It's the end of June, a month that has been eventful in the greater, outside world, with the good (Cavs winning) balanced out by the bad (Orlando) and everything in between. Because all the local libraries have the nerve to be patriotic, and also because I don't have wi-fi at the casa, I will be offline at least until the Fourth, after the libs close tomorrow afternoon for the holiday weekend.
If only the Brits had won...wait, would "Brexit" have happened if we were still property of the Queen?
Anyway, I'm coming to the end of the period I like to call "no payments for student loans or medical bills due," I've already mailed off the first payment for next month for the student loans and my medical bills will be paid via an arrangement I like to call "bleeding me dry if I don't get a job soon." Speaking of which, I have applications out there, no responses as yet. But some of the jobs I've applied for in teaching, they probably are waiting for a while before calling people like myself, who are qualified to teach. I figure by this time next month, it might be time to hit the "panic" button on the lack-of-incoming-cash department. But for now, I walk.
I started up walking again over at Sertoma Field ("Sertoma" being Cherokee for "made-up word coined by white people," I suppose. Though if I Google it after posting this and it turns out to be a real word, who's the racist then?). It usually takes about forty-five minutes to do three laps (well, it takes me forty-five minutes to do three laps), and it's a good way to meet people who like to run by while also saying good morning if they can be bothered. I'm not a hat-wearer per se, but I like to go walk before I even think about taking a shower, and my bedhead is best hidden under my twenty-odd-years-old Red Sox cap (from Starter, so it's got a band in the back to accommodate my oversized head). Plus, you tend to get sweaty from all that walking. So why not save some water and walk while you already stink? Stink some more! It's fun!
I got an iPod Shuffle back in May, it was almost a full month before I got it up and running (of the two thousand songs I have, it could load maybe 250. But I can't complain about the variety too much, even when I don't want to hear Van Morrison songs one right after the other. I like to mix it up). I like to have a soundtrack while I avoid the duck shit that's all over certain parts of the walking track. At Sertoma, as in life, a lot of your time will be spent avoiding duck shit. Look it up, it's in the Bible and the Bill of Rights. Generally, I have been walking pretty regularly in the mornings, at around nine; any later and, with the way the weather is going here in SC, I'd melt before I made it completely all the way around. And I'd melt into the duck shit on the paths. Nobody wants that.
By and large, I've done a lot of reading this past month, right now I'm almost three hundred pages into Infinite Jest. I like to head down to the Cooper lib and get online, the parking pass doesn't run out until early August so why not? I do miss the daily tumult of either teaching a class or preparing to teach one the next day; even after the clusterfuck that was April, I have to say that I enjoyed every last stress-inducing minute of the final build-up to graduation. As I didn't get into any MFA programs yet, I'll have to put off my exit from the state for a year, I guess. There's a lot of uncertainty in the near future, safe to say, and I imagine a lot of my fellow grads feel something similar. I guess that's why I took up walking again, even with all the duck shit to navigate: it's something that I have some control over, even if there's duck shit involved. And did I mention how the mama and papa ducks hiss at you if you walk too close to their babies?
At any rate, I walk to lose weight (which I *think* is starting to work), I walk to get exercise, I walk to get out of the house for a little bit, and I walk because I like to listen to music. And then I walk some more...
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Friday, June 24, 2016
Isolationism Is So 1941
If you're like me and you're waking up today (or, if like me you turned it to CNN right after "@midnight" and saw the news, you went to bed) with the news that the UK has left the EU, all because of something called the "Brexit vote," you are not alone. Also, you may want to make sure you didn't have anything invested in any English businesses, because their economy is in the shitter. Literally.
I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.
By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).
Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.
Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.
Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?
Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.
I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.
I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.
I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.
By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).
Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.
Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.
Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?
Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.
I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.
I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.
Friday, June 17, 2016
No Randy Quaid, No ID4
There's a lot of incredibly serious and depressing shit going on in the world this past week, in case you haven't noticed. So let me set your mind at ease by talking about something that is far, far less substantial or important...though of course, that's what the government wants you to believe.
I was in high school when the original Independence Day (also known as ID4, in an attempt to confuse people wondering where IDs 1-3 were, or maybe that's just me being silly) came out. I *think* I saw it during its original run, but I certainly saw it during what turned out to be the last of VHS's glory days (the late Nineties) on more than one occasion, and it sure seemed awesome at the time. Shit got blow'd up real good, and when you're a hormonal teenage boy that's what you went to movies to see (well, that and naked female chests, of which ID4 was bereft). Over time, as is often the case with things that we love when we're younger and stupider, I came to view ID4 as a cynical cash-grab by two directors who were clearly of the Michael Bay school of action shit (even if they pre-dated him or even inspired him, I lumped them in with Bay's amped-up uber-manly shitfests). This is not to say that ID4 is a bad movie; it's entertaining as hell when shit's getting blow'd up real good. But it's the alien invasion movie as popcorn thrill-ride, when more substantial and lasting alien movies (like Alien or The Thing, for instance) force us to confront more "realistic" instances of aliens among us (I use quotation marks because no one really knows how "reality" would be affected by contact with an alien species. My guess: we'd lose our shit).
Part of what makes me appreciate, to some extent, my own view of the film's faults is that it has quite possibly the most overwrought death scene in the history of cinema. I speak, of course, of former walking punchline (and current walking punchline, but for different reasons) Randy Quaid's heroic sacrifice to shove his plane up the alien ship's....well, just go watch it. I can wait, it's on YouTube.
Are you back? Good. Notice anything about that scene in particular? I am not a professional screenwriter, I don't know if it's hard to craft the perfect dialogue for anally probing (or perhaps acting as a human catheter on) an alien spaceship, knowing full well that you're a goner. But I'm guessing a roomful of actual monkeys chained to typewriters would write more convincing "last hurrah" dialogue than what comes out of Mr. Quaid's mouth. Why stop at one cliché when you can use them all? Really, we're in no hurry to bring this alien craft down, have your moment, Mr. Quaid!
It is shitty filmmaking par excellence.
So while I see this generation's ID4, with Goldblum and Pullman and even, for some reason, Brent Spiner back in it (spoiler alert: I thought his character died in the original, but I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter), I say "that's nice, but where's your Randy Quaid-esque character or moment?" By the way, I have zero interest in seeing the new one. I find that remakes or reboots or re-imaginings sometimes stretch the credibility factor and indeed rarely justify their existence (there are exceptions to this rule, of course. But they're few and far between). And while the internet (read: lonely men) was getting itself in a tizzy over an all-female Ghostbusters, nary a word seems to be said about a Quaid-less ID4 (if Spiner can come back, why not Quaid? Maybe his proctology exam of the alien ship granted him an extra life or two?). I will be that voice in the wilderness, then, that one brave soul asking the question that no one in their right mind would ask because I have a lot of time on my hands and it's stupid and pointless and less depressing to think about than our country's sick obsession with firearms.
I'll be more than happy to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for this post, is what I'm saying.
Truly, in the history of cinema, in the history of chewing scenery, in the history of milking it for all it's worth, Randy Quaid in ID4's closing act cannot be beat. So maybe the new film won't even try. But where there's a will, there's a way. Nothing like a little elbow grease to get the job done. I'm coming, Elizabeth, and that's all she wrote. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. In the words of my generation, whatever...
I was in high school when the original Independence Day (also known as ID4, in an attempt to confuse people wondering where IDs 1-3 were, or maybe that's just me being silly) came out. I *think* I saw it during its original run, but I certainly saw it during what turned out to be the last of VHS's glory days (the late Nineties) on more than one occasion, and it sure seemed awesome at the time. Shit got blow'd up real good, and when you're a hormonal teenage boy that's what you went to movies to see (well, that and naked female chests, of which ID4 was bereft). Over time, as is often the case with things that we love when we're younger and stupider, I came to view ID4 as a cynical cash-grab by two directors who were clearly of the Michael Bay school of action shit (even if they pre-dated him or even inspired him, I lumped them in with Bay's amped-up uber-manly shitfests). This is not to say that ID4 is a bad movie; it's entertaining as hell when shit's getting blow'd up real good. But it's the alien invasion movie as popcorn thrill-ride, when more substantial and lasting alien movies (like Alien or The Thing, for instance) force us to confront more "realistic" instances of aliens among us (I use quotation marks because no one really knows how "reality" would be affected by contact with an alien species. My guess: we'd lose our shit).
Part of what makes me appreciate, to some extent, my own view of the film's faults is that it has quite possibly the most overwrought death scene in the history of cinema. I speak, of course, of former walking punchline (and current walking punchline, but for different reasons) Randy Quaid's heroic sacrifice to shove his plane up the alien ship's....well, just go watch it. I can wait, it's on YouTube.
Are you back? Good. Notice anything about that scene in particular? I am not a professional screenwriter, I don't know if it's hard to craft the perfect dialogue for anally probing (or perhaps acting as a human catheter on) an alien spaceship, knowing full well that you're a goner. But I'm guessing a roomful of actual monkeys chained to typewriters would write more convincing "last hurrah" dialogue than what comes out of Mr. Quaid's mouth. Why stop at one cliché when you can use them all? Really, we're in no hurry to bring this alien craft down, have your moment, Mr. Quaid!
It is shitty filmmaking par excellence.
So while I see this generation's ID4, with Goldblum and Pullman and even, for some reason, Brent Spiner back in it (spoiler alert: I thought his character died in the original, but I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter), I say "that's nice, but where's your Randy Quaid-esque character or moment?" By the way, I have zero interest in seeing the new one. I find that remakes or reboots or re-imaginings sometimes stretch the credibility factor and indeed rarely justify their existence (there are exceptions to this rule, of course. But they're few and far between). And while the internet (read: lonely men) was getting itself in a tizzy over an all-female Ghostbusters, nary a word seems to be said about a Quaid-less ID4 (if Spiner can come back, why not Quaid? Maybe his proctology exam of the alien ship granted him an extra life or two?). I will be that voice in the wilderness, then, that one brave soul asking the question that no one in their right mind would ask because I have a lot of time on my hands and it's stupid and pointless and less depressing to think about than our country's sick obsession with firearms.
I'll be more than happy to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for this post, is what I'm saying.
Truly, in the history of cinema, in the history of chewing scenery, in the history of milking it for all it's worth, Randy Quaid in ID4's closing act cannot be beat. So maybe the new film won't even try. But where there's a will, there's a way. Nothing like a little elbow grease to get the job done. I'm coming, Elizabeth, and that's all she wrote. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. In the words of my generation, whatever...
Friday, June 3, 2016
The Last Stand of the Heterosexual White Male (And Why That's a Good Thing)
Everywhere on the internet, it seems, people are getting angry and yelling at one another. And usually it's because of Donald Trump. I am not here to slam him any more than I already have (though have you tried buying any Trump Steaks lately?), but to point to a larger issue that I think is driving his surge to future Fuehrer-dom, if it can't be stopped. The issue I speak about, of course, is the death of political incorrectness.
Any time I hear someone say aloud "well, we all have to be politically correct now," what I really hear is "I can't call blacks/Muslims/Hispanics/Jews/fill-in-the-blank what I really want to call them anymore." This may strike some of you as unfair, but this is my blog. You want to complain about it, start your own. Anyway, it's no secret why The Great Combover One is currently leading the GOP over a cliff of non-relevance no matter what happens in November: white people be tripping, yo.
Specifically, white heterosexual males (of which I am a member, though I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it considering some of the company I have to keep).
During my TCTC days, we were told in Sociology that in twenty years, people of Mexican or Hispanic descent would be the majority in this country. Seeing as my last class at TCTC was twelve years ago, I'd say we're in the home stretch towards that goal being achieved. African-Americans may dominate our sports, music, and culture, but they're not a huge part of our overall population. And pretty soon, neither will we white folks be, at least in terms of dominance through sheer numbers.
All I can say is: thank fucking God.
For most of recorded history, people from the relatively small continent of Europe (and not even all of Europe; when was the last time thoughts of an Italian invasion stirred fear in anyone?) have kinda had the run of things, using their pale skin (from being so far from the sun, don't you know?) as some sort of indicator that they're better than anyone else (spoiler alert: we're not). From slavery to imperialism, colonialism to Colonial Williamsburg, we white men have had a lot to answer for, even if (as my family loves to remind me whenever I dare to be the only liberal in the room) some of us didn't have direct participation in ancient-history stuff (but here's the thing: that shit still has power over everything we do, and we don't acknowledge it at our peril). I think we white men have done some good things, to be sure: the Beatles, for one thing, and pizza. But that's an awful small amount of good to bring into the world when the balance is really scaled towards all the negative shit we've done, or has been done in our name. And it's not even stuff that we just did to "others." I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more terrifying than anything Monty Python conceived of for the skit of the same name.
You'll notice I didn't say "we white people," because let's be honest: for most of history, women didn't mean shit to white men except as baby-makers and maybe mistresses when we got tired of making babies officially. Somehow giving you ladies the vote less than a hundred years ago means "we're good, right?" Considering how casually rape culture is taken by some of my fellow white men (most of them at Return of Kings), it's understandable that we are not, in fact, good.
So we (white men not named me) are scared of the coming loss of racial dominance, I guess. Tough shit, it's a thing and it's happening, and thank God for it. Someone else will be in charge now, as it should be. It might not happen this election cycle (hell, there may be enough crazy white people to elect a smooth-talking con artist to the highest office in the land; it's happened before), but it's coming, and soon. And we white men can be like Custer, kicking and screaming the whole way because our penis size is threatened. Or we can work with those communities that are rising up to dominate our country, and ensure that they know that we're allies, not enemies. This is a nation of immigrants, from all over the damn place. We white men have no special claim to being "American," not really.
But I'm guessing my friends who support Trump are going to hate this idea :-p
Any time I hear someone say aloud "well, we all have to be politically correct now," what I really hear is "I can't call blacks/Muslims/Hispanics/Jews/fill-in-the-blank what I really want to call them anymore." This may strike some of you as unfair, but this is my blog. You want to complain about it, start your own. Anyway, it's no secret why The Great Combover One is currently leading the GOP over a cliff of non-relevance no matter what happens in November: white people be tripping, yo.
Specifically, white heterosexual males (of which I am a member, though I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it considering some of the company I have to keep).
During my TCTC days, we were told in Sociology that in twenty years, people of Mexican or Hispanic descent would be the majority in this country. Seeing as my last class at TCTC was twelve years ago, I'd say we're in the home stretch towards that goal being achieved. African-Americans may dominate our sports, music, and culture, but they're not a huge part of our overall population. And pretty soon, neither will we white folks be, at least in terms of dominance through sheer numbers.
All I can say is: thank fucking God.
For most of recorded history, people from the relatively small continent of Europe (and not even all of Europe; when was the last time thoughts of an Italian invasion stirred fear in anyone?) have kinda had the run of things, using their pale skin (from being so far from the sun, don't you know?) as some sort of indicator that they're better than anyone else (spoiler alert: we're not). From slavery to imperialism, colonialism to Colonial Williamsburg, we white men have had a lot to answer for, even if (as my family loves to remind me whenever I dare to be the only liberal in the room) some of us didn't have direct participation in ancient-history stuff (but here's the thing: that shit still has power over everything we do, and we don't acknowledge it at our peril). I think we white men have done some good things, to be sure: the Beatles, for one thing, and pizza. But that's an awful small amount of good to bring into the world when the balance is really scaled towards all the negative shit we've done, or has been done in our name. And it's not even stuff that we just did to "others." I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more terrifying than anything Monty Python conceived of for the skit of the same name.
You'll notice I didn't say "we white people," because let's be honest: for most of history, women didn't mean shit to white men except as baby-makers and maybe mistresses when we got tired of making babies officially. Somehow giving you ladies the vote less than a hundred years ago means "we're good, right?" Considering how casually rape culture is taken by some of my fellow white men (most of them at Return of Kings), it's understandable that we are not, in fact, good.
So we (white men not named me) are scared of the coming loss of racial dominance, I guess. Tough shit, it's a thing and it's happening, and thank God for it. Someone else will be in charge now, as it should be. It might not happen this election cycle (hell, there may be enough crazy white people to elect a smooth-talking con artist to the highest office in the land; it's happened before), but it's coming, and soon. And we white men can be like Custer, kicking and screaming the whole way because our penis size is threatened. Or we can work with those communities that are rising up to dominate our country, and ensure that they know that we're allies, not enemies. This is a nation of immigrants, from all over the damn place. We white men have no special claim to being "American," not really.
But I'm guessing my friends who support Trump are going to hate this idea :-p
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