Category Archives: Abstract Idea

The Judgmentor Jumble: Things I Love That Other People Hate Edition

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Noun: Various. Opinion: Love.

Image credit: AMC

One of the interesting things about writing a blog like this is how often one comes up with opinions one would ordinarily never have bothered having about stuff no one else cares what you think about. Another interesting thing is finding out that it is more difficult to explain why you love things than hate things. There’s something about hating that people trust; the hostility acts as a dais on which you get to stand and allows you to be taller than everybody else and no matter what you say you see (bald spots! dandruff!) people will take your word for it as you’ve undermined anything positive they had to stand on. Say you love something, however, and people tend to scoff. Love seems to make you vulnerable and ridiculous. There’s something perverse, important and terribly interesting going on here, which I will not investigate. I will instead wallow and relish in this messedupness, the way a wolf rolls in deer shit and carrion, by celebrating the things I love that I know make other people spoon-gag.

Opera—I freaking love the opera (say in sing-song voice with extended vibrato on the last syllable–go ahead, go back and read it again just like that). The impractical costumes, the monotonous recitative, the lung-bursting arias! The fake weapons, the mediocre dancing, the part where two zaftig singers embrace but can’t quite encircle their arms around one another because of their oversized midsections! I love it all! I hate the overpriced tickets, but that’s about the only thing I hate about it. My love for opera does not, however, make me blind to the fact that other people really hate opera. I’ve had to turn off the radio, leave performances early and utilize headphones because of the rampant opera hate. This is entirely unfair, as most of the hate comes from people who’ve never properly listened to opera. This is also entirely understandable, as opera has lame public relations—like cats. Look at dogs, dogs have great PR: man’s best friend and all that. Dogs are always showing up on rooftops during floods and next to the graves of their owners who were killed in a natural disaster. They’re positioned as loyal and noble and loving and having low, easy-to-achieve expectations of you. Meanwhile, cats show up on You Tube beating up on dogs. Cats are loved by cat people despite their poorly managed reputation—cat people laugh when a cat rubs up against their leg then hisses at them when they bend down to pet it. Cat people find this adorable. When cats stare at cat people and cat people respond by saying “hi!” and the cat runs away, cat people think that’s endearing.

Opera people are like cat people. Opera and cats have something in common: they come across as detached and elitist, but they’re both really, really beautiful. And just because one cat is kind of an aloof asshole, it doesn’t mean all operas are boring. You follow? Look, if you’re one of these people who find opera boring or obnoxious—whatever, I don’t feel like fighting now. But if you’re someone who thinks you don’t like opera when you’re actually just intimidated by it? Come. I stroke your hair. Relax–it’s just opera. Even if you spoke the language it’s being sung in, you still wouldn’t understand what they’re saying—the melisma warps the vowels to the point that French, Italian and German all pretty much sound like the same gibberish. Hey, I’ve fallen asleep during the opera. So what? Sometimes they’re too damn long—usually by the time I wake up the same soprano’s still going at it; you won’t miss much, don’t worry about it. It’s just opera. Read the Wikipedia entry before you go, that will help you follow the story. Opera’s all about the journey, the music, that’s why you can see the same opera over and over and never tire of it. Most of the time the stories don’t even make sense, anyway. Again, it’s just opera. Bug Bunny did it, so can you.

Now, once you get over the whole intimidation thing, you might be surprised to find that there is a world of beauty you never knew existed. There are notes you’ve never heard sung before. There is emotion you didn’t think could be expressed with such accuracy or in such an interesting way. Once your brain encompasses the complexity of a Mozart aria, you may just wonder how you ever withstood the herp-derp repetitiveness of a contemporary pop song. Opera may be hard to love at first, but it’s easy to stay in love. If all you know about opera is what you saw in Pretty Woman, forget that twaddle immediately! If I recall correctly, he says something about how if you love opera the first time, you love it forever, but if not it will never be a part of your soul. She, of course, cries ecstatic tears her first time. That is because they are watching Verdi’s La Traviata, where a john falls in love with a hooker and then the bitch DIES. She cries because she herself is a HOOKER. Get it? Do NOT take life lessons of any sort from a goddamn Julia Roberts movie. Those of us who love opera know it took time; first familiarity, then friendship, then affection, then the kind of love that makes marriages work for life.

Gwyneth Paltrow—Everyone hates Gwyneth Paltrow, but I…actually, I hate her, too. A lot. Next.

Home Economics—I am not one of these women who takes pride in not cooking or sewing or cleaning. I do not knit ironically (I knit poorly, which resides in a different quadrant of attitude, catty-corner from the one that says “tragic, self-mocking hipster”). My oven is in regular use. I hate doing laundry and I hate ironing; I nevertheless fancy myself competent at both (as long as you ignore collars and sleeves. And the section around buttons). I take pride in generally being a good steward of my things and space. I do not feel any less the feminist for being domestic; in fact, I’d like to think I’m making a stronger statement. I am advancing the cause by using my powers for good, to improve the quality of my life and not in subservience to someone else’s pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, if I could afford it I’d hire the cadre of servants from Downton Abbey—but I believe that truly happy people are the ones who know to find joy in the chores they must do. Thus drudgery becomes delight! And a sinkful of dirty dishes gets cleaned in the span of one and a half Al Green songs with made-up lyrics (“I’m…so in love with you; Whatever I want you do; It’s alright by me…You–make me feel; Like a shoe…I–want to spend all my cash on food…”).

Betty Draper—AMC’s Mad Men is scheduled to return to the air in a couple of months, and this seems as good a time as any to assert my affection for this crazy bitch. If you don’t watch the show, you probably won’t be too insulted by my love for Betty Draper. In the beginning of the series, she is the model housewife of the main male lead. So textbook is her performance of the housewife role that it is hard to tell if her flawlessness comes from effort or vapidity. Then Betty’s character suffers through the indignities of an unfaithful husband, a repressive society, suburban scrutiny and imperfect children. We see her veneer crack little by little—when we see what’s underneath, instead of vulnerable flesh we discover a fossilized spirit cast in amber, once liquid resin but long ago polymerized by heat and pressure. She turns monstrous in her selfishness and contempt for the world, including her own children. This seems the most honest depiction of the influence of mid-century values on a bystanding woman. Trapped in a supporting role to my own life, confined within fences both physical and metaphorical, hindered from fulfilling every corporeal and emotional need, disallowed from pursuing my intellectual interests, required to set my hair every morning, demanded to maintain a certain waist size, dismissed for every quality I possess in mind or character, performing all these duties perfectly to the thankless indifference of the world, I, too, may eventually disassociate from decency and compassion when so little has been rendered to me. I, too, may subvert my oppressors in self-destructive ways. I, too, may lock my daughter in a closet out of frustration. I find her an entirely sympathetic figure, a beautiful body harboring a longing soul that was scourged by negligence. A waste of mind and spirit. A compelling picture of a heart blackened and gloriously corrupt. I hope she wins.

Keanu Reeves—It’s not like I’ll watch anything Keanu’s in, like I would for, say, Meryl Streep or Peter O’Toole. But Keanu manages to show up in a lot of movies I genuinely enjoy, like a traveling film bomb, including Much Ado About Nothing, the first Matrix, Dangerous Liaisons, A Scanner Darkly, etc. He shows up in a lot of other shit, too, so there’s that. However, while his range as an actor is limited, the diversity of his projects is prodigious, which is admirable. I never found Keanu’s screen presence disagreeable—what other people see as wooden strikes me as refreshingly lacking in exploitation. He does not chew scenery, he does not bully the viewer with emotion, his beauty is clean and unaggressive and quite delightful to take in. He’s a glass of unsweetened iced tea, a little on the underbrewed side. The waiter forgot to add the lemon wedge. But I drink it anyway. I hereby officially lobby for more pretty boys in the movies, or at least as many as there are less interesting, insipidly attractive women who have been tolerated on-screen (some even win Oscars for it). Maybe that will cheer up Keanu. It will me.

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, though why would you? I just spent six paragraphs expounding on things you hate. I apologize. But really, I gave you the opportunity to stand on your dais and laugh at the midget who likes fancy music, baking, frigid blonds and Ted Logan from his and Bill’s excellent adventure. Stand there on your platform, make fun of my hairline and enjoy it! Or…should you be among the few who love what I love…come join me and look for boogers up their nostrils! Haha, that’s a hairy one.

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Occupy Wall Street

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Noun: Occupy Wall Street. Opinion: Yup. OK.

Photo credit: The Washington Post

I live right by Zuccotti Park where the protesters have set up camp, and I’ve lived in the area since it was called Liberty Plaza—which may at first seem like a more fitting appellation but seeing as John Zuccotti made $1.2M for napping during an annual board meeting in 2008, maybe its current name isn’t irrelevant.  To be fair, I don’t actually know if he napped, I just assume that because he was 72 years old.  To be even more fair, I don’t actually know if he bothered attending the meeting, he may have voted in absentia.  Given what I know about septuagenarians, however, I will stand by my assumption that whether or not he was in attendance, John Zuccotti was somewhere napping.

I’m sure he’s a very nice man.

We just got started and I’m already off course.  That supercilious English bitch on my GPS exasperatedly tells me she’s recalculating, like she’s so much smarter than I am, which I guess she is so I’m changing the voice options. Slut. But as long as I’m way out here, I want to say something about the dirty hippies that people are saying comprise the majority of protesters.  Others say they are being misrepresented by the media, and that most of the protesters are your average, disfranchised, college-educated American. To this small, endearing voice of impassioned wisdom, I say: actually, they are mostly dirty hippies. The average Americans you’re seeing are the reporters covering the story.

Which is not to say that dirty hippies don’t have something valuable to contribute. And maybe some of them started out more hippie than dirty, but a month of living in a tent pushed them over.  Maybe they were already dirty, but the act of carrying a cardboard sign transformed their image from pointlessly filthy to a hippie with a mission.

The Aw-strine accented voice on my GPS tells me we’re on the fair dinkum pass, she’ll be right, reckons we’ll be out of the woopwoop in seven donkey’s years.  I’m as certain about what that means as I am about what the protesters want. They carry so many signs, and 99% of them make them sound like whiny potheads on an angry trip—like your brother-in-law, the one who’s been sleeping on your couch the past eleven weeks and who never offers to pay for the groceries he blithely consumes and shares with his cat. If you were to make some gentle suggestions about his life choices, you’re sure to get some unfocused but extensive belligerence roughly directed at you.

But when it comes to the 1 remaining %, I’m on your side. Probably. Maybe not. Honestly, it’s hard to tell.

I get that it’s hard for the protesters to fight an enemy they can’t identify. I mean, this is an industry that calls itself Wall Street, when basically the only investment bank that still resides there is German (and we can all rest assured Deutsche Bank is paying taxes—big, juicy, European ones). This is an industry that specializes in investing money but charges large fees to pay themselves salaries because they can’t make enough money through investing money. It would be like selling eggs, but you can’t produce enough eggs, so you ask to be paid in chickens in return for an egg when any honest farmer would be eating eggs from his own damn chickens. This is an industry, to paraphrase Buffett, where men travel in limos to take advice from brokers who ride the subway. So much of Wall Street is really fucked up and arbitrary.

And then there’s all that math, which can be confusing. Wall Street has a huge advantage in a country that still debates the factual basis of evolution. We’re not that bright. Numbers are amazingly tractable to obfuscation and Wall Street exploits them to its full advantage. Sometimes, they even just make them up! Based on no fundamental truth at all! But we don’t notice, because it’s hard to tell when they do that.

There’s also no check or balance to them. The obvious assumption is that the government is watching them. But the government turns out to be peopled by those who worked on Wall Street, because apparently all that math and fuckery takes an insider to understand. So Obama, who as Commander-in-Chief needs to have expertise in politics and human rights law and oil pricing and environmental carcinogens and how not to piss off the Chinese and the Torah decides to delegate, of all things, this. So he’s like, “anyone who understands this shit, raise your hands.” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street. And then it occurred to him to talk to other people, like Congressmen, to whom he said “find out if this shit is legal” and since they didn’t really know, they went and asked “does anyone know if this shit is legal?” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street and they said, why, yes, yup, it sure was legal, yessir. And even if it were all legit and above-board, the way everyone went about it was just weird and wrong and did nothing to make the process more transparent, and in a bucket already filled with dumb they added their own interminable supply of stupid.

No one comes out well here, by the way. One group of people probably did illegal and/or immoral things. These illegal and/or immoral things led to another group of people, who were by parts unlucky, unaware, victims of an underfunded public education system that made them bad at math—even maybe irresponsible! Or maybe completely innocent and undeserving!—but all in a legal way, to lose jobs and savings and security and opportunities. And a third group of people, who pledged to work in the second group of people’s interest, got gun-shy about doing anything because the first group is, in fact, essential to ensuring that the third group keep their jobs—not only/necessarily because they are being paid off, but because all three groups are more interdependent and fungible than people think. The first group is the aorta, and the second group is the heart and needs the aorta operated on, and the third group doesn’t have a medical degree.

The third group may very well be right that if they attempt surgery they’ll fuck it up and kill the patient. So, it recommends diet and exercise, hoping the issue will go away. It probably won’t, by the way. We really do need it operated on. We need the aorta to work. It shouldn’t be removed, it shouldn’t be ignored, it should be made to work. To anyone on either side who thinks that the heart can survive without it or vice-versa, I suggest you reconsider.

The GPS just rattled something off in Spanish; I’m assuming it said we’re close to our destination. So, okay, it’s all very confusing and a real, honest, legitimate clusterfuck. Maybe that’s why none of these protesters can explain what they want in an effective manner. “We’re the 99%”? Really? Is that a threat? Besides, to call themselves the 99% is a little disingenuous, as the working poor raise an eyebrow at being included in a statistic they were pointedly left out of before.  As far as they are concerned, there is still a large gap separating them and the middle class.

But they need the middle class.  If you’re not in the 1%, you need the middle class.  The existence of a healthy middle class suggests that there is fluidity between the strata. It means there is a pathway from the bottom to the top.  It is the sign of a thriving capitalistic democracy—not everyone is rich, but everyone contributes and has a say. A large, succulent middle class is where small businesses come from, where competition thrives, where innovation is born.  Even a vast majority of those we’d consider rich would benefit from this socioeconomic lubrication; it opens up the top to them, it validates their ambitions. The problem is, where there is a hill to climb up there is a slope to slide down.  And if you have a lot to lose, you’d rather seize the system and press pause on all this bustling interchange.

This country doesn’t appreciate its middle class.  The average American sees his place in the middle class as a temporary layover to the day he wins the lottery.  He’s so concerned about protecting those imaginary winnings he’ll even vote against his present self-interest.  We take the middle class for granted.  There are other countries that work hard to ensure the life of the middle class is pleasant and livable—they offer health benefits and work week limits and free colleges and day care and good bakeries.  Not us; if you can’t provide these things for yourself, you don’t deserve them.  We hate the middle class.  Liberals think they’re fundamentalist bourgeois, conservatives think they’re unionized wangs, everyone thinks they’re underachieving yokels. We abhor the middle class.

And now the middle class is coming out of this self-loathing. It’s occurring to us that we’ll never be rich, not like this.  All that stuff that happened in the last few years, even more—the frontal lobe may have forgotten WorldCom, Enron and Tyco, the dot-com bubble, the S&L scandal, but they’re imprinted in the sulky depths of our reptile brain—slashed into the rickety trust that was built between the haves and have-nots. How is it that these shitheads get to pull our collective dick every time they make a mistake?  And how is it that we have to pay their bail?  They never shared the wealth when they had it, why is it my asshole that gets raw and sore when they lose it? Every! Single! Fucking! Time!

Maybe we sense we’re being frozen out of being even middle class so we’re finally driven to protect it.  Maybe we could lead good lives in the middle class, if only there were certain systemic reinforcements put in place that would ensure its sustainability. Maybe if we were given the vast majority of the nation’s wealth, we would “create jobs,” too—us and a flock of masturbating ducks, because wealth begets economic activity like economic activity begets a big fucking DUH. Maybe the rich aren’t so special and we didn’t deserve their contempt after all. Maybe we’re starting to think that if there is a class of Americans who should be provided greater protection and preferential treatment, it’s the middle class.  Maybe this is what Occupy Wall Street is calling for, maybe this is why their message is so diffuse—it’s a motion for a concept of society, a model of civilization, which is more complex and difficult than can be expressed on a poster board held by a dirty hippie.

When I was a kid sometimes my older brother and his friends would make me feel left out. My response was often to launch from a running start, land on one of their backs like a monkey, and windmill my arms to batter my fists against their heads in a violent bid for attention. My brother would then calmly pluck me off, avoid making eye contact, toss me out of the room and close the door in my face. This is exactly how it is recommended you should handle a deranged monkey. For my part, in retrospect, my behavior seems an unlikely way to win anyone over. I didn’t get what I wanted, which was to be included. But, as I stood on the other side of the door, stomping my feet and screaming until birds flew into power lines on purpose, everyone knew, for what it was worth, that the monkey was mad.

The voice on the GPS is in that neutral, God-Bless-American accent of the Mid-Atlantic and syndicated sitcoms. It’s telling me that we’re very, very far from our destination. But at least we’re pointed in the right direction and, with some guidance, we might even make it there.

Gay Marriage (and an Appeal for Civil Discourse)

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Noun: Gay marriage.  Opinion: Done.

Noun credit: Dennis.

So I was watching the local news the other day when a reporter was polling passersby on their views on legalizing gay marriage in New York.  And one woman said she was against it, because it was “unnatural” and that her take was really “a religious thing.”  And she said all this with a smile, as if what she was saying wasn’t one of the worst things you could ever utter with your mouth.

To me, gay equality is a question with an obvious answer.  It’s a non-issue.  It’s so self-evident it drives me fucking bonkers to have to discuss it.  There are real problems in the world, people—real, complicated issues that demand our attention.  And you’re making me sit here and argue with you over whether the Earth is round.  It’s excruciating.

FINE, GAWD, I get it, it’s not about me.  So, ok, here’s my contribution.  Gay marriage should be legal.  It should never have been illegal.  Can we go back to working on world peace now?

No, I didn’t think so.  Look, I know you’ve heard this before, but why do you care?  Why bother caring?  I don’t care.  I don’t care that you and your wife are having missionary sex (you with your secretary, she with the pool boy).  I think you make the world a little bit worse, and make the gender divide a little harder to traverse, but I’m not proposing a Federal Fidelity Amendment to the Constitution or a Defense of Loyalty Act.  I figure that 1) this is between you two, so in return for not legislating whom you sleep with I trust you will not legislate whom I sleep with (i.e., my microwavable hot water bottle stuffed into a teddy bear) and 2) you’re not costing me anything, so when I do sleep, I sleep well.  If you were born that way—which I have reason to believe is true—I don’t care.  If it was a choice—nope, still don’t care.

It’s not like by legalizing gay marriage I’m going to force you into one.  If you’re a dude and the idea of making out with another dude grosses you out, don’t do it.  And if it makes your sweaty parts tingle, go at it.  But—and this goes for all of you—close the fucking door, don’t do it on my couch, and take a shower after.

Really, this is no biggie.

Ah, but the other side has decided to challenge this confidence; they’ll play their hand with a little more finesse.  Sure, I’ll humor you, bring it.  Now I see your entire cavalry take one step back, leaving a lone representative standing before me.  At first I’m a little afraid you put Bill O’Reilly out there, in which case my short tenure as activist is done.  I’m sorry, but I have my limits.  I will not engage battle with a logic-averse yammer engine.

But no, it’s no one from Fox News.  It is a well-dressed man.  And he has kind eyes and an agreeable, soft-spoken manner.  He seems decent, reasonable.   Let’s call him Jon.  Jon disagrees with me.

Jon isn’t hateful.  Jon doesn’t vilify gays.  He is religious, but he defers to God on judging fellow men.  He has gay friends and he knows that the stereotypes are unfair.  His gay friends are devoted to each other and yearn for legitimacy and protection under the law.  And he thinks they deserve every right but marriage.  He is not opposed to equal treatment of gay partnerships–that, he concurs, is a human right.  But not gay marriage.  And I, finding such half-assery hollow if not slightly sinister, don’t accept.  The concept of marriage, he tells me, is in itself institutional.  Marriage has existed since ancient times, but today’s idea of marriage, American marriage, marriage as an institution–one that is monogamous, one that determines kinship, one that is officiated, one that is a sacrament, one that is romantic as opposed to transactional–was originated by the divine laws governing our founding fathers and mothers. When those laws introduced marriage, the introduction necessarily came with a definition.  And the definition integrated this clause: that it was between man and woman, before God.

Basically, though Jon is too nice to say so, they—straight God people—came up with the institution.  It’s theirs.  Why would anyone else even want it?  It’s just weird, like if Jews wanted to appropriate Christmas.  They are not keeping gays out, Jon says, as much as they are trying to contain the institution.  An institution that they created, they defined and that they honor. They invite others to partake, but it has to be by their rules.

Meanwhile, I tell Jon that by withholding marriage, you withhold legitimacy even when you grant its rights.  Both marriage and Christmas have already been appropriated by a secular society.  You can’t commandeer the concept of marriage and dictate the rules when it is already so deeply ensconced in the public domain.  Jon shakes his head and says what I’m calling marriage and Christmas aren’t really.  Without rancor, I tell him he will have to reassess his definitions in the light of progress.  Without rancor, he tells me that that undermines the point of tradition and religion.  I tell him his logic has been used as an excuse to oppress the weak; he says mine has been used as an excuse to discard time-tested wisdom.  I look at him and see the violence of Nazism; he looks at me and sees the violence of the French Revolution.  I call him Tyranny; he calls me Chaos.

And then there’s the Church.  Jon says: you may say you support separation of Church and State, but what will happen is that the State will—has already!—become involved in the Church’s management of this affair.  For once this becomes legal in the courts, the Church will be called to defend itself in the future against discrimination on this issue.  It will open the doors to challenging us on adoption, polygamy, religious liberty.  Church and State reside in the same ecosystem and you will pollute our waters and we will have to deal with it.  You cannot expect us to stand idly by when we fundamentally disagree with the direction this will lead us.  And I nod and say: You’re right.  That’s going to suck.  But let’s face it, things have been going downhill for you guys since the Reformation.

Jon looks disappointed in me, then turns to leave but I’m not sure why; maybe because I was flippant, maybe because he’s a Protestant.  So I run after him and insist on buying him a cup of coffee, a fancy one, with foam and caramel swirls, because though I am thoroughly unsympathetic to his argument I probably proved his point by dismissing his concerns.  Which are, I have to admit, not entirely bullshit.  Not if you associate virtue with customs, tradition, faithful allegiance and community.  Can we agree that those things aren’t entirely bullshit?  But neither is my stance that the economic, psychological and social impact of differential treatment to minority groups is destabilizing to a democracy.  And you can’t keep marriage to yourself without practicing differential treatment.  Church and State do reside in the same ecosystem, and prejudice pollutes all of our waters—whether secular or religious.  Inclusion is a precondition to democracy, and, for that matter, devotion.  Jon doesn’t disagree.

So we sit, drinking coffee, agreeing on the merits but disagreeing on the greater evil.  We believe that by both defending our sides nobly, we will find a resolution and do honor to the process.  Neither of us will change our minds, but we both feel that a compromise with the other party could be tolerated; we’ve developed trust in each other’s intentions.  We toast to civil discourse despite the fact that we’re currently at an impasse.

This country has found itself at many impasses, but this is the kind that doesn’t kill your mothereffing soul.  This impasse is where things get foggy for some people who usually associate with the left or right–it’s where a liberal like Obama finds himself when he says his view on this issue is still “evolving” (if you accept that at face value).  It’s where a conservative like New York State Senator Roy McDonald is compelled to say: “You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.”  It’s an upside-down, topsy-turvy, confusing place, this impasse.  But it’s also where this nation will find its salvation as an open society–it’s where the best answers will come for our hardest questions.  It’s where answers will come without designating winners and losers, without festering resentment.  It’s where answers will come with more acceptance, less rage, more faith, EVEN WHEN one thinks the answer is so.  BLOODY.  OBVIOUS.

Luckily for me, this impasse is a very skinny little space, delineated by fuzzy lines, and no one can find it much less make room.  Luckily for me, our simplistic, retarded, dim-witted national confabulation hasn’t presented a Jon, it’s presented Fox News, a loss to whom would be unacceptable.  Luckily for me, the arguments against gay marriage have been along the lines of “it’s unnatural” and “it’s a religious thing”—so foolish and hateful that there really is only one side to choose.  Luckily for me, the discourse has been anything but civil and I don’t have to bother with understanding and nuance.  So when gay marriage happens—and it will, whether now or later, in New York and across the entire nation—I will buy myself a cup of coffee, mourn Jon, and celebrate alone with an unrestricted conscience.

International Women’s Day

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Noun: International Women’s Day.  Opinion: Yeah, ok, sure.

 

March 8 is International Women’s Day, isn’t that nice?  Very generous of The Someone in charge of the Roman calendar to give us a day.  According to the CIA World Factbook, there are around 3,429,458,135 of us in the world today, which yields 0.000025 seconds for each of us if we split the day evenly.  ZOMG!  I wonder what I should do with mine?

Surely I’ll use it shopping or getting a manicure or avoiding math!  Squeeee!

Ok, ok, punch-yourselves-in-the-head it out.  I know, shhh, it’s ok now.  Let’s just resign ourselves to a post consisting exclusively of sweeping generalizations, because that’s really the only way we’ll get through this before the turn of the next decade.  Are we all on board the USS Slippery Slope?  Good, nobody move, not even to adjust a wedgie, lest we all topple overboard.

Despite the unavoidable implication that a day for women (international ones) cedes the rest of the year to everybody else (men, iguanas, candy corn, etc.), I’m not against taking a moment to remember the achievements of womanhood.  Not at all.  The fact that most of these achievements were not documented is a function of a rather unfortunate history of subjugation—but if we were to judge the leaps in human progress by only that which was chronicled and sourced, let me just testify for the record: THE JUDGMENTOR INVENTED AWESOME AND ASS-KICKING.  There, noted in the annals for all posterity to take heed.

But on the off-chance that greatness existed even without witness, that thunderous advancement was served in the quiet footnotes of history, that titanesses lived alongside titans, whether as intellectual equals or supporters that facilitated the latter’s achievements… let us take a moment (say, a day—give or take forever) to be grateful for the magnificence contributed to humanity by women, despite a long and universal custom of trying to prevent such contributions from happening.

It makes the utmost sense, for example, that in the dark, primitive days of man’s survival, the silence was broken by language as discovered by women.  If men were hunters, communicating with noise could not have worked to their advantage as they moved stealthily ever closer to their prey.  If women were gatherers, it seems only natural that their social clusters would have harvested its own social customs and practices.  This is how I imagine things went:

Woman 1: *pointing to snake in wolfberry bush*  Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Woman 2: *looks at Woman 1* Durrr?

Woman 1: Durrr!

Woman 2: *detecting urgency in Woman 1’s voice, intuiting danger, following direction of Woman 1’s finger, noticing snake in wolfberry bush and safely moving locations, nodding*  Durrr.

And henceforth snakes were known as Durrr.  And pointing meant “regard the general space in the direction indicated by the trajectory of the sightline that begins from the end of my index finger and note any item or person that is unusual or germane in the context of our current communication.”

A similar scenario may have played amongst the men, but it would have ended differently.

Man 1: *pointing to snake in tall grass* Dur…Dur…Durrr!

Man 2: *punches Man 1, gets bitten by snake, dies*

I also suspect that agriculture was discovered by women, whose environment and habits would make them receptive to the very unhurried and protracted messages of Nature.

Woman 1, year 1: picks berries from wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 1, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices decomposing wolfberry germinating on ground

Woman 1, year 2: returns to wolfberry bush, notices new, mini-wolfberry bush next to it

Woman 1, year 2, late in season: returns to wolfberry bush, notices mini-wolfberry bush dying in the shadow of bigger wolfberry bush

Woman 1, year 3, after drought: returns to wolfberry bush, notices both dead.  Comes up with the words “Son of a goddamn it.”

And after cursing the inconvenience of gathering, the Woman figures out that seeds, earth, water and sun have something to do with developing new life and more food.  And if life and food can be manipulated, people can stop wandering around the planet like idiots and farm.  Which pretty much changed, you know, everything.

Not that this really needs a male scenario, but let’s indulge ourselves for 0.000025 seconds:

Man 1, year 1: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 2: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 3: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 4: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

Man 1, year 5: finds wolfberry bush, eats wolfberries

No, no, this is not meant to be a male-bashing session, I…oh, get over it.  After millennia upon millennia of violent oppression and sexual degradation and tyrannical conditioning, you can take thirty fucking years of women’s lib and having your feelings hurt.  It’s International Women’s Day, suck it up.

Wait, wait, I have a father and a brother and know too many good men for that kind of prejudice, so I take a fraction of it back—the fraction that corresponds to the ratio of good men to bad.  Because I have more in common with good men than I do with bad women.  And bad women exist—in fact, all kinds of women exist.  We as a gender are more diverse by orders of magnitude than men are, I think.  Men come in primary colors, women come in every shade in between.   There are varieties of women I regard as completely different species from myself—unfortunately, some of these women, few as they are, tend to dictate disproportionately the stereotypes used to perceive the rest of us.  That tends to happen in fragmented markets, but those stereotypes are not only unfair, they’re too often untrue.

Rational, thoughtful women—with rapier intuition, refined sensitivity and invaluable problem-solving skills and finesse—are among the finest creatures this planet has produced (besides puppies).  I would rather have these women as my president, my boss, and my banker than anyone else in the world.  I would trust them to guide me in good times, lead me in bad, and be stewards for the world peace we’ve always longed for under the rule of men.  Are they too few?  Maybe.  Maybe we create a hostile environment for girls to develop into such women.  Certainly we could do a better job of keeping them safe from rape and war, encouraging their literacy, having faith in their judgment as they grow into adults.

So it is for those women—those who were, are, and will be—that I dedicate my 0.000025 seconds of International Women’s Day.  I can’t think of a better use of my time.

Singlehood

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Noun: Singlehood.  Opinion: Love.

I’ve decided to stop fighting it.

I’ve felt this way for so long.  I’m…overcome.  At first I couldn’t find the right words for it, and then I was afraid of what you might think once I said it, but now I have to say it because holding it in any longer feels dishonest and that makes me feel incomplete and I…I…I’m just going to say it, out loud, whatever the consequence…I…

I love me.

Furthermore, I love the way I love me.

And if you’re making all kinds of masturbatory parallels in your sick twisted head, then…yes, well, all that applies.  That’s how much I love me and how goddamn good I am at it.

And as it is with all love, not everyone will get it.  They’ll be all, like, why is she so into herself?  She’s not even pretty.  Or—why her?  I do NOT see what she sees in herself.  You’d think she could do better.  Or—I’m happy for them and all?  But?  I once heard she was with someone else once, a guy?  And once a cheater, like, always a cheater, you know?  And your friends will nod gravely in agreement as you wait for this affair to come to a humiliating (for me) and satisfying (for you) end.  Though little do you know that this love reserves the right to meet someone online and elope with them three months down the road if it feels like.

But love needs no reason, and self-love is as irrational as any other.  And this self-love is a critical component to being a happy single person.  It may, in fact, be the only critical component.  There are many ways to do singlehood right, I would think—but not every way is doing it right.  Sitting in dark rooms with your eyes glazed over with soggy longing is not doing it right.  Whimpering at contented couples walking by your lonely park bench is not doing it right.  Preemptively naming unborn young and enrolling them in schools near desirable suburban subdivisions is not doing it right.  Singlehood is wasted on you.  You are the released prisoner who aches to go back to confinement—you lack something of the human spirit that your fellow parolee has, who relishes the wilds of liberty.

These wilds yield a bounty of pleasures—and you are granted a hut in the  jungle.  It’s your own damn hut, its mortgage has been paid off, and the coconuts that fall through your thatched roof are your goddamn coconuts and you’ll drink the milk straight from them before putting them back in the fridge.  You’re free to roam sans loincloth, you double dip the plantain chips, and when something’s itchy you scratch it.  You sweep on occasion for company (and make the bed for good company), but once they’re gone all bets are off.  To prevent going full-on native I do recommend regular social interaction.  Depending on your tolerance for people, this may mean friends or co-workers or itinerant toucans or high-fiving the proboscis monkey next door every other day.

Other than that, singlehood is what you make of it.  If you have in your mind’s eye an idea of what a partner would look and feel like as a material presence in your life—how s/he would support you, champion you and take care of you—you should take that vision and become that person yourself.  Be the provider and the recipient in one.  Some may resent how much work this represents, how the singleton has to be twice the person, superhuman almost.  Or some may realize that this is the path to full actualization, and that those who pair up are destined to be half-developed gimps who achieve but a fraction of their potential.

Stop hissing at me, coupled people; I am on record as being pro-marriage, so pipe the fuck down.  I get it, that’s a sore spot and I licked my finger and prodded it like a nerve-damaged proctologist.  And it hurts for different reasons, depending on where you find yourself—for some of you, I know that having someone else in your life has rather doubled your work than halved it.  Your life together works, but it works because you do the heavy lifting.  So if anyone is fully fucking actualized, it’s you, because you climbed up, count’em, TWO pyramids of Maslow’s hierarchy and did all the dishes on the way and now you’re in the second trimester of expecting a third little pyramid and I can go SUCK it.  Thus, to you I bow; you have my sincerest congratulations—and my deepest sympathies.  While your achievements are a great testament to your will and potency, they also serve to make me really, really, really smug about being single.  I will go suck it, thank you.

For others of you it hurts because you were very content feeling sorry for me up to this point where it’s starting to become clear that maybe I’m feeling sorry for you and that is all kinds of uncomfortable because if you don’t have the validation of others what the fuck do you have?  And now you think I’m such a bitch and I’m overcompensating for my pathetic, lonely life and now I think you’re such a dumbass and you’re overcompensating for your hollow, lonely life and neither of us are feeling sorry for one another but rather are threatened by each other.  We’re fighting now.

And for the rest of you it hurts because you know, despite my hyperbole, on some level I’m right.  You did leave behind good things when you found your mate.  And as much as you love your shmoopie, you miss these things.  Sure, your boo makes you a better person, or maybe just a different person, or maybe it’s hard to tell anymore.  You miss the clarity of your identity in the open air, stripped of the heavy weight of attribution and relationships.  You miss the simplicity and elegance of the you you are when you’re not them or we.  You miss the invigorating freedom and answering the calls of the wild, filled with adventure and possibility.  It’s not that your snookie-woo—I can’t—it’s not that your partner has held you back, it’s that you’re flying at a different altitude and caught a different tailwind and it wasn’t where you were before or where you thought you could be.  That’s the breaks.  And I, from my vantage point in the gorgeous wilderness, can look in through the glass at the fire in your hearth, the smoke curling from your chimney, and miss the sweetness of quiet, comfortable companionship.  That’s the breaks, too.

See, you and I aren’t fighting.  You and I are the same–but cast in different plays.  You’re Star Wars, I’m Looney Tunes, but we’re both Pez dispensers.  Yeah.

So happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy couples out there.  But a very happy Valentine’s Day to all you happy singles out there.  No one ever says it to you, and we all should—yours is a love to be celebrated and cherished.  And if you were once one and now are the other, then a happy Valentine’s Day to you and your great adventures in love.  Happy Valentine’s Day to you all, may your lives be filled with freedom and joy and exquisitely delicious chocolate truffles you buy yourself.

Intention

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Noun: Intention.  Opinion: Conflicted.

OK, so I got the message from the last post.  The consensus was basically an appeal to the Judgmentor to, uh, take it down a notch.  The fan base of the Miss Piggy posts doesn’t necessarily intersect with that which enjoys the entries where I basically contort my entire body into a chevron-like shape pointed towards your face and bellow at the top of my keyboard: “j’ACCUSE, bitches!”

Well, that’s not what I meant.  I’m not in the business of opinion-changing, just in opinion-articulating.  So, it was not my intention to stress anyone out.  I did not intend to agitate.  Any low-grade trauma experienced by readers was not intended.

How’s that working?

What if I flutter my lashes, poke you playfully with my elbow in a mischievous intimation of complicity and call you boo?

If I didn’t mean to and didn’t do it on purpose, it would be unfair of you to hold it against me…right?  In this case, it really would.  Who am I to judge (it’s just what I do), but this little blog and your little panties getting bunched up your little butt crack are not worth the grief.

Instead, let’s look to the recent Senate panel hearing on the Goldman Sachs investigation.  Oh, now there is a worthy assembly of panties wadded up in some of the most powerful assholes in the country!  It was a veritable cavalcade of atomic wedgies.  Man, some goat was gotten over a few securitized assets, huh?  That Carl Levin, he can really tune his voice to a perfect pitch of derision.  And Lloyd Blankfein, I’ve never heard someone toe the line between ingratiation and condescension while scarcely holding off a lisp that is ever so very barely slightly gay but not really (am I alone on this?  Maybe.  I’ll Q-tip my ear canals later but for now I stand by what I hear).  As for the rest of those muttonheads, there aren’t enough whiskey sours in the world to make me feel better about the fact that they exist.  That goes for politician and banker alike.

Any time a politician felt stonewalled or out-articulated, he or she would resort to interrogating around Goldman’s intentions.  Did they sell a bad deal on purpose?  Did they mean to cheat their clients?  Are they playing fair?  Did they intend to lie/cheat/steal?

Does it fucking matter?  The economy popped and all that remained were the ratty shards of a burst balloon.  Yet Goldman seemed unscathed—Goldman was yet burnished.  While their peers fell to bankruptcy and shame and takeovers, Goldman made like Scrooge McDuck diving into his money bin of gold coins.  Its displays of wealth were in bad taste during difficult times, and the SEC couldn’t take it anymore.  Poor SEC…always trying to prove it’s a man, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, coming on too strong with its Napoleonic complex, desperately trying to make up for having only one ball and wondering why it’s never invited to any parties.  But this isn’t about them.  Or even those yahoos we voted into office asking the questions.  This is about how much it pisses me off that Goldman has the gall to cock their heads to the left and give the baroo face as said yahoos tried to extract information from them.

Full disclosure: the Judgmentor has been involved in a credit default swap or two.  Not in any serious way, but I passively made a living by being involved in securitizing toxic collateral and tranching that shit out.  Good times.  The point is the SEC doesn’t really have a case.  In a good year, we wouldn’t be watching this Punch and Judy show, since if not disclosing a hedge fund’s involvement in a deal is wrong when the deal goes sour, it’s wrong when the deal goes right.  This isn’t about that.  It’s not about misleading investors, what a crock of shit that is.  If selling a structured asset to a sophisticated investor is misleading, then every time I sell a stock to someone who is willing to buy it I would be committing fraud.  The entire market is based on disagreement!  You can’t buy a share you think is going to go up unless someone is out there who has one and thinks you’re WRONG and a DUMBASS and TRAGIC because he thinks it’s going to go down and he’s willing to bet you $34.28 for it, and bam, there you have your market rate.  That isn’t fraud, that’s called a difference of opinion.

No, that’s not what is pissing the SEC off.  What’s pissing the SEC off is what’s pissing me off—that face they make.  That stupid Scooby-Doo shrug they do (“I ron’t row, Renator”) like they couldn’t piece the words together in their heads to craft a full sentence where the verbs conjugate to agree with the nouns.  Come the fuck on, boys.  That’s just poor marketing.  It makes everyone hate you, because it’s transparent, and if you’re capable of this you’re capable of fraudulent action, and now we all think you did it on purpose.  That it was all intended.

Intention, ladies and gentlemen!  To Immanuel Kant, it was everything.  Bless his epistemological heart, he was unafraid of the kinds of ideas capable of constipating philosophical discussion for centuries on end.  Impossible to act upon or enforce, his moral philosophy was nevertheless very interesting to think about.  Intention, he thought, is what gave action meaning.  A rich man who gives a homeless man money with contempt in his heart is morally inferior to someone who doesn’t give alms but wants to.

On the other hand, we have the Greeks, who didn’t accept intention as a defense.  One of my favorite myths is that of Actaeon because it makes most decent people squirm with its completely vile discharge of justice.  Oh, it’s so arbitrarily violent it’s beautiful.  Here’s Ovid’s version: Actaeon is a strapping young hunter who separates from his friends and his dogs after a productive chase.  Meanwhile, Diana (Greeks’ Artemis) is being prepared for a bath by her maids-at-arms.  Diana is, of course, the goddess of the hunt—a tall, athletic virgin with a deadly quiver and even deadlier aim.  She’s a frigid little cunt but that’s why they love her on Olympus.  Well, Actaeon accidentally stumbles into the ladies’ locker room, so to speak, and sees Diana as no man or god was allowed to see her.  It wasn’t on purpose.  It was not intended.  It did not matter.  Naked and beautiful, majestic and insulted, utterly and unequivocally pissed off, Diana hisses a curse while splashing water on Actaeon and turns him into a stag.  He is bewildered and desperate when his hunting party catches up to him.  At this point Ovid roll-calls the roster of Actaeon’s pack of dogs and launches into a graphic and detailed description of how each one, by name, sinks their fangs into their master’s flesh and tears into his body.  Actaeon’s cries were sadder than any deer’s cries, being slaughtered by his friends and his pets for a sin he didn’t mean to commit.  And Diana was pleased.

Whether Goldman meant to cheat their client, or their peers, or us, is nigh irrelevant.  The fact is that just by wandering into the shaded pool where we thought we were safe they were guilty of an act of violation.  Look, I don’t think the SEC tearing Goldman to shreds would do anyone any good.  But it would FEEL good…and the Judgmentor would, for a half second, be pleased.

Unions

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Noun: Unions.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: Jen.


Among the nicer, more conscientious of you, there may be those who were wondering where the Judgmentor hath been these many weeks.  Among the rest of you are those who never really noticed the absence but are curious now that the topic has been brought up.  And the remaining of you may go back to playing Farmville for all I care.

Where have I been?  I’ve been busy.  Growing more deeply disenchanted with the world is a time-consuming business, I’ll have you know.  I have been off having what little remained of my idealism touched in private parts.  I have been occupied with the violation of an entire life philosophy.  In short, I have been busy becoming more cynical.

The easy joke here is to laugh a not very slightly supercilious laugh, the way Americans laugh at European people, and ask if that is even possible.  Just so you know, there is no faster way to have me get my sanctimony on.  Idealism is not vacuous, or silly, or embodied by your Tickle-Me-Elmo approach to life.  It is not always graced with beauty but it always has an element of splendor.  As if there were virtue in serenity, in canopied buoyancy, in blinding smiles and drawing your mental curtains to screen out the ugly.  Who’s more cynical, I ask—me, who had pursued an exquisite chimera, or you, chipper as you were, who never questioned whether the world could be better?  Me, who made choices with the faith that the result would direct itself towards a normative path, or you, who made negative decisions by accepting the positive reality?  What’s a more cynical statement: “This goddamn fucking sucks” or “That’s ok, it’s just the way things are”?  No, this is not me getting defensive, this is me not getting you.  Some idealists focus on the positive, some focus on the negative, but none of us find willful ignorance funny.  Skepticism is not cynicism, though admittedly it’s a slippery slope.

Chew on that while I climb off my soapbox.  Anyway, the point is that the slope turns into an outright freefall down the rabbit hole.  I (barely) stand witness to it.

The Judgmentor, in fact, never left.  The problem was that my last entry was up for all of two minutes before I took it down—it was too dark, too much, too Tori Amos on downers and pomposity.  It’s the space my brain is in right now.  For the first time in my career, I am working with unions.  For the first time, I am working with those without graduate degrees or suburban upbringings or ambitions that don’t involve winning the lottery.  For the first time, I am working with the noble proletariat, the great unwashed masses who struggle mightily against the new feudal system of capitalism, those whose income come from honest labor and not from exploitative ownership of the means of the production they make possible.  As vulnerable as they are to abuse and mistreatment, as susceptible as they can be to corporate manipulation, do they not have a right to protection?

Well, yes.

Do they deserve it?

Fuck, no.

But not because they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some such Tory nonsense.  I don’t buy into a merit system based on accumulated wealth, it smacks too much of over-simplification chased with malice (hear me, Fox News cocksuckers?).  Unions don’t deserve to exist because people fundamentally SUCK and because they don’t stop at protecting the innocent from the exploitation of management.  They will grab, snatch and claw at more.  Samuel Gompers, leader of American unions and founder of the AF of L, summed up human nature when he said “we do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.”   And voila the suckiness of mankind—this isn’t the innocent organizing against corporate evil, this is a simple case of assholery versus assholery.

And what kind of result can possibly manifest from a war of assholes?  Never a good one.  Where’s Troy today, after all (or Greece, for that matter)?  The distortions to the free market system I’ve witnessed that were direct consequences of the union and their irrational demands have been astounding in scope.  Hey, I’m no unadulterated fan of competitive capitalism—but however rickety its operations when left alone, it is fucked upside-down when you introduce a market abortion like a collective bargaining agreement.  What you can do, say, suggest, how you can execute, scratch your pits and carry out reasonable business practices is completely hamstrung.  There is jockeying and posturing on both sides, each trying to position themselves with perceived advantages.  The most charming part about the battle is how very human it can be— arbitrary, irrational, and mean-spirited.  Unions will negotiate themselves right out jobs just out of spite.  Businesses will resort to any covert maneuver to save a buck.   And after all that, management still treats workers like shit.  If asked by any of the manual laborers I come into contact with, you better believe I tell them to go union.

And thus my idealism lies gasping for breath on the asphalt, bleeding from the head.  Beaten to a pulp by the misled notion that responsible self-interest can exist and butt-raped with a broomstick by the idea of dignity inherent in simpler lives.  Absurd, of course.  But worth saving…on the off-off-off-chance that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is someone out there who’ll deserve and benefit from the elusive justice idealism lives to enable.  Because his or her demise is a far greater injustice than all the ill-begotten victories of the assholes put together.  So I’ll resuscitate that pathetic invalid, bandage its wounds, and have it live another day, keeping it alive on bare faith and defiance alone.  It’s gnarled and broken and looks a little like an old Chinese Crested with conjunctivitis, but it’s goddamn splendid.

Specialization

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Noun: Specialization.  Opinion: Ugh.

Our society likes specialization; we hire based on it, we pay based on it, we respect based on it—if you’re Tiger Woods and amazingly gifted at a so-called sport no one can stand watching without a hit of antipsychotics, we’ll still grant you multi-billion dollars worth of endorsement packages even though your taste in women exhibits the kind of unimaginative mind usually possessed by lobotomized monkeys.  Find your pigeon-hole, we tell our kids, and acquaint yourself with every single shade of beige it’s painted in.

This is coming from a good place, really.  We value stability—it’s not a bad thing, especially if you’re living within firing range of Baghdad’s Green Zone.  But if you’re reading this, it suggests you have the means and time to spare on completely asinine activities.  The last thing you need in your life is more stability.  With the money, time, and mastery of English you possess, you are in the enviable position of investigating the instabilities that could potentially reward you with immense gratification and insight.  I have a lot of thoughts about this that are hard to convey in a little entry, but suffice it to say that while I think specialization has its merits, personal fulfillment is not one of them.

Yet exploring the world outside your pigeonhole is not a simple task.  It takes iron-clad nerves to put your cheaply-won sense of identity aside and start something new.  It sucks to be a beginner.  It is deeply humbling for an adult and a pain in the ass.  But you’re not a beginner forever, and even if you suck balls at this new pursuit forever, the profits you gain from being well-rounded are yours forever.

Fred Astaire was seventy-eight when bitch broke his wrist trying to ride on a skateboard.  Those of you shaking your head and clucking away can shove your sanctimony somewhere up an orifice, along with the pole, hamster, your head, and the fist of your bunkmate from that one time at band camp, cuz that story’s nothing less than a testament to AWESOME.  He was awarded a lifetime membership to the National Skateboard Society (the who?  I dunno.  Source: Wikipedia), an honor we all aspire to deep in our hearts of random and unattainable desires.  The point is one does not find oneself teetering on top of unstable platforms and calling ourselves a gangster on wheels in retirement if one has not been doing irrational and novel things as a course of habit.  For every wrist broken, Astaire had probably done a jamillion ridiculous things that did not result in traction.  He probably picked up rock climbing, Arabian racing and downward dog somewhere along the way.  This did not keep him from being pretty good at his area of expertise.  Boss could twinkle his toes like no one else in a tuxedo.

While I’m conjuring up dead white men to make my non-argument, even Einstein had some pretty harsh assessments of the ills brought upon humankind by specialization.  Even I will concede that Einstein was pretty smart, though he never did gain the level of respect as a philosopher that he did as a pioneer of genius-worthy hairdos.  Since I’m tired of typing, cue the copy-paste:

Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic.

(Next time you go to the doctor, take that piece of information with you.)  Specialization makes you bad at what you do do, not to mention downright sucky at what you don’t.  You’ve limited the number of applicable ideas and principles you have access to.  Besides, when all you know tomorrow is what you know now, you’ve just wasted a day in your finite life.  You missed an opportunity to be inspired and fulfilled and enthused and smarter and wiser and better-looking (maybe).  So don’t complain to me if you’re bored and dull and prematurely old and stupid and lame and ugly (definitely).

So go out there and try something new, something that has interested you—listen to that voice that beckons you to pottery, to salsa, to Vietnamese, to homoerotic liaisons—there has to be a reason it’s calling.  It’s dishonest to ignore it.  Just be the asshole who doesn’t know what she’s doing.  You’ll be fine.  Yeah, people will judge (what?), but it’s not about them, it’s about you.  It’s your fucking life.  Make it interesting, make it yours, make it worth your time on this grisly little planet.  Sponge up what good the universe has to offer.  When you’re seventy-eight with eight hip replacements under your belt, you’ll have better stories and a bigger smile than the rest of them who never indulged their curiosities and broke free from the fetters of stasis.  You won’t have repressed your soul into a dehydrated turd.  You might be poorer and wobblier, sure, but at the end the Great Accountant in the Sky will not be tallying up your virtues in terms of dollars and number of embarrassing moments avoided.  I don’t know this for sure, but I’m willing to literally bet my happiness on it.

Matrimony

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Noun: Matrimony.  Opinion: I do!

Noun credit: Al Bundy.

marriage

One of you jokers thought it would be funny for me to write about matrimony.  Like I know shit.  But whatever, such technicalities have no power in preventing the Judgmentor from forming opinions, especially when solicited.

If nothing else, I have the perspective of distance.  I’ve been watching you married people, oh, yes.  I’ve even got some money riding on a few of you, but that’s neither here nor there.  So what makes two rational, independent people who can barely get their own shit in order think that they can handle another entire life to manage?  At least with your own mess you have the benefit of knowing your own thoughts—bring in another person and you are getting a lot of static with your data, even if you made each other’s acquaintance as zygotes residing in separate uteruses.  After the first flush of lust and infatuation, the reality of a relationship sets in…trying to live with another person—with their quirks and desires and highly inconvenient free will—is no small feat.  On top of it all, they have all…these…goddamn…OPINIONS.  Where to go on vacation, what to spend money on, how often to have or not have sex.  Why is this fool all up in my shit?  It’s enough to drive a bitch insane!  Who would agree to this fuckery?

Taking a relationship to the level of marriage is to agree to having this bug up in your underwear for the rest of your frigging life.  I mean, even the fear of dying alone (as if anyone dies in concert) can’t drive a relatively well-adjusted human being to signing that contract.  Yet people do it all the time.  ALL THE TIME.  I should know, they keep asking my ass for presents.

Every person is different, and when you put two of them together, you double the differentness.  Ergo, one can only assume that every marriage is different.  So what are the commonalities that compel us to continue with this man-made institution?  Let’s see.  One of the defining attributes of a marriage is fidelity—it’s what separates a married couple from me living with my bestest, closest gay friend.  Even if you decide to keep the bar low and not bother with that losing battle, it’s still a point of negotiation.  But for most people, monogamy is the feature of a marriage that will make or break the deal—there are at least thousands of years of collective evolution, experience and habit that feed into that expectation, and if you’re one of those people who think that it’s unrealistic, you’re fighting a whole hell of a lot of fantasy even if you’re right.  For every couple you’re laughing at for being impractical, there’s someone like me laughing at your own deluded ass.  People will cheat, yeah—but people will subsequently get hurt, shaken, and royally pissed off.  Deal.

That’s the bad news about fidelity—it’s slippery and irresolvable.  The good news is that loyalty is a choice.  And every act of betrayal comprises a series of choices: the choice to imbibe that extra beer.  The choice to flirt with the girl with the back tat.  The choice to follow her up to her apartment.  The choice to conjoin genitalia.  Lots of opportunities there to make different choices, which is why your wife has chosen to take every damn thing you own, even your collection of dog-eared porn magazines, just so she can wipe her ass with them in the new baller apartment she’s paying for with your alimony.

Which brings us to economics.  Marriage as a transaction—not just for women (must I clarify for some of you?  You make my life hard) but for men.  The transaction could be of anything—money, safety, image, sex, housekeeping, regular feedings, companionship, diamond rings, babies, finally getting the parents to shut the hell up.  What are you getting out of it?  It has to be worth something.  This, too, is a choice—it doesn’t have to be a mercenary one, but a choice it is.

Aaaaaaaand then there’s love.  Yeah.  That’s where this conversation ends.  Say what you may, but that’s no choice.  It’s a choice to act it and express it, but to feel it—even when your counterpart is rattling every last nerve and taxing the very fiber of your soul to the point that every other sentiment is overwhelmed and you can only assume you still love this person until he gives you back the remote or she stops making that sucking sound through her teeth—is a gift.  It’s a gift you give to someone else, but it’s also a gift that life has given you.  And if you’ve been given this gift, this profound connection to another person and an unfathomable sense of investment in someone else’s happiness, you better be grateful.  Yeah, it will get you into trouble, and it may even end up in this weird and absurd state called matrimony, but it’s also the only thing that makes marriage in this day and age make sense.  Otherwise, I can only believe that there are easier solutions to your ills.

So, I get it.  I get why gay and lesbian couples want in on the bullshit.  I get why I’m getting hit up for wedding gifts.  I get why chick flicks are obsessed with the topic.  I get why sworn bachelors wake up one day and decide to settle down.  It’s because of love—it feels great, you want to feel it forever, and it makes you just crazy enough to promise to make that happen.  Matrimony isn’t a mystery, but love surely is.

High School

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Noun: High School.  Opinion: Pssht.

tjhsst

The Washingtonian recently featured a cover story on the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, rated by U.S. News and World Report as the best high school in the nation for the past two years running, and probably several times sporadically before (I can’t be bothered to look that shit up, just take my word for it).  The article was titled “Why You Should Hate This School,” and proceeds to talk about how the over-achievers who populate its student body are basically better than you in every way, and since you are a bitter, stupid and ugly LOSER, the Washingtonian saw it fit to remind you to direct your bile thusly.  Full disclosure: TJHSST (big fail on crafting an efficient acronym, there) is the alma mater of one Judgmentor.

Most locals call it TJ (that’s better), and it is a public magnet school you need to test to get into.  The test lasted about as long as the SATs from what I recall, thereby introducing most of us to the distinctive agony that is standardized testing.  There was an essay portion where I was inspired to write about aliens (I was, what, 13 or 14 at the time?) and a bunch of algebra I’m sure I used my fingers and toes to get through.   I don’t know how I got in.  We were known as the nerd school in the area, which would have hurt our feelings if we weren’t all diagnosable with the low-grade Asperger’s usually correlated with being interested in computers.

From what I remember of high school, it was a blur of social anxiety and bodily transformation.  Yet from reading this article one would think we were all well-adjusted, multi-talented brainiacs who translated Medieval French troubadour verse for fun and pooped out National Merit Scholarships when we weren’t busy running triathlons and curing AIDS at the same time.  I guess some of us were.  I certainly was not—see that kid at her locker observing the world with a stink-eye while noshing on a Hostess Fruit Pie?  Yeah, that was me.  I took AP Judgment in high school, and left it at that.

I have a lot of good things to say about my high school, but most of you don’t give a shit.  You want to hear what this genius factory sucks at.  Well, for one, there’s me.  That should make you feel better about yourself immediately.  And secondly, most of us were not as outstandingly awesome as the article suggests—there was a large dose of journalistic license liberally applied.  Granted, I did not have the benefit of going to high school more than once and increasing my sample size (HALLELUJAH) so I only have the perspective of my own experience.  We were probably more motivated than most, and more eager to be inspired, and that’s saying a lot.  But we were still teenagers, and thereby assholes by definition: lazy, hungry, stupid, insecure and just figuring life out.

TJ was definitely a safe place for a lot of us, especially during a time when the base schools were installing metal detectors to screen for weapons.  And during formative years, one can’t say enough about the benefits of something like that.  But we were also incredibly sheltered—those of us who developed any street smarts at all either grew up where that was already necessary or came by them far later in life.  There are huge advantages to being surrounded by smart kids of more or less the same socioeconomic status—but the disadvantage is a certain character-killing homogeneity.  I feel that a lot of us grew up sort of retarded in the ways of sex, drugs, racial and class relations—that is to say, the real world outside of White Liberal Guiltanistan—but damn if we couldn’t ride the shit out of a quadratic equation.

The article talks about whiz kids who are destined for the Ivy Leagues.  And then what?  How much does being able to clone an African violet in a petri dish really count for in life?  Seriously, now, do any of you living in the reality of adulthood actually believe that these kids won’t eventually have their dreams killed?  Most of them will, obviously.  Such is life.

And they will nevertheless lead perfectly responsible and happy lives, if they’re lucky.  The geeks will console themselves from the quotidian stressors of existence with their PlayStations, the jocks will masturbate to memories of their All-State victories, the drama kids will take their exhibitionist tendencies out on their co-workers, the straight-A students will continue trying to validate themselves by earning the approval of others.  It’s life.  Which is something that is attainable even if you never went to the best high school in America.  So you have absolutely no reason to hate this school, in particular.  You can hate it because you hate high school universally, though, and be grateful that we are no longer there.