant, size small t-shirt and same for underwear. I’m a 30 year old in a child’s body, celebrating at his kitchen table with a glass of Spanish white wine. The next day, the gym scale read 147.
She wondered whether I wanted to lose more in response to the news that, according to the scale, I currently weigh 141. “Maybe cut out the cardio? Use that time on weights,” she suggests. That’s not bad advice. Giving up the 2.5 mile run isn’t a difficult choice if only for selfishness. I hate running. Hate it. But, because this world is goddamned cruel, the running played the largest role in shedding the fat. Switching over to a weight-dominant regiment makes me anxious that the fat will creep back under my skin. I’ll give it a shot, though; she’s a trained fitness instructor and I’m a lazy academic. Listen to the experts, eh?
She wondered whether I wanted to lose more in response to the news that, according to the scale, I currently weigh 141. “Maybe cut out the cardio? Use that time on weights,” she suggests. That’s not bad advice. Giving up the 2.5 mile run isn’t a difficult choice if only for selfishness. I hate running. Hate it. But, because this world is goddamned cruel, the running played the largest role in shedding the fat. Switching over to a weight-dominant regiment makes me anxious that the fat will creep back under my skin. I’ll give it a shot, though; she’s a trained fitness instructor and I’m a lazy academic. Listen to the experts, eh?
Monday, June 15, 2009
Be safe, mate
Last week I saw a student from my Winter course at the Holland Farmer’s Market. She watched a stand for her employers, a natural/organic grocery store, while I feigned interest in hanging flower baskets. Her name slipped from memory, though I recognised her immediately. The twenty dollar bill, crisp and folded in my wallet, was the entire market budget. I walked up to an ATM, rocking on my heels between two cars waiting for the same machine. My former student’s booth looked expensive (as organic products are wont to be). I focused on market stalls adjacent hers, feigning interest in floral hanging baskets ($10!). That mental persecutor’s voice: I’m on the student’s territory, not a respected teacher but a common (perhaps miserable) man trespassing in barely clean clothes and dishevelled hair hiding under a hat. Because life is life, I made eye contact and we shared a pleasant but fabricated hello. Did I mention that she earned a ‘D’ in my class? Her store sells hummus, peanut butter and the like. I like both of these things. Of course bought one container of each. Why? Obligation. Of what? The prospect of seeing delicious things for sale at 8a, unseasonably cold for even the predictably unseasonable Michigan, and not buying them didn’t sit well. The sale took nearly half of my market budget. Our brief conversation limited to the immediate perspective sale, the sale, the subjunctive future of enjoying said sale. Yikes. Awkward. Over to an opposite stall, stood a handsome young man selling peppers. He struck a pose of self-aware boredom mixed with the effort to mask said boredom. Buying a pound of red peppers he made note of my being his first sale of the day, to which I wondered aloud what the hell these people’s problem could be to not buy such good looking peppers. He shrugged and asked if I’m from Western. “I left two years ago,” he explained, seeing the old WMU faculty id card when the remaining $10 came out from my wallet. “I signed up for the Navy. Leave in February,” he volunteered. Jesus, it’s too cold outside for June; the mug of coffee a waning miracle. “Be safe, mate,” is all I could offer.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
It's in a red notebook
The stuff that should be on this site are going into a red notebook. I bought the red notebook last Christmas at the Barnes and Noble store in Grand Rapids. Not only is it red, it is made in Spain. There are any number of ready-made excuses for the posting avoidance: busy with house projects, entertaining guests, attention to the present summer course combining with preparation for the second. Any or all of these. But none, really. The red notebook is without the public air.
Derrick and I talked about homeownership over a vegetarian dinner: pride, prejudice, responsibility, cost, night sounds, neighbours. He’s an invaluable connection in this especially lonely summer. He stayed for five days. The Tigers won and lost their series games against the White Sox. Shayla finished a “Flowers in the Attic,” and maintained social connections on social network sites from my laptop plopped in the kitchen not socialising much with her father and I. We together took on a handful of improvement projects: replaced the original, late 1930’s electrical outlets (which prior owners painted over with the walls), removed the cabinet doors, built bookcases, filled those bookcases, shopped home furnishings outlet stores, swapped old incandescent bulbs with higher-efficiency spirals, moved furniture from room-to-room, tackled the lawn, ran wires from room-to-room, and others I shamefully overlooked completing this morning. I learned to appreciate, and come to rely upon, the employees at Home Depot and Lowes. The advice received from the various folks in those stores is high fucking appreciated, if not a huge savings in avoiding unnecessary work. I realise now that a house is a living thing. Its pipes, a circulatory system (a little rust), electrical wires/sockets the neurologics, the middle wall it’s spine. Put in the context of owning and caring for a life is simultaneously terrifying in its responsibility and a huge source of pride. Reckon this is the nearest to parenting I’ll get (unless a dog enters the picture), so enjoy it. How I feel about being a single parent is a continuing development. On that note, fuck HGTV. That network is yuppie propaganda. Each show I saw about finding/buying one’s first house centered on 20-something straight couples whose criteria, every time, was “enough room to start a family.” Ugh. The realtor made a similar comment to me. Thanks, society, for adding a dash of inadequacy to my once-in-a-lifetime achievement.
Derrick and I talked about homeownership over a vegetarian dinner: pride, prejudice, responsibility, cost, night sounds, neighbours. He’s an invaluable connection in this especially lonely summer. He stayed for five days. The Tigers won and lost their series games against the White Sox. Shayla finished a “Flowers in the Attic,” and maintained social connections on social network sites from my laptop plopped in the kitchen not socialising much with her father and I. We together took on a handful of improvement projects: replaced the original, late 1930’s electrical outlets (which prior owners painted over with the walls), removed the cabinet doors, built bookcases, filled those bookcases, shopped home furnishings outlet stores, swapped old incandescent bulbs with higher-efficiency spirals, moved furniture from room-to-room, tackled the lawn, ran wires from room-to-room, and others I shamefully overlooked completing this morning. I learned to appreciate, and come to rely upon, the employees at Home Depot and Lowes. The advice received from the various folks in those stores is high fucking appreciated, if not a huge savings in avoiding unnecessary work. I realise now that a house is a living thing. Its pipes, a circulatory system (a little rust), electrical wires/sockets the neurologics, the middle wall it’s spine. Put in the context of owning and caring for a life is simultaneously terrifying in its responsibility and a huge source of pride. Reckon this is the nearest to parenting I’ll get (unless a dog enters the picture), so enjoy it. How I feel about being a single parent is a continuing development. On that note, fuck HGTV. That network is yuppie propaganda. Each show I saw about finding/buying one’s first house centered on 20-something straight couples whose criteria, every time, was “enough room to start a family.” Ugh. The realtor made a similar comment to me. Thanks, society, for adding a dash of inadequacy to my once-in-a-lifetime achievement.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Ryu Inu
Ryu Inu is asleep to my right. He’s a four year old male (neutered) Shiba Inu. He came to Holland today from Newaygo. His owners posted a message on Craigslist. I responded, not believing the luck - having wanted a Shiba Inu for a decade. The owners and I agreed on the details of the adoption during a few email messages and phone calls. They gave me two grocery bags of Ryu’s toys and snacks, a folder of veterinary history of immunizations, and his country registration. Now he’s asleep to my left. Tuckered out. We ran a mile in the neighborhood. Before that, we ran three blocks; that is, I chased him for three fucking blocks after he wiggled under the back yard fence. We were home 45 minutes when he made his break. A family of 12, maybe 15, witnessed the chase from point-blank range as Ryu and I tore through their family picnic. I apologized at full speed. Finally caught him, carried in one arm, back from a stranger’s impressive back yard garden. The picnic people applauded as we made our way back to my house. I had no choice. My shoes fell off next to their garage. Those two and a half miles I run at the gym nearly every day paid off in spades. Ryu and Ciela get along famously. By that, I mean they sniffed each other’s butts and afterwards walked in different directions. This is a huge relief. Shiba Inu are hunters. He pulls like a bottle rocket on a string when he notices a smaller animal during our walks. Ciela is fat, lazy, and defenseless. Compared to what Ryu wants to chase, Ciela is an unprotected chocolate cake.
Tonight is the first one. I hope it’s a quiet one. Tomorrow is his first day alone from either previous owners or me. Multiple web sites warn about Shiba Inu predisposition to separation anxiety. Being at the office will suck, I’ll feel anxious leaving him solo. For now though, bedtime. Two animals and a grown man who isn’t a pervert.
update: Ryu shows nearly zero signs of separation anxiety: some minor squeals for a few seconds after the door closes. Nothing what i’d feared: destroyed, chewed up things, pee stained floor, angry neighbors. What a good dog!
Tonight is the first one. I hope it’s a quiet one. Tomorrow is his first day alone from either previous owners or me. Multiple web sites warn about Shiba Inu predisposition to separation anxiety. Being at the office will suck, I’ll feel anxious leaving him solo. For now though, bedtime. Two animals and a grown man who isn’t a pervert.
update: Ryu shows nearly zero signs of separation anxiety: some minor squeals for a few seconds after the door closes. Nothing what i’d feared: destroyed, chewed up things, pee stained floor, angry neighbors. What a good dog!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Breathing people said.
The Telegraph (UK) published in March a list of twenty ridiculous complaints made by tourists (I presume the British holidaymaker variety). The majority centre around accommodation, animals and perceived bait-and-switch tactics (“the sand in your brochure is white but the actual beach sand is yellow.”) Comments like these are depressingly run-of-the-mill from the mouths of tourists on their first foreign outing. The sorts of people who imagine their vacation destination in terms of a carefully controlled paradise operating on the engine fuel of happy service to the tourists whims; not, God almighty, aware that the dream-land is in fact called by many others as ‘home’ by the Two specifically are walking the line of ludicrous: "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners." and "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
Friday, May 15, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A weekend in May
This weekend half happened. Yesterday the final parade, Muziekparade, of Tulip Time took place. I napped through it. Saw the new ‘Star Trek’ film (well worth the $6.50). The first class of Summer term went well. The assigned room feels like a prison cell - or, I assume so having not been in a prison cell - but did see a few episodes of ‘Oz.’ Hot, claustrophobic, no ventilation, over-crowded, three hours for the next 13 Saturday mornings. A headache cut short the gym time. Had dinner at Panera, with Steven’s goddamned voice in my head: fat vegetarians eating too many carbs. Tomato soup with croutons, a tomato/mozzarella sandwich with chocolate chip/walnut cookie as dessert. Delicious food accompanied by unfair mental fear-mongering. Took to bed early.
Woke up to blinding sunlight and bird-song. Threw blankets into washing machine, did some perfunctory tidying-up. Critically examining my complexion in the mirror when the idea to drive into Saugatuck popped up. I really need to study Spanish with the Dele now less than a week away. The tourists stop apparently in Saugatuck on their way home from Holland. Out-of-towners swarm the town’s small streets. Didn’t realise that. The tourists mingle with the gay bears. Is it Bear Weekend? Lots of bearded, chubby men walking about - some walking toy dogs. Sitting here since 9a, did lots of studying. Met with a former student turning in some missing work. I’ll submit a grade change later this afternoon. He lives not far from my new house. “It’s probably not up to your standards,” he said describing his Summer English 101 course. I am a tyrant, it seems. Maybe I should take as a compliment former student’s boredom with higher-level courses. Sigh. It’s past 1p. Time to move on, get my ass out of this chair in this cafe, get my feet on the treadmill. I had a cup of the cafe’s organic oatmeal. Lots of fibre and carbs! “Fat vegetarians,” he croons.
Shut up.
Woke up to blinding sunlight and bird-song. Threw blankets into washing machine, did some perfunctory tidying-up. Critically examining my complexion in the mirror when the idea to drive into Saugatuck popped up. I really need to study Spanish with the Dele now less than a week away. The tourists stop apparently in Saugatuck on their way home from Holland. Out-of-towners swarm the town’s small streets. Didn’t realise that. The tourists mingle with the gay bears. Is it Bear Weekend? Lots of bearded, chubby men walking about - some walking toy dogs. Sitting here since 9a, did lots of studying. Met with a former student turning in some missing work. I’ll submit a grade change later this afternoon. He lives not far from my new house. “It’s probably not up to your standards,” he said describing his Summer English 101 course. I am a tyrant, it seems. Maybe I should take as a compliment former student’s boredom with higher-level courses. Sigh. It’s past 1p. Time to move on, get my ass out of this chair in this cafe, get my feet on the treadmill. I had a cup of the cafe’s organic oatmeal. Lots of fibre and carbs! “Fat vegetarians,” he croons.
Shut up.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Surveys
Last night I had dinner with the Doremire clan (sans mom) and a friend of Adam’s flown in from Seattle... not for this occasion, though. The friend brought up a social geography survey method that gauges the ‘livability’ of American regions, mostly urban to quasi-urban centres. I remember three of the four survey criteria: tolerance, technology, transportation, and something else. Maybe higher education? The implication of the survey is no doubt an arrow in real estate agent’s quiver to justify the $100k tack-on to a loft in San Francisco, but apparently meant to lend a scientific authority for urban relocation away from the small towns and rural landscapes of America. I wouldn’t take a breath for arguing against the awesome appeal of urban living along three to four criteria (plus the hundreds others unmentioned or assumed) and didn’t make an attempt to poke holes in the survey’s methodology or results.
Where I had/have a problem is the cultural chauvinism carried by the survey’s results and replicated in the voice of my fellow dinner guest. I bristled at the unspoken but impossible-to-miss judgement made about living, voluntarily and of sound mind, in Holland. Based on the survey’s criteria, Holland cannot possibly be a satisfactory incubator of talented creative people; the city (if the survey’s advocates would even allow the c-word applied) lacks [unspecified] tolerance, reliable and penetrative mass transit, and high technology firms. Holland comes out at best an interesting backwater, a pleasant tourist destination for Middle Americans and at worst a lockstep Christian identity recruiting pasture saturated with Dell laptops and American sedans. My problem with this came out of Adam’s friend assuming that small cities in provincial areas of the Rust Belt cannot produce or attract talented, creative, intellectual, multi-cultural people; further, that these small cities actively repel / discourage that development. What made me most uncomfortable was the anti-intellectual foundation of this comparison. It assumed, in Holland’s specific case, that easily-defended stereotypes from 15 years ago exist in the same form and ferocity in 2009. It also, in a back-handed sort of way, seemed a personal insult in my deciding to buy a home here. Adam, a bit later, acknowledged my irritation of the argument in an even-handed way but prodded me to continue my response. The bastard. What choice did I have.
Where I had/have a problem is the cultural chauvinism carried by the survey’s results and replicated in the voice of my fellow dinner guest. I bristled at the unspoken but impossible-to-miss judgement made about living, voluntarily and of sound mind, in Holland. Based on the survey’s criteria, Holland cannot possibly be a satisfactory incubator of talented creative people; the city (if the survey’s advocates would even allow the c-word applied) lacks [unspecified] tolerance, reliable and penetrative mass transit, and high technology firms. Holland comes out at best an interesting backwater, a pleasant tourist destination for Middle Americans and at worst a lockstep Christian identity recruiting pasture saturated with Dell laptops and American sedans. My problem with this came out of Adam’s friend assuming that small cities in provincial areas of the Rust Belt cannot produce or attract talented, creative, intellectual, multi-cultural people; further, that these small cities actively repel / discourage that development. What made me most uncomfortable was the anti-intellectual foundation of this comparison. It assumed, in Holland’s specific case, that easily-defended stereotypes from 15 years ago exist in the same form and ferocity in 2009. It also, in a back-handed sort of way, seemed a personal insult in my deciding to buy a home here. Adam, a bit later, acknowledged my irritation of the argument in an even-handed way but prodded me to continue my response. The bastard. What choice did I have.
Lunatics and civic events
Flowers attract bees. Tulips attract artists. Tulip Time attracts lunatics and tourists... the two groups invariably coming into contact, drawn by the same signal. This year’s festival keeps the human calculus in balance. Lemonjello’s swarms with fat tourists wearing pastels and floral prints collected in table-clusters pouring over maps, mispronouncing place names. The lunatics buzz around the tourist’s periphery working in odd orbits. I avoid eye-contact with the lunatics and tourists alike. They might take an inadvertent gaze as an invitation for communication. To chat. No no. I forgot the earphones, oh no. A Korean boy with a full size red bass guitar stands outside the door, peering inside wondering.... wondering I can’t imagine. Go away.
It breaks one’s heart to see a 40-something sweat in a green polo at 65 degrees hold court with an un-medicated psychotic selling “custom” music CDs.
It breaks one’s heart to see a 40-something sweat in a green polo at 65 degrees hold court with an un-medicated psychotic selling “custom” music CDs.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Competition
The Tulip Time 5k/8k run took place in a track very close to my future residence. I didn’t know about the race before seeing the PDF map on the festival’s website. 5k, hmmm... Every day at the gym I run 2 miles. 2.25 if the morning’s coffee lingered in the blood. Last week I survived the 2.5 mile point. Anyway, these distances aren’t too much removed from 5 kilometres. Race day but I didn’t participate. Running a race adds the element of competition I’ve not yet contended with; at the gym, I compete with myself and the boredom of staring into a car park. And the treadmill is, you know, inside a climate-controlled environment. Running the distance seemed entirely plausible but the context supplied the wrench. While I didn’t run this race, the idea remains an entertaining one to.... uh, entertain. I saved the 5k race track map. When I can run 5k on the treadmill then maybe the outdoors version will be the new goal.
In related news, the scale reads 150lbs. Almost skinny!
In related news, the scale reads 150lbs. Almost skinny!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Choices
Two years back, the University of Missouri published a paper about human cognitive processes when viewing web pages. The research shows that when the eyes have fewer images to absorb on a single page correlates to increased focus to content. Participants ‘engaged’ the material, reading more closely, contemplated implications and in general understood the content better. Additionally, they were less likely to browse away from the page. Not withstanding meta-content such as chat windows, Facebook or iTunes, the research concludes that fewer distractions lead to increased concentration. That may seem like a ‘no shit, Sherlock’ situation but the implications are noticed in contexts outside of reading web pages, specifically making choices. Popular belief is that as options in a given situation increase the better-considered the the ultimate choice. In other words, quality of results rises with increased sample size. A person shown 5 possible vacation destinations versus 10 possibilities absorbs the increased criteria and as a result makes the best possible final decision. The Missouri research takes some of this popular wisdom and turns on its ear. The consequence of many options is often paralysis. The greater the options, the worse aptitude for a timely and wise choice. Ten vacation possibilities offered will put pressure on the chooser to make a ‘wise’ decision that ultimately forces the person to rely on stereotype and assumption, not well-reasoned, well-researched conclusions. Of course time is an important factor -- the more time one has to sift through options, the more likely a ‘better’ decision will result -- given that the person, you know, uses the time wisely. The time variable looms large and easily ignored in the consideration of choice/decision. We commonly call this ‘procrastination’: viz., “the paper due date is 2 weeks from now... so I have at least 12 days to ignore it.” Anyway, the point that I take from these phenomena is that one most foreclose/shut certain options/doors to make a better decision. I’ve run up against this dilemma in varying situations but most pertinent is whether to enter a PhD program and whether to buy a house.
Exhibit A, the reliable and impenetrable shield deployed to beat back the battery of arguments and remonstrations from friends and colleagues, against buying a house is The Future PhD. They called my attitude “ridiculous,” and “financially inept.” How can I buy a house in this economic climate, I volley? Prices and interest rates are historically low, so right now is the best time to buy, they say. Right! We work in automotive. Layoffs, furloughs, Chrysler bankrupt. What sane person plunges into a mortgage --- especially their first? I answer my own question: the kinds of people who buy coastal property during a Hurricane warning. People who mock logic. Dangerous lunatics. They say I’ve kept the job for nearly 10 years and survived by far the worst, so why stay on the sidelines? A mortgage, though! A 30 year financial commitment. I’ve been alive that long. My mind reels at attempting to wrap around the idea of a 30 goddamned year contract. Yes, they say, but nobody says you stay in the house for that long. The market rebounds, which it always does, and then you sell at a profit. Ah-hah! But what of those who were caught out in that same line of thinking when the market tanked? Well, obviously there are highs and lows... this is a low. They move in for the kill: their loss is your gain. Jesus, I think. It’s a parasitic life span. Look, though; the terrible Exhibit A winches into the open: how can I get into any PhD programs if I’m anchored to a house in Holland? Ahhh... the Missouri choice survey rears its head and I tremble.
Entering a doctoral program loomed, nay dominated, my vision of the future since 2005 at least. Early into the relationship with Mark, I remember telling him that I had no plans to remain in Holland specifically and West Michigan in general. WMU accepted me that summer and I prepared to enter into the mysterious world of graduate work. I also secretly cringed at the denial of doctoral admission at University of Chicago (see previous post). The two year MA @ WMU acted as a step, a half-step necessary to take between the BA and PhD. I hope you’re willing to move in two years, Mark. We broke up during my first teaching semester. Teaching fulfilled. The happiest hours of my day were those in the classroom, at the chalkboard. When the MA ended the domino next to fall was quitting JCI and entering a PhD program. 12 rejection letters and no falling domino. Remain in Holland. Remain with JCI. Waves of urge to quit the job and move, abandon, renounce, crash headlong into Chicago crested and broke in daily and weekly frequencies. Financial prudence kept my feet on Dutch soil and internet browser... other places. On our first date, I told Steven my impatience for leaving this Michigan area and into the arms of Bloomington, Chicago, Madison, or whichever wonderful city would take me. He made his disdain for this area apparent and behold we shared a bias that would be built upon... too much. He did basic research on MBA programs at similar schools. How great if we both land at the same university, albeit different programs? Great, obviously. University budgets fell into abyss, departments admitted ever fewer candidates and job searches (well documented, if semi-apocryphal and hysterical) cancelled in the majority of states. We broke up during my second year of teaching, first year at a different institution; the chalk dusted love affair continued uninterrupted. No doctoral applications filled out, no English department websites investigated. Paging Doctor Martin. Are you in the building?
The goal of working, earning a PhD is to teach full time. In colleges. Adults, not children. Kids make me homicidal. The PhD is the stepping stone means enabling this end. Four year institutions won’t consider MA/MS holders for full time positions. The community/2 year colleges picked up this trend in the last decade or so. And who can blame them? The labour pool of successful doctoral candidates can drown an elephant. That means it’s deep. A deep pool. Why then would any institution of higher education ‘stoop’ to taking on the lowly Master’s peoples? Answer, they don’t. Those folks are hired at part time, little to zero benefits. That’s me. Here’s the thing. JCI supplies income and benefits -- GRCC kicks in teaching experience and income. Two jobs, dual-income and existential wonders. Teaching at the College reduced, by a lot, the desire to get into a doctoral program. Again, the overwhelming thrust (sorry) of getting PhD is teaching full time. Well, teaching part time has been a fucking blast at this institution. JCI continues to decline laying me off. It was a month ago that the PhD shield against the arguments to (in the ready made idioms), “settle down” or “plant roots” in Holland came to resemble a dollar store fly-swatter than a iron-clad logical Pentagon. That sentence may not be sensible.
So it came to pass (sorry - again! - to Tolkien) that the choice of applying to doctoral programs was taken off of the table. Holding out for an uncertain future doesn’t make sense anymore (but it sure did for a looooooong time). I couldn’t rationalise a position highly dependent upon unknowns either to myself or to those around me. But this is important. The closing (or mostly shutting) of the doctoral option forces me to much more closely examine the options remaining over, say, the next five years. And these options are pretty fucking good, I may say. Once my brain accepted the logic of living right now instead of pausing for the future, the decision to buy a house was ludicrously easy to make. Closing happens this month. The list of housewarming invitees needs writing.
Exhibit A, the reliable and impenetrable shield deployed to beat back the battery of arguments and remonstrations from friends and colleagues, against buying a house is The Future PhD. They called my attitude “ridiculous,” and “financially inept.” How can I buy a house in this economic climate, I volley? Prices and interest rates are historically low, so right now is the best time to buy, they say. Right! We work in automotive. Layoffs, furloughs, Chrysler bankrupt. What sane person plunges into a mortgage --- especially their first? I answer my own question: the kinds of people who buy coastal property during a Hurricane warning. People who mock logic. Dangerous lunatics. They say I’ve kept the job for nearly 10 years and survived by far the worst, so why stay on the sidelines? A mortgage, though! A 30 year financial commitment. I’ve been alive that long. My mind reels at attempting to wrap around the idea of a 30 goddamned year contract. Yes, they say, but nobody says you stay in the house for that long. The market rebounds, which it always does, and then you sell at a profit. Ah-hah! But what of those who were caught out in that same line of thinking when the market tanked? Well, obviously there are highs and lows... this is a low. They move in for the kill: their loss is your gain. Jesus, I think. It’s a parasitic life span. Look, though; the terrible Exhibit A winches into the open: how can I get into any PhD programs if I’m anchored to a house in Holland? Ahhh... the Missouri choice survey rears its head and I tremble.
Entering a doctoral program loomed, nay dominated, my vision of the future since 2005 at least. Early into the relationship with Mark, I remember telling him that I had no plans to remain in Holland specifically and West Michigan in general. WMU accepted me that summer and I prepared to enter into the mysterious world of graduate work. I also secretly cringed at the denial of doctoral admission at University of Chicago (see previous post). The two year MA @ WMU acted as a step, a half-step necessary to take between the BA and PhD. I hope you’re willing to move in two years, Mark. We broke up during my first teaching semester. Teaching fulfilled. The happiest hours of my day were those in the classroom, at the chalkboard. When the MA ended the domino next to fall was quitting JCI and entering a PhD program. 12 rejection letters and no falling domino. Remain in Holland. Remain with JCI. Waves of urge to quit the job and move, abandon, renounce, crash headlong into Chicago crested and broke in daily and weekly frequencies. Financial prudence kept my feet on Dutch soil and internet browser... other places. On our first date, I told Steven my impatience for leaving this Michigan area and into the arms of Bloomington, Chicago, Madison, or whichever wonderful city would take me. He made his disdain for this area apparent and behold we shared a bias that would be built upon... too much. He did basic research on MBA programs at similar schools. How great if we both land at the same university, albeit different programs? Great, obviously. University budgets fell into abyss, departments admitted ever fewer candidates and job searches (well documented, if semi-apocryphal and hysterical) cancelled in the majority of states. We broke up during my second year of teaching, first year at a different institution; the chalk dusted love affair continued uninterrupted. No doctoral applications filled out, no English department websites investigated. Paging Doctor Martin. Are you in the building?
The goal of working, earning a PhD is to teach full time. In colleges. Adults, not children. Kids make me homicidal. The PhD is the stepping stone means enabling this end. Four year institutions won’t consider MA/MS holders for full time positions. The community/2 year colleges picked up this trend in the last decade or so. And who can blame them? The labour pool of successful doctoral candidates can drown an elephant. That means it’s deep. A deep pool. Why then would any institution of higher education ‘stoop’ to taking on the lowly Master’s peoples? Answer, they don’t. Those folks are hired at part time, little to zero benefits. That’s me. Here’s the thing. JCI supplies income and benefits -- GRCC kicks in teaching experience and income. Two jobs, dual-income and existential wonders. Teaching at the College reduced, by a lot, the desire to get into a doctoral program. Again, the overwhelming thrust (sorry) of getting PhD is teaching full time. Well, teaching part time has been a fucking blast at this institution. JCI continues to decline laying me off. It was a month ago that the PhD shield against the arguments to (in the ready made idioms), “settle down” or “plant roots” in Holland came to resemble a dollar store fly-swatter than a iron-clad logical Pentagon. That sentence may not be sensible.
So it came to pass (sorry - again! - to Tolkien) that the choice of applying to doctoral programs was taken off of the table. Holding out for an uncertain future doesn’t make sense anymore (but it sure did for a looooooong time). I couldn’t rationalise a position highly dependent upon unknowns either to myself or to those around me. But this is important. The closing (or mostly shutting) of the doctoral option forces me to much more closely examine the options remaining over, say, the next five years. And these options are pretty fucking good, I may say. Once my brain accepted the logic of living right now instead of pausing for the future, the decision to buy a house was ludicrously easy to make. Closing happens this month. The list of housewarming invitees needs writing.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
A Japanese dog and the Tea Party
This afternoon, Ryu and I walked the usual circuit around downtown. We approached the corner of Eighth Street and River Avenue where two people stood slightly bent forward, looking at a crop of tulips. The tulips are out en force before the first week in May. The woman in the pair had a camera in her hands, the man mimicking her movements but without a camera. They wore matching blue jeans and Pittsburgh Steelers windbreakers. Tourists. The two, seemingly satisfied with the documentation of the floral samples inside this one planter, straightened up in time to see us arrive at the corner. Now, before the story progresses, I want to share a useful set of metaphors prefaced by a bit of information.
First, Ryu is a beautiful dog. People across the age range and genders make cooing sounds when he prances past. If he and I are stopped at an intersection (or anywhere, to my chagrin, because he’s relieving himself), people exploit the interlude as an opportunity to pose a set of boilerplate questions: is it a boy or girl, what kind of dog is he, how old is he, is he friendly, where did you get him, my gosh he is so cute, can I pet him? Those questions belong exclusively to the realm of Yes and No, save for the ‘he is so cute’ bit which, of course, is not a question. To that, I grin and feel aggravatingly single.
Oh, the metaphor. Ryu is a total magnet. Were he a human and minus the leash, I’d be his wingman. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been a wingman. I had to read Urban Dictionary to confirm the word choice.) The situations wherein people tell me that he’s cute, what options exist other than to say “thanks,” comment in agreement, or provide a perfunctory grin? I can’t deny or lie that he’s a fucking awesome looking dog. Still, hello? How about some attention on the end of the leash wearing pants? Society -- and by that I mean the popular media -- teaches that animals ought attract attention to their carer. A dog projects a manner of unselfishness onto their human and, in Ryu’s case, a sense of style. So far, in a year, I’ve had not one bite. Which is unfair (and I don’t mean the pun). Always the wingman and never the... not wingman? How does that old saw work in the structure of the bridesmaids cliché...? Let me know, ladies.
I should note that walking downtown has practical and tactical value. Schlepping into town extends our range of both exercise and recognition. He and I walk a lot farther when in town than during our usual neighbourhood trek (at least, it seems farther, for his need to lift a leg every 30 seconds). He also gets to ‘chase’ the abundant foraging squirrels in Centennial Park absent my anxiety of car traffic. The downtown excursion is also tactical in that should Ryu ever slip away -- which his breed notoriously accomplishes like tragic Houdini-dogs -- it’ll give some comfort that a slew of people in both our walking areas would recognise a happily running Shiba Inu and know which weeping man to find.
Returning to the Steelers fans. The light to cross Eighth turned prohibitive as I came to a stop next to them. The woman’s face registered the familiar ‘I’m going to ask questions about your wonderful dog’ expression yet the man’s voice hit me first. “Is that a husky?” he asked. I looked at him, registered him as perhaps in the late 60s and, looking back to the now crouched woman, responded in the negative. “He looks like a baby husky,” she says from the balls of her feet looking at Ryu who is next to me and two feet from the couple. “No, he’s fully grown. Six years this summer,” I say. The man insists that Ryu looks like a husky. It’s then that a recognise his tone: matter-of-fact, as though the situation were switched and Ryu were in their care and I posed the questions. How odd. He asked whether Ryu is friendly, to which I deviated for the first time from the standard “yes,” to “he is friendly if you are.” When the man kept still and said “I’d better not risk it then,” I noticed a politically themed button on his baseball cap: white numbers 9 1 2 superimposed over an American flag. The white numbers sparked a backwards process of adding up the events of the past 1o seconds. These people are Tea Party activists. Holy shit. This hit me with force. The woman, still crouched and all smiles focused on Ryu, asks what ‘kind’ of dog he is, and I share that “he’s a Shiba Inu, a Japanese hunting dog; kind of like a fox.” She stands up yet remains looking down, enraptured. The man says, “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” I look not at the man’s face but at his political button. The Eighth Street crossing light turns. “Nos cruzamos, Ryu,” and we walk toward the park. The couple go east.
His eyes would be all slanted. The strange old man said that about my dog. My Japanese dog. Several issues here.
One, I’ve never encountered a self-identifying Tea Party activist. Last week I saw a white SUV parked outside the Curragh Irish Pub festooned with Michigan Tea Party magnets. I made mental note that the crazies are arrived. ‘Take back the government’? What does that even mean? It’s right there: where we the people elected it. My sole exposure to Tea Party supporters otherwise is through newspapers and the internet. If one discounts their leaders Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, the rank-and-file seem like average rednecks: poor, under-educated and racialist. Yet, the New York Times recently released a survey disproving that stereotype... at least, the poor portion. The survey also suggests that Tea Party supporters possess an average level of education (in 2010 America, what in hell does that even mean? I know college students who cannot conjugate a verb). Perhaps I’m on the wispy end of the 1970’s culture wars but possessing an education infers that one is aware of social acceptabilities. If Tea Party activists are indeed of average income and education (but totally racialist), then it boggles the mind to consider what for this man is socially taboo if describing Japanese things as ‘slanted’ is comfortably safe. Perhaps his mental calendar flips perpetually between 1944 and 1985?
Second, the man applied a human physiology to a dog without a discernible sense of irony. Slanted eyes - Japanese humans - Japanese dogs. I honestly don’t get the connection. Japanese people do not have slanted eyes. Their eyelids, like many East Asian people, have a double crease. So, yeah, not correct. The physiology of dog eyelids to their original nation makes no goddamn sense and negative a thousand sense in connection to the humans of that geography. Maybe this point links back to number one up there because, call me old-fashioned, an educated discerning person would not have made the inter-species analogy. It’s fucking clumsy, embarrassing.
Third, the man said the horrible bigoted comment in a didactic tone one uses when correcting a simple mistake. Try this exercise at home. Have a person say aloud, “we now have a lot of children so should by a Toyota coupe.” Then, you respond aloud with “no, we shouldn’t buy a coupe because it only has two doors.” Sounds reasonable, right? A sedan is defined by its having four doors and a coupe, two. No big deal here. Now, in that same tone say “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” Please, please tell me that you feel the wrongness of the words. English speakers should hear a similar wrongness of language not so much in tone as in time with the mistaken conjugation of ‘saw‘ and ‘seen‘ (I seen a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into an Audi vs I saw a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into a no you fucking didn’t you litigious liar, shut up).
The stinky cherry atop this anti-social cake is point four: he presumed that I wouldn’t taken offence to his comment. This upsets me most.
The bigot presumes that others of their group share their prejudices; therefore, all white guys are equally bigoted. NO. NO! That logic isn’t logic: it is racist. How does that obvious truth escape racialist people? This is an older, white married man ostensibly not from this city who yet possesses the peace of mind to conclude that an unknown white man also accepts bigotry. The adjective ‘unknown’ ought to activate his brain’s crucial ‘keep the questionable comments inside’ mechanism, but in this case the unknown might as well be ‘nephew.’ And that ‘quality’ about bigotry terrifies: the implied familial-like cohesiveness of racial identity. Remember, he and I are total strangers to the other. What we had in common are skin colour, language and shared space of an intersection. Yet, out of the stranger-ness this man found in me a familiar identity based on skin colour. That shared identity enabled the forging of a sufficient bond for him to comfortably share that horrible comment. His assuming my tolerance in hearing bigotry presumes that all white people are bigots -- that all white people think the same. Exactly zero white people agree with that presumption! Even crazies agree, if asked in a a sensible manner, that not all crazies think the same kind of batshit crazy. I’d bet other people’s money that this bigot would emphatically conclude that all whites do not think the same. He is a shameless racist and I am a heathen sodomite, yet we’re both white. ¡Viva la diferencia! No racial/ethnic/cultural/gender/sexual group appreciates that totality of prejudice by another group. Remember the calendar reference up there? It’s 2010 for fuck’s sake. But, go ahead and test my argument: replace any group in the gap in the following sample sentence as a test. ________ love to go shopping. Blacks? Racist. Asians? Bigoted. Persians? Ditto. Women? Sexist. Homos? (oh... shit...) Homophobic.
What is the take away from this experience? I walked into Centennial Park with Ryu, the scene familiar: sunshine and trees, squirrels and tulips in the city I chose to call home. Yet, I felt different. A strange man infected me with his racial presumption. For the first time I felt bad for being white. The comment about my Japanese dog looped me into a colour-bound prejudice that I did not fight. It happened suddenly. I was unprepared. It took place in public. Whatever. The truth is that my goddamn liberal insistence on the goodness of people cloaked the man’s vile nature until too late. I acted in response to a traffic light instead of in defence of principles and so suffered in the aftermath. This is an education.
Ryu seems unaffected, I am pleased to report.
First, Ryu is a beautiful dog. People across the age range and genders make cooing sounds when he prances past. If he and I are stopped at an intersection (or anywhere, to my chagrin, because he’s relieving himself), people exploit the interlude as an opportunity to pose a set of boilerplate questions: is it a boy or girl, what kind of dog is he, how old is he, is he friendly, where did you get him, my gosh he is so cute, can I pet him? Those questions belong exclusively to the realm of Yes and No, save for the ‘he is so cute’ bit which, of course, is not a question. To that, I grin and feel aggravatingly single.
Oh, the metaphor. Ryu is a total magnet. Were he a human and minus the leash, I’d be his wingman. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been a wingman. I had to read Urban Dictionary to confirm the word choice.) The situations wherein people tell me that he’s cute, what options exist other than to say “thanks,” comment in agreement, or provide a perfunctory grin? I can’t deny or lie that he’s a fucking awesome looking dog. Still, hello? How about some attention on the end of the leash wearing pants? Society -- and by that I mean the popular media -- teaches that animals ought attract attention to their carer. A dog projects a manner of unselfishness onto their human and, in Ryu’s case, a sense of style. So far, in a year, I’ve had not one bite. Which is unfair (and I don’t mean the pun). Always the wingman and never the... not wingman? How does that old saw work in the structure of the bridesmaids cliché...? Let me know, ladies.
I should note that walking downtown has practical and tactical value. Schlepping into town extends our range of both exercise and recognition. He and I walk a lot farther when in town than during our usual neighbourhood trek (at least, it seems farther, for his need to lift a leg every 30 seconds). He also gets to ‘chase’ the abundant foraging squirrels in Centennial Park absent my anxiety of car traffic. The downtown excursion is also tactical in that should Ryu ever slip away -- which his breed notoriously accomplishes like tragic Houdini-dogs -- it’ll give some comfort that a slew of people in both our walking areas would recognise a happily running Shiba Inu and know which weeping man to find.
Returning to the Steelers fans. The light to cross Eighth turned prohibitive as I came to a stop next to them. The woman’s face registered the familiar ‘I’m going to ask questions about your wonderful dog’ expression yet the man’s voice hit me first. “Is that a husky?” he asked. I looked at him, registered him as perhaps in the late 60s and, looking back to the now crouched woman, responded in the negative. “He looks like a baby husky,” she says from the balls of her feet looking at Ryu who is next to me and two feet from the couple. “No, he’s fully grown. Six years this summer,” I say. The man insists that Ryu looks like a husky. It’s then that a recognise his tone: matter-of-fact, as though the situation were switched and Ryu were in their care and I posed the questions. How odd. He asked whether Ryu is friendly, to which I deviated for the first time from the standard “yes,” to “he is friendly if you are.” When the man kept still and said “I’d better not risk it then,” I noticed a politically themed button on his baseball cap: white numbers 9 1 2 superimposed over an American flag. The white numbers sparked a backwards process of adding up the events of the past 1o seconds. These people are Tea Party activists. Holy shit. This hit me with force. The woman, still crouched and all smiles focused on Ryu, asks what ‘kind’ of dog he is, and I share that “he’s a Shiba Inu, a Japanese hunting dog; kind of like a fox.” She stands up yet remains looking down, enraptured. The man says, “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” I look not at the man’s face but at his political button. The Eighth Street crossing light turns. “Nos cruzamos, Ryu,” and we walk toward the park. The couple go east.
His eyes would be all slanted. The strange old man said that about my dog. My Japanese dog. Several issues here.
One, I’ve never encountered a self-identifying Tea Party activist. Last week I saw a white SUV parked outside the Curragh Irish Pub festooned with Michigan Tea Party magnets. I made mental note that the crazies are arrived. ‘Take back the government’? What does that even mean? It’s right there: where we the people elected it. My sole exposure to Tea Party supporters otherwise is through newspapers and the internet. If one discounts their leaders Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, the rank-and-file seem like average rednecks: poor, under-educated and racialist. Yet, the New York Times recently released a survey disproving that stereotype... at least, the poor portion. The survey also suggests that Tea Party supporters possess an average level of education (in 2010 America, what in hell does that even mean? I know college students who cannot conjugate a verb). Perhaps I’m on the wispy end of the 1970’s culture wars but possessing an education infers that one is aware of social acceptabilities. If Tea Party activists are indeed of average income and education (but totally racialist), then it boggles the mind to consider what for this man is socially taboo if describing Japanese things as ‘slanted’ is comfortably safe. Perhaps his mental calendar flips perpetually between 1944 and 1985?
Second, the man applied a human physiology to a dog without a discernible sense of irony. Slanted eyes - Japanese humans - Japanese dogs. I honestly don’t get the connection. Japanese people do not have slanted eyes. Their eyelids, like many East Asian people, have a double crease. So, yeah, not correct. The physiology of dog eyelids to their original nation makes no goddamn sense and negative a thousand sense in connection to the humans of that geography. Maybe this point links back to number one up there because, call me old-fashioned, an educated discerning person would not have made the inter-species analogy. It’s fucking clumsy, embarrassing.
Third, the man said the horrible bigoted comment in a didactic tone one uses when correcting a simple mistake. Try this exercise at home. Have a person say aloud, “we now have a lot of children so should by a Toyota coupe.” Then, you respond aloud with “no, we shouldn’t buy a coupe because it only has two doors.” Sounds reasonable, right? A sedan is defined by its having four doors and a coupe, two. No big deal here. Now, in that same tone say “well he can’t be Japanese or else his eyes would be all slanted.” Please, please tell me that you feel the wrongness of the words. English speakers should hear a similar wrongness of language not so much in tone as in time with the mistaken conjugation of ‘saw‘ and ‘seen‘ (I seen a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into an Audi vs I saw a Prius accelerate suddenly and then smash into a no you fucking didn’t you litigious liar, shut up).
The stinky cherry atop this anti-social cake is point four: he presumed that I wouldn’t taken offence to his comment. This upsets me most.
The bigot presumes that others of their group share their prejudices; therefore, all white guys are equally bigoted. NO. NO! That logic isn’t logic: it is racist. How does that obvious truth escape racialist people? This is an older, white married man ostensibly not from this city who yet possesses the peace of mind to conclude that an unknown white man also accepts bigotry. The adjective ‘unknown’ ought to activate his brain’s crucial ‘keep the questionable comments inside’ mechanism, but in this case the unknown might as well be ‘nephew.’ And that ‘quality’ about bigotry terrifies: the implied familial-like cohesiveness of racial identity. Remember, he and I are total strangers to the other. What we had in common are skin colour, language and shared space of an intersection. Yet, out of the stranger-ness this man found in me a familiar identity based on skin colour. That shared identity enabled the forging of a sufficient bond for him to comfortably share that horrible comment. His assuming my tolerance in hearing bigotry presumes that all white people are bigots -- that all white people think the same. Exactly zero white people agree with that presumption! Even crazies agree, if asked in a a sensible manner, that not all crazies think the same kind of batshit crazy. I’d bet other people’s money that this bigot would emphatically conclude that all whites do not think the same. He is a shameless racist and I am a heathen sodomite, yet we’re both white. ¡Viva la diferencia! No racial/ethnic/cultural/gender/sexual group appreciates that totality of prejudice by another group. Remember the calendar reference up there? It’s 2010 for fuck’s sake. But, go ahead and test my argument: replace any group in the gap in the following sample sentence as a test. ________ love to go shopping. Blacks? Racist. Asians? Bigoted. Persians? Ditto. Women? Sexist. Homos? (oh... shit...) Homophobic.
What is the take away from this experience? I walked into Centennial Park with Ryu, the scene familiar: sunshine and trees, squirrels and tulips in the city I chose to call home. Yet, I felt different. A strange man infected me with his racial presumption. For the first time I felt bad for being white. The comment about my Japanese dog looped me into a colour-bound prejudice that I did not fight. It happened suddenly. I was unprepared. It took place in public. Whatever. The truth is that my goddamn liberal insistence on the goodness of people cloaked the man’s vile nature until too late. I acted in response to a traffic light instead of in defence of principles and so suffered in the aftermath. This is an education.
Ryu seems unaffected, I am pleased to report.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The semester ending
Two weeks remain in this semester. Tomorrow is the last meaningful class. I didn’t plan beyond the 16th. Luckily for the students, they get two weeks to meet with me in conferences and revise their major papers. Whether they *do* is another matter.
The department chair offered two summer courses. Two. In summer. That’s fucking amazing for a couple reasons. Summer courses are plums usually taken by full-time faculty and part-time faculty with a high seniority level. To get a single course during summer is a minor miracle. To get two looks more like a Godsend. I thanked the chair profusely and empathically accepted the positions. The classes are serendipitous for timing and placement. A 101 is full-summer Saturday morning course in the Grand Rapids main campus and the 102 meets in Holland, a Summer II course in session Tuesday and Thursday from 6-9p. That neither class conflict with JCI schedule or require a shake-up of my newly earned personal life, is a cause for celebration. The income? Also great.
My current students, the ones which stuck out the challenge, will go into their next level courses far more prepared than their counterparts. It sucks that the semester ends right after I memorised their names.
The department chair offered two summer courses. Two. In summer. That’s fucking amazing for a couple reasons. Summer courses are plums usually taken by full-time faculty and part-time faculty with a high seniority level. To get a single course during summer is a minor miracle. To get two looks more like a Godsend. I thanked the chair profusely and empathically accepted the positions. The classes are serendipitous for timing and placement. A 101 is full-summer Saturday morning course in the Grand Rapids main campus and the 102 meets in Holland, a Summer II course in session Tuesday and Thursday from 6-9p. That neither class conflict with JCI schedule or require a shake-up of my newly earned personal life, is a cause for celebration. The income? Also great.
My current students, the ones which stuck out the challenge, will go into their next level courses far more prepared than their counterparts. It sucks that the semester ends right after I memorised their names.
Friday, April 10, 2009
I keep losing weight
I lost approximately thirty pounds since January of 2008. Here is a list of changes that I believe lead to this loss:
Converting to vegetarian
No longer eating fast food
No longer drinking soda/carbonated beverages
Cutting out fried food
Cooking more at home (this waxes and wanes)
Switching work shifts from 4p-Midnight to 10a-6p
Joining a 24hr gym
Daily protein shakes
Reading labels in the grocery store
My weight hit 180lbs last year. This week, the gym’s medical scale (see how I eliminate possibility of error?) read 152. I ran an extra half mile to celebrate. Tonight I celebrated a little more in the form of a gluten-free chocolate cake slice at Uncommon Grounds in Saugatuck. The added bonus of being amongst feathered-hair lesbians makes the scenery change a welcome one.
Despite the possibilities I might cite when people ask whether I’ve lost weight (and how), I usually claim a tapeworm.
Converting to vegetarian
No longer eating fast food
No longer drinking soda/carbonated beverages
Cutting out fried food
Cooking more at home (this waxes and wanes)
Switching work shifts from 4p-Midnight to 10a-6p
Joining a 24hr gym
Daily protein shakes
Reading labels in the grocery store
My weight hit 180lbs last year. This week, the gym’s medical scale (see how I eliminate possibility of error?) read 152. I ran an extra half mile to celebrate. Tonight I celebrated a little more in the form of a gluten-free chocolate cake slice at Uncommon Grounds in Saugatuck. The added bonus of being amongst feathered-hair lesbians makes the scenery change a welcome one.
Despite the possibilities I might cite when people ask whether I’ve lost weight (and how), I usually claim a tapeworm.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Face burn
So, goddamnit, my face is burned. I don’t know what caused it but entertain a theory. My dermatologist prescribed Retin-A for acne. She advised the lowest dose due to its nasty side-effect of drying and irritating the skin. Retin-A sleeps with the group of medications whose side-effects are possibly worse than the condition they treat. The advice says to use Retin-A at night in sparing amounts, only enough to lightly glaze the face, and only at night. Sunlight exacerbates the irritants, making Retin-A the evil twin of sunblock. Even at night though the doctor told me to follow application with a moisturizing creme -- nothing brand specific, but anything hypoallergenic and preferably containing aloe. Four times per week I put on the meds followed by a liberal dose of St Ives creme. 10 days back I noticed a strip of red roughly following my beard-line on the right side of my face. It itched like crazy. I reckoned my skin was telling me to trim a little, so I did. After trimming my beard I then noticed my cheek’s left side looked normal. Neither region gets a Retin-A application (for obvious reasons). I didn’t think much of it until the redness showed up around my eyes. Ten days since the first notice of red, neither patch disappeared despite my reducing the Retin-A to twice per week and applying the St Ives every night.
Today I trolled websites looking for advice. Most people in a similar situation described redness lasting two weeks. They used Neutrogena products as moisturizer. One woman with whom I empathised completely described her red face as sufficiently embarrassing to keep her home-bound. The redness caused such embarrassment that going into public was off-limits. Jesus, do I understand that. My acne would flare so suddenly and viciously that, just months back this happened, I refused to go into public. I’d skip Krav Maga classes, insist watching DVDs at home instead of going to the cinema, making coffee at home rather than risk the stares at Lemonjello’s. Facial acne during teen years is one thing (and expected), acne at 30 is another fucking game altogether. And it’s another fucking world as a gay guy -- where looks are paramount. Anyway, I lost faith in the St Ives creme -- in part for it seeming to make the itching worse - and am heading to Meijer later to find Neutrogena. I had a personal embargo against Neutorgena products back in the late 90’s because of Norway’s resumption of whaling. I’m refusing to look up this issue right now for entirely selfish reasons.
Today I trolled websites looking for advice. Most people in a similar situation described redness lasting two weeks. They used Neutrogena products as moisturizer. One woman with whom I empathised completely described her red face as sufficiently embarrassing to keep her home-bound. The redness caused such embarrassment that going into public was off-limits. Jesus, do I understand that. My acne would flare so suddenly and viciously that, just months back this happened, I refused to go into public. I’d skip Krav Maga classes, insist watching DVDs at home instead of going to the cinema, making coffee at home rather than risk the stares at Lemonjello’s. Facial acne during teen years is one thing (and expected), acne at 30 is another fucking game altogether. And it’s another fucking world as a gay guy -- where looks are paramount. Anyway, I lost faith in the St Ives creme -- in part for it seeming to make the itching worse - and am heading to Meijer later to find Neutrogena. I had a personal embargo against Neutorgena products back in the late 90’s because of Norway’s resumption of whaling. I’m refusing to look up this issue right now for entirely selfish reasons.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Atavism
I promised myself years ago to write a response to William A Henry’s 1994 book In Defense of Elitism. Phil recommended that I read it, so I promptly bought it. It then waited on a bookshelf for a year. I’ve read it twice, the most recent one recently. This post is not the self-promised response to the book as a whole but rather of a single paragraph. Henry’s finest paragraph lies almost hidden and unassuming within his most controversial chapter, “Affirmative Confusion” whose topic any any reasonable person can deduce. The paragraph is reproduced below (with all due respect to Henry and his publisher’s intellectual and property rights):
The error is in looking for a group basis, a categorical basis, for pride. One’s worth and self-regard ought to come from individual competitive performance, not from group identity. Pride based on clan or tribal connections is atavistic. It appeals to people who fear they cannot succeed as individuals, and by diverting their energies it all but ensures that they will will not succeed as individuals (91).
The chapter is obviously addressing American Affirmative-Action programs. Henry claims from his position of anti-egalitarianism that the AA programs play into group identity politics to the detriment of all involved. Blacks, he writes, will subsume individual responsibility to the quota system. That instead of studying, hard work, building social connections, and community service upon which one builds a platform for future (and continued) success, individual blacks will rely on the quota system to guarantee a position of employment. Whites, then, will notice less-qualified blacks working amongst the professional ranks and wonder why a double standard exists for excellence. The resulting tension pushes racial reconciliation even further down the timeline instead of the intended sooner. The pernicious, camouflaged land-mines of identity politics litter the ground on which American racial groups are destined to share. AA programs result in, according to Henry, an atavistic impulse amongst contemporary generations of Americans. People for whom the Civil War and Civil Rights are chapters in high school textbooks instead of lessons on social revolution experience present racial problems in a cognitive dissonance. In other words, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and whites reach backward, rummaging through history’s closet, and from their group’s narrative derive their individual attitude. White’s (rightly) say that neither their families nor themselves owned slaves, voted to segregate Asians along the coasts, or used Hispanic nannies. Blacks will reach back to conjure up the spirit of oppression -- none of which matters to Hispanics and Asians. Hispanics wonder aloud why blacks deserve special programs when Hispanics constitute a larger slice of the population and have that whole language barrier to work out. Asians, well, I don’t know enough about Asian-American culture positions to say (and frankly, neither does Henry). The atavistic impulse that Henry disdains is individual’s use of historic events on a racial/ethnic scale as rationale for present individual problems. In other words, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. If a black woman, Hispanic man, white man, Asian woman cannot qualify for professional and secure jobs, the applicant should not cast a net backwards to find explanations. The problem does not lie in the past but in the present. One’s resume is nearly all that matters in our time, not our excuses.
The error is in looking for a group basis, a categorical basis, for pride. One’s worth and self-regard ought to come from individual competitive performance, not from group identity. Pride based on clan or tribal connections is atavistic. It appeals to people who fear they cannot succeed as individuals, and by diverting their energies it all but ensures that they will will not succeed as individuals (91).
The chapter is obviously addressing American Affirmative-Action programs. Henry claims from his position of anti-egalitarianism that the AA programs play into group identity politics to the detriment of all involved. Blacks, he writes, will subsume individual responsibility to the quota system. That instead of studying, hard work, building social connections, and community service upon which one builds a platform for future (and continued) success, individual blacks will rely on the quota system to guarantee a position of employment. Whites, then, will notice less-qualified blacks working amongst the professional ranks and wonder why a double standard exists for excellence. The resulting tension pushes racial reconciliation even further down the timeline instead of the intended sooner. The pernicious, camouflaged land-mines of identity politics litter the ground on which American racial groups are destined to share. AA programs result in, according to Henry, an atavistic impulse amongst contemporary generations of Americans. People for whom the Civil War and Civil Rights are chapters in high school textbooks instead of lessons on social revolution experience present racial problems in a cognitive dissonance. In other words, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and whites reach backward, rummaging through history’s closet, and from their group’s narrative derive their individual attitude. White’s (rightly) say that neither their families nor themselves owned slaves, voted to segregate Asians along the coasts, or used Hispanic nannies. Blacks will reach back to conjure up the spirit of oppression -- none of which matters to Hispanics and Asians. Hispanics wonder aloud why blacks deserve special programs when Hispanics constitute a larger slice of the population and have that whole language barrier to work out. Asians, well, I don’t know enough about Asian-American culture positions to say (and frankly, neither does Henry). The atavistic impulse that Henry disdains is individual’s use of historic events on a racial/ethnic scale as rationale for present individual problems. In other words, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. If a black woman, Hispanic man, white man, Asian woman cannot qualify for professional and secure jobs, the applicant should not cast a net backwards to find explanations. The problem does not lie in the past but in the present. One’s resume is nearly all that matters in our time, not our excuses.
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