I can remember how I used to speculate about how I would encounter my future.
I was going to be big. Not the biggest, but something. We were all going to be something. I don’t think my aspirations or my optimism have changed much, but I look back on that spot I was standing proclaiming my conquest, and I realize now that the mere fact that I’m looking means something has changed. The knowledge of time passing, of a single day gone, or another step toward the abyss, that’s what aging is. They say you’re childhood is over the moment you know you’re going to die. It’s amazing how you can go on until this point, whatever this point is now, and think you’ll be the first one to live forever.
I don't feel old, but I'm starting to understand what it means to become older, to no longer be the proud owner of a reckless youth.
I can remember the pleasure of not seeing the road in front of me. Usually youthful discussions unfettered by hindsight were fun because there was so much in front of us. There's a certain comfort in the freedom of uncertainty. I could be this or I could go after that, and as far as the cloudy road would show me, that goal would be mine for the taking, not just for the talking. The method was thankfully always far enough beyond my headlights that I needn’t have worried about the madness on the road between it and me. I knew it was long and wide enough that the predictions and gambles wouldn't throw me far enough off my trail that I couldn't find my way back. Life was a platinum credit card, with an eternity until payment was due.
I’ve watched things occur among my friends and to my family that have paved the road behind me, cleared the cloudiness and sharpened my view when I turn and look backward. I’ve been to the funerals and weddings of people I think about every day, said I love you and been rejected, said I’m sorry and been accepted, I’ve joked about baldness and illness, gray hair and mortgages, and brought gifts to my friends’ children and told them how big they’re getting. I’ve marked spots in the world with my footprints where the dust will never settle the same way. I have lived well by my estimation. Some experiences make you different than the day before they occurred. You can’t be who you were the day before, so you must then be one day closer to death.
I remember an essay by Umberto Eco I read during university. It was about Superman, which is what originally caught my interest. He discussed how the comic book stories never changed the man, essentially different from most characters of his iconography, who progress through experience. He is challenged, he fights and overcomes, but concluding every adventure he stands unchanged. No one learns his identity, no one gets closer to him, he doesn't step another day toward death; he remains cursed by immortality. Superman and his story are not allowed to age, the inherent dubiousness of being an idol. Though his icon retains its impressive profile, he stands envious of the humans, because it's the experiences of success and frailty actually makes us great.
Just try explaining that to… us.
We don't like being older. We don't like the idea of another day passing us another step towards death. We don't like the idea of being on the other side of the peak of our performance. We don't like admitting that failure. We fear being perceived in comparison to the younger us, the ultimate rival.
Why isn't our pride inherent? Why can't it be ignorant of our calendar age? Why do we always have to wait for acceptance and cautiously avoid the possibility of being poorly evaluated? Why does age eventually equal castration? Why do I feel I have to write about it?
I wonder sometimes about the source of my concern. What is the actual problem with potentially having fewer days before me than behind me? Why can't I be satisfied with what I've done? Am I scared of death? Do I fear being elderly? Do I fear being an accountable adult? Is it merely that I'll slip out of the PEPSI demographic?
We are all greedy when it comes to our life story. I think we all want to be the biography of the century, to believe that we are all immortal and worthy in some way. We want to amass all the quality possible and don't relish the thought of the window of opportunity closing. Aging becomes about potential, what we think we are capable of achieving, and what we potentially stand to lose.
I've been lucky to sidestep many of the general aesthetics of aging. I haven't lost my hair, my hair hasn't lost its pigment, my physicality remains, with a scar here and there. I am older but I'm not old, it's as though a second adolescence has befallen me. I'm in between worlds.
I am the guy in the group of friends that has resisted maturity. Maturity meant something different five years ago, as did success and progression. I sought an elusive career, while they each found a mate, committed to a home and built a family. Now they have a different achievement, a purpose intertwined with those in their family portrait. These friends are not alone on their road into the uncertain future. Every choice they make considers the people who consider them. What they’ve built has built one of the lines in time that marks their path. Sharing uncertainty makes the horizon smaller, but I know they don’t lament that.
Infinity is no longer right there. I can remember feeling comforted in discussing my ravenous and boundless aspirations. With my fitful hindsight, I now see that they were built on a gamble free of consequence. No one can tell you the world is not yours when you're looking over three-quarters of your life; a forest too massive to think about the tress. As ugly cynicism slowing plods in, I now ask myself questions with less fantastical answers.
The most interesting thing about this landmark of life, this source of infinite anguish, the threat of aging, is how it's been sold to us. We’re told it’s a condition of weakness and irrelevance. The worst thing about being old is accepting the sales pitch, that you've lost something from your former youth.
Older is a seemingly unforced admission.
Older is not just about feeling limitations, it's about dwelling in consequences.
I'm lucky to stand in a moment with enough road behind me to admit mistakes with the mask of wisdom, but with enough horizon far enough ahead of me to be inspired by my persevering aspirations.
I’m glad the road is clearer, both behind and ahead of me, and for the loss of blessed uncertainty I have gained the burden of experience. I look back now at the hopeful kid and wish he could look back up at me. For the most part I’d have nice things to say, but maybe between the two of us we could grab a nugget of advice from the really old version of both of us.
I am wine. I am art. One day might float into the next with little or no distinction, leaving me looking for lost time as I look back down the road, but regardless of what convention tells me I’ve lost, I know that today I’m better than yesterday.
Grandpatrick
Hate Day
Hate Day
Welcome to my New Holiday.
Soon enough it will be appropriated by all the artificial sentiment assembly lines and Hallmark-induced quasi-event.
I hate it already.
For the moment, I’ll stomach one revulsion while I revel in many others. These are the things I hate today. Try not to take a bite out of your monitor as you’re swept up in the spirit of the occasion.
I’ll start things off with mosey, before I get into a gallop.
I hate people.
There’s an expression I use from time to time: ‘A person is intelligent but people are idiots.’ I’m not certain who said it, but it’s in this context that I hate people. I hate the way people regard other people. We have an instinct to assume the worst or the inferior quality from those around us. At some level an instinct of survival tells us not to rely on others, assuming our own superiority, instead giving us the benefit of ___doubt.
I get a crook in my eye every time I see a driver gesture something needless and offensive because someone in front of him did something to impede his egocentric progress. Every time I see someone cut in line, hypocritically pull some thoughtless insult from their holster or get away with something needlessly profitable, not because it’s mean, but because whenever we do it, and we all do it, we think we are entitled to it.
I hate it because I see the version of them and us on the other side thinking: ‘how dare they.’
People suck and get my hate because they lose objectivity. We are somehow designed to forget we are surrounded by persons, and we become driven by thoughtless emotions, not the logic we all deserve.
People loose logic, they generalize and stereotype… they can’t drive! I hate them.
I hate things.
I hate how important things, also known as stuff, have become. A great line from a great movie*: “Why do I know what a duvet is? How can this possibly help me as a person?” The characters follow with: “We are polishing the brass on the Titanic.” While problems surround us like a herd of icebergs, we concern ourselves with the ornate. I am convinced that things, the clutter rising around us, in unrequested glossies in the mailbox, in insipid jingles bashing against my face through the car stereo, and in the micro-methodically constructed market identity that has decided what I’ll drive, wear, eat, hum to, live for, and listen to, are all only getting in the way.
A better television screen should not be considered innovation.
I hate the things I want but don’t have, how I talk myself out of them and salivate for them again. I feel like we’re all dieters at a dessert buffet, some of us uncontrollable, some unconvinced, but none entirely immune.
I hate trends for the same reason I hate things. I hate the thoughts we dedicate to fashion, in all its forms, none of which contribute.
I hate __gate.
I can’t stand how every scandal since the early seventies, political or otherwise, is labeled with the snappy suffix ‘gate’. Watergate’s biggest crime is in bringing us Waiter-gate, Sewer-gate, Lewinski-gate, Governor-gate… I’m now waiting for an intense senate hearing-style fracas over someone’s offensive white picket fence.
I know what we’ll call it… wait for it… Gate-gate.
Damn you, Woodward and Bernstein.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty pissed. I just noticed my fingertips digging into the top of my desk.
I hate hate.
Slightly contradictory perhaps, but please continue.
It could be the worst word in the English Language. It represents an evolution of our species that has never been necessary. Survival has never required hating another person or an object, or even a pop-singer. Even the use of ‘hate’ in a passing colloquial-dalliance doesn’t make sense.
You can’t actually hate cooked vegetables, you can’t hate an unfashionable trend, and you might think you hate an anti-popular Hollywood idol, but it is nearly impossible to hate the perception that represents them. You can dislike whatever you please, you are not required to like everything, in fact if we all liked the same thing I would probably hate that too, but can the negativity. Saying you hate the little things makes it slightly more okay to hate the big things. Give your over-developed hate muscle a little alone time.
Aside from the occasional appearance razor-sharp satire, why do we have hate? I hate hate.
Do as I say, not as I hate, in this case.
I hate Super-Fans.
This hate includes most deep conversations about sports. Professional athletic excellence is among the last great showcases in our society. A good game is the last bastion of true unpredictability. Some of the great examples of modern poetry and expression are drawn from the heroism of athletic achievement. Aside from the celebrity garbage that tends to follow many of its figures, which I also hate, there’s a perception many fans have of their own involvement that bothers me.
Super sports fans seem to have this feeling of entitlement over their team. Sometimes I overhear of am drawn into a discussion that involves a group of players they’ll never meet, and how ‘We’re really going to get them this year,’ or ‘We’ve really gotta get rid of this player.’ My least favorite is how they seem to attach an awareness on to the players’ personalities as though they know them. They sound like teenage boy band fanatics: ‘He’s so spoiled,’ or ‘all he cares about is the money.’ It’s often fascinating insight considering they see them only through a hockey visor.
As for the meatheads that wear only body paint to a subzero football game, I keep waiting for Darwin to come and save them.
I’m officially mad now. I really hate those guys. Just picturing the dopey bastards…
I hate Wal-Mart on a Sunday.
This is really a love-hate thing. I keep going. I tend to be confronted with the absolute worst of society in mere steps on to the ‘purchase pathway’. I can walk around for two minutes and be stocked with material, and resentment.
I hate how some parents look at their kids as a burden in department stores. I hate this mostly on Sundays, in Wal-Mart. I just want to grab their slappy, crappy parental hands off that clutch of their kids’ shoulders, take them back in time, and take all their own fuckin’ toys and burn them. I know childcare is tricky for a lot of parents, but if they’re that much trouble, if you can’t relate to how cool the toy section looks to someone who doesn’t understand the concept of money yet, one of you stay with them in the car, and stay out of my universe.
I hate pump-action toy shotguns.
Why do these exist? A handheld conveyance for spraying water or suction-cup darts or foam puff balls or light-up laser effects is different to me than a toy replicated from a firearm carried only by police, criminals, and action movie stars. It’s replicated from a device designed and perceived to harm other humans. Why do we have a version for kids to practice with?
The thought of some nasty bastard at Nerf getting some wild x-mas bonus because of his breakthrough shotgun design makes me want to punch a dog.
I hate PDAs; the public affection kind. Sorry, I just do…my essay. I hate the text message kind too. Who named them after fruit? I hate them too.
I hate that movies ran out of originality ten years ago; there must be no good books left.**
I hate the overt misuse of our great language: ‘youse’, ‘whole ‘nother’, ‘you ain’t never gonna get it’, etc. I dislike people using the letter ‘Z’ in place of ‘S’ and thinking it’s clever. English is the most nuanced and grandly verbose form of communication on the planet. Frankly, I believe it and each of us sharing it deserve the proper respect.
The next time someone uses ‘seen’ in the wrong tense… “I seen this great show today,” I’m going to punch them in their teeth.
I hate faux-hawks.
I think I just crushed my mouse.
I hate blister packs. I bought a package of ‘energy-saving’ light bulbs recently wrapped in three square meters of rigid plastic. What energy has been saved here? Everything comes in this impenetrable crap. The other night I saw a commercial for a cutter specifically designed to open this packaging. I hate commercials.
Here’s an idea: Loose the space-age polymer, Mother Earth’s been through enough agonizing irony.
I hate greeting cards. Mentioned earlier, I know. I hate that you can buy a sentiment. When I know one is required I look for the one with the least written on it, scratch that crap out, and try to say something meaningful. I mostly just get them for the envelope.
They have potential for redeeming themselves when they introduce the hate card.
I hate makeover shows. TV needs a bunch of obnoxious quasi-experts to invade unannounced and show every friggin’ channel how to find its true beauty.
I hate people who stop walking in a progression. Do you ever find yourself moving with the rhythm of the crowd, through a sports arena, to the subway, or towards the top of an escalator, and the person or couple in front of you JUST STOP? They’ve decided to take an ignorant little moment to discuss the rest of their lives, forcing you to crawl over and around them while you get people crowding your back like you’re on a bobsled team.
Be aware of your surroundings, be decisive in your progress, but above all be thankful, that I didn’t shove your tongue into the top of that escalator.
I hate chest hair sprouts. I hate them mostly because I can’t not look at the nasty bastards. Rediscover the crew neck undershirt, gentlemen. Your body hair is not my business. Sadly, the obnoxious self-righteous makeover-naughts are heading to your house next for waxtime.
I hate childishness. It’s different than playfulness. Children are egocentric and are learning to be capable of selflessness and consideration of certain consequences. No excuse from an adult.
I hate Reality TV, mostly because of the stupendous contradiction. I hate addictions, I hate attractions, I hate affectations. I hate perfume for men, SUVs with TVs in them, excessive use of the color pink, black stereotypes, gay stereotypes, lame white-guy stereotypes, the price of gas, the cost of alternatives, dog clothes, mailbox flyers, theatre lineups, politicians’ pensions, talk radio, people that don’t know how to use four-way stop signs, everything above DOUBLE, people that don’t know when to shut up, and people who don’t finish essays.
...I pretty much hate everything that has the capacity to be stupid or is the result of stupidity. So... yeah, I hate everything today.
I don’t hate you.
Keep your dukes up.
Patrick
* The movie is Fight Club
** My Novel: The Valiant Unheroic - Find it at www.chapters.ca -
Welcome to my New Holiday.
Soon enough it will be appropriated by all the artificial sentiment assembly lines and Hallmark-induced quasi-event.
I hate it already.
For the moment, I’ll stomach one revulsion while I revel in many others. These are the things I hate today. Try not to take a bite out of your monitor as you’re swept up in the spirit of the occasion.
I’ll start things off with mosey, before I get into a gallop.
I hate people.
There’s an expression I use from time to time: ‘A person is intelligent but people are idiots.’ I’m not certain who said it, but it’s in this context that I hate people. I hate the way people regard other people. We have an instinct to assume the worst or the inferior quality from those around us. At some level an instinct of survival tells us not to rely on others, assuming our own superiority, instead giving us the benefit of ___doubt.
I get a crook in my eye every time I see a driver gesture something needless and offensive because someone in front of him did something to impede his egocentric progress. Every time I see someone cut in line, hypocritically pull some thoughtless insult from their holster or get away with something needlessly profitable, not because it’s mean, but because whenever we do it, and we all do it, we think we are entitled to it.
I hate it because I see the version of them and us on the other side thinking: ‘how dare they.’
People suck and get my hate because they lose objectivity. We are somehow designed to forget we are surrounded by persons, and we become driven by thoughtless emotions, not the logic we all deserve.
People loose logic, they generalize and stereotype… they can’t drive! I hate them.
I hate things.
I hate how important things, also known as stuff, have become. A great line from a great movie*: “Why do I know what a duvet is? How can this possibly help me as a person?” The characters follow with: “We are polishing the brass on the Titanic.” While problems surround us like a herd of icebergs, we concern ourselves with the ornate. I am convinced that things, the clutter rising around us, in unrequested glossies in the mailbox, in insipid jingles bashing against my face through the car stereo, and in the micro-methodically constructed market identity that has decided what I’ll drive, wear, eat, hum to, live for, and listen to, are all only getting in the way.
A better television screen should not be considered innovation.
I hate the things I want but don’t have, how I talk myself out of them and salivate for them again. I feel like we’re all dieters at a dessert buffet, some of us uncontrollable, some unconvinced, but none entirely immune.
I hate trends for the same reason I hate things. I hate the thoughts we dedicate to fashion, in all its forms, none of which contribute.
I hate __gate.
I can’t stand how every scandal since the early seventies, political or otherwise, is labeled with the snappy suffix ‘gate’. Watergate’s biggest crime is in bringing us Waiter-gate, Sewer-gate, Lewinski-gate, Governor-gate… I’m now waiting for an intense senate hearing-style fracas over someone’s offensive white picket fence.
I know what we’ll call it… wait for it… Gate-gate.
Damn you, Woodward and Bernstein.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty pissed. I just noticed my fingertips digging into the top of my desk.
I hate hate.
Slightly contradictory perhaps, but please continue.
It could be the worst word in the English Language. It represents an evolution of our species that has never been necessary. Survival has never required hating another person or an object, or even a pop-singer. Even the use of ‘hate’ in a passing colloquial-dalliance doesn’t make sense.
You can’t actually hate cooked vegetables, you can’t hate an unfashionable trend, and you might think you hate an anti-popular Hollywood idol, but it is nearly impossible to hate the perception that represents them. You can dislike whatever you please, you are not required to like everything, in fact if we all liked the same thing I would probably hate that too, but can the negativity. Saying you hate the little things makes it slightly more okay to hate the big things. Give your over-developed hate muscle a little alone time.
Aside from the occasional appearance razor-sharp satire, why do we have hate? I hate hate.
Do as I say, not as I hate, in this case.
I hate Super-Fans.
This hate includes most deep conversations about sports. Professional athletic excellence is among the last great showcases in our society. A good game is the last bastion of true unpredictability. Some of the great examples of modern poetry and expression are drawn from the heroism of athletic achievement. Aside from the celebrity garbage that tends to follow many of its figures, which I also hate, there’s a perception many fans have of their own involvement that bothers me.
Super sports fans seem to have this feeling of entitlement over their team. Sometimes I overhear of am drawn into a discussion that involves a group of players they’ll never meet, and how ‘We’re really going to get them this year,’ or ‘We’ve really gotta get rid of this player.’ My least favorite is how they seem to attach an awareness on to the players’ personalities as though they know them. They sound like teenage boy band fanatics: ‘He’s so spoiled,’ or ‘all he cares about is the money.’ It’s often fascinating insight considering they see them only through a hockey visor.
As for the meatheads that wear only body paint to a subzero football game, I keep waiting for Darwin to come and save them.
I’m officially mad now. I really hate those guys. Just picturing the dopey bastards…
I hate Wal-Mart on a Sunday.
This is really a love-hate thing. I keep going. I tend to be confronted with the absolute worst of society in mere steps on to the ‘purchase pathway’. I can walk around for two minutes and be stocked with material, and resentment.
I hate how some parents look at their kids as a burden in department stores. I hate this mostly on Sundays, in Wal-Mart. I just want to grab their slappy, crappy parental hands off that clutch of their kids’ shoulders, take them back in time, and take all their own fuckin’ toys and burn them. I know childcare is tricky for a lot of parents, but if they’re that much trouble, if you can’t relate to how cool the toy section looks to someone who doesn’t understand the concept of money yet, one of you stay with them in the car, and stay out of my universe.
I hate pump-action toy shotguns.
Why do these exist? A handheld conveyance for spraying water or suction-cup darts or foam puff balls or light-up laser effects is different to me than a toy replicated from a firearm carried only by police, criminals, and action movie stars. It’s replicated from a device designed and perceived to harm other humans. Why do we have a version for kids to practice with?
The thought of some nasty bastard at Nerf getting some wild x-mas bonus because of his breakthrough shotgun design makes me want to punch a dog.
I hate PDAs; the public affection kind. Sorry, I just do…my essay. I hate the text message kind too. Who named them after fruit? I hate them too.
I hate that movies ran out of originality ten years ago; there must be no good books left.**
I hate the overt misuse of our great language: ‘youse’, ‘whole ‘nother’, ‘you ain’t never gonna get it’, etc. I dislike people using the letter ‘Z’ in place of ‘S’ and thinking it’s clever. English is the most nuanced and grandly verbose form of communication on the planet. Frankly, I believe it and each of us sharing it deserve the proper respect.
The next time someone uses ‘seen’ in the wrong tense… “I seen this great show today,” I’m going to punch them in their teeth.
I hate faux-hawks.
I think I just crushed my mouse.
I hate blister packs. I bought a package of ‘energy-saving’ light bulbs recently wrapped in three square meters of rigid plastic. What energy has been saved here? Everything comes in this impenetrable crap. The other night I saw a commercial for a cutter specifically designed to open this packaging. I hate commercials.
Here’s an idea: Loose the space-age polymer, Mother Earth’s been through enough agonizing irony.
I hate greeting cards. Mentioned earlier, I know. I hate that you can buy a sentiment. When I know one is required I look for the one with the least written on it, scratch that crap out, and try to say something meaningful. I mostly just get them for the envelope.
They have potential for redeeming themselves when they introduce the hate card.
I hate makeover shows. TV needs a bunch of obnoxious quasi-experts to invade unannounced and show every friggin’ channel how to find its true beauty.
I hate people who stop walking in a progression. Do you ever find yourself moving with the rhythm of the crowd, through a sports arena, to the subway, or towards the top of an escalator, and the person or couple in front of you JUST STOP? They’ve decided to take an ignorant little moment to discuss the rest of their lives, forcing you to crawl over and around them while you get people crowding your back like you’re on a bobsled team.
Be aware of your surroundings, be decisive in your progress, but above all be thankful, that I didn’t shove your tongue into the top of that escalator.
I hate chest hair sprouts. I hate them mostly because I can’t not look at the nasty bastards. Rediscover the crew neck undershirt, gentlemen. Your body hair is not my business. Sadly, the obnoxious self-righteous makeover-naughts are heading to your house next for waxtime.
I hate childishness. It’s different than playfulness. Children are egocentric and are learning to be capable of selflessness and consideration of certain consequences. No excuse from an adult.
I hate Reality TV, mostly because of the stupendous contradiction. I hate addictions, I hate attractions, I hate affectations. I hate perfume for men, SUVs with TVs in them, excessive use of the color pink, black stereotypes, gay stereotypes, lame white-guy stereotypes, the price of gas, the cost of alternatives, dog clothes, mailbox flyers, theatre lineups, politicians’ pensions, talk radio, people that don’t know how to use four-way stop signs, everything above DOUBLE, people that don’t know when to shut up, and people who don’t finish essays.
...I pretty much hate everything that has the capacity to be stupid or is the result of stupidity. So... yeah, I hate everything today.
I don’t hate you.
Keep your dukes up.
Patrick
* The movie is Fight Club
** My Novel: The Valiant Unheroic - Find it at www.chapters.ca -
Was Superman My First Religion?
I consider this the most important of the most important questions:
What inspired you when you were uncorrupted?
The roots of the identity you've chosen, the basis for the decisions you've made, the goals you've sought, the campaigns you've supported, you hairstyles you've worn, the music you couldn't stand, and things your friends did that you couldn't stand for, all grew from the first thing that inspired you.
When you were young that source of inspiration became your universe growing in front of you. You stood behind that influence, rested a structure of faith beneath it, and the person you are now and the place you now stand began from there.
Inspiration is something grander than creativity when you’re too young to be cynical. What could be more important to who you are than your first hero?
My father was my teacher, my mother was my protector; they provided the foundation of my life. I had friends I looked up to and a cool older cousin that taught me to fish, but no hero with his hand on my shoulder, no one specifically that showed me I could be, achieve or contribute something greater. I think for most kids, inspiration comes from something intangibly beyond your grasp. Heroism is inspired free will in action. Heroism is an ideal often outside the walls of your home and sometimes beyond the bounds of your realm.
For me being boundless was all about a cape and an 'S'. My hero was the hero.
I always wanted to be that kind of hero. I always wanted to play the good guy. I didn’t know how to enjoy the game from the other side. I’m certain not only that this influence was inspired from a cape and a curl of black hair, but that it formed the core of the now greyed and muddled virtues that direct me today. This seed is as clear in my memory as the tree that grew outside my first bedroom window.
What is the real purpose of religion when you’re too young to consciously choose a savior? When school is new, reading is new, and making decisions just beyond the reach of your parents is still a fresh taste in your mouth, the frame that you put around the daily experiment of learning is measured by the values inherited in your family’s collective faith, be they religious or not. In a sense your family is your religion, for lack of a better word.
As you grow into adolescence the purpose of faith becomes more philosophical; the religion of your family is intended to challenge who you are and ask where you belong, why you do what you do, and to what you should aspire toward. When you’re young religion is intended to give you a direction before you really require any answers. When you begin to ask questions, it evolves with you…
And then you reject it all.
I’ve always tried to do the right thing, which in my adolescence meant discarding and rejecting in the name of the unfocused rebellion with unflinching conformity of the almighty teenage anti-church.
I got in the long line waiting to be cool, and like everybody else, when it finally got to my turn I found myself reaching back into that basket of values and looking up that old tree in the backyard for fruit. I began to see the things on the road behind me with a new perspective, even if they were way up in the sky…
a bird…
a plane...
Superman is the creation of two young men from Cleveland. By no means are these cartoonists regarded as prophets, but within the right circles they represent the inception of something earth-changing. He is potentially the most recognizable and reproduced pulp-icon of the last century, exceeded in exposure by only actual religious figures… and perhaps Mickey Mouse. He is deserving of all conceivable manner of milestones and monuments, but should he be in any way a hero to the faithful?
There are a variety of parallels designed and drawn between saints, men of the cloth, and the Man of Steel. Unearthly origins, altruism, sacrifice, exodus, and a memorable symbol are common threads. None of these accomplishments in his case are real, but faith is never really about the tangible. Though these lines are often bridged for the purposes of selling movie tickets and novelty toothpaste, a certain context of greatness and influence is undeniable, and invincible. Through every medium, in every incarnation, the message and his mission remain constant. A kid in my old neighborhood will give you the same one word description at the sight of that ‘S’ than a kid in Japan or Russia or Mars. His iconic message is gospels of heroism, strength, guardianship and self-sacrifice. His is a story that crosses more boundaries than any doctrine is intended to traverse.
This all might seem trivial. How could a character of fiction, designed for a fantasy-seeking pre-adolescent, employed largely for the quest of advertising revenue, be pedestaled as some manner of religious mythos? Could I be more sacrilegious? This is after all a clear violation the very first commandment; but after all things, what better one to start with?
What is worship? Is it servitude? Is that really the path intended by any creator that gave out free will? Is inspiration any less valuable than worship? In my time of pure youthful discovery, my imagination was captured not by a doctrine but by a colorful adventurer that embodied a different kind of sacrifice. There is value in that, rooted in my secret-identity at the deepest level, which goes beyond what’s theologically measurable, what passes as cool in contemporary company, and seems as good in your maturity as it did when comics were cool. Identifying with this hero made sense to me when very little did and the grown up version of that little herophile, with his safety-pinned red cape and super-rubber boots, (they still fit - snuggly) relishes that memory. I might be too old to be a Super-fan, I might live in a world of sour grown-olds that need to quantify the quality that inspires them, but I think we have to hang on to that feeling.
Whether it’s Shakespeare, a nursery rhyme, an inspiring relative, Jesus Christ or an empty Kleenex box, if it stuck with you then I’m behind you. What you choose to link your faith behind is individual and all about your own experience.
My own prophecy regarding the eventual Man of Steel’s sainthood will sadly go unanswered for some time. There’s no doubt in my mind that this fictional figure will go on and keep his place as an icon, a story, a Halloween costume, a wallpaper pattern, and the Patron Saint of Pulp Immortality. I picture the archeologists of some distant future unearthing our comic book parchments and interpreting some sort of Hercules-like worship from the issue where he first encounters Kryptonite. The real question is how many generations will go by before he becomes mythology, before his place in society isn’t relegated to marketing demographics or a catch phrase. I for one think we owe our heroes more than that.
In the end, religion really isn't the right word for it. An organized system of beliefs structured around the faithfully unanswerable doesn't describe what grew around me as I poured through my comic books with a theologian’s precision.
In the bitter end it goes like this: grown-ups have religion, kids have heroes. Any bits of the perception of that kid within us that transcends into our maturity is a gift. Any chance we take to look on the whole world with brand new eyes and consider that anything is possible we are lucky and for that moment we are heroic.
Then it’s back to being Clark Kent.
Are Our Heroes Our Fault?
I wonder sometimes if it's always been this way.
It rolls back from the shore with our receding innocence; the eroding translucence of our youthful values is tragic and tragically inevitable. Our heroes are going to fail us eventually; it’s a truth we all encounter. As the younger generation matures in this environment of bombardment and sopping media saturation, I keep seeing figures ascend to the altar of modern adoration that begin the trajectory of a glorious falling star, but hit the earth like a rusty anvil.
Are these celestial belly flops and the concurrently failing faith of the generation beholding them the fault of the heroes, or is the fall and the heroes themselves the fault of those they’re supposed to be saving?
Heroes and Idols have been poured into one mold and turned out as golden calves for as long as their stories have had audiences. We have always honored champions, fed vicariously from their victories, and sought them out to fight our battles for us. Yes, we are to blame. For every golden god, every false profit, every sainted sports hero and substance-soaked rock star, and for every flash in every pan there has been a stage provided by a willing flock.
This flock will come to deny their shepherd.
My novel, 'The Valiant Unheroic', is about a young man named Eric with a heroic purpose but no conventionally admirable qualities. As the selfless feats he performs become more undeniably spectacular, the marvel they conjure fuels a growing public allure. The fascinated people call him hero, but their fixation seeks an all too mortal conclusion, and proves that even the best fame and heroism are mutually elusive.
**Note: A spoiler alert for those currently reading 'The Valiant Unheroic'. ***
As Eric's heroic impact/novelty evolves, he finds himself asking where his own contribution began and ended. His legacy looks to be comprised of dated headlines and victims he's helped that return to their predators. The tragedies of his selfless life leave him wanting for at least the semblance of accomplishment, of a purpose fulfilled.
He asks, as I ask, much of the following.
Is his heroism found in the intention to help?
They say the road to Hell is paved with these intentions, but it is right to judge a person's attempt to help with hindsight at a perfect 20/20?
During the hostage rescue that comes to define his heroic career, Eric is forced into a situation where he must make a decision about the terrorist's life versus the potential harm of numerous innocent bystanders. In spectacular fashion he saves the day for the hostages, for the headline-buying public, and the year for the tabloid media below. He makes a decision beyond his station, that costs the troubled captor his life and the insurance companies a fortune. He calls his own heroism into a perilous question of profit and loss.
Eric's intention was purely benign but the result becomes contentious. Should his act be regarded in its seed or in its blossom? As it tends to be with the line dividing hero and terror, should it merely depend on perspective?
The idea of heroic intention excludes most subjects of modern worship; mannequins, champions, and doomed poets. A recipient of glory does not ascend to the pedestal intending to be helpful. Glory is a byproduct of competition and victory. The two motivations do not stand together.
In the end, good intention is irrelevant to heroism or a heroic legacy because it is integral to our nature to honor that which honors us. We can’t identify with something that doesn’t have a result, an event or a product logo for us to stand behind.
Why must we perceive when seeing is so readily available to us?
Is heroism found in the outcome?
We tend to celebrate great outcomes not best intentions, quantity not quality, but how often is such a correlation actually accurate?
The company that released a certain performance-enabling blue pill was designing a heart medication, but how will their rise be remembered? George W. Bush was after something righteous in the Middle East, and Christopher Columbus certainly wasn’t as he headed west… The ends rarely represent means, or what was meant, whatever that means.
As Eric’s fame soars and the city discovers a forgotten species of hero, Eric is pummeled with the sudden evolution of his purpose. He quickly learns how his contribution is metered and judged, how his place in the community is as a commodity not a guide, not an example to follow or even a source of inspiration.
It’s impossible to be heroic when an expectation grows around you. Judging results in quantities or comparing them or validating them removes the spark that starts the fire in flock. Heroism entails exceeding expectations, not maintaining a quota. There’s little if any inspiration within expectation. Where’s the fun in just matching the benchmark?
Is heroism then found in the aftermath?
Every contribution, as an article of history, is only as glorious as it is made out to be by the bard who portrays it in a play, a textbook or a tell-all biography.
How many people have been helped in a posthumous manner, through teachings or by example, by Christ, Mohammed, Mozart or Edison? As their ripples circle out over the oncoming history, how much can their helpful influence be blamed for the byproducts, for the extremism, industrial dependence, and for bad muzac. So then we are forced to ask, as Eric is, how many of those ripples brought harm? Are those ripples the fault of the hero or those acting on the hero’s behalf?
Hero is the pinnacle of a free will in action, in one of two obvious incarnations: good and bad. Balance is the foundation not only of reality itself, but also perception. Without bad there is no good, without villain there is no hero, but also without hero there is no perspective. Conversely, without our perspective there are no heroes… nothing to show between plays during the Superbowl.
Our heroes are indeed our fault…
…But a trespass we should be proud of choosing. Though the quality of those we choose to pedestal might be questionable, we are lucky to have them. We are just as responsible for the villains, and just as lucky to have them too, because a coin with only one side isn’t worth anything and yin without yang is just going in circles.
Good and bad, hero and villain, heaven and hell, are all subjective elements to our individual experiences. Whether we worship our heroes in a productive, inspirational way or merely use them as an excuse to watch too much TV or join an evil book club, choosing them and their gospel-according-to-running-shoes makes us individual from every other soul to come to the fountain. Though a hip hop emperor may look out over a crowd of bemused baseball hats and baggy jeans that appear to be swaying in mindless unison and awaiting their next order, they all arrived to that altar under a different star.
Heroes tend to become symbols when they lose the initial sheen of inspiration and the shadow of expectation falls over them. Symbols can be more dangerous than any comic book archenemy or distant extremist insurgent. Symbols unite people in two-dimensional ways, under an architecture built of cards. If we could somehow recall that the relationship drawn between you and your hero, as fleeting as it may seem, is drawn from the precious individuality building your identity on what is hopefully an impenetrable foundation.
There are no easy answers for Eric. No matter how hard he and I may try there is no definition for hero. As individual as the cells and strings that make up your bones and skin and sense of humor is the combination of gesture and achievement that you will identify as heroic. Heed that sense of wonder, don’t let it wash away completely, otherwise the voting system on American Idol will become meaningless, and when it’s your turn to stand for something the rest of us can be ready with the confetti.
The existence of heroes comes down to our creativity and collective problem with accountability. When there’s been an event we can’t explain we create a god and where there grows a situation beyond our control we await a hero. While this creation creates clutter, dissention among the factions of warring icons, and a pollutant cloud of silly-ass tabloid drivel, imagine for a moment a place with no heroes.
We need heroes.
We need to fight on and feel envy, to savor victory, and to comeback swinging after defeat. Without the idols and the glitter, the crusaders and the messiahs, without Jesus and Superman, I for one would not have dreamed when I was young. Before I figured out it’s easier to be cynical, I lived in a vivid place where my hero was going to be there for me, and I could one day fight the same evil.
I still have heroes; they’re all just little more black and white.
Patrick
It rolls back from the shore with our receding innocence; the eroding translucence of our youthful values is tragic and tragically inevitable. Our heroes are going to fail us eventually; it’s a truth we all encounter. As the younger generation matures in this environment of bombardment and sopping media saturation, I keep seeing figures ascend to the altar of modern adoration that begin the trajectory of a glorious falling star, but hit the earth like a rusty anvil.
Are these celestial belly flops and the concurrently failing faith of the generation beholding them the fault of the heroes, or is the fall and the heroes themselves the fault of those they’re supposed to be saving?
Heroes and Idols have been poured into one mold and turned out as golden calves for as long as their stories have had audiences. We have always honored champions, fed vicariously from their victories, and sought them out to fight our battles for us. Yes, we are to blame. For every golden god, every false profit, every sainted sports hero and substance-soaked rock star, and for every flash in every pan there has been a stage provided by a willing flock.
This flock will come to deny their shepherd.
My novel, 'The Valiant Unheroic', is about a young man named Eric with a heroic purpose but no conventionally admirable qualities. As the selfless feats he performs become more undeniably spectacular, the marvel they conjure fuels a growing public allure. The fascinated people call him hero, but their fixation seeks an all too mortal conclusion, and proves that even the best fame and heroism are mutually elusive.
**Note: A spoiler alert for those currently reading 'The Valiant Unheroic'. ***
As Eric's heroic impact/novelty evolves, he finds himself asking where his own contribution began and ended. His legacy looks to be comprised of dated headlines and victims he's helped that return to their predators. The tragedies of his selfless life leave him wanting for at least the semblance of accomplishment, of a purpose fulfilled.
He asks, as I ask, much of the following.
Is his heroism found in the intention to help?
They say the road to Hell is paved with these intentions, but it is right to judge a person's attempt to help with hindsight at a perfect 20/20?
During the hostage rescue that comes to define his heroic career, Eric is forced into a situation where he must make a decision about the terrorist's life versus the potential harm of numerous innocent bystanders. In spectacular fashion he saves the day for the hostages, for the headline-buying public, and the year for the tabloid media below. He makes a decision beyond his station, that costs the troubled captor his life and the insurance companies a fortune. He calls his own heroism into a perilous question of profit and loss.
Eric's intention was purely benign but the result becomes contentious. Should his act be regarded in its seed or in its blossom? As it tends to be with the line dividing hero and terror, should it merely depend on perspective?
The idea of heroic intention excludes most subjects of modern worship; mannequins, champions, and doomed poets. A recipient of glory does not ascend to the pedestal intending to be helpful. Glory is a byproduct of competition and victory. The two motivations do not stand together.
In the end, good intention is irrelevant to heroism or a heroic legacy because it is integral to our nature to honor that which honors us. We can’t identify with something that doesn’t have a result, an event or a product logo for us to stand behind.
Why must we perceive when seeing is so readily available to us?
Is heroism found in the outcome?
We tend to celebrate great outcomes not best intentions, quantity not quality, but how often is such a correlation actually accurate?
The company that released a certain performance-enabling blue pill was designing a heart medication, but how will their rise be remembered? George W. Bush was after something righteous in the Middle East, and Christopher Columbus certainly wasn’t as he headed west… The ends rarely represent means, or what was meant, whatever that means.
As Eric’s fame soars and the city discovers a forgotten species of hero, Eric is pummeled with the sudden evolution of his purpose. He quickly learns how his contribution is metered and judged, how his place in the community is as a commodity not a guide, not an example to follow or even a source of inspiration.
It’s impossible to be heroic when an expectation grows around you. Judging results in quantities or comparing them or validating them removes the spark that starts the fire in flock. Heroism entails exceeding expectations, not maintaining a quota. There’s little if any inspiration within expectation. Where’s the fun in just matching the benchmark?
Is heroism then found in the aftermath?
Every contribution, as an article of history, is only as glorious as it is made out to be by the bard who portrays it in a play, a textbook or a tell-all biography.
How many people have been helped in a posthumous manner, through teachings or by example, by Christ, Mohammed, Mozart or Edison? As their ripples circle out over the oncoming history, how much can their helpful influence be blamed for the byproducts, for the extremism, industrial dependence, and for bad muzac. So then we are forced to ask, as Eric is, how many of those ripples brought harm? Are those ripples the fault of the hero or those acting on the hero’s behalf?
Hero is the pinnacle of a free will in action, in one of two obvious incarnations: good and bad. Balance is the foundation not only of reality itself, but also perception. Without bad there is no good, without villain there is no hero, but also without hero there is no perspective. Conversely, without our perspective there are no heroes… nothing to show between plays during the Superbowl.
Our heroes are indeed our fault…
…But a trespass we should be proud of choosing. Though the quality of those we choose to pedestal might be questionable, we are lucky to have them. We are just as responsible for the villains, and just as lucky to have them too, because a coin with only one side isn’t worth anything and yin without yang is just going in circles.
Good and bad, hero and villain, heaven and hell, are all subjective elements to our individual experiences. Whether we worship our heroes in a productive, inspirational way or merely use them as an excuse to watch too much TV or join an evil book club, choosing them and their gospel-according-to-running-shoes makes us individual from every other soul to come to the fountain. Though a hip hop emperor may look out over a crowd of bemused baseball hats and baggy jeans that appear to be swaying in mindless unison and awaiting their next order, they all arrived to that altar under a different star.
Heroes tend to become symbols when they lose the initial sheen of inspiration and the shadow of expectation falls over them. Symbols can be more dangerous than any comic book archenemy or distant extremist insurgent. Symbols unite people in two-dimensional ways, under an architecture built of cards. If we could somehow recall that the relationship drawn between you and your hero, as fleeting as it may seem, is drawn from the precious individuality building your identity on what is hopefully an impenetrable foundation.
There are no easy answers for Eric. No matter how hard he and I may try there is no definition for hero. As individual as the cells and strings that make up your bones and skin and sense of humor is the combination of gesture and achievement that you will identify as heroic. Heed that sense of wonder, don’t let it wash away completely, otherwise the voting system on American Idol will become meaningless, and when it’s your turn to stand for something the rest of us can be ready with the confetti.
The existence of heroes comes down to our creativity and collective problem with accountability. When there’s been an event we can’t explain we create a god and where there grows a situation beyond our control we await a hero. While this creation creates clutter, dissention among the factions of warring icons, and a pollutant cloud of silly-ass tabloid drivel, imagine for a moment a place with no heroes.
We need heroes.
We need to fight on and feel envy, to savor victory, and to comeback swinging after defeat. Without the idols and the glitter, the crusaders and the messiahs, without Jesus and Superman, I for one would not have dreamed when I was young. Before I figured out it’s easier to be cynical, I lived in a vivid place where my hero was going to be there for me, and I could one day fight the same evil.
I still have heroes; they’re all just little more black and white.
Patrick
Inherent Evil
In the glow of his 12-point font manifesto, the writer’s eyes tighten above a crooked Cheshire sneer:
Sixty-seven cents of every dollar that has ever been spent in the entire existence of modern currency has been devoted to combating evil, in one form or another. These mounds of pounds and dollars and cents have been spent in service of good, countering villainy, disease, and undesirable politics. This figure, a totally fabricated statistic, represents the clear and definitive weight of the good guy proportion of the population.
Consider every coin of every dollar striking that blow for the good side. Consider every regal head of state on one side and the patriotic national symbol on the other and how they share a common purpose in this world but will never see the same perspective. Which is the benevolent side? For all of you out there thinking tails, does that make all those famous heads wrong? It’s a bummer sometimes to have a world with all this perspective.
It is clear to me, based on what I’ve gathered from cable news, action movies and my own assumptions, that we are, barring a percentage of exceptions, a society of good guys. We regularly band together in support behind the handsomer members of our political and ethnic communities, when the numbers are required, to sit back and speculate. We keep our place in the audience, in the gallery, waiting for our chance to re-evaluate the type of good that we support.
We like the good guy,
We cheer the good guy,
We buy the good guy’s running shoes,
We are the good guy.
Victories are measured by the task overcome. Games are measured in points, elections and American Idol in votes, races in heats and times, hotels and movies in stars, and good guys are measured by the bad guys they stand against.
The real question: Who is the bad guy?
Traditionally, the bad guy wears the black hat, at least when the good guy wears white. He proposes the con to the good guy’s every pro; he opposes his and our values and therefore in some way threatens the way we choose to live. Traditionally, the bad guy rides alone, he seeks to fulfill his own selfish ends without a thought to another person or idiom on the planet. He spares not woman or child, he fears a fair fight, he is doomed to be overcome.
Traditionally the bad guy is killed by Clint Eastwood.
Realistically the story is somewhat different. Realistically the bad guy is actually a person. He is the bad guy not because of his actions but because of whom he opposes. He wears hats of any number of colors, and sometimes no hat at all. He is from a place that has a flag or a church or a family tradition that differs from ours. He has the opposing viewpoint because he perceives his plight from a different part of a different chain of the mechanism of the world. Different victories of different values are important to him. His victories for those who perceive his own good are meaningful. He is the good guy in his community. Realistically the world is full of mirrors and contradictions, and completely devoid of Hollywood endings. Realistically, the bad guy is the good guy to someone.
On our dirty green and blue and real Planet Earth, with our good and our bad, and our boundaries and flags, there is no real bad guy. At least not the kind of bad guy we’ve been sold.
There is no one out there who actually wants to conquer the entire world, enslave all of humanity, murder women and children along the way, and defeat Clint Eastwood. Any similar aspirations are born of unsound faculties, and not part of the real world anyhow. The ill and the influenced, the misled, the disturbed, and the sometimes mislabeled members of our society who are not acting of sound mind or free will; they are excluded from the purely evil ranks. Even the most self-serving, egotistical Chief Executive Officer is not really seeking evil as an end to itself. Typically, again according to my trusted movie reference source, their goals are more related to personal wealth, and malevolence to others tends to be a byproduct. Not to mention that these conglomerated reality-show boss figures are in fact clearly heroes to somebody in some measure.
The problem is that the idea of a bad guy has been marketed and sold to us. And though it works for Superman and it works for Clint it doesn’t work in the real world.
The problem is every culture, every boundary, every flag and every fence is rife with good guys, and populated with perspective. The problem with perspective is that it tends to be myopic, and we don’t allow ourselves to see more than our own.
Is anything inherently evil? If none us of us bought it, do you think we’d stop following the leaders that sell it?
It’s just as unjust to presume yours is the only good as it is to assume your opponent is only evil.
Whether the threat is a political entity winged to one side, zealots of religious inspiration, earth-shattering environmental catastrophe, or a clever mélange of the three, nothing sells like terrorist cells, tsunami swells, or communist shells. An unseen enemy twisting his mustache and plotting our doom makes us watch more, buy more, cheer more, and permit more in the name of the crusade.
Forrest Gump famously said ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ Dismissed by most under its dumb dull drawl, I’ve always thought he meant, ‘there are no stupid people only stupid actions’. The evil acts, the insidious performances we’ve all witnessed, imagined and entertained are the enemies we have to protect each other from. They’re always going to happen; weaker moments, misunderstandings, acts of aggression, crimes of passion, religious incongruences, movies with bad endings, fashion faux pas… We just have to maintain the objectivity of Forrest’s wisdom.
The likelihood of the existence of the kind of opponents in this world that we have been led to detest are about as likely as a man in a red cape flying to your rescue. Not to mention that this unlikely man will be wearing a yellow belt to hold up underwear worn over his tight blue pants. There are no archenemies or criminal masterminds bent on world domination. As close as the meanest and nastiest CEOs and political leaders might get to the cartoonish super-villain, ringing their hands and cackling maniacally, none of them actually have the misguided hubris to actually aspire to take over the world. Who would actually want the responsibility?
Self-preservation is not inherently evil
Revenge is not inherently evil
BO is not inherently evil
Poor fashion sense is not inherently evil
As much as I hate to admit it, offensive custom car paint design is not inherently evil
REAL EVIL
Stealing your girlfriend
Farting in an elevator
Leaving the toilet seat up
Re-gifting Christmas gifts
Ending sentences with prepositions
Ending essays with bad humor
Hahaha…(I’m wringing my hands)
Sixty-seven cents of every dollar that has ever been spent in the entire existence of modern currency has been devoted to combating evil, in one form or another. These mounds of pounds and dollars and cents have been spent in service of good, countering villainy, disease, and undesirable politics. This figure, a totally fabricated statistic, represents the clear and definitive weight of the good guy proportion of the population.
Consider every coin of every dollar striking that blow for the good side. Consider every regal head of state on one side and the patriotic national symbol on the other and how they share a common purpose in this world but will never see the same perspective. Which is the benevolent side? For all of you out there thinking tails, does that make all those famous heads wrong? It’s a bummer sometimes to have a world with all this perspective.
It is clear to me, based on what I’ve gathered from cable news, action movies and my own assumptions, that we are, barring a percentage of exceptions, a society of good guys. We regularly band together in support behind the handsomer members of our political and ethnic communities, when the numbers are required, to sit back and speculate. We keep our place in the audience, in the gallery, waiting for our chance to re-evaluate the type of good that we support.
We like the good guy,
We cheer the good guy,
We buy the good guy’s running shoes,
We are the good guy.
Victories are measured by the task overcome. Games are measured in points, elections and American Idol in votes, races in heats and times, hotels and movies in stars, and good guys are measured by the bad guys they stand against.
The real question: Who is the bad guy?
Traditionally, the bad guy wears the black hat, at least when the good guy wears white. He proposes the con to the good guy’s every pro; he opposes his and our values and therefore in some way threatens the way we choose to live. Traditionally, the bad guy rides alone, he seeks to fulfill his own selfish ends without a thought to another person or idiom on the planet. He spares not woman or child, he fears a fair fight, he is doomed to be overcome.
Traditionally the bad guy is killed by Clint Eastwood.
Realistically the story is somewhat different. Realistically the bad guy is actually a person. He is the bad guy not because of his actions but because of whom he opposes. He wears hats of any number of colors, and sometimes no hat at all. He is from a place that has a flag or a church or a family tradition that differs from ours. He has the opposing viewpoint because he perceives his plight from a different part of a different chain of the mechanism of the world. Different victories of different values are important to him. His victories for those who perceive his own good are meaningful. He is the good guy in his community. Realistically the world is full of mirrors and contradictions, and completely devoid of Hollywood endings. Realistically, the bad guy is the good guy to someone.
On our dirty green and blue and real Planet Earth, with our good and our bad, and our boundaries and flags, there is no real bad guy. At least not the kind of bad guy we’ve been sold.
There is no one out there who actually wants to conquer the entire world, enslave all of humanity, murder women and children along the way, and defeat Clint Eastwood. Any similar aspirations are born of unsound faculties, and not part of the real world anyhow. The ill and the influenced, the misled, the disturbed, and the sometimes mislabeled members of our society who are not acting of sound mind or free will; they are excluded from the purely evil ranks. Even the most self-serving, egotistical Chief Executive Officer is not really seeking evil as an end to itself. Typically, again according to my trusted movie reference source, their goals are more related to personal wealth, and malevolence to others tends to be a byproduct. Not to mention that these conglomerated reality-show boss figures are in fact clearly heroes to somebody in some measure.
The problem is that the idea of a bad guy has been marketed and sold to us. And though it works for Superman and it works for Clint it doesn’t work in the real world.
The problem is every culture, every boundary, every flag and every fence is rife with good guys, and populated with perspective. The problem with perspective is that it tends to be myopic, and we don’t allow ourselves to see more than our own.
Is anything inherently evil? If none us of us bought it, do you think we’d stop following the leaders that sell it?
It’s just as unjust to presume yours is the only good as it is to assume your opponent is only evil.
Whether the threat is a political entity winged to one side, zealots of religious inspiration, earth-shattering environmental catastrophe, or a clever mélange of the three, nothing sells like terrorist cells, tsunami swells, or communist shells. An unseen enemy twisting his mustache and plotting our doom makes us watch more, buy more, cheer more, and permit more in the name of the crusade.
Forrest Gump famously said ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ Dismissed by most under its dumb dull drawl, I’ve always thought he meant, ‘there are no stupid people only stupid actions’. The evil acts, the insidious performances we’ve all witnessed, imagined and entertained are the enemies we have to protect each other from. They’re always going to happen; weaker moments, misunderstandings, acts of aggression, crimes of passion, religious incongruences, movies with bad endings, fashion faux pas… We just have to maintain the objectivity of Forrest’s wisdom.
The likelihood of the existence of the kind of opponents in this world that we have been led to detest are about as likely as a man in a red cape flying to your rescue. Not to mention that this unlikely man will be wearing a yellow belt to hold up underwear worn over his tight blue pants. There are no archenemies or criminal masterminds bent on world domination. As close as the meanest and nastiest CEOs and political leaders might get to the cartoonish super-villain, ringing their hands and cackling maniacally, none of them actually have the misguided hubris to actually aspire to take over the world. Who would actually want the responsibility?
Self-preservation is not inherently evil
Revenge is not inherently evil
BO is not inherently evil
Poor fashion sense is not inherently evil
As much as I hate to admit it, offensive custom car paint design is not inherently evil
REAL EVIL
Stealing your girlfriend
Farting in an elevator
Leaving the toilet seat up
Re-gifting Christmas gifts
Ending sentences with prepositions
Ending essays with bad humor
Hahaha…(I’m wringing my hands)
Teach Your Kids to Swear
Have you ever been cursed by gentler ears for the audacity of wearing words in your discourse that belong beyond the boundaries of politeness, even though they bless upon your statement exactly the necessary nastiness? Like everything else we convey and exchange today, must we let the content of our discourse become secondary to packaging? Am I the only one who thinks polite conversation needs more audacity? Am I the only one who thinks a curse every now and then can be a blessed thing?
Is it possible to be offensive without offending? As a writer I seek to do great things like provoke, challenge and affront. All worthwhile invention is based on offending a prior system of values. As humans we fear that offense, until we eventually embrace it, and await the next thing to hate.
This is how I view profanity, an unfortunate and longstanding target of that need to feel offended. But what is it that we truly fear about these anatomical comparisons and matriarchal metaphors? Why are these references so closely related to vulgarity and not expression? There’s a truly interesting part of the brain that motivates us to swear, which drives us to put an outlaw word between the verbs and nouns in our statements. I believe it’s a part that should be cultivated. It’s a motivation born somewhere between exuberance and ignorance, which is where humanity is its happiest, which in turn can be a very tolerable form of offense.
I have a problem with people who have a problem with words. To assume that some of the words we use have more power than the people sending or receiving them is affording us less credit than we deserve. Or is it? Is our problem with words rooted in too much offense or an over-developed defense?
The simple truth behind this simple fact is that if we take the fear away from these words than we’ll dull the edge that apparently and sadly still draws blood. If swears were less jagged, or if our response was conditioned to be less inflicted, other words and the assumptions that ride them, would also be less wounding.
The complex truth involves the need to recognize the power of words as misused weapons. It is said that guns don’t kill people, but think we can all agree that in these deaths guns certainly do play a role. Words can be weapons, vile social bullets pointed and fired and more wounding than any sticks or stones.
Let’s just get this out of the way: Some words suck and they were meant to suck, but I tend not to worry about them, because though I may own the weapon, I have no intention to hurt anyone.
A word can be the mightiest sword, and though I wield them and wave them about with a corked tip, I do like the edge. A word can’t cut the crap if it’s got no edge. I relish swearing. I like the power. It’s a gift given to our verbal exchange. I enjoy it as the zesty garnish added to our automatic, pod-cloned everyday discourse. It can be the performance-enhancing drug to a lame and lagging sentence, the bustier and stiletto heals, the black ace from the dealer, the dark sunglasses… the f**king ’68 Mustang convertible. With a single profane chocolate chip what was once dough is now a cookie, what was once cowering against the wall of the dance floor now wears a snazzy white suit and points his finger high. Swearing gives personality to a series of grouped letters herded by punctuation… yet remains misunderstood. Perhaps it’s for the best, a rebel is never quite the same when he’s invited into convention, a wolf is not a wolf after it’s invited indoors. The key is to keep the little scoundrels offensive though not offending. Let’s keep profanity in the black cowboy hat, but let’s talk for a while about why we love the bad guy so much.
The Great George Carlin said:
Sh!t
Pi$$
F**k
Cun+
C@cks@cker
M#thrrf**krr
And Tits;
The Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV.
The Magnificent Seven: Seven words that will eternally be honored and condemned. Whether or not these harmless exiles will ever be uttered on the picture box governed by those that believe words are more detrimental then portrayals of violence, they will always have power. There will always be a wanted poster hanging for these desperados and I for one thank Mr. Carlin for that. These little darlings are like Robin Hood, feared by the establishment, honored by the public, an outlaw with arrow-splitting aim. A folk hero anti-role-model for the generations to come.
We must be cautious in teaching the children the timeless art of comparing others to their private parts and excretions. Hearing a youngster belt out a surly swear at a sibling may never be as warm and delightful as say… exclaiming them yourself, but nonetheless the torch must be passed. Kids test their boundaries as they emerge and mature into the world. It’s always going to be the negligent parents whose children seek out firearms and needled arms in the place of structure and the overly disciplined children who run to them in escape of tyranny.
Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ve done the next generation a service when your expletives bleep out, and you tell them to ‘do as you say not as you do’, and you forbid them in the name of etiquette from a verbal power you know they will inevitably embrace, as you did and your parents did before you.
There is a greater value in profanity than just playful rebellion. There’s honesty and creativity, there’s the moments you utter your deepest frustrations to yourself under dark clouds of glorious filth.
What comes out of your mouth when you stub your toe? Truth. What do you bellow at the neighborhood bully when he’s too far for your fists? Rage. What do you exclaim at the height of an orgasm? Ecstasy. How can such things be blasphemy?
Teach your kids to swear. Don’t stifle them when their experimental spirits erupt a f**k here or a sh!t there. Give them license to the play in moors of our language so they can gain a better perspective of the pasture. There was once a time when ‘sex’ was a dirty word parents uttered in the dark from a across the space between twin beds. How foolish does it seem now to have ‘sex education’ swept under a rug and hope kids will lose interest? To me it seems about as foolish and prudish as punishing a kid for using a word… a simple expletive… that probably was originally heard from the person who lays down the punishment. Well, I say teach your kids to swear. I say that the prudes can have their history because they certainly won’t have the future. I say f**k the prudes, it’s only the sticks and stones that will stop them.
Education is the key. Allow adrenalized exclamation the freedom to cultivate and it will find its proper place. I’m not suggesting that we’d all be better off if every parent with a child under twelve present them with a loaded gun and encourage them to toddle off with their playmates. Nor do I think that those parents would be well advised to take a tour of safe injection sites or conduct lessons on joint-rolling techniques at the dining room table. I wouldn’t recommend a four-letter word section of f’s, s’s, and a’s be covered in grammar, nor would I think it prudent to reward the children for calling grandma an old c*nt. It’s the parents who speak openly and accept calmly the wonder of children that earn their trust in return. Stick to positive reinforcement and you can avoid hearing about f**king br*cc*li at the Sunday Dinner Table. Correct them when they refer to your boss as a prick instead of an a$$hole, and praise them when they find a new way to put three ‘good ones’ together into one sibling insult.
I say this both tongue-in-cheek and tongue-dangling straight out in a demon waggle. I don’t like anything being left out of the game for the wrong reasons. Amidst the fear of fear and getting offended in defense, we keep putting the wrong offendant on trial. It’s hypocrisy to tell our young that swearing is somehow morally wrong when in our most honest moments we tend to curse a raw streak. Hypocrisy will never disappear, but its cohorts can be deterred. The Puritan-inspired tradition of pre-emptive offense, with regards to political correctness, must be left the f*ddlest*cks behind. We have to forget what offends us and remember what’s worth defending. Free speech will always be more valuable than costly censorship. Disregard the insults not directed at you, fight the fights worth fighting, change the channel if you don’t like what you see, and remember that words can never hurt you.
Teach your kids to swear. Let them play in the dirt. Prove to them you’ll never be afraid of what they have to say. Teach them to let fly with boundless conscious thought, responsibly but brazenly. If for no other reason, allow them their foul language to take away its danger. To make something legal is to make it far less interesting. Let’s curse out a path to a place where we aren’t afraid of any words, where we aren’t offended for the sake of outdated sensibility, where meaningless symbols aren’t injected into words to cork their jagged tips, where we can get offended by worthwhile causes, like bad fashion sense and overly sassy writing. I want this place to have hypocrisy sitting a little bit closer to the back of the bus, while the tastiest fruits, flowers and thorns of our great language hang their asses out the window… mooning French and German and the other wannabes.
This place also has to have free porn.
Enjoy your F**king Day,
Hughes
PS. I hope you enjoyed the dust-off.
Is it possible to be offensive without offending? As a writer I seek to do great things like provoke, challenge and affront. All worthwhile invention is based on offending a prior system of values. As humans we fear that offense, until we eventually embrace it, and await the next thing to hate.
This is how I view profanity, an unfortunate and longstanding target of that need to feel offended. But what is it that we truly fear about these anatomical comparisons and matriarchal metaphors? Why are these references so closely related to vulgarity and not expression? There’s a truly interesting part of the brain that motivates us to swear, which drives us to put an outlaw word between the verbs and nouns in our statements. I believe it’s a part that should be cultivated. It’s a motivation born somewhere between exuberance and ignorance, which is where humanity is its happiest, which in turn can be a very tolerable form of offense.
I have a problem with people who have a problem with words. To assume that some of the words we use have more power than the people sending or receiving them is affording us less credit than we deserve. Or is it? Is our problem with words rooted in too much offense or an over-developed defense?
The simple truth behind this simple fact is that if we take the fear away from these words than we’ll dull the edge that apparently and sadly still draws blood. If swears were less jagged, or if our response was conditioned to be less inflicted, other words and the assumptions that ride them, would also be less wounding.
The complex truth involves the need to recognize the power of words as misused weapons. It is said that guns don’t kill people, but think we can all agree that in these deaths guns certainly do play a role. Words can be weapons, vile social bullets pointed and fired and more wounding than any sticks or stones.
Let’s just get this out of the way: Some words suck and they were meant to suck, but I tend not to worry about them, because though I may own the weapon, I have no intention to hurt anyone.
A word can be the mightiest sword, and though I wield them and wave them about with a corked tip, I do like the edge. A word can’t cut the crap if it’s got no edge. I relish swearing. I like the power. It’s a gift given to our verbal exchange. I enjoy it as the zesty garnish added to our automatic, pod-cloned everyday discourse. It can be the performance-enhancing drug to a lame and lagging sentence, the bustier and stiletto heals, the black ace from the dealer, the dark sunglasses… the f**king ’68 Mustang convertible. With a single profane chocolate chip what was once dough is now a cookie, what was once cowering against the wall of the dance floor now wears a snazzy white suit and points his finger high. Swearing gives personality to a series of grouped letters herded by punctuation… yet remains misunderstood. Perhaps it’s for the best, a rebel is never quite the same when he’s invited into convention, a wolf is not a wolf after it’s invited indoors. The key is to keep the little scoundrels offensive though not offending. Let’s keep profanity in the black cowboy hat, but let’s talk for a while about why we love the bad guy so much.
The Great George Carlin said:
Sh!t
Pi$$
F**k
Cun+
C@cks@cker
M#thrrf**krr
And Tits;
The Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV.
The Magnificent Seven: Seven words that will eternally be honored and condemned. Whether or not these harmless exiles will ever be uttered on the picture box governed by those that believe words are more detrimental then portrayals of violence, they will always have power. There will always be a wanted poster hanging for these desperados and I for one thank Mr. Carlin for that. These little darlings are like Robin Hood, feared by the establishment, honored by the public, an outlaw with arrow-splitting aim. A folk hero anti-role-model for the generations to come.
We must be cautious in teaching the children the timeless art of comparing others to their private parts and excretions. Hearing a youngster belt out a surly swear at a sibling may never be as warm and delightful as say… exclaiming them yourself, but nonetheless the torch must be passed. Kids test their boundaries as they emerge and mature into the world. It’s always going to be the negligent parents whose children seek out firearms and needled arms in the place of structure and the overly disciplined children who run to them in escape of tyranny.
Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ve done the next generation a service when your expletives bleep out, and you tell them to ‘do as you say not as you do’, and you forbid them in the name of etiquette from a verbal power you know they will inevitably embrace, as you did and your parents did before you.
There is a greater value in profanity than just playful rebellion. There’s honesty and creativity, there’s the moments you utter your deepest frustrations to yourself under dark clouds of glorious filth.
What comes out of your mouth when you stub your toe? Truth. What do you bellow at the neighborhood bully when he’s too far for your fists? Rage. What do you exclaim at the height of an orgasm? Ecstasy. How can such things be blasphemy?
Teach your kids to swear. Don’t stifle them when their experimental spirits erupt a f**k here or a sh!t there. Give them license to the play in moors of our language so they can gain a better perspective of the pasture. There was once a time when ‘sex’ was a dirty word parents uttered in the dark from a across the space between twin beds. How foolish does it seem now to have ‘sex education’ swept under a rug and hope kids will lose interest? To me it seems about as foolish and prudish as punishing a kid for using a word… a simple expletive… that probably was originally heard from the person who lays down the punishment. Well, I say teach your kids to swear. I say that the prudes can have their history because they certainly won’t have the future. I say f**k the prudes, it’s only the sticks and stones that will stop them.
Education is the key. Allow adrenalized exclamation the freedom to cultivate and it will find its proper place. I’m not suggesting that we’d all be better off if every parent with a child under twelve present them with a loaded gun and encourage them to toddle off with their playmates. Nor do I think that those parents would be well advised to take a tour of safe injection sites or conduct lessons on joint-rolling techniques at the dining room table. I wouldn’t recommend a four-letter word section of f’s, s’s, and a’s be covered in grammar, nor would I think it prudent to reward the children for calling grandma an old c*nt. It’s the parents who speak openly and accept calmly the wonder of children that earn their trust in return. Stick to positive reinforcement and you can avoid hearing about f**king br*cc*li at the Sunday Dinner Table. Correct them when they refer to your boss as a prick instead of an a$$hole, and praise them when they find a new way to put three ‘good ones’ together into one sibling insult.
I say this both tongue-in-cheek and tongue-dangling straight out in a demon waggle. I don’t like anything being left out of the game for the wrong reasons. Amidst the fear of fear and getting offended in defense, we keep putting the wrong offendant on trial. It’s hypocrisy to tell our young that swearing is somehow morally wrong when in our most honest moments we tend to curse a raw streak. Hypocrisy will never disappear, but its cohorts can be deterred. The Puritan-inspired tradition of pre-emptive offense, with regards to political correctness, must be left the f*ddlest*cks behind. We have to forget what offends us and remember what’s worth defending. Free speech will always be more valuable than costly censorship. Disregard the insults not directed at you, fight the fights worth fighting, change the channel if you don’t like what you see, and remember that words can never hurt you.
Teach your kids to swear. Let them play in the dirt. Prove to them you’ll never be afraid of what they have to say. Teach them to let fly with boundless conscious thought, responsibly but brazenly. If for no other reason, allow them their foul language to take away its danger. To make something legal is to make it far less interesting. Let’s curse out a path to a place where we aren’t afraid of any words, where we aren’t offended for the sake of outdated sensibility, where meaningless symbols aren’t injected into words to cork their jagged tips, where we can get offended by worthwhile causes, like bad fashion sense and overly sassy writing. I want this place to have hypocrisy sitting a little bit closer to the back of the bus, while the tastiest fruits, flowers and thorns of our great language hang their asses out the window… mooning French and German and the other wannabes.
This place also has to have free porn.
Enjoy your F**king Day,
Hughes
PS. I hope you enjoyed the dust-off.
My Jeep
I have an old jeep that nobody likes.
To my knowledge my jeep has never intentionally sought to offend anyone. I’ve never caught it taunting the smaller two-wheel drive vehicles. It hasn’t behaved inappropriately by trying to reject its advancing years, by running with the younger, flashier SUVs and thus ensuing a sports utility scandal, or donning gawdy accessories in a vain makeover attempt. It doesn’t cavort, talk back, speak out of turn, ask for dessert before dinner, and though it stays out all night, it tends to remain exactly where I left it.
It has been known to dribble. Every now and then the periodically incontinent old jeep has been known to leave behind a modest puddle of coolant or oil, but I think even the most insensitive person can excuse the intentional leakage.
My old jeep is a salt and peppered fine wine well-aged Connery by most standards. Debonair is the word that best suits its presence of gracefully mature contours and chrome accents that have added an air of class to an already stalwart driving machine. Time has yet to leave its scar in result of an accident or a corrosive rash of rust, thanks to the dutiful care shown by myself and its several previous owners. Jeeps have a timeless quality in their design, making it difficult for most to distinguish one model year from the next. This stayed look makes it difficult to categorize the old codger as a robust middle-aged to slightly feeble mid-elderly. This culminates in an appearance that is dated but still elder-fabulous.
So, like me, right about now you’re left wondering ‘what’s the problem?’ Why does everybody hate the handsome jeep? The handsome, chrome-crowned, king of class, 4 wheel-drive old blue bear should be revered by all lucky enough to be gridlocked behind it.
They hate it because they are good people. My friends are good people doing what they’re supposed to do; what they’re told to do and trained to do: to be consumers.
A properly trained and conditioned consumer seeks the marketing campaign that most appropriately fits their chosen identity and is prompt in recycling and recirculating that identity through diligent consumption, as they are periodically commanded to so. They consume candied breakfast foods, giga-lectronics, foreign-formed pre-shrunk denim slacks, and all the other shiny bobbles that are rolled down the trough.
The jewel of this market-formed consumption, the grandest trick the Joneses ever pulled, was planned obsolescence, convincing the consuming public that the next to most substantial investments they would be making in their lives, in approx. $500 of metal and glass, would need to be made over and over again, every three years. A house can stand for centuries, but a car can’t make it to preschool.
They hate my old jeep because, like all great hate, it has been taught convincingly. They hate it because it represents a failure to conform, a failure to conquer, and a failure to consume.
I guess I just don’t buy it.
I guess I’m one of the few that realizes I don’t have to.
Why are we consumers? Why must we consume to be members of society? Why don’t we refer to citizens under our system of commerce as contributors or productionists?
I guess I have a problem with attributing quality in the things we have based on their newness. Our cars are the worst offenders. Obsolescence is forcing us to keep up with all of our neighbors in a variety of aspects. Without new computers and cell phones every few years we’re left to navigate the outdated limbo, while the trendy live in their candy-coated mega-nano-pixelled, video-camera phone bliss. The safety features of our appliances evolve. Our needs and desires as people with toys evolve.
We evolve. We have evolved.
Our cars have not evolved.
With the exception of some moderately efficient hybrid models and fairly innovative omni-sized cupholders, the automobile, the central icon of our society’s industrial horsepower, is by most accounts evolutio-proof. But we invest in these vessels of convenience and identity with such fervor, they have become some strange generational prosthetic.
Costs goes up, the cost of fuel goes up, the cost of living goes up, the cost of our frivolous values goes up, while the car conveying us through the tunnel to the light has not. The car has flat-lined. Only the final cost has gone up.
There’s no more Mustang McQueen coolness, Fifties tail fins, or VW Vans, lending to us not just an identity but an immortality, a chance to be part of something. All we get now is a mock-regal splendor, a competitive but fleeting trophy; tickets aboard the Titanic.
I admit that a sentimental attachment like mine to an inanimate object is unrealistic, but I think there’s a value in holding a value in your possessions beyond the obvious and monetary. Why can’t we start to consider our cars like our homes, our favorite friends, wines, and lucky hats?
If ‘better with age’ became more of a consumer’s…‘contributor’s’ mantra, then maybe the car-glomerates would be forced and perpetuated to finally design immortal and market longevity in their vessels.
… Like my semi-geriatric butt-kicker…
…Timeless …Macho …Hated
…No, envied.
To my knowledge my jeep has never intentionally sought to offend anyone. I’ve never caught it taunting the smaller two-wheel drive vehicles. It hasn’t behaved inappropriately by trying to reject its advancing years, by running with the younger, flashier SUVs and thus ensuing a sports utility scandal, or donning gawdy accessories in a vain makeover attempt. It doesn’t cavort, talk back, speak out of turn, ask for dessert before dinner, and though it stays out all night, it tends to remain exactly where I left it.
It has been known to dribble. Every now and then the periodically incontinent old jeep has been known to leave behind a modest puddle of coolant or oil, but I think even the most insensitive person can excuse the intentional leakage.
My old jeep is a salt and peppered fine wine well-aged Connery by most standards. Debonair is the word that best suits its presence of gracefully mature contours and chrome accents that have added an air of class to an already stalwart driving machine. Time has yet to leave its scar in result of an accident or a corrosive rash of rust, thanks to the dutiful care shown by myself and its several previous owners. Jeeps have a timeless quality in their design, making it difficult for most to distinguish one model year from the next. This stayed look makes it difficult to categorize the old codger as a robust middle-aged to slightly feeble mid-elderly. This culminates in an appearance that is dated but still elder-fabulous.
So, like me, right about now you’re left wondering ‘what’s the problem?’ Why does everybody hate the handsome jeep? The handsome, chrome-crowned, king of class, 4 wheel-drive old blue bear should be revered by all lucky enough to be gridlocked behind it.
They hate it because they are good people. My friends are good people doing what they’re supposed to do; what they’re told to do and trained to do: to be consumers.
A properly trained and conditioned consumer seeks the marketing campaign that most appropriately fits their chosen identity and is prompt in recycling and recirculating that identity through diligent consumption, as they are periodically commanded to so. They consume candied breakfast foods, giga-lectronics, foreign-formed pre-shrunk denim slacks, and all the other shiny bobbles that are rolled down the trough.
The jewel of this market-formed consumption, the grandest trick the Joneses ever pulled, was planned obsolescence, convincing the consuming public that the next to most substantial investments they would be making in their lives, in approx. $500 of metal and glass, would need to be made over and over again, every three years. A house can stand for centuries, but a car can’t make it to preschool.
They hate my old jeep because, like all great hate, it has been taught convincingly. They hate it because it represents a failure to conform, a failure to conquer, and a failure to consume.
I guess I just don’t buy it.
I guess I’m one of the few that realizes I don’t have to.
Why are we consumers? Why must we consume to be members of society? Why don’t we refer to citizens under our system of commerce as contributors or productionists?
I guess I have a problem with attributing quality in the things we have based on their newness. Our cars are the worst offenders. Obsolescence is forcing us to keep up with all of our neighbors in a variety of aspects. Without new computers and cell phones every few years we’re left to navigate the outdated limbo, while the trendy live in their candy-coated mega-nano-pixelled, video-camera phone bliss. The safety features of our appliances evolve. Our needs and desires as people with toys evolve.
We evolve. We have evolved.
Our cars have not evolved.
With the exception of some moderately efficient hybrid models and fairly innovative omni-sized cupholders, the automobile, the central icon of our society’s industrial horsepower, is by most accounts evolutio-proof. But we invest in these vessels of convenience and identity with such fervor, they have become some strange generational prosthetic.
Costs goes up, the cost of fuel goes up, the cost of living goes up, the cost of our frivolous values goes up, while the car conveying us through the tunnel to the light has not. The car has flat-lined. Only the final cost has gone up.
There’s no more Mustang McQueen coolness, Fifties tail fins, or VW Vans, lending to us not just an identity but an immortality, a chance to be part of something. All we get now is a mock-regal splendor, a competitive but fleeting trophy; tickets aboard the Titanic.
I admit that a sentimental attachment like mine to an inanimate object is unrealistic, but I think there’s a value in holding a value in your possessions beyond the obvious and monetary. Why can’t we start to consider our cars like our homes, our favorite friends, wines, and lucky hats?
If ‘better with age’ became more of a consumer’s…‘contributor’s’ mantra, then maybe the car-glomerates would be forced and perpetuated to finally design immortal and market longevity in their vessels.
… Like my semi-geriatric butt-kicker…
…Timeless …Macho …Hated
…No, envied.
The Devil That Delivered Del: Part Three
I decided to be handsome today.
As the morning sun drew across the water, at the spot on pond in the park with the best vantage point, I thought of all the idolized and idealized faces I saw on movie posters and magazines. I thought of the way the waitresses always look at Michael and the way the other angels look at each other when they ignore me at sunrise. I thought of the way humans perceive creation as esthetic perfection and degrees infinitely declining from it, and how they ignore the perfection of imperfection and the beauty in its ugly chaos.
That morning my face was smooth and square, my body was lean and straight and solid. My features were dark and flawless, striking, but pleasantly so. As people emerged from their homes I could see all those that looked like me walking with their shoulders and arms back and high, looking at everyone they passed directly in the eye, while the people who looked more like the previous me, were too busy to regard those around them as they seemed to use their eyes to walk, staring down at their stirring feet.
As I prepared my mimicry of Michael’s powerful shoulders and astounding grin, I noticed being noticed for the first time that I can recall. A woman ahead of me on the sidewalk was shuffling through the newspapers on a merchant’s newsstand. From a scowl at some disagreeable headline, her expression turned to me and halted in an immeasurably minute way. Every word of her body language was spoken so quietly as no one around us could perceive this interaction. My own inexperience in such situations might have had her subtlety blow past on the wind, but the novelty of appreciation had heightened this moment to the zenith of my own individuality. She was captivated by me. A warmth of achievement rose through me that I had felt maybe twice in my existence. I had her in my possession. As her eyes tightened and her smile ever so slightly drew up her face, I dropped my eyes.
I was scared. An immortal being... more feared than perhaps any in history... with only apparently pride at stake... flinched. Something buried in this new instinct, this amalgam of basic human drive and cutting edge materialism, shook my concentration enough to force a retreat. What was I sacred of? More so than my performance, more so than the stir of brief sexual dominance, and ever so far beyond the ultimate goal of my unblessed endeavor - my wager with Michael was now a fascination with this feeling of fear, this quell of intimidation. I tried to dig down into my thoughts and seek the seed.
I passed her and the monument of moments passed us both. I continued down the sidewalk, growing all the more congested with workers and servants of others and their clocks, trying to dwell within my moment of fear. The spark of intimidation or lust or pride or defeat or whatever it was that I felt that pushed my head and eyes down involuntarily was among the most intriguing in my memory and certainly at the centre of the whole point of my need to win our wager. The dwelling took me through the warmths of pride and the hollowness of regret and defeat. Whatever it was it was primal, and primal is a luxury, a designer drug to one of my kind.
The most elegantly designed stimulant to visit this tangible human world is the unknown, the challenge that was before me in her form. Though their biological dispositions toward convenience desensitizes them to the experience, the novelty of challenging something novel was still new to me. As an observer I believe it's common to seek categories and groups for those you examine, as well as what they exhibit. I observe this world more than any of my kind and I thought long ago my discoveries had been dwindled. A familiar feeling of disappointment and disgust crosses behind my eyes when it occurs to me how they all ignore it, or don't even feel it. I failed, but I'll know that novelty when it confronts me again.
His miraculous morning sun continued to beam down on my broad heroic shoulders through the skyscrapers and billboards. I conquered my way down the street trying to remember the feeling that beautiful woman’s eyes shot through me, at first ignoring those around me that found me lovely, keeping my thoughts wrapped around what made me stir and what men found beautiful in her. More and more the almost imperceiveable gestures of those sharing the sidewalk with me, who in days before would have not relented to an earlier me one inch of it, continually softened on their awareness of my presence. They seemed appreciative of me and offered me graciousness in looks of peace and pre-emptive diplomacy. Whether in a poor imitation of Michael’s of smile or a thinner glance of examination or dismissal, my regard meant something divine to those around me.
Superficial value and self-assurance grew inside me. I caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby store window and failed at first to recognize even the essence of me inside the face that had been mine for less than a day. I then started to notice how the organism of the city street in the morning sun moved biologically around and through and toward the gravity of the beautiful things. I could feel the motivations of those around me, pleased and disgusted with one another, as they choose their merchants, their storefronts, and the directions of minds and hearts based on all too tangible superficial quantities.
It struck me then like a gaze into my morning sun: an impenetrable strategy. I can be all that friendship, integrity, valor, humility and honor require, all I have to do is look the part. I think for the first time Michael is wrong: all that is can be sold. I think I'm going try to be beautiful to the eyes that behold me from now on. I think it's the generous thing to do.
Trust, favor, comradery, bravery, all that I need to fabricate in order to engage the life of this drifting soul, and turn him toward Michael’s and my creator’s redemption will bloom from beauty, the most fleeting element of all creation.
Thanks for reading. Until the next.
Patrick
As the morning sun drew across the water, at the spot on pond in the park with the best vantage point, I thought of all the idolized and idealized faces I saw on movie posters and magazines. I thought of the way the waitresses always look at Michael and the way the other angels look at each other when they ignore me at sunrise. I thought of the way humans perceive creation as esthetic perfection and degrees infinitely declining from it, and how they ignore the perfection of imperfection and the beauty in its ugly chaos.
That morning my face was smooth and square, my body was lean and straight and solid. My features were dark and flawless, striking, but pleasantly so. As people emerged from their homes I could see all those that looked like me walking with their shoulders and arms back and high, looking at everyone they passed directly in the eye, while the people who looked more like the previous me, were too busy to regard those around them as they seemed to use their eyes to walk, staring down at their stirring feet.
As I prepared my mimicry of Michael’s powerful shoulders and astounding grin, I noticed being noticed for the first time that I can recall. A woman ahead of me on the sidewalk was shuffling through the newspapers on a merchant’s newsstand. From a scowl at some disagreeable headline, her expression turned to me and halted in an immeasurably minute way. Every word of her body language was spoken so quietly as no one around us could perceive this interaction. My own inexperience in such situations might have had her subtlety blow past on the wind, but the novelty of appreciation had heightened this moment to the zenith of my own individuality. She was captivated by me. A warmth of achievement rose through me that I had felt maybe twice in my existence. I had her in my possession. As her eyes tightened and her smile ever so slightly drew up her face, I dropped my eyes.
I was scared. An immortal being... more feared than perhaps any in history... with only apparently pride at stake... flinched. Something buried in this new instinct, this amalgam of basic human drive and cutting edge materialism, shook my concentration enough to force a retreat. What was I sacred of? More so than my performance, more so than the stir of brief sexual dominance, and ever so far beyond the ultimate goal of my unblessed endeavor - my wager with Michael was now a fascination with this feeling of fear, this quell of intimidation. I tried to dig down into my thoughts and seek the seed.
I passed her and the monument of moments passed us both. I continued down the sidewalk, growing all the more congested with workers and servants of others and their clocks, trying to dwell within my moment of fear. The spark of intimidation or lust or pride or defeat or whatever it was that I felt that pushed my head and eyes down involuntarily was among the most intriguing in my memory and certainly at the centre of the whole point of my need to win our wager. The dwelling took me through the warmths of pride and the hollowness of regret and defeat. Whatever it was it was primal, and primal is a luxury, a designer drug to one of my kind.
The most elegantly designed stimulant to visit this tangible human world is the unknown, the challenge that was before me in her form. Though their biological dispositions toward convenience desensitizes them to the experience, the novelty of challenging something novel was still new to me. As an observer I believe it's common to seek categories and groups for those you examine, as well as what they exhibit. I observe this world more than any of my kind and I thought long ago my discoveries had been dwindled. A familiar feeling of disappointment and disgust crosses behind my eyes when it occurs to me how they all ignore it, or don't even feel it. I failed, but I'll know that novelty when it confronts me again.
His miraculous morning sun continued to beam down on my broad heroic shoulders through the skyscrapers and billboards. I conquered my way down the street trying to remember the feeling that beautiful woman’s eyes shot through me, at first ignoring those around me that found me lovely, keeping my thoughts wrapped around what made me stir and what men found beautiful in her. More and more the almost imperceiveable gestures of those sharing the sidewalk with me, who in days before would have not relented to an earlier me one inch of it, continually softened on their awareness of my presence. They seemed appreciative of me and offered me graciousness in looks of peace and pre-emptive diplomacy. Whether in a poor imitation of Michael’s of smile or a thinner glance of examination or dismissal, my regard meant something divine to those around me.
Superficial value and self-assurance grew inside me. I caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby store window and failed at first to recognize even the essence of me inside the face that had been mine for less than a day. I then started to notice how the organism of the city street in the morning sun moved biologically around and through and toward the gravity of the beautiful things. I could feel the motivations of those around me, pleased and disgusted with one another, as they choose their merchants, their storefronts, and the directions of minds and hearts based on all too tangible superficial quantities.
It struck me then like a gaze into my morning sun: an impenetrable strategy. I can be all that friendship, integrity, valor, humility and honor require, all I have to do is look the part. I think for the first time Michael is wrong: all that is can be sold. I think I'm going try to be beautiful to the eyes that behold me from now on. I think it's the generous thing to do.
Trust, favor, comradery, bravery, all that I need to fabricate in order to engage the life of this drifting soul, and turn him toward Michael’s and my creator’s redemption will bloom from beauty, the most fleeting element of all creation.
Thanks for reading. Until the next.
Patrick
TelEvAngels and Salesmen Among Us
Are shepherds necessarily representative of their flock?
Is the flock responsible for the behavior of their shepherd?
I’ll come back to that in a bit.
You know how it’s all but irresistible to observe human misery?
Sure you do.
You might be a perfectly nice person and not all deserving of such an accusation. You might be the nicest person in the room, or maybe the nicest person you know. You might even be as nice as me, but for some reason there’s a part of your instinct that forces you to stare at car crashes, tune into CNN’s political and environmetal catastrophe and suspenseful talk show DNA/DAD test unveilings, and watch those first few episodes at the start of American Idol.
Human misery is the best term I can think of to describe the stimulant of uniquely guilty indulgence I get from spending at least a few minutes every Sunday checking in on some of my favorite crusaders. Sunday Morning Tele-Evangelism is proof not only of the existence of God, but that he does indeed have a similarly sadistic sense of humor.
I can’t get enough of these Televised Evangelists. Regardless of their message, the medium they present, in their bizarrely contradictory manner, affirming the ideals of humility and chastity, ensconced in golden robes and decadent splendor, I find divinely and remarkably sin-sational... for lack of a better testament.
There’s an undeniable thread of salesmanship that binds these beckoning beacons to the padded crosses to which they aspire. They use salesmanship to supplement a lack of their genuine charm, with something slightly more artificial. They use salesmanship convey a new dimension, a new deal now available in an older promise. Often the new promise implies conditions that they are not qualified to offer. They use salesmanship because inherent to the process of professing in their medium, faith is a performance. I use the word salesmanship because it seems inescapable to me that book-marked somewhere in their bibles is the need to convince their subjects of something, that their flock is at some level unfaithful. Though strangely enough, in my opinion a flock certainly should not need to be sold.
I don’t want to mention names, and fall before a pulpit of topical accusation, so I’ll keep my accounts conveniently untraceable and unaccountable. These are sins of a breed that crosses crucifixes and herds sheep of all denominations. It’s not the message that troubles me; it’s the vacuous vessel that more than moderately needs a new dogma.
For those of you that might think that I’m the only one checking in on these pied pipers, stay tuned for the shots of the audience. They come in droves. The devoted fill monster stadiums around the world, and tune in every week to see these performers, these beaming, larger than life, and larger than scripture, bringers of the word, of… a healthy Sunday morning Goddening.
I designed that word deliberately to sound like bludgeoning.
So where falls the blame: The preacher or the choir? The pied piper or the mice that follow? The dictator or the public that surrenders their freedom? The liar or the sucker that believes them? I realize I’m painting an argument in this manner with a broad biased brush, so to reiterate: My focus remains on those ever so sparse instances in our history and on today’s world stage/altar when the influence of the faithful is exploited… and when those faithful allow their faith to fall under another’s advantage. In a situation of persuasion, salesmanship intruding on faith, and leaders using faithful ideals to influence political direction, it’s about more than who’s wearing the wool and whom the wolf’s clothing.
Sadly, we live in a world of unclean conclusions. Accountability in this case tends to fall on the wall. The wall tends to be an integral part of the problem.
Anyone can argue that without the droves of the faithful, the salesmen would have no one to exalt to, no one to swindle, and nothing for me to rant about. The counterpoint, which I tend to prefer, forgives the hypnotized for falling susceptible. The onus in my world of rational acceptable moral standing blames snake oil sales on the purveyor, not so much in the hypochondriac rubes. If they never rolled into town under banners and bombast, offering answers to questions that weren’t asked, then no one would ever be left that all too common feeling of under-whelming results.
In the end people can choose spend their money on whatever magic beans they find valuable, and hook their wagon to whichever horse best suits their chariot. So long as they are hurting no one, I say praise away sister, hallelujah and amen to all men. And if you want to invest your faith in a leader that I wouldn’t buy a used car from, your business is just that.
The real problem for me involves when these guys point their finger, and use their often sizable influence, justified by a source that is often interpreted to their will and service, and involves a target that I humbly submit is often beyond their reach and thus none of their God-damned(pardon me, but somehow fitting) business to condemn.
This is when they wield their real power, and like any corrupting power in the world…
There is an old adage, that seems in a way to be more antiquated by the day, that enforces a separation of church and state. That notion should extend and evolve, to separation of church and… everything. Not that I see faith of any form as negative and in need of segregation, but involving every single other form of decision that represents people not invited to the meeting, religion should be held at the door. Government represents us as a community and a majority, as equals, but religion is and should be an individual experience, speaking to our personal journeys, and not covering us like a blanket.
I can’t imagine any responsible leader, counsel or guide that would claim that a religious experience or personal ethos of one of his flock should precisely the same in every detail as the follower sitting in the next pew. How then, can the same responsible leader assume that connecting religion to the state, to the majority, to a defined worldview, and away from an individual experience can be in the interest of faith?
It makes no sense for a leader to broaden and dull his flock’s direction, unless that leader seeks more flock – and more power.
It seems to be the doctrine of the day to choose an outrage. Regardless of the voice, this media altar on which we all kneel, voices from one corner of the ring, must oppose another, and implies a host of other attributes and beliefs that don’t necessarily apply. Example: I’m in favor of a certain kind of car, have a negative opinion of a certain military engagement oversees, have accepted a certain theory on the origin of our species, and am a fan of a certain TV show, thus my opinion must be divinetly _______, on the issue of abortion.
There are very few pluses in living with so many thuses. A thus about my beliefs, drawn from my faith, which you’ll never know, my ethnicity, which you’ll never guess, or how I spend my spare time is simply a fallacy. I just hate to think that these stadiums of people, doing what is essentially a very positive thing, being lead into a fallacy that follows a thus, thus probably negating the real value of the affirmation they seek.
It’s clear to me that the standard Televised Evangelista has interests that they must protect. They are running a business. They have an employer and likely stockholders, perfectly mortal failings, and not to mention followers who can only better be served by these teachings when the teacher’s resources and tentacles reach emperor-like proportions. Who can blame them for bringing their best guns to the show? If I had a congregation three times the size of my hometown to sermonize you can bet that my followers would not be left wanting for a quenched sense of purpose. They would know that they could all be crusaders like me, so long as they agree with me on what evil to defeat.
To the modern-day icons of faith and purpose: By all means, spread the word, feed the faithful. But for the love of… well, of God… don’t spend your Sunday selling your wares to the people who trust you. After all, wasn’t Sunday meant for rest?
Eh, man.
Is the flock responsible for the behavior of their shepherd?
I’ll come back to that in a bit.
You know how it’s all but irresistible to observe human misery?
Sure you do.
You might be a perfectly nice person and not all deserving of such an accusation. You might be the nicest person in the room, or maybe the nicest person you know. You might even be as nice as me, but for some reason there’s a part of your instinct that forces you to stare at car crashes, tune into CNN’s political and environmetal catastrophe and suspenseful talk show DNA/DAD test unveilings, and watch those first few episodes at the start of American Idol.
Human misery is the best term I can think of to describe the stimulant of uniquely guilty indulgence I get from spending at least a few minutes every Sunday checking in on some of my favorite crusaders. Sunday Morning Tele-Evangelism is proof not only of the existence of God, but that he does indeed have a similarly sadistic sense of humor.
I can’t get enough of these Televised Evangelists. Regardless of their message, the medium they present, in their bizarrely contradictory manner, affirming the ideals of humility and chastity, ensconced in golden robes and decadent splendor, I find divinely and remarkably sin-sational... for lack of a better testament.
There’s an undeniable thread of salesmanship that binds these beckoning beacons to the padded crosses to which they aspire. They use salesmanship to supplement a lack of their genuine charm, with something slightly more artificial. They use salesmanship convey a new dimension, a new deal now available in an older promise. Often the new promise implies conditions that they are not qualified to offer. They use salesmanship because inherent to the process of professing in their medium, faith is a performance. I use the word salesmanship because it seems inescapable to me that book-marked somewhere in their bibles is the need to convince their subjects of something, that their flock is at some level unfaithful. Though strangely enough, in my opinion a flock certainly should not need to be sold.
I don’t want to mention names, and fall before a pulpit of topical accusation, so I’ll keep my accounts conveniently untraceable and unaccountable. These are sins of a breed that crosses crucifixes and herds sheep of all denominations. It’s not the message that troubles me; it’s the vacuous vessel that more than moderately needs a new dogma.
For those of you that might think that I’m the only one checking in on these pied pipers, stay tuned for the shots of the audience. They come in droves. The devoted fill monster stadiums around the world, and tune in every week to see these performers, these beaming, larger than life, and larger than scripture, bringers of the word, of… a healthy Sunday morning Goddening.
I designed that word deliberately to sound like bludgeoning.
So where falls the blame: The preacher or the choir? The pied piper or the mice that follow? The dictator or the public that surrenders their freedom? The liar or the sucker that believes them? I realize I’m painting an argument in this manner with a broad biased brush, so to reiterate: My focus remains on those ever so sparse instances in our history and on today’s world stage/altar when the influence of the faithful is exploited… and when those faithful allow their faith to fall under another’s advantage. In a situation of persuasion, salesmanship intruding on faith, and leaders using faithful ideals to influence political direction, it’s about more than who’s wearing the wool and whom the wolf’s clothing.
Sadly, we live in a world of unclean conclusions. Accountability in this case tends to fall on the wall. The wall tends to be an integral part of the problem.
Anyone can argue that without the droves of the faithful, the salesmen would have no one to exalt to, no one to swindle, and nothing for me to rant about. The counterpoint, which I tend to prefer, forgives the hypnotized for falling susceptible. The onus in my world of rational acceptable moral standing blames snake oil sales on the purveyor, not so much in the hypochondriac rubes. If they never rolled into town under banners and bombast, offering answers to questions that weren’t asked, then no one would ever be left that all too common feeling of under-whelming results.
In the end people can choose spend their money on whatever magic beans they find valuable, and hook their wagon to whichever horse best suits their chariot. So long as they are hurting no one, I say praise away sister, hallelujah and amen to all men. And if you want to invest your faith in a leader that I wouldn’t buy a used car from, your business is just that.
The real problem for me involves when these guys point their finger, and use their often sizable influence, justified by a source that is often interpreted to their will and service, and involves a target that I humbly submit is often beyond their reach and thus none of their God-damned(pardon me, but somehow fitting) business to condemn.
This is when they wield their real power, and like any corrupting power in the world…
There is an old adage, that seems in a way to be more antiquated by the day, that enforces a separation of church and state. That notion should extend and evolve, to separation of church and… everything. Not that I see faith of any form as negative and in need of segregation, but involving every single other form of decision that represents people not invited to the meeting, religion should be held at the door. Government represents us as a community and a majority, as equals, but religion is and should be an individual experience, speaking to our personal journeys, and not covering us like a blanket.
I can’t imagine any responsible leader, counsel or guide that would claim that a religious experience or personal ethos of one of his flock should precisely the same in every detail as the follower sitting in the next pew. How then, can the same responsible leader assume that connecting religion to the state, to the majority, to a defined worldview, and away from an individual experience can be in the interest of faith?
It makes no sense for a leader to broaden and dull his flock’s direction, unless that leader seeks more flock – and more power.
It seems to be the doctrine of the day to choose an outrage. Regardless of the voice, this media altar on which we all kneel, voices from one corner of the ring, must oppose another, and implies a host of other attributes and beliefs that don’t necessarily apply. Example: I’m in favor of a certain kind of car, have a negative opinion of a certain military engagement oversees, have accepted a certain theory on the origin of our species, and am a fan of a certain TV show, thus my opinion must be divinetly _______, on the issue of abortion.
There are very few pluses in living with so many thuses. A thus about my beliefs, drawn from my faith, which you’ll never know, my ethnicity, which you’ll never guess, or how I spend my spare time is simply a fallacy. I just hate to think that these stadiums of people, doing what is essentially a very positive thing, being lead into a fallacy that follows a thus, thus probably negating the real value of the affirmation they seek.
It’s clear to me that the standard Televised Evangelista has interests that they must protect. They are running a business. They have an employer and likely stockholders, perfectly mortal failings, and not to mention followers who can only better be served by these teachings when the teacher’s resources and tentacles reach emperor-like proportions. Who can blame them for bringing their best guns to the show? If I had a congregation three times the size of my hometown to sermonize you can bet that my followers would not be left wanting for a quenched sense of purpose. They would know that they could all be crusaders like me, so long as they agree with me on what evil to defeat.
To the modern-day icons of faith and purpose: By all means, spread the word, feed the faithful. But for the love of… well, of God… don’t spend your Sunday selling your wares to the people who trust you. After all, wasn’t Sunday meant for rest?
Eh, man.
Your Walk Can Talk
Like all egotistical beings, I’ve come upon a revelation that I believe must be shared. Nothing proceeding will shatter the earth or enlighten the endimmed, nonetheless, I have you, and I intend to keep you.
When’s the last time you really looked at someone’s walk?
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Among the many analogies frothing to my surface, regarding brittle defenestration (window shattering) and a potentially inferior Microsoft product, I simply find windows to be unreliable in their offering of true insight. If you really want to know about soul, whether it’s through a window or a door or Motown or romantic anguish, you must seek honesty. The truth about honesty is that it doesn’t come easily, in fact, you have to kind of steal it.
Humans are at their best, or most honest, or perhaps least dishonest, when their defenses are down; when they’re honest and they don’t know it.
The truth doesn’t have to be something hidden behind a window only some Curious Tom would Peep through. Forget windows, forget peeping into soulful eyes, you’ll find the truth about somebody far easier watching them walk away. In actual fact it’s the walk that carries you that offers all those admirers the key to that which you lock away. This fact eureka’d me like Newton’s apple-to-the-head, tinted slightly by a mind far more focused on girls than science. Inspirationally speaking, the male of the species often finds his brilliance when in pursuit of the better of the species.
It was a sunny day back in university. I was sitting on the steps of the regally ornate main administration building of The University of Ottawa preparing an itinerary of solid procrastination in the face of impending final exams. It was atop this cloud I was perched when across the courtyard a siren-song swung my attention to an as yet faceless vixen walking out my life, crashing me back to earth before she’d had the chance to walk in and out of my life. In a crowd of bustling students she, and more importantly her walk, was suddenly all that I saw. Without a conscious thought I was on my feet and in pursuit.
The walk she used to prowl and parade across that courtyard spoke to me in one hundred universal languages. It was sultry and sophisticated. It was everything my hormonally-driven motivation needed, and said volumes in high-heeled, striding verse. I had to follow her.
It wasn’t her looks that snared me; though I could sense her pheremonal attractiveness, I had yet to see her face. It wasn’t her features or curves exactly either, though she did have sleek and slender frame, long legs with flawless lines that connected her knee-length skirt to her high-heeled shoes, and a sway to her hips that was like a gold watch swinging in front of my eyes.
Her body was her instrument and the walk was music. I lagged far enough behind to prey/pray and close enough to stalk. The last thing I wanted to do was upset this harmony that we shared. The second to last thing was to be mistaken for the type of pursuer that made a habit of this kind of observation.
I know very little of the nature of love. I would venture to say that I know a great deal less than the average male lovelorn learner, but I believe a major facet of love goes to the effect of how well you know your partner or ‘objet de desire’. Love is knowledge of another person, you know them inside and out, you know what they’re going to say before they say it, and what they need before they ask it. It’s knowledge born of a connection deeper than learning and observation. I can say with doubtless certainty, clouded only somewhat by that hazy male angst, that I knew this girl I was following. I was smitten by this girl whose face I had yet to see, knowing all I needed to know, and falling off my feet for what she did with hers.
The walk told me things about how our life together would unfold. I planned what I would say when our eyes finally met, I structured a list of the first five things I would compliment about her, and thought of how she would react to the truth of why I began pursuit. I thought of things I very rarely consider when in prowling mode. All of this was from her walk, from something in her sway that convinced me we were compatible.
Like any worthwhile prey, she was cunning. Her stride was long and quick, and eventually I fell behind. I lost her in a crowd soon after in front of a mall and she quickly exited my life. She was gone faster than she came. With only her walk she commanded me and seduced me. She demonstrated a part of her brave soul that I felt a brief but pressing need to investigate. I remember the experience vividly to this day and I never saw he face. To this day I remember that walk.
I found a park bench soon after our parting and sank into a wash of my pedestrianic epiphany. I began to watch the people hustling, moseying, walking, strutting, prancing, stomping, trotting, moping, strolling, sauntering, and ambling past me on that busy section of campus and got to know all of them a little bit through that looking glass to the soul that none of us think to hide. I swear that in those moments of inspired clarity I could have guessed the name, occupation, self-image, and present punctuality of everyone I observed. Had I been walking myself I would have been on air.
Walking presents a most often unconscious and therefore honest portrayal. We think about other things when we’re on our way across a parking lot, following our dogs, or approaching an important appointment. We walk fast when we’re anxious and tall when we’re proud. A person’s version of these walks is as unique as the pedestrians themselves, but the themes are always consistent. You can always tell when a strut is deliberate and whether it’s manifested by insecurity or egotism. You can always tell if someone’s nervous amble is triggered by something behind or something upcoming. The walk says it all; it’s a presentation we seem to rarely know we’re giving.
To the folks who don’t utilize the standard two-footed march: You’re in this as well. Don’t think just because you use a wheelchair, prosthetics, crutches or canes, you don’t present something as you make your way down the cobblestone. A defeated mope or a bulletproof strut are each displays that occur largely from the shoulders up. Anyone or anything capable of locomotion under their own power forgets they’re doing it at some point. They think of a point made at point A or what they’ll be when they reach point B. There is no locomoto-poker-face.
The next time you get a chance, watch the people around you at the mall or in the park. Do they float or bounce or drag? Are they at this location for the first time? Are they late for an interview? Have they just made a purchase they are uncertain about? Are they mulling over a retort they wished they’d said, or intend to say? Are they walking honest? Are those new shoes? Is that guy staring at me? See what you can learn. And try not to get into trouble.
Also feel free to test your own march, how are you pointed in travel between points? The secret to observing yourself is to allow yourself to forget to watch. Set the hourly alarm on your watch. That should give you the time to forget and will hopefully catch you in mid-strut and allow you to reflect on the moves that you convey during your conveyance. Are you Tony Monero or Quasimodo? And what exactly are you doing swaying that right arm?
In closing I would like to make a plea to all walks of life: Don’t let this truth I’ve unleashed affect the moving life-size signature you display, there are so very few things remaining that keep us individual. Treasure your saunter; strut like a peacock, prance like a deer, prowl like a lion, and glide like a cloud. There is always beauty in uniqueness.
As for the girl, the walk of my dreams: I didn’t like seeing you go, but I loved watching you walk away. I hope the life you eventually walked into had the good fortune of approaching you from the front.
Walk tall, all.
Patrick Hughes
When’s the last time you really looked at someone’s walk?
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Among the many analogies frothing to my surface, regarding brittle defenestration (window shattering) and a potentially inferior Microsoft product, I simply find windows to be unreliable in their offering of true insight. If you really want to know about soul, whether it’s through a window or a door or Motown or romantic anguish, you must seek honesty. The truth about honesty is that it doesn’t come easily, in fact, you have to kind of steal it.
Humans are at their best, or most honest, or perhaps least dishonest, when their defenses are down; when they’re honest and they don’t know it.
The truth doesn’t have to be something hidden behind a window only some Curious Tom would Peep through. Forget windows, forget peeping into soulful eyes, you’ll find the truth about somebody far easier watching them walk away. In actual fact it’s the walk that carries you that offers all those admirers the key to that which you lock away. This fact eureka’d me like Newton’s apple-to-the-head, tinted slightly by a mind far more focused on girls than science. Inspirationally speaking, the male of the species often finds his brilliance when in pursuit of the better of the species.
It was a sunny day back in university. I was sitting on the steps of the regally ornate main administration building of The University of Ottawa preparing an itinerary of solid procrastination in the face of impending final exams. It was atop this cloud I was perched when across the courtyard a siren-song swung my attention to an as yet faceless vixen walking out my life, crashing me back to earth before she’d had the chance to walk in and out of my life. In a crowd of bustling students she, and more importantly her walk, was suddenly all that I saw. Without a conscious thought I was on my feet and in pursuit.
The walk she used to prowl and parade across that courtyard spoke to me in one hundred universal languages. It was sultry and sophisticated. It was everything my hormonally-driven motivation needed, and said volumes in high-heeled, striding verse. I had to follow her.
It wasn’t her looks that snared me; though I could sense her pheremonal attractiveness, I had yet to see her face. It wasn’t her features or curves exactly either, though she did have sleek and slender frame, long legs with flawless lines that connected her knee-length skirt to her high-heeled shoes, and a sway to her hips that was like a gold watch swinging in front of my eyes.
Her body was her instrument and the walk was music. I lagged far enough behind to prey/pray and close enough to stalk. The last thing I wanted to do was upset this harmony that we shared. The second to last thing was to be mistaken for the type of pursuer that made a habit of this kind of observation.
I know very little of the nature of love. I would venture to say that I know a great deal less than the average male lovelorn learner, but I believe a major facet of love goes to the effect of how well you know your partner or ‘objet de desire’. Love is knowledge of another person, you know them inside and out, you know what they’re going to say before they say it, and what they need before they ask it. It’s knowledge born of a connection deeper than learning and observation. I can say with doubtless certainty, clouded only somewhat by that hazy male angst, that I knew this girl I was following. I was smitten by this girl whose face I had yet to see, knowing all I needed to know, and falling off my feet for what she did with hers.
The walk told me things about how our life together would unfold. I planned what I would say when our eyes finally met, I structured a list of the first five things I would compliment about her, and thought of how she would react to the truth of why I began pursuit. I thought of things I very rarely consider when in prowling mode. All of this was from her walk, from something in her sway that convinced me we were compatible.
Like any worthwhile prey, she was cunning. Her stride was long and quick, and eventually I fell behind. I lost her in a crowd soon after in front of a mall and she quickly exited my life. She was gone faster than she came. With only her walk she commanded me and seduced me. She demonstrated a part of her brave soul that I felt a brief but pressing need to investigate. I remember the experience vividly to this day and I never saw he face. To this day I remember that walk.
I found a park bench soon after our parting and sank into a wash of my pedestrianic epiphany. I began to watch the people hustling, moseying, walking, strutting, prancing, stomping, trotting, moping, strolling, sauntering, and ambling past me on that busy section of campus and got to know all of them a little bit through that looking glass to the soul that none of us think to hide. I swear that in those moments of inspired clarity I could have guessed the name, occupation, self-image, and present punctuality of everyone I observed. Had I been walking myself I would have been on air.
Walking presents a most often unconscious and therefore honest portrayal. We think about other things when we’re on our way across a parking lot, following our dogs, or approaching an important appointment. We walk fast when we’re anxious and tall when we’re proud. A person’s version of these walks is as unique as the pedestrians themselves, but the themes are always consistent. You can always tell when a strut is deliberate and whether it’s manifested by insecurity or egotism. You can always tell if someone’s nervous amble is triggered by something behind or something upcoming. The walk says it all; it’s a presentation we seem to rarely know we’re giving.
To the folks who don’t utilize the standard two-footed march: You’re in this as well. Don’t think just because you use a wheelchair, prosthetics, crutches or canes, you don’t present something as you make your way down the cobblestone. A defeated mope or a bulletproof strut are each displays that occur largely from the shoulders up. Anyone or anything capable of locomotion under their own power forgets they’re doing it at some point. They think of a point made at point A or what they’ll be when they reach point B. There is no locomoto-poker-face.
The next time you get a chance, watch the people around you at the mall or in the park. Do they float or bounce or drag? Are they at this location for the first time? Are they late for an interview? Have they just made a purchase they are uncertain about? Are they mulling over a retort they wished they’d said, or intend to say? Are they walking honest? Are those new shoes? Is that guy staring at me? See what you can learn. And try not to get into trouble.
Also feel free to test your own march, how are you pointed in travel between points? The secret to observing yourself is to allow yourself to forget to watch. Set the hourly alarm on your watch. That should give you the time to forget and will hopefully catch you in mid-strut and allow you to reflect on the moves that you convey during your conveyance. Are you Tony Monero or Quasimodo? And what exactly are you doing swaying that right arm?
In closing I would like to make a plea to all walks of life: Don’t let this truth I’ve unleashed affect the moving life-size signature you display, there are so very few things remaining that keep us individual. Treasure your saunter; strut like a peacock, prance like a deer, prowl like a lion, and glide like a cloud. There is always beauty in uniqueness.
As for the girl, the walk of my dreams: I didn’t like seeing you go, but I loved watching you walk away. I hope the life you eventually walked into had the good fortune of approaching you from the front.
Walk tall, all.
Patrick Hughes
The Search for Princess Strawberry-Leg in The Land of Ideale
For T & B (or M)
I can tell by your smile it’s a story you seek
And I think I’ve got the best story this week.
I’m Wizardini and I’m from Ideale,
A far away land that’s quite simply unreal.
This story’s about a young lady named Teagan, you’ll see
and something quite special found just above her knee.
Have you ever been to a place where everything’s pretty?
The bugs are all cute, as sweet as your teddy,
And everybody’s face has a smile for you all ready.
Ideale as a place is a wonderful thing.
Everybody’s so gorgeous: the bumblebees don’t sting.
Such a gathering of gorgeousness you never saw,
Ideale is in fact prefect, except for one flaw:
It’s almost ideal except for one thing,
Ideale as a place is a kingdom with no king.
No one was quite sure just where the king went
Whether he left or if he was sent.
Some said riches were in his plans,
And he’d taken a fleet to far away lands.
Others whispered about in a quiet buzz,
They all were so pretty…
they forgot who the king was.
One sunny day, I stood before them and said,
“I’ve had a vision of our new leader while I slept in my bed.
A dream told me I would find our new monarch,
Maybe in the field, or in the mall, or maybe in the park.
The one important thing that I would have to remark,
Is that on this person’s person is a special kind of mark.”
“A mark… A MARK! But how could that be?
Our king won’t be perfect, not pretty like me.”
I watched with confusion as they buzzed like a fuse,
How they’d already forgotten my good wizard news.
With my umbrella, my favorite book, and my determined stare,
I set off down the road with only one care.
I would knock on every door and shake every hand,
I would do all I could to speak to all in the land.
I wouldn’t rest
I wouldn’t stop
I wouldn’t even take a meal
Until I found that mark
Until I found that ideal person…
To be the best thing for Ideale.
Soon it felt like ten summers had gone by with no luck
I felt like a wizard with my face in the muck.
I was sure I had met everyone that I could,
But no one had the mark that my dream said they would.
By now I was sure everyone thought I was silly,
And all of Ideale called me an old silly nilly.
I rested my tired face on my hands, on my knees,
And said: “Oh my gosh-goodness, I just wanted to please!”
At that moment a little voice said: “Hello,”
“…You look so sad,
Like there’s no more down you could go.”
“Maybe all you need is water to drink,
We can visit my mom in the house colored pink.
We love to have guests in our home where we stay,
So very few people travel so far this way.”
A big smile rose on my tired old face
Who thought I’d find someone so nice, so far out of place?
“My name’s Teagan,”
“I am Wizardini the Wizard,” I said.
“And meeting a nice person is a weight off my head.”
And to myself, just then I thought:
“My, this as a quality sure means a lot.
In all of my travels throughout this whole quest,
No one else has been nice enough to make me their guest.”
We walked together to the house colored pink,
And got some cold water she poured from the sink
Teagan’s Mommy was nice, and beautiful too,
We three sat and talked from nine until two.
Soon Teagan’s curiosity could no longer hold,
She asked me Wizardini what had left me so cold.
I said: “My dear, I’m on an impossible quest,
A nastier challenge than any math test.
I have to find someone in Ideale,
Someone I’m now sure just can’t be real.
Somewhere in this land there is someone distinct,
Someone more special than lavender ink.
How can there be in this land of perfection,
Someone who stands in a different direction?”
“So what you seek,” Mommy said with a smile
“What’s taken you mile, after mile, after mile…
Is the search for a person who’s not the same as you or me,
Not the same as her, and different than Aunt Bea,
Not the same as the pretty teacher or the handsome spelling bee,
And not the same as every Idealian from here to the Sea?”
“Well, that’s simple,” said Teagan “That person is me.”
“What!” I then said, my mouth drooped to the floor,
I said nothing else, stunned right to the core.
I thought to myself one thing and not a thing more:
“How could pretty young Teagan be the king I’m looking for?”
After a moment right there, on Teagan went
Explaining to me just what she meant.
“We are all different, why can’t you see?
My mommy’s distinct, like you and like me.
Mommy’s always said, since I was as small as a pea,
Being a little bit different is what we were all meant to be.”
I went to sleep with one thought on my mind:
“Should I be seeking a leader of a different kind?”
I fell off to sleep and a vivid, bright dream
About a pretty young girl who could show all of Ideale,
That all the gorgeous people were far more than they seem.
“Why don’t you both come?” I said the next day,
We’ll go tell Ideale, all these things that you say…”
We went into town, all three standing tall
Right through the crowds, to the centre of the mall
“Gather around my friends,” I said to them all.
“Open your ears, for my news is not small.”
They slowly gathered, with their faces wound up tight,
Like they wouldn’t believe me, with all of their might.
“We seek a king for our land of Ideale
But we all seem to forget that ideal is not real.”
“You are you and he is him
Your name is Martha and his is Jim.
His mother is Polly and yours is Kim
I know that you all think of me as quite dim
But the differences among you Idealians
Could fill the school gym.”
“Different? Different? Is that what he said?”
“How could such nasty words escape from your head?”
“If we were all different, then how could it be
That one of us after the next is perfect to a T?
From every lovely head to every pretty knee
There isn’t one flaw that you can see.”
At that moment,
The pretty young girl with the Wizard decided to speak
It was high time that they found a new different to seek.
“Different means more than a mistake or a flaw,
It means distinct and special…
Maybe the best you ever saw.”
“People and things are different for a reason
Where would the year be with only one season?
Who would want all the same snowflake,
One kind of singing voice,
And one flavor of birthday cake?”
Just then Edgar, Ideale’s handsome town grump,
Interrupted her, stomping his foot down with a thump.
“How can we be expected to believe what you say,
When it comes from the prettiest girl we’ve seen all day?
If somewhere on you such difference exists,
I will have to rethink every one of my lists.
Teagan looked over at her mommy, who nodded and said,
“Go ahead, Darling, they all need to see,
How special and different special can be.”
So, now with every eye in all of Ideale looking on,
Teagan gave them a reason to have been gathered since dawn,
Just above her knee she then lifted her skirt,
And every jaw before her dropped right to the dirt.
On the front of her leg sat a big bright strawberry,
And I thought to myself, ‘this is news that’ll carry.’
“That’s it! That’s it! The wizard spoke of that mark.
On the leader we would find in the mall or the park.”
“That’s different? That’s special? Well that’s not so bad!”
“It’s bright and it’s pretty…”
“…It’s something I wish I had!”
Then the NEATEST thing happened, something I never foresaw,
Everyone started to show off their own wonderful flaw.
“I have a mark on my arm.”
“I’m allergic to cats”
“I was born missing a toe!”
“This is not my real hair.”
“I hate taking baths.”
“I can’t play the oboe!”
At that moment old Edgar, the former town grump,
Had just finished showing off his very strange hump,
Like everyone around him he felt knocked up a peg,
So he led his town in a cheer: “To Princess Strawberry-Leg!”
I watched with a smile, arms folded across my chest,
Knowing for sure that this would be best.
But just then my young friend said something I didn’t expect:
She rose up her voice, her arms standing erect.
“My friends and my neighbors I have one thing to suggest
Something I bet you’ll agree and attest.
If Ideale’s leader is someone with a special mark,
We know we’re all different, let’s all be monarch.”
“Stand up and be proud of your special things,
And we’ll all be princes, princesses and kings.”
The people they cheered and the bells they did chime
The Land of Ideale was an even shinier dime.
I said then to her Mommy, “You must be proud all the time.”
She nodded and said,
“And I had no idea how well she can rhyme.”
Things were imperfectly perfect from then on in Ideale,
Once upon a time, happily ever after, and all that... stuff.
The End
I can tell by your smile it’s a story you seek
And I think I’ve got the best story this week.
I’m Wizardini and I’m from Ideale,
A far away land that’s quite simply unreal.
This story’s about a young lady named Teagan, you’ll see
and something quite special found just above her knee.
Have you ever been to a place where everything’s pretty?
The bugs are all cute, as sweet as your teddy,
And everybody’s face has a smile for you all ready.
Ideale as a place is a wonderful thing.
Everybody’s so gorgeous: the bumblebees don’t sting.
Such a gathering of gorgeousness you never saw,
Ideale is in fact prefect, except for one flaw:
It’s almost ideal except for one thing,
Ideale as a place is a kingdom with no king.
No one was quite sure just where the king went
Whether he left or if he was sent.
Some said riches were in his plans,
And he’d taken a fleet to far away lands.
Others whispered about in a quiet buzz,
They all were so pretty…
they forgot who the king was.
One sunny day, I stood before them and said,
“I’ve had a vision of our new leader while I slept in my bed.
A dream told me I would find our new monarch,
Maybe in the field, or in the mall, or maybe in the park.
The one important thing that I would have to remark,
Is that on this person’s person is a special kind of mark.”
“A mark… A MARK! But how could that be?
Our king won’t be perfect, not pretty like me.”
I watched with confusion as they buzzed like a fuse,
How they’d already forgotten my good wizard news.
With my umbrella, my favorite book, and my determined stare,
I set off down the road with only one care.
I would knock on every door and shake every hand,
I would do all I could to speak to all in the land.
I wouldn’t rest
I wouldn’t stop
I wouldn’t even take a meal
Until I found that mark
Until I found that ideal person…
To be the best thing for Ideale.
Soon it felt like ten summers had gone by with no luck
I felt like a wizard with my face in the muck.
I was sure I had met everyone that I could,
But no one had the mark that my dream said they would.
By now I was sure everyone thought I was silly,
And all of Ideale called me an old silly nilly.
I rested my tired face on my hands, on my knees,
And said: “Oh my gosh-goodness, I just wanted to please!”
At that moment a little voice said: “Hello,”
“…You look so sad,
Like there’s no more down you could go.”
“Maybe all you need is water to drink,
We can visit my mom in the house colored pink.
We love to have guests in our home where we stay,
So very few people travel so far this way.”
A big smile rose on my tired old face
Who thought I’d find someone so nice, so far out of place?
“My name’s Teagan,”
“I am Wizardini the Wizard,” I said.
“And meeting a nice person is a weight off my head.”
And to myself, just then I thought:
“My, this as a quality sure means a lot.
In all of my travels throughout this whole quest,
No one else has been nice enough to make me their guest.”
We walked together to the house colored pink,
And got some cold water she poured from the sink
Teagan’s Mommy was nice, and beautiful too,
We three sat and talked from nine until two.
Soon Teagan’s curiosity could no longer hold,
She asked me Wizardini what had left me so cold.
I said: “My dear, I’m on an impossible quest,
A nastier challenge than any math test.
I have to find someone in Ideale,
Someone I’m now sure just can’t be real.
Somewhere in this land there is someone distinct,
Someone more special than lavender ink.
How can there be in this land of perfection,
Someone who stands in a different direction?”
“So what you seek,” Mommy said with a smile
“What’s taken you mile, after mile, after mile…
Is the search for a person who’s not the same as you or me,
Not the same as her, and different than Aunt Bea,
Not the same as the pretty teacher or the handsome spelling bee,
And not the same as every Idealian from here to the Sea?”
“Well, that’s simple,” said Teagan “That person is me.”
“What!” I then said, my mouth drooped to the floor,
I said nothing else, stunned right to the core.
I thought to myself one thing and not a thing more:
“How could pretty young Teagan be the king I’m looking for?”
After a moment right there, on Teagan went
Explaining to me just what she meant.
“We are all different, why can’t you see?
My mommy’s distinct, like you and like me.
Mommy’s always said, since I was as small as a pea,
Being a little bit different is what we were all meant to be.”
I went to sleep with one thought on my mind:
“Should I be seeking a leader of a different kind?”
I fell off to sleep and a vivid, bright dream
About a pretty young girl who could show all of Ideale,
That all the gorgeous people were far more than they seem.
“Why don’t you both come?” I said the next day,
We’ll go tell Ideale, all these things that you say…”
We went into town, all three standing tall
Right through the crowds, to the centre of the mall
“Gather around my friends,” I said to them all.
“Open your ears, for my news is not small.”
They slowly gathered, with their faces wound up tight,
Like they wouldn’t believe me, with all of their might.
“We seek a king for our land of Ideale
But we all seem to forget that ideal is not real.”
“You are you and he is him
Your name is Martha and his is Jim.
His mother is Polly and yours is Kim
I know that you all think of me as quite dim
But the differences among you Idealians
Could fill the school gym.”
“Different? Different? Is that what he said?”
“How could such nasty words escape from your head?”
“If we were all different, then how could it be
That one of us after the next is perfect to a T?
From every lovely head to every pretty knee
There isn’t one flaw that you can see.”
At that moment,
The pretty young girl with the Wizard decided to speak
It was high time that they found a new different to seek.
“Different means more than a mistake or a flaw,
It means distinct and special…
Maybe the best you ever saw.”
“People and things are different for a reason
Where would the year be with only one season?
Who would want all the same snowflake,
One kind of singing voice,
And one flavor of birthday cake?”
Just then Edgar, Ideale’s handsome town grump,
Interrupted her, stomping his foot down with a thump.
“How can we be expected to believe what you say,
When it comes from the prettiest girl we’ve seen all day?
If somewhere on you such difference exists,
I will have to rethink every one of my lists.
Teagan looked over at her mommy, who nodded and said,
“Go ahead, Darling, they all need to see,
How special and different special can be.”
So, now with every eye in all of Ideale looking on,
Teagan gave them a reason to have been gathered since dawn,
Just above her knee she then lifted her skirt,
And every jaw before her dropped right to the dirt.
On the front of her leg sat a big bright strawberry,
And I thought to myself, ‘this is news that’ll carry.’
“That’s it! That’s it! The wizard spoke of that mark.
On the leader we would find in the mall or the park.”
“That’s different? That’s special? Well that’s not so bad!”
“It’s bright and it’s pretty…”
“…It’s something I wish I had!”
Then the NEATEST thing happened, something I never foresaw,
Everyone started to show off their own wonderful flaw.
“I have a mark on my arm.”
“I’m allergic to cats”
“I was born missing a toe!”
“This is not my real hair.”
“I hate taking baths.”
“I can’t play the oboe!”
At that moment old Edgar, the former town grump,
Had just finished showing off his very strange hump,
Like everyone around him he felt knocked up a peg,
So he led his town in a cheer: “To Princess Strawberry-Leg!”
I watched with a smile, arms folded across my chest,
Knowing for sure that this would be best.
But just then my young friend said something I didn’t expect:
She rose up her voice, her arms standing erect.
“My friends and my neighbors I have one thing to suggest
Something I bet you’ll agree and attest.
If Ideale’s leader is someone with a special mark,
We know we’re all different, let’s all be monarch.”
“Stand up and be proud of your special things,
And we’ll all be princes, princesses and kings.”
The people they cheered and the bells they did chime
The Land of Ideale was an even shinier dime.
I said then to her Mommy, “You must be proud all the time.”
She nodded and said,
“And I had no idea how well she can rhyme.”
Things were imperfectly perfect from then on in Ideale,
Once upon a time, happily ever after, and all that... stuff.
The End
Mr. Fixit
I thought I'd bring one out from the drawer. Enjoy the dust-off.
Fixing the whole world can start with your toaster.
Do you ever feel that without our devices we’d have very few vices at all? Put all of us together; all the people, places, gadgets, stuff and things that make up the living machine that is our society. Picture this big, sloppy engine turning in its inefficiently perpetual manner. As a mechanism, no one will argue we are need of a tune-up, but who can perform such a therapeutic and mechanical wonder? In what capacity are we in need of this alteration, in our hardwiring or in our software?
Who among us is qualified to deliver this devised diagnosis?
We come home from televisions to televisions and images of images we seek to obtain and ridicule, that our ancestors would have never have dreamt of seeing, or believed in needing, and would not have missed. The more we get plugged in the more detached we become, from the earth, from our neighbor, and even from the devices designed to keep us connected.
If the outlet you are currently plugged into ceased its outlay, if the power went out, the mechanics went on leave, if the doctors weren’t on call and the helplines weren’t online, where would you be? What could you contribute to your own survival? What about the survival of the community you depend on?
We’ve constructed our incubators and sit happily in our fake wombs, but have become unfamiliar with the sources of our warmth and security. The Japanese use the same word for crisis and opportunity; we should adopt a similar moniker for convenience and encumbrance.
Perhaps we need to forget Encumvenience and devise a de-vice.
There is no debate that our automobiles and televisions are in charge, but it’s staggering how little we know about the keepers of our mojo constructed for us by our brothers and our sisters.
The problem therefore being not that we have the conveniences, but that we have so easily relinquished the ignition keys to those conveniences. Look around the room at the vices that surround you. How much do you know about them? I mean, you know their function, you know their brand name and perhaps the part of the world from which they came. You know that it needs batteries or an outlet to function, and that if you drop it from too high that it will cease to function. Most importantly, you know that your life is a little bit better because of that device and the service it provides you. You know you enjoy that service, but you likely don’t question how that service is performed.
Why do we have no desire to learn how these services are mechanically conjured for us? Why are we so easily satisfied and contented with warm food and entertainment just provided for us like infants? Doesn’t this eagerly pawed warm nippled bottle represent a regression from the motivation and relentless innovation that got is this far?
We’ve asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ so many times before. We have religion and philosophy and competition and war because of our compelling need to question, but for some reason when that mystery comes in the form of convenience we stop asking those questions. On the surface we have a device-addicted culture. A population more concerned about creature comforts than creatures. We have identities that are established through packaging and a society that is smarter, but older, fatter, and increasingly more helpless.
In very simple terms, we don’t know how the devices we depend on function. Though this may seem trivial in our neon world, it creates a fundamental problem as a worldwide organism. As individuals, generally speaking, we no longer have a symbiotic relationship with the machines and devices and structures we depend on. We feel detached from them, though the umbilical cord is fiber optic and as strong as titanium.
There are about as many solutions to our detachment as there are items in your sharper self-image catalogue, but more often than not they involve a leap of faith that as a race of humans we simply aren’t capable of. At least not without an escalator.
Don’t think for a minute that I will be putting down my remote and unplugging my… well… anything. Let me take you for a moment to a world of my design.
Imagine a place where you knew how everything worked. You understood how the pictures came through the magic box in the living room, how things got sucked into your vacuum, how the fridge kept your food cold, and what that fourth sound was when your started your car. Even further, you knew what made the paint in your den brown, what made concrete hard, what made your chicken fingers crunchy, and what happened to them after you swallowed them.
In this world you can actually picture the anatomy of these devices clearly in your mind; you understand their structures as accurately as the spelling of your own name. There is no mystery to how they perform the services you count on them for. Moreover, this knowledge is common knowledge. Understanding the mechanics of everyday devices is everyone’s business. Everyone around you is familiar with the gadgets that make up the structure of modern life, how a signal travels through a wire to a modem and into a computer to become e-mail, how the same signal can travel to a satellite and appear on someone’s phone, and how they get caramel inside those chocolate squares.
There is nothing special about this world, nothing in the water that makes people smarter, nothing in their genetics that makes them more curious, or more tools in their pockets that allow them to tinker. It’s a level of responsibility that compels them. With the advent of their industrial revolution, a different convenience was born, one that lived hand in hand with the thirst for knowledge that had steered them that far. They considered the knowledge that designed their luxury to be public domain.
In part, they saw the self-preserving value of understanding organisms both of flesh and of fiberglass, knowing ‘thyself’ more and more as the information became realized. Also, the idea of License spanned farther than just cars and guns, and further than merely operating the mechanism without causing the death of another. If one were to operate a machine, why wouldn’t that operator want to know everything about what they’re operating and how it accomplishes that operation? Any less would seem as foolish to them as using a chainsaw as a toothbrush.
Naturally one immediately wonders about this world’s unfortunate specialist sector; the doctors, mechanics, tree surgeons, cobblers and undertakers. Would the specialist go the way of the dinosaur in this world? It might be easy to assume that the need for someone who has studied and apprenticed a certain field would fossilize and petrify. Photo-mat technicians, Subway sandwich artists, vascular surgeons; why would these people exist in this Utopia?
You needn’t fear for them, their role is merely different. As much as awareness is prevalent in this world, its utopian perfection does not include a longer day, free hardware, or knowledge of undiscovered symptoms that are cutting edge before they are common. The knowledgeable public of this miraculous land still require the services of people with lifts for their vehicles and x-rays for their broken bones to perform the general maintenance required to keep our world’s mechanical heart pumping.
On a quantitative level, consider how the knowledge to fix and maintain the mechanisms of our lives would immediately affect our world. Think of the condition of a planet where disposal isn't the first thing its inhabitants consider to deal with a problem. Consider how convenience would expand to include terms like longevity while excluding the need for warranty and obsolescence.
On a level of far grander quality, consider how every public dynamic would function if the understanding of function wasn’t limited to a narrow faction. What happens when everyone can contribute when something that we count on ceases to function? Contribution: Surgeons standing over a patient, grease monkeys gathered around a ’64 Mustang, four kids getting your order at Wendy’s. Every quandary, every calamity, every injury would potentially be surrounded by people who could offer a solution, who could combine their knowledge gathered through their understanding of License and fix the problem.
Everyone around every table offers a knowledgeable answer rather than waiting for their number to be called.
On the surface, we have smaller junkyards and an underpopulation of old car parts and broken toasters. Closer to the center of the onion, we have a population of Mr. and Mrs. John Q Fixits who have the knowledge to offer repair. We have people in places that have their things and understand that ownership includes a responsibility to the things that pop, call, comfort and govern.
Sometimes I think that we are going to figure it ALL out about 6 hours before our poor planet crumbles. Anyone know where we put the warranty card for our planet?
As for your toaster: Fix it yourself, then offer to fix your neighbor’s.
As for me, I’m waiting for a toast.
Patrick
Fixing the whole world can start with your toaster.
Do you ever feel that without our devices we’d have very few vices at all? Put all of us together; all the people, places, gadgets, stuff and things that make up the living machine that is our society. Picture this big, sloppy engine turning in its inefficiently perpetual manner. As a mechanism, no one will argue we are need of a tune-up, but who can perform such a therapeutic and mechanical wonder? In what capacity are we in need of this alteration, in our hardwiring or in our software?
Who among us is qualified to deliver this devised diagnosis?
We come home from televisions to televisions and images of images we seek to obtain and ridicule, that our ancestors would have never have dreamt of seeing, or believed in needing, and would not have missed. The more we get plugged in the more detached we become, from the earth, from our neighbor, and even from the devices designed to keep us connected.
If the outlet you are currently plugged into ceased its outlay, if the power went out, the mechanics went on leave, if the doctors weren’t on call and the helplines weren’t online, where would you be? What could you contribute to your own survival? What about the survival of the community you depend on?
We’ve constructed our incubators and sit happily in our fake wombs, but have become unfamiliar with the sources of our warmth and security. The Japanese use the same word for crisis and opportunity; we should adopt a similar moniker for convenience and encumbrance.
Perhaps we need to forget Encumvenience and devise a de-vice.
There is no debate that our automobiles and televisions are in charge, but it’s staggering how little we know about the keepers of our mojo constructed for us by our brothers and our sisters.
The problem therefore being not that we have the conveniences, but that we have so easily relinquished the ignition keys to those conveniences. Look around the room at the vices that surround you. How much do you know about them? I mean, you know their function, you know their brand name and perhaps the part of the world from which they came. You know that it needs batteries or an outlet to function, and that if you drop it from too high that it will cease to function. Most importantly, you know that your life is a little bit better because of that device and the service it provides you. You know you enjoy that service, but you likely don’t question how that service is performed.
Why do we have no desire to learn how these services are mechanically conjured for us? Why are we so easily satisfied and contented with warm food and entertainment just provided for us like infants? Doesn’t this eagerly pawed warm nippled bottle represent a regression from the motivation and relentless innovation that got is this far?
We’ve asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ so many times before. We have religion and philosophy and competition and war because of our compelling need to question, but for some reason when that mystery comes in the form of convenience we stop asking those questions. On the surface we have a device-addicted culture. A population more concerned about creature comforts than creatures. We have identities that are established through packaging and a society that is smarter, but older, fatter, and increasingly more helpless.
In very simple terms, we don’t know how the devices we depend on function. Though this may seem trivial in our neon world, it creates a fundamental problem as a worldwide organism. As individuals, generally speaking, we no longer have a symbiotic relationship with the machines and devices and structures we depend on. We feel detached from them, though the umbilical cord is fiber optic and as strong as titanium.
There are about as many solutions to our detachment as there are items in your sharper self-image catalogue, but more often than not they involve a leap of faith that as a race of humans we simply aren’t capable of. At least not without an escalator.
Don’t think for a minute that I will be putting down my remote and unplugging my… well… anything. Let me take you for a moment to a world of my design.
Imagine a place where you knew how everything worked. You understood how the pictures came through the magic box in the living room, how things got sucked into your vacuum, how the fridge kept your food cold, and what that fourth sound was when your started your car. Even further, you knew what made the paint in your den brown, what made concrete hard, what made your chicken fingers crunchy, and what happened to them after you swallowed them.
In this world you can actually picture the anatomy of these devices clearly in your mind; you understand their structures as accurately as the spelling of your own name. There is no mystery to how they perform the services you count on them for. Moreover, this knowledge is common knowledge. Understanding the mechanics of everyday devices is everyone’s business. Everyone around you is familiar with the gadgets that make up the structure of modern life, how a signal travels through a wire to a modem and into a computer to become e-mail, how the same signal can travel to a satellite and appear on someone’s phone, and how they get caramel inside those chocolate squares.
There is nothing special about this world, nothing in the water that makes people smarter, nothing in their genetics that makes them more curious, or more tools in their pockets that allow them to tinker. It’s a level of responsibility that compels them. With the advent of their industrial revolution, a different convenience was born, one that lived hand in hand with the thirst for knowledge that had steered them that far. They considered the knowledge that designed their luxury to be public domain.
In part, they saw the self-preserving value of understanding organisms both of flesh and of fiberglass, knowing ‘thyself’ more and more as the information became realized. Also, the idea of License spanned farther than just cars and guns, and further than merely operating the mechanism without causing the death of another. If one were to operate a machine, why wouldn’t that operator want to know everything about what they’re operating and how it accomplishes that operation? Any less would seem as foolish to them as using a chainsaw as a toothbrush.
Naturally one immediately wonders about this world’s unfortunate specialist sector; the doctors, mechanics, tree surgeons, cobblers and undertakers. Would the specialist go the way of the dinosaur in this world? It might be easy to assume that the need for someone who has studied and apprenticed a certain field would fossilize and petrify. Photo-mat technicians, Subway sandwich artists, vascular surgeons; why would these people exist in this Utopia?
You needn’t fear for them, their role is merely different. As much as awareness is prevalent in this world, its utopian perfection does not include a longer day, free hardware, or knowledge of undiscovered symptoms that are cutting edge before they are common. The knowledgeable public of this miraculous land still require the services of people with lifts for their vehicles and x-rays for their broken bones to perform the general maintenance required to keep our world’s mechanical heart pumping.
On a quantitative level, consider how the knowledge to fix and maintain the mechanisms of our lives would immediately affect our world. Think of the condition of a planet where disposal isn't the first thing its inhabitants consider to deal with a problem. Consider how convenience would expand to include terms like longevity while excluding the need for warranty and obsolescence.
On a level of far grander quality, consider how every public dynamic would function if the understanding of function wasn’t limited to a narrow faction. What happens when everyone can contribute when something that we count on ceases to function? Contribution: Surgeons standing over a patient, grease monkeys gathered around a ’64 Mustang, four kids getting your order at Wendy’s. Every quandary, every calamity, every injury would potentially be surrounded by people who could offer a solution, who could combine their knowledge gathered through their understanding of License and fix the problem.
Everyone around every table offers a knowledgeable answer rather than waiting for their number to be called.
On the surface, we have smaller junkyards and an underpopulation of old car parts and broken toasters. Closer to the center of the onion, we have a population of Mr. and Mrs. John Q Fixits who have the knowledge to offer repair. We have people in places that have their things and understand that ownership includes a responsibility to the things that pop, call, comfort and govern.
Sometimes I think that we are going to figure it ALL out about 6 hours before our poor planet crumbles. Anyone know where we put the warranty card for our planet?
As for your toaster: Fix it yourself, then offer to fix your neighbor’s.
As for me, I’m waiting for a toast.
Patrick
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