One More

I heard something on the radio this morning that's inspired me to make a notable addition to the list from yesterday. Notable enough that it gets its own post, and not just an editing addition to yesterday.
Captain Sully.
The radio blurb this morning was about how today will be his first flight (piloting, lord knows he traveled via plane since the incident for media engagements and what not) since the famous landing on the Hudson River in January.(1) Of course they carried on the tradition of liberally using the word "hero" in describing the man.
Now let's get this straight. What he did was impressive and admirable but not heroic. He was just doing his job, for chrissakes. I checked his bio and he joined the Air Force in 1969, so he's been piloting planes for at least 40 years. I'm pretty confident that any person licensed to fly commercial airplanes has the expertise to successfully land a plane on a smooth body of water, let alone one with 40 years of experience.
The act of flying is inherently dangerous.(2) People have constantly claimed that he saved the lives of the 155 people on board in January. If you accept that as truth you must also accept that every single pilot who ever captains a plane and lands it successfully then saves the lives of all passengers. This is not heroic, this is what these people do for a living. They take off, they usually kick it into autopilot for several hundred miles, then they land. Over and over. Oh, sometimes there is turbulence and they have to take it off autopilot.
Let me step back and say that clearly it's tougher to land a plane on water with no wheels than on land with wheels, but again, I'm sure all pilots are put through in-case-of-emergency training so that they know how to land on water and on non-runway land. I'm also not going out on a limb by saying that landing a plane with no engine power must be tougher than with, but then of course I'm sure they are all trained at that too.
And now a sidebar complaint about "heroes." A man doing his job is not by itself heroic, no matter what that job is. If heroism enters the equation (debatable but acceptable), then it exists only when the man decides to embark upon a career such as aviation, or firefighting, another profession that is constantly called heroic. It's a noble pursuit. It is admirable. It is not heroic.
Maybe my definition is just a bit stricter than others.


1. The radio blurb finished up mentioning that if anyone wanted to take his first flight back, you are out of luck because the flight is sold out. If there was any earnestness in that statement, then I really don't know what to think of our human society. To think someone would take a flight from NYC to Charlotte purely because it's the first one for the pilot after an eight-and-a-half-month layoff is beyond ridiculous.
2. Dangerous, meaning there is always a chance of death, not dangerous because death is likely. Sorta like walking on the yellow part of the subway platform while a train is coming into the station. But not dangerous like walking through a minefield.

Understanding Island

I have opinions like everyone. I don't think I get any more passionate about my opinions than a normal person. But I do tend to judge others based off of my opinions, and probably do that more than a normal person. This is likely due to the fact that I can be rather arrogant about things, that I'm very sure of myself.
In my own defense, I will not lapse into true arrogance about something unless I've gone over it in my head a few times and come to the conclusion that I'm just right, damnit, more right than you at least.
But lots of times these arrogant judgments aren't fair, or they are simply hurtful. Even in some very rare instances they may actually be wrong. Gasp. Sometimes I introduce an objective opinion into a subjective field. Sometimes I judge someone/something when it's not needed or welcome. Sometimes my opinions might just innocently diverge from another's, in which case a judgment(1) is both unnecessary and unwelcome.
The reason I'm thinking about this now is that I was reading something I think yesterday and John Cusack was mentioned in terms of how everyone like him. Well, I can't stand John Cusack. I don't like really any of his movies (particularly the 80s ones that he might be most famous for), and I don't really like any of his roles. People seem to think that he would be a nice guy in real life based on his acting. Setting aside for a second that that's a pretty stupid assumption to make, I feel like he'd be insufferable based on the same thing. It seems my personal opinion just severely differs from that of the general population. I might be tempted to make a judgment about the general population because of this (and have done similar things in the past, to be sure), but really why? It's ok for me to hate John Cusack and for everyone else to love him. Lots of times, there may be a subliminal explanation for this divergence, but not always.
On a vaguely similar note, I had an argument with Sara a week or two ago about the movie I Heart Huckabees. It seems she is a big fan, and she made me watch it when it was randomly on TV. I was less than impressed. Actually, I thought it was pretentious garbage, and offered this opinion to Sara, who naturally took some offense.
I say "naturally" because, while it's perfectly ok--actually very healthy--to engage in dissenting conversation about one of the arts, it's usually(2) not ok to do so as arrogantly as I did in this case. I led off with the judgment and never really backed off to the opinion, and that's an important distinction to make in a lot of cases.

Anyway, in the spirit of all of this, I thought I'd come up with a small list of topics in which my strong opinion/belief/judgment differs strongly with most people. I do this as a way of highlighting that yes it is ok to have differing viewpoints and not have anyone be "wrong," but also as reinforcement to myself to be more forgiving and benevolent.
So here, in no particular order, are some things I (sometimes improbably) have a strong but very minority opinion about, and where there is nothing wrong with that.(C) I only make a note where necessary:
1. John Cusack
2. Coffee -- don't drink it, can't stand it.
3. Music -- I've talked about this before, and I guess I'm still not completely ready to give up the idea that my viewpoint isn't a little more enlightened than others, but I include it here in a spasm of benevolence. To recap: hearing other people talk about music is utterly noxious to me. I appreciate it only for its innateness.
4. Tabasco sauce -- I love spicy things, but think the flavor of this is repulsive.
5. Sketch comedy.
6. Doctors -- not impressed.
7. Champagne.
--I just now realized that all of these so far are things I don't like--
9. Tofu -- no, really, it's not too bad.
10. Facebook/Twitter -- no.
11. Guinness -- if this is in fact an acquired taste, then I am in complete ownership of it.



A. You can't tell because this thing automatically highlights spelling errors and therefore notified me of the problem, but right here I spelled that word wrong for the second time in the same paragraph. That's almost unforgivable.
B. I don't care, if you try to claim that Ron Howard is as good a director as someone like Kubrick, then yes I am fully permitted to humiliate you. There is a line below which vaguaries don't exist. But then, I don't usually waste time in engage people making such dumb claims, so maybe this is moot.
C. Here is a list of things where my minority opinion is correct and the popular one is just flat wrong, and yes there is something wrong with the populous:
1a. Ron Howard -- hack.
1b. Tom Hanks -- overrated, very. Also frequent collaborator with 1a, which is a black mark.
2. American Idol/Reality TV in general
3. Celebrity worship -- I would say "obviously," but the fact that I think I fall in the minority about this rather amazingly means maybe not so obvious.

The Worse and Worst

How horrible are people?
How much more horrible are we now than we were before?
How much of a reinforcing factor is the media in reporting horribleness?
Does this reinforcement work more strongly for negative stories than positive ones?
Is the media responsible for horribleness, if even slightly?

My kneejerk answers to these questions would be: pretty horrible, noticeably so, a lot, yes, and yes.
I'm not going to link it because the contextual facts of the story are irrelevant, but what got me thinking about this is that I stumbled onto a story about a 35 year old woman who had given up her child for adoption about fifteen years ago. It seems she tracked down this biological son via the internet, befriended/manipulated him, and actually had sex with him.
This story is so absurdly horrible that I at first have a hard time believing that a human being is possible of that kind of depravity all on his/her own, that some vile stew of contemporary evils must have swirled around in this woman's conscious and unconscious beings to create the possibility for her actions.(1)
My next thought was about the old cliche how the major news outlets only report on negative stories and not positive ones. I also thought about how the still-adolescent internet media seems to cycle through stories in an exponential desire to find the most extraordinary or most amazing or most horrible one, as though the hyper-competitive nature of internet news forces that media to deliver greater and greater shock value to slice off whatever attention it can from its overstimulated audience. And how could this constant yearning for extremes, coupled with the clear and longstanding negative focus of these news stories, not lead a consuming humanity into at least unconsciously worse and worse behavior.
It's like the psychology behind copy-cat crimes, only with a baser, least-common-denominator competitive streak.
I think this effect does exist. I think this is a form of radical social evolution that is sped along by the brute power and speed of worldwide web connectedness.
I think as a general rule that the media is definitely complicit in this, but on a macro level and not a micro one. I don't specifically dislike media outlets or forms or any people associated with or responsible for them, but I do with some consistency dislike the observable effects of "media." In a way, you could say that not everyone is prepared to be exposed to infinite information.(2) You could definitely say that not everyone producing media is prepared for the responsibility of infinite information.
It's nice to know things. It's nicer to know that you can know something if only you decide to. But the near-infinite experiences of the world population are too much for any one person, especially when being handily distilled by media into only the wildest and most unbelievable.
I guess in a secondary and indirect way I'm saying to you not to leave out the banality of the world. Indeed, if media only to focus more on the amazingly positive stories that abound in the world, then that would only partly remedy the situation.
Nonetheless, as a consequence of this strain of thought, here in this blog I'm going to try to consciously make note of the wonderful things that I see, both inherent in the world and of course those which come from people.


1. Big time disclaimer here. I'm in no way excusing this woman from blame here. I'm also not saying she did what she did as part of some natural escalation of society. Every crime is unique because every criminal is unique. What I'm saying is that the maybe 0.01% of crazy that got into this woman thanks to her absorption of other negative media stories might be enough to push her ever slightly to ever-worse acts. And if lots and lots of people are absorbing the same tiny sliver of acceptance of depravity, then eventually dominoes will start to fall. It's like the parable if you put a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters and give them a million years, eventually one would produce Hamlet. But if they were all watching a continuous loop of Shakespearean tragedies while sitting in front of the typewriters, you can be very sure that it would take a lot less longer.
2. Naturally, no one could ever be prepared for infinite information, though the thought, as mere theory to consider, is an interesting one.

A Conversation, Part II

So I was drifting along the fringe of this little conversation, mostly just waiting for it to be over and trying not to make it seem so, kinda enjoying the fact that I didn't have to join in much, when the other woman finally focused on me, and I'm pretty sure she only did so in a trying-to-be-nice way so I wouldn't feel excluded or so she could show how nice she is by showing interest in me, someone she'd probably never see again. Her question was so predictable that you might be amazed that at this point in my life I haven't ever bothered to create a stock answer for it.
"So what do you do?"
This is not even a difficult question to answer. And yet. I hate this question. It's not just the chit-chat banality of it, either, though I do hate mindless chatting.
When engaging in conversation with someone you don't know, 99.9% of the time the other person will be looking for a quick and easy way to stereotype, judge, and compartmentalize you(1), in that order; or, if you're lucky, they're not doing that very actively and are instead just trying to ask the flattest questions possible so as to fill the time until someone else shows up without having to mentally engage at all. "What do you do?" is the quintessential example of the latter, but its insidiousness lies in that after your brief chat is over, the other person will quite often actually remember how you respond to it and from then on that is how they will know you. To them, you will not be you, but instead a first name and an occupation(2).
Ah but this is my blog and this is going to be more personal than that. So let me admit that the other big reason I loathe "What do you do?" is because--at least compared with most people--I don't have a very good answer to it. I've been seriously employed for 6 years now so naturally I have a perfectly suitable answer, but I don't have a "good" one, an answer that engages the interest or, presumably, respect of the questioner.
My official title is Assistant Facilities Manager, but mostly I answer the question with Office Manager, because that word Facilities tends to confuse a lot of people. But everyone knows what both an Office and a Manager are. Telling a near-stranger that you are an "Office Manager" doesn't really elicit much interest; I know this because I don't often get a follow-up question outside of "Where at?" or "What company?"
Some of the reasons people don't find much interesting about my job title: I usually don't like talking to strangers all that much, I don't with any comfort brag about myself(3), I am pretty much biologically wired to hate all things pompous, and am therefore unable to engage in the same phony bullshit that people do to try to impress other people, and finally, I myself simply am not all that interested in talking about jobs, so my general inability to disguise my feelings about a subject can pretty easily influence another person's reception of it.
I am not what I do. A lot of people are, but not me. I don't take my work home with me, and I would change careers almost instantly if that were to ever change. I'm not usually very productive with my spare time, but I rather zealously will defend my right to it.
For me, a job is a way to make enough money to make myself, and now my future wife and presumptive family, happy. I've never really had much of a desire for a specific job. Maybe that's laziness and maybe it's a lack of ambition that's followed me most of my life, but I don't really care. It's hard to make other people interested in what you do if you don't devote terribly much of your own interest to it.
None of this is to say that what I do is boring or unfulfilling or in some way shameful. Well, I work in an office, so sometimes it actually is boring, but not usually. I will say that at one point I did wonder how essential my position was. Basically how replaceable was I? But that passed because I realized that yes indeed some of my personal skills provide sometimes great value to the company. It can be hard to effectively explain with any brevity what I truly do. Mostly this is because I do a lot of different things. Truly, I am not an Office Manager. I do many different things in many different degrees of intensity for almost random durations, and so I often don't know what I'll be doing in the next week.
Sometimes I am an Accountant. Sometimes I work in Real Estate. Sometimes I stock shelves. Sometimes I am a Financial Analyst. Sometimes I am a plain old Manager. Sometimes I work in HR. Sometimes I am a Project Coordinator. Sometimes I am a Painter. Sometimes I pass myself off as a Lawyer. Sometimes I clean up messes. Sometimes I am a Creative Consultant. Sometimes I am a Carpenter. Sometimes I work in Demo. Always I am looking for ways to be more efficient. Almost always I am a professional. I could probably get a lot more milage out of some of the specific aspects of my job when trying to impress people talking about what I do, but I don't try to impress people. I have heard friends or acquaintances answering the "What do you do?" question in the way that you are supposed to: embellished and aggrandized. I cringe when this happens. You see, it's the delivery and acceptance of this practice that makes people seem almost let down when I answer simply and reservedly. "What do you do?" isn't even really a question, it's an invitation to show yourself off. It's like a job interview question. And most people will bullshit with the best of them when given the opportunity.
Fuck those people. If you ask me what time it is I will say "4:15" or whatever, I won't talk about how great or expensive my watch is. If you ask me what I studied in college I will say "English," I won't give a dissertation on why I so dislike Charles Dickens. If you ask me if I have a girlfriend I will say "yes," I won't talk about how I often honestly feel like I have a better relationship than anyone else in the world. If you want to honestly know about my relationship experiences, then you're going to have to honestly ask. If you want the description of my job to sound like a CEO or a famous artist or goddamned race car driver(4), then you're going to be disappointed. Contrary to the way most people talk about themselves to strangers, those interesting or prestigious jobs are filled by a tiny tiny minority of the population.

What I do is I enjoy myself. Who I am is a much deeper and more complex topic than could or should ever be discussed with a stranger.


1. Those other 0.1% of people are the ones who become my friends.
2. This is only vaguely related, but I went through a phase a while back where I used to not want people to tell me their names when I met them. This was for two reasons: first, I would often just forget the name anyway; and second, since a person's name isn't of their choice it really doesn't say anything about him. I much preferred to see first if I enjoyed the other person any, and if so, only then would it really be necessary to know the name. After all, if I turned out not to like the person, I would not be communicating with him again and would have just wasted a tiny space of my brain by putting his name there. Efficiency.
3. I should say "truthfully" brag about myself. I used to, and sometimes still do, love to display a faux arrogance. I do it for laughs or to diffuse situations, but since I'm such a naturally gifted actor I can give people the wrong impression that I actually am that arrogant.
4. This is almost straight out of the movie Swingers, but I don't care. What kind of pretentious asshole society are we in where we are just as well making up some ridiculous fanciful lie about ourselves as telling the simple truth? It doesn't seem to matter that a person is happy with his life if he doesn't get appropriate approval from a stranger. Being proud of yourself is a 100% internal personal emotion.

Independent (or just confused) Personality

He also found that personality traits assigned by the psychiatrists in the initial interviews largely predicted who would become Democrats (descriptions included “sensitive,” “cultural,” and “introspective”) and Republicans (“pragmatic” and “organized”).

That's a small quote from the middle of a long article in last month's Atlantic(1) about a long study that purportedly sheds light on what makes for a happy life.(2) It interests me in a personal way because I have taken seriously my deliberate decision to belong to neither the Democratic nor the Republican party. I've always felt that my political beliefs(3) have never consistently fallen in with either party and that I've been free to agree or disagree with either at any time. This little quote nicely confirms this thought. Read those personality traits again. If I or anyone else extremely close to me had to choose five words to describe me, those might be the first five picked.(4) I have all the dominant traits of Republicans and Democrats.
So I think what this means is that I ought to be on the Supreme Court.

1. I've loved this magazine for a long time, and you really can't go wrong reading anything in it. But I've got a little complaint about how they changed their name from the Atlantic Monthly to just the Atlantic. A little too pretentious, if you ask me.
2. I'm not sure if I'm terribly impressed with this article. It was the cover feature last month so normally you'd be free to just end the debate and start anthologizing it. But it wandered around, never really answered its own hypotheses, and turned into a biography on the study's director, which would be a fine and simple article to write, but not terribly interesting in a broad sense or enlightening in any sense. I still feel the same way about the Atlantic now that I did about PBS a few years ago (enthralled, awed, and completely devoted), I'd just call this article the "Antiques Roadshow" of the Atlantic.(a)
3. My beliefs on social issues are decidedly liberal. I am mature and humble enough not to always assume I'm right about diverse and complex political and economic issues, but not social ones such as gay rights or abortion(b) or the like. There I am no better than a petulant child. The only difference is that instead of being absolutely certain of my own rightness, I'm more sure of my adversary's wrongness.
4. Let's put them in this order: pragmatic, introspective, organized, sensitive, cultural.

a. Hopefully anyone reading this knows enough about me that I don't have to explain how I feel about "Antiques Roadshow." Let's just say that Mondays, and any day they were doing a pledge drive and giving away Broadway-related merchandise, were disappointing evenings for me.
b. Abortion being a very interesting issue. It's got both a strong social component as well as a strong political one. I don't disagree that there are a lot of sensible arguments on both sides of the political abortion issue, but only one on the social side. A woman has a right to choose what she does with her body, no matter what any religious text has to say about it.

Russians: You Win

I'm still thinking about a PBS World War II special that I was watching last week. It's atypical focus was on the Eastern front, and the Russian experience in particular. It wasn't actually that good of a show, containing those horribly acted re-enactments that you see in historical shows sometimes, but the subject matter I found to be enthralling.
Like a lot of young males, I used to love war documentaries, films, books, anything. My favorite movie ever was Saving Private Ryan, and I was one of the people who actually loved that back in the day all the History Channel ever aired was WWII shows. But even through this exhaustive coverage, you don't often get the full story. According to everything I was ever presented with, D-Day was the biggest thing ever, and the North African and Italian invasions were anything more than diversionary. This is of course false. The Eastern front during WWII was far bloodier and more "important" than anything the U.S. did elsewhere. The Russians basically won the war for us, or put more descriptively, the Russians wore out and defeated the Germans, which allowed the Allies to win the war. I think partially because this side of the story is so often left out of the history that Americans consume, and partially because the actual scale of the Russian/German fighting, is precisely why I am so fascinated by it.
One focus of the PBS special, and the reason I'm still thinking about it a week later, was the Battle of Stalingrad. I urge you now to do a quick search of this battle just to educate yourself. It was immense and horrible and hugely deadly and basically the end of the Third Reich. And the Russians were literally fighting in defense of their country, meaning if they had lost they might not have had a country anymore. This small matter is something that the U.S. has not had to face since at least 1815. Sure we have participated in wars since then, but never really with the fate of the country or its civilians' lives at stake.
The point of this post now is to display my complete awe at the country of Russia (Soviet Union) in general, and specifically the people who participated in the Battle of Stalingrad. Secondarily, I would like to ask any American alive during the Cold War who thought they would like for us to actually go to war against the USSR, just what the hell were you thinking? The Russkies would have completely destroyed us in any ground (non-nuclear, I know the qualifier is non-trivial, but go with it) war, the reason being that they as a people are simply made of tougher stock. It's hard to make these comparisons, but I consider myself to possess relatively strong fortitude, but I can promise you that there is no way I would have held up through Stalingrad. No way.
Scroll back up and take another look at the statue in the picture. That statue was dedicated in 1967 on a hill overlooking Stalingrad where particularly bloody fighting took place. It's 279 feet tall. The sword alone is 108 feet long. It's called "The Motherland Calls." It's hard to see, but look at the face. They showed a close-up of the face during the PBS special, but the point is that the mouth is wide open and the face is straining in horror as if desperately exhorting someone to action. It's terrifying. It would be terrifying if it were only 6 feet tall, but those crazy Russians built it 279 feet tall. The imagery is supposed to call to memory the fact that Russians from all over the country were summoned to Stalingrad to fight and die (fact: at one point during the battle, the life expectancy for a newly arriving Russian solider was less than 24 hours) to defend the Motherland.
I simply can't imagine how the United States would ever have a chance against that kind of national backbone. Even today, weakened and relatively shamed as a world power and failed economic state, I would not want to mess with Russia in a traditional war. We have innumerable technological advances that would likely never let a war devolve into the brutality of Stalingrad, but you still can't hide from the fact that those Russians are some frightening sons of bitches.

Wondering

1. In preparation for the new phone system we're installing tomorrow, I'm going through the generic online training tutorial (I mean literally right now I'm doing this, it's droning in the background as I write from the reception desk). What's fascinating me now is of course not the content but the nice gentleman speaking and operating the phones in the first-person perspective presentation. He's got a nice clean voice, which is probably why he was chosen to do it. However, he's also got a little bit of a lisp, which is utterly consuming my attention. I don't mean like a homosexual lisp but more of an adolescent lisp, where many of the words are just sloppily or lazily pronounced. It's not regional, like a dialect. For example, he just used the word "regional," and he spoke it as "reguh-nool." This is a very slight example. "The" becomes "deh," "external" becomes "etsternal," "calls" becomes "cualls." But the biggest one is row. He says "rwow." It's like how Bobby Flay talks. It's a soothing voice, but I don't know why. I also for some reason associate it with Asian people, which I why I'm assuming this gentleman is Asian. I wonder if that association comes from the l/r problem they often have with English? I wonder if my assumption is a social stereotype or if Asian people just get used to pronouncing things slightly wrong because they've heard it so much from family?
Whatever the answers to those questions, this particular guide has got my sense of perception engaged, and I haven't got much to work with. His hands aren't model hands but instead a bit lumpy, and tanned. Other than that, so far I've only gotten a quick view of his upper right forehead and his button blue sleeves. Nonetheless, I feel acquainted with him, and my reaction to this is similar to any time you meet someone new or mysterious: I want to know more, and I want to project things onto him. Why do people do that? Why does a disembodied voice and two hands cause me to want to know about the rest of him? Why does his odd speaking spark that zest to know more? We are a curious species.

2. Something more generally interesting is this next thing. I was back in Columbus this past weekend and ran into some old college friends. One person (who was really more a friend-of-a-friend, meaning I haven't talked with him and never would have known him were it not for my friend, still this is someone with whom I effortlessly communicate) asked me if I was still writing my blog. Fairly mundane question and I answered that sure I was but not prolificly. The interesting thing is that he almost instantly added: "sorry if I'm not readng it regularly," as though some mention of his reading habits were necessary.
Now, nothing in the way this person acted was remotely out of the ordinary, and naturally neither of us made any notice of anything odd occurring. Nevertheless, I find his qualifying remark (sorry if I'm not reading) to be very interesting. Why did he (or would anyone) ever feel the need to apologize there? Has our blogging society become so (im)personal that people read by requisition? Is it a personal reflection on a person if an acquaintance of that person either does or doesn't read his blog?
This is a dangerous trend, I think. To borrow Descartes: "I write therefore I am read."
I think a requirement for a valuable friendship is to find the person interesting, so naturally it would follow that you would enjoy talking with him or--back to our example--reading something he has written. Now, when we talk to someone, we share in leading the conversation; we have a say in keeping things interesting to us; however, when a person writes something they are free to go off on their own without regard to someone else's interest level. There are people who do write solely with the intent of keeping people interested, but those people are not merely writing, they are entertaining, and only using written words as a medium.
I don't blog-write like that. I write what interests me and I let myself go with a thought. It's what I love about this form of writing: it's vaguely formal but simultaneously totally personal. I feel almost as though whoever may be reading I am engaging in one of those long thoughtful conversations that seem to occur around fireplaces and involve politics or religion (since most people aren't conditioned well enough to have serious intelligent and actual free-will opinions on anything else, but that's digressing too much for now). If someone out there doesn't find a topic as interesting as I do, then don't consider it a reflection on me I consider it a reflection on us as we relate to that topic. Nothing more. Some of my best friends really get into current music, but I get no interest from it so whenever they talk about it I either drift off or find someone else to talk about something different. It's nothing personal that I don't share their interest in music.
So I wonder if apologizing to someone for not reading their blog is more meaningful than that? I know that I think it shouldn't be, but probably it is. I guess an easy way to describe my general belief is that if you are a person who would be offended by someone not reading your blog, then you probably shouldn't be blogging, or you should get new friends.

your efforts are futile

ive come to realize that i have a real talent for something. hold on now, because no this isnt going to be any kind of back-slapping exercise like i sometimes engage in. i only realize it's a talent because ive noticed that not only do not many people share this talent, but quite a few are actually utterly incapable of it in any regard.
i have an effortless ability to not feel another person's uncomfortability in conversation. basically, i do not naturally feel any empathy in conversational settings. ive only come to notice this over many years, as i watch other people get sucked into things they dont want any part of simply because they do the normal thing and act interested and nod their head and otherwise dont ignore the other person imposing on their time/space.
if you find yourself with me in a social situation and neither of us has anything natural to add, then you can just save yourself the agony and know that i wont say anything and i wont judge you for doing the same. see, what happens for the huge majority of people is, while they might be able to recognize that i wont add anything to the "conversation," almost no one is able to come to terms with the latter fact: that it really is ok for them to do the same. pretty much everyone i ever come across finds it impossible to leave well enough alone and forces some attempt at chatter, only to find that their efforts only enhance the awkwardness.
i say awkwardness because i can appreciate the sensation that most people have in these situations. i am capable of feeling awkwardness, though it is relatively rare. the important thing to know here is that, with extremely small exception, i dont feel awkward during conventionally "awkward" social conversational situations.
if you want to talk to me about your cat or something and you cat doesnt happen to interest me (this is an apt example, fyi), then i wont really engage in your conversation and youll end up basically talking out loud for no good reason. if you tell me something about the weather being hot, i will recognize this as a forced attempt at breaking through, but i will do nothing to help you there; instead i will either agree or disagree about the actual point you make regarding the heat, and then stop talking.
i dont want this now to sound like im not ever interested by things people say or merely people themselves. this is far from true. sometimes the smallest or most banal things will completely engage me. i think i am interested by things a pretty normal amount. normal, meaning about the same as most people. which, given the fact that i felt the need to write this post on this subject, would seem to suggest that most people who are normally interested by things do not actually behave that way. they will act like they are interested in far more things that they really are. they will be phony. i am sorry but this is true. if it's a bad thing to be phony on a macro level then surely it should be just as bad to be phony on a micro level.
i think this ties back into how i started this, actually. it's ok to feel uncomfortable. it's ok not to care about things, just as much as to care about things. do not get frustrated by my seemingly poor social skills just because you have a hard time understanding this, and i promise not to let your lack of awareness further degrade my social abilities around you.

Two Good Movie Ideas

Fact: I have good ideas. Fact: I am poor at acting on these ideas. Fact: I don't really mind that my ideas don't always come to fruition.
One of my key approaches to life is that I don't feel the need to prove myself to others as long as I know I'm sure of myself. You could call this cowardice and you might have a point, but i don't see the need to actually go about proving to you that I can run a marathon if I am fully certain that I could, for instance.
While I was walking to Whole Foods' beer store on Houston last night (let me pause for a second and both trumpet this resource and shame myself for underutilization of it. You buy an empty half-gallon growler for like $3, then you pay from $7-20+ to have it filled with draft beer whenever you want. And they stock delicious beer as well, often locally produced for people who are into that sort of thing. And it's just a 20minute round-trip excursion from my apt.), something mundane got me thinking, as happens frequently. A guy dressed like a cook with longish hair tied back in a ponytail stepped across the sidewalk in front of me outside of a small restaurant, then lit a cigarette and started smoking it alone as he surveyed the street. He looked like how Robert DeNiro might have looked it 1982 if he were preparing for a role as some kind of a cook.
1. So I'm not sure why but that cook's aloneness there on the sidewalk so near to other people gave me a good idea for a movie plot. I should say, not just the cook's aloneness but the complete disengaged sense of being in a place but not of it, is what gave me the good idea. Most movies are of course about people on a basic level, sometimes about people reacting to events but more often the interesting or quality ones are just about people. Further, they are about people interacting with other people. What I mean is that a movie's plot is virtually always advanced through dialogue or some interaction with people, sometimes also with objects (the Raging Bull jail cell scene) or events (Forrest Gump, duh) or environments (Cast Away, aka the greatest movie ever made), but whatever it is specifically it's still basically just the active engagement with outside forces that drives plot.
What I'd propose is that you take an individual--a comedian would be a good subject to help show my point--and follow him not as he deals with people but just before and just after and especially those moments--like with the cook on the sidewalk--when he's amidst people but still alone. I'd go to great lengths to ensure that it wouldn't simply be a case study on loneliness or a biography of a hermit, but instead simply an examination of those times in a life when a person is only himself at his innermost. It's a variation on something I find very interesting: that a person will behave differently when alone than when in company. (Even if the person is completely self-aware and well-adjusted and unaffected by conventions or expectations, he will act differently. An example of this that I've mentioned before is that when I wake to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I will almost never wash my hands afterward, but if at work and someone else is relieving himself at the same time as me I will always do at least a cursory rinse in the sink. How a man reacts to the former tells more about him on a basic level but it's also boring because it's something mostly involuntary for the man. How a man reacts to the latter isn't interesting because it's a social constant, but the thoughtful man's response to his bending in the latter situation is extremely interesting. At least to me.)

2. The other great movie idea I'll share now is one I've had for at least five or six years now, but since I'm now 28 and unlikely ever to follow-up on it (see also Monsieur, Monsieur), I'll share it with the world. This idea is not so much a plot idea as it is a thematic visual idea that would essentially make whatever plot you put behind it simple dressing.
Just a warning now,

(There, I've left an extra space for emphasis.)

but I feel that this is one of the finest artistic-related ideas I've ever had. I always become excited when thinking about the possibilities and the utter originality* of it any time I consider it.

You position the camera lens as though it is an eyeball looking out at the world and just follow your character around. I'm not talking about a simple first-person POV here either. You'd have to semi-blur most of the screen, maybe even blacking out nebulous amounts of the edges, and focus only on the center focal area. Not only that but this central focal area would have to drift and move (and the rest of the screen in kind) as the character's eyes drift from one object to another. I'm no lens expert but I'm not sure the technology was advanced enough to do this right when I first conceived this idea. In 2009 it might be possible.
Vision, and seeing things differently under different levels of focus and sharpness, has always been fascinating to me. This is most likely because unlike most people, I haven't really ever been able to take my vision for granted. (Obviously there are blind people who would scoff at this statement. Sorry to them.) My eyes required correction, but then the correction didn't take so I to go back to glasses, which never felt natural to me. I couldn't get over the fact that I was looking through something to allow me to see, and even then the glasses would slide around or I'd be trying to see with my periphery and of course fail because the frames never seemed to wrap enough quite enough. Finally a year and a half ago I went under the knife and I'm now something close to a normal contactless seer. The only problem is that, depending on the humidity and the wind, my vision can fluctuate slightly. Not enough to ever cause a problem, but enough to recognize it.
That history out of the way, think of the effects this filming technique would produce:
1. You'd get a real point of view. Something that bugs me with traditional POV camera shots is that no human can actually see with clarity the breadth of a movie screen. So while I'm watching a movie shot that way, I'm noticing many details that the character himself can't be processing beyond the simple impressionistic level.
2. You would change the way we think of "realism." (Again, done correctly) I think this is the true elimination of the fourth way in film. It's not virtual reality as we've been exposed to it thus far, because it would still be a film and thus it's goals would still be fictive and artistic.
3. You could add a layer of thought to every second of the film. You're forcing the viewer to consider himself as he watches the film. And you could do it without any subtlety whatsoever, but in such a way that it's effect after watching for a few minutes would dissolve so effortlessly that it would fuzz over the distinction between subtle and nonexistent influences. The possibilities this could open up with storylines and themes and symbols and everything a good writer is good at would be amazing.
Ok I'm getting the feeling that I might be drifting into the realm where I'm not able to make sufficient sense of what I'm trying to say, so perhaps I should cut this short. Know that I love this idea. I love it so much that if it were presented by someone else, I'd still love it and want to write about it.

*The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a recent film that I admired quite a bit, did do something that could be considered similar to what I'm proposing. They used the camera lens to double for a human eye, and narrowed the perspective of that eye to mimic the condition of the main character. However, in that film, they use the technique as a simple way of connecting the audience to the experience of the character, rather than as narrative filmic tool in and of itself. They also didn't go the whole way of constraining the lens' focus to replicate that of an actual eye's. None of this is meant to discredit the technique in the film though. I loved it. I thought it was extremely well done.

The Post-Talent Age

On Saturday night around 2:30 I left a bar in Park Slope and since I didn't want to fall asleep during the potentially long subway ride ahead of me, I grabbed a paper from the rack near the door of the bar. It turned out to be a Village Voice from mid-December. Here I thought they spontaneously combusted after about 8 days, and the good folks in Brooklyn manage to keep them circulating for over a month. God bless. So I managed to wade into an article about a writer complaining about blogs. All too appropriately, this blogger will say the article itself wasn't very good, but that there were some wonderful quotes way at the end that nicely verbalize some of my own thoughts:

1. "The state of publishing is such that you can get all these great things, but people don't talk about the work. They talk about you. There used to be serious critics and an audience. . . . Now, the audience is also in the critic business."
2. "The Internet's returned us all to these sort of 19th century critics who are trying to judge us by our voice, who are trying to hear the way our soul comes through."

And now the big ones:

3. "We have created a sort of post-talent age."
4. "It's commercial realism as opposed to intellectual realism."

I'm not so much interested or qualified to analyze how this all specifically relates to publishing--that's just the medium the article concerned itself with--but I think it does a great job generally describing the current state of artistic creation, and the public's reception of it.
The internet lately has allowed anyone to presume himself an expert on anything. Look at me, even. What do I know about film? I took one class in college about it, but other than that my only qualifications are that I'm very interested in film and therefore that I pay close attention to certain aspects of it. But I could be a hack. Anybody writing or critiquing anything online could be a hack. And that's why if you're responsible you must question the writer/reviewer, as well as his reviews. Since this type of ad hominem argumentation necessarily can't lead to any greater insight, what we're left with is simple questions and simpler answers: a dead-end for many intellectual pursuits.
And when your intellectual pursuits lead to a dead-end, you might just easily choose to quit trying. You might aim lower, you might leave the vacuum open for lesser lights. This is how I view the comment about this being a "post-talent age."
I used to spend time thinking about the idea of post-modernism as it applies to all fields of art. I was and still am fascinated by the idea of somehow transcending time or context, or by representing something just a bit further, if you'll allow me a sloppy bit of metaphysics. I used to wonder where could anyone ever go after post-modernism? Was "post-modern" simply a catch-all to describe everything happening now? And therefore, does that mean that artistically we'd arrived at a bleak point with no room to continue to grow, or does it mean that we'd managed to rise above labels and consequently to have limitless possibilities?
Enterprising artists (remember I'm talking about all fields of art here, not just painters or sculptors or whatever your mental image of an artist defaults to) pushed the envelope so much as to distract people from what was beautiful or talented and of course brought into question just what those things were. This was all very interesting, but I think it may have ominously succeeded in removing talent from the equation.
If reality TV "stars" can be more popular than any infinite amount of fine actors, then what good is acting?
If pop stars can be more or less created and sold as images, and if people who already have an image but no musical talent can find success as "musicians," then what's the point in refining a person's musical craft?
If a writer can produce something great, only to have it ignored by the media and attacked and undermined by a faceless internet presence, while all it would take is the opinion of one person (Oprah) to guarantee success, then why strive toward something bigger and better?
If a truly innovative filmmaker toils in obscurity and can't find funding, but a 15 year old can become famous for a 3:00 YouTube clip, then why focus your energy on anything more than what will have mass appeal?

I think it's great that people can now use the internet to express themselves, and that it gives a voice to just about anyone who wants one, but there are consequences.
Say you are in a room that has three microphones with 100 people, and five of those people are unquestioned geniuses. In the past, just a few of those 100 people would decide by some process who to allow to speak (assuming of course that the goal is for the smartest person to have the mic), but those few people would be largely successful in discovering those smart people. Let's say that command of the three mics would rotate amongst a group of 7-8 people, with 4 of those geniuses being accounted for, while one remains in the shadows. What you'd have is little difficulty in hearing the speakers (since there are only 3 mics to talk over each other), and relatively good representation of intelligence. Over time, those 4 geniuses would command people's attention better than the 3-4 hacks who slipped into the group of speakers but some failing on the part of the deciders.
Now let's imagine that you're in the same room with the same 100 people and five geniuses, only this time there are 50 very-slightly-quieter microphones than the original three, plus the original three. And assume that the group who decide who to let speak isn't 100% concerned with finding the smartest people. What you'd end up with is 53 people talking at once, and an almost random allocation of intelligence handling those microphones.
That might be an unnecessarily tedious analogy, but it's generally close to where we are now. It's almost as if no one knows who's worth a damn anymore. Worse, it's not entirely certain whether or not anyone cares who's worth a damn. This is where the final quote from above seems most relevant: "It's commercial realism as opposed to intellectual realism."
If you reread those four quotes at the top, maybe you will agree with me that the first two represent an advance in our culture, while the last two most definitely represent a collapse. Whether or not the two sets of quotes can exist as mutually exclusive is a bigger debate than I'm ready to tackle here. In fact, how society might go about fostering an environment that allows for #1 and 2, while keeping #3 and 4 to a minimum would be one of the more interesting artistic arguments to follow in our contemporary world. Personally, I could live without #1 and 2 if it meant the elimination of #3 and 4, though you have to admit the latter present us with some extremely interesting if unsavory scenarios.

1. Ok. It was a long time coming this year, but I'm finally and legitimately excited for the OSU-Michigan game tomorrow. Michigan's pathetic 3-8 is still not enough to taint what is the most anticipated football game for me every year The only exceptions to this would be if the Steelers were playing in the AFC Championship game or of course the Super Bowl. All other games of any level or importance would be secondary, even, believe it or not, an OSU national title game appearance (though I'm sure this opinion is colored by semi-recent events). So it will be fun tomorrow, and I'm semi-confident that the game might itself be interesting for quite a while, or at least long enough to give Michigan a victory against the historically-high 20.5 point spread.
After our game at noon, what I think might be the biggest game of the year is at 8:00 with Texas Tech and Oklahoma. TT is good and all, but I think a lot of people are forgetting how ridiculous Oklahoma is. I think they're going to put the hurt on Texas Tech, and I think they ought to get into the title game over Texas, even though they lost head-to-head.
This is a small digression, but this would be a great year for a playoff, maybe the best yet. I'm fairly certain there will be no major unbeatens (sorry Alabama), and at least 6-8 legitimately good teams to duke it out, in order of quality: Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Texas, Alabama, Texas Tech, Penn State. Add to that potentially-undefeated Utah and you've got a nice playoff lineup (first-round games: OU-Utah, Florida-Penn St, USC-TT, Texas-Bama. Excellent).

2. There has been a minor controversy online regarding a guy trying to use shady means to prove his theory that Obama was elected because the media covered the race unfairly. First, know that the guy at the center of this, John Ziegler, used to be a conservative talk-radio host, which really is about all you need to know about him. This guy cooked up a survey to show that Obama voters absorbed slanderous news about McCain/Palin better than about Obama/Biden, and that this obviously means that the liberal media played up the Republicans' faults while obscuring the Democrats'. Never mind that Obama is black and therefore belongs to a minority group that hasn't ever been portrayed remotely fairly by any form of media, or the fact that it would take some impressive kind of conspiracy in 2008 to effectively filter info.
Anyhow, I'm not as interested in that part of the debate. I'd like to look at a couple examples of why Ziegler/conservatives are angry about the media's treatment of the election, as found through his survey. People were much more likely to know that Palin has a pregnant teenage daughter and received $150,000 worth of clothes than they were to know about Obama's (out of context and misquoted) comment about the coal industry or Biden's past plagiarism. To any observer, partisan or not, this should come as no surprise. Even accepting Ziegler's general assumption--that this is because the media focused on the former stories and ignored the latter--should not be at all debatable. He--we--everyone, unfortunately--is assuming the media is operating with any kind of journalistic standards in mind, that the media is concerned with reporting honest stories and presenting honest pertinent information. Maybe it's archaic, but the major TV and radio networks are subject to federal oversight because they were originally intended to be responsible guardians of the public's information absorption. This has gone by the wayside, and is only really ever expected out of PBS anymore.
Instead, what we have now in almost all media outlets (and throughout all entertainment in fact) is a constant pandering to a least-common-denominator. The media doesn't give us what we ought to know, they give us what they think we want to know. We're interested in trivial scandal and personal details about politicians, cause lord knows those are the things that affect a person's governance (sometimes I know, they do, but you know what I mean).
I've criticized news and entertainment industries about this stuff before but so many people seem unfazed by this that it bears repeating. Our culture is different now, and not for the better. I don't care that Sarah Palin's daughter doesn't use contraception, I don't care that Eliot Spitzer sees prostitutes, I don't care that Bill Clinton got a hummer in the White House. I care that it's perfectly legal to discriminate against gay people, I care that U.S. leaders don't need to adhere to the same standards we hold to the rest of the world, I care that this country isn't remotely solvent.

3. The other day, I received an email from my good friend David Plouffe asking me for money again. (A reminder, Plouffe was Obama's campaign manager.) It was more or less your standard request for donation, this time to help fund the transition effort, except I noticed a couple lines that hint at something I find--at the risk of sounding naive--wholly remarkable and admirable:

For the first time, transition efforts won't be financed with donations from Washington lobbyists and PACs -- which means we'll need to keep asking for your help. Your generosity during the campaign helped get us here, but building a more transparent and open government means continuing to rely on a broader group of people to do this the right way.

First, the theme is the same as always, the same as it was since the day Obama rejected public financing and instead decided to raise all his money on his own. Through these constant emails from them, the campaign has been consistently proud of this fact. Although it sets a dangerous precedent toward ever-escalating money spent on political campaigns, I'm inclined to agree with their pride. Why not be supported quite literally from your supporters, and not some taxpayer funds or professional lobbyists? I know my ignorance on this forces such simplicity, but it makes sense. Again, I'd be worried about the path this could lead us down, but in this moment, I like it.
The much more interesting part of the quoted paragraph, though, is this: "building a more transparent and open government means continuing to rely on a broader group of people."
Obama has found himself in a difficult position after managing to somewhat transcend some of the usual politics in the eyes of millions of people. It's a corny cliche word here, but he's given hope that he might be different or run things differently than we're used to. In this task, and given these expectations, he will of course fail. He's a politician after all. He might represent better things to people but in the end he's one of them.
Nonetheless, if there is one thing that I've sorta noticed about how Obama and his people have gone about things, it's that he seems to genuinely be making an effort at transparency and accountability. Of course, after 8 horribly secretive Bush years, this is politically fruitful, but it seems more of an institutional mandate for the future from the future Prez himself, rather than a comment on the past. I'm too lazy to provide specific examples here from his campaign or the last couple weeks, but I'm happy to say that it seems to me at least that he's trying to deliver on a pretty important bit of promise that his victory represents. So good for him. But don't fuck it up.

The Big Republican Problem

This ought to be the last political post for a while, or at least the last one focused mainly on politics. They're fun in doses, and I'm sure I will have had my fill soon enough.

During the last several weeks as I've habitually politics-loaded, I've tried to make sure I get a little of both sides. The problem with internet surfing for legit but opinionated information is that similar-minded sites tend to link to each other but not as much to dissenting ones. To get around this, you have to follow a link where a liberal is making fun of what a conservative is saying, and then once at the other site, to browse around rather than simply read what was linked. For your information, one site that's dedicated to conservative thinking (and no I'm not using that phrase ironically. I think it's terribly stupid when liberals (or any group that might ever drift toward elitism) act like it's impossible to find extremely intelligent arguments from the other side. No one has a monopoly on good ideas.) which I have found to contain plenty of smart, readable content is nextright.com. There are many others but my laziness has limited me mostly to revisiting this one.
Anyhow, in reading some of these Republican sites, I can't help but notice some of the comments to articles. As with any site, the comments are on another planet than the articles, quality-wise, but since I don't have as many righty friends anymore, and I don't see many here in Manhattan, it can be slightly if curiously informative. Being from Eastern Ohio, and raised in a somewhat culturally conservative household, I have some experience with both sides of the political debate. Of course over time I have tended to the left in my own thinking but I can certainly respect and often agree with either side.
Now, there are a lot of conservatives lamenting their performance Tuesday, for good reason, but there may be even more (the more ambitious or enthusiastic at least) that are attempting to lay out how to regain traction and eventually return to national power. Many of the excuses/ideas offered are reasonable, but I've found that my own personal feeling regarding the biggest Republican problem has gone laregly unmentioned.
Somewhere along the line (I'll leave others to decide when exactly), Republicans made a decision that, sure, it's ok if a large portion of our base consists of bigoted, ignorant, uninformed, and homogenous individuals. By letting too many of these types of voters run amok as a big chunk of their base, the Republicans took up residence on the wrong side of history. By consistently doing this, they ensured that no matter what else happened in the present, sooner or later, they were going to fall. I talked about this is my gay marriage post a few back, but it's a guarantee that fairness and virtue will win out in this country in the long run (And let's pause here to note that no matter the flaws of the country or its people, this fact stands high as evidence of its true greatness).
You could probably trace today's versions of the Democratic and Republican parties directly to the civil rights era, when Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act changed the south from a Democratic stronghold to the Republican one it has remained to this day. Starting there, they fell behind (in many cases, to say they "fell behind" is very generous, more descriptive to say they "vigorously opposed.") on racism, abortion, guns, the environment, anything science-related, homosexuality, and pretty much any other progressive social/cultural issue. They took the easy road and pandered to the ignorances, fears, and insecurities of the present, somehow not noticing that the supporters of intolerance would shrink as the years went on and people naturally became more accepting of others' differences. They somehow didn't notice that the national share of white males was diminishing every year as this country continued it's centuries-old tradition of receiving immigrants in high numbers (I don't have a source handy, but it's estimated that in the not-too-distant future, there will be no more majority race).
Of course, not all Republicans favor oppression and intolerance. Most of the leaders of the party and a great percentage of its members nationwide are personally appalled at that behavior. But too many of their base is not, and because it's "the base," Republican leaders have gone to great lengths not to alienate it.
The Democrats are imminently capable of screwing up their current majority (also let's not overlook the poorly educated sections of their party) and they might sometimes consider themselves lucky to have stumbled into their preferred socially progressive positions, but assuming they steer the ship reasonably enough, I predict that the Republicans as we know them will never become a majority national party again until they've accepted this as ground zero and simply cast off their lot of ignorant fools. In consecutive national elections, this base has proven utterly futile, so what good is it to them? They need to rework the party from the bottom up. If their various strategists and thinkers can't see that their uneducated and intolerant base is nothing but a huge albatross, then they don't deserve the status as anything more than a minor third-party. Let their factions form their own parties: the Racist Party, the Homophobic Party, the Creationist Party, the Guns Don't Kill People I Kill People Party. What would be left of the Republicans would be absolutely certain to peel off lots of the not-yet-entrenched newly moderate part of the Democratic party. If they were somehow able to commit to their policy issues in any kind of big-tent way, they would probably stand a great chance to defeat the Democrats again.
But this kind of eschewing of their embarrassing base would take time and result in many failures in the near future, so they are sure not to heed it. It's the easy way out, and it's what got them into this mess 40-some years ago.

Finally, from a personal standpoint, can you imagine this country with the various intolerant groups having been marginalized politically? I'd say that's as close as a large society like the US could get to eutopia.

A Different Kind of Obama Voter

Many of you know that I've boycotted the Democratic and Republican parties because I feel that there should be more than two parties in this country, and that the repressive nature of the current two-party system leads to uninspiring (at best) or whore-to-party (at worst) candidates. This has led to a series of elections only interesting for their closeness; the candidates themselves have always seemed so unimportant or ultimately indistinguishable.
In the last NY gubernatorial election, I voted for a member of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. I did this without fear of consequence.(1) In 2006 I spread my various votes around the spectrum of Third Parties: one for the Socialists, one for the Greens, one for the Libertarians, one for the Constitutionists. It felt good to make a choice for something other than the status quo. It felt good to support other voices, even if the candidates themselves were not truly qualified for the task with which my vote would charge. Unfortunately, none of the third parties ever had any chance to win and so my votes were merely symbolic, and therefore not as irresponsible as they might otherwise be.
So now I found myself today with what seemed like a more serious choice for president, though not really serious for the normal reasons. Last night, I was doing my final familiarizations with the third party candidates appearing on the ballot(2): Roger Calero (Socialist Worker's), Gloria La Riva (Socialism & Liberation), Cynthia McKinney (Green), Bob Barr (Libertarian), and Ralph Nader (Independent).
At this time, I found myself eliminating candidates(3) and was left with only Nader as a realistic choice. Now, it's not like I have anything against Nader, but I had to stop and consider what I was debating in my head: Nader over Obama. What was I doing? On the one hand we have an actual independent with a strong record, and on the other we have a Democrat, and a pretty classic one at that. But while Obama is still in my mind "just a Democrat," he's also something more than that. He's something we haven't seen in presidential elections in many years. He's someone that people really truly connect to and respond to, not just a product of partisan hype and enthusiasm, or so it seems to me. I am truly interested and excited to see what he might do as President, how he might lead. He seems to transcend the simple politics of at least the last 40+ years, and for that reason alone it's exciting to see how the country will react to him.
I've got nothing really against John McCain. He's a largely inoffensive candidate. Reminds me a lot of John Kerry actually, and GWBush in 2000, and any number of candidates before him. He's someone I'd never vote for. In a race with two of him, I'd surely have gone with Nader. But there aren't two of him. There's a guy who seems just different enough to me, so my vote this morning went outside of my tendencies and to him.(4) Godspeed sir.


1. No, Eliot Spitzer resigning in the wake of a sex scandal does not count as a consequence. Not even close.
2. I've never seriously considered casting a write-in vote, for a couple of reasons. First, I've never felt so strongly about a person to so definitively cast a vote "for" that person. Second, my votes have been more about dissenting from the current system than specifically identifying with a marginal sector of it.
3. Calero--not even born in the US. Come on, people.
La Riva--interestng, but not my cup of tea.
McKinney--kindof a joke, almost certainly in it only for the exposure. In other words, no better than Ds or Rs.
Barr--I don't mind Libertarians but this is not the right guy. He led the impeachment effort of Clinton. No, that wasn't at all partisan. Also, it was because he banged someone and lied. I'm what you'd call a cultural liberal, like a crazy-far-left kind, so indignation at Clinton's action is confusing to me.
The guy who I might have considered had he been on the ballot was Ron Paul but even there we miss on several of the issues. Of course he's also just a Republican, but I respect the defiantly outsider stance.
4. Just for the record, I didn't officially vote for a Democrat. In New York state, third parties are allowed to nominate candidates from the two major parties and still get their party's name on the ballot. This year, McCain was nominated by the Conservative and Independence Parties, as well as the Republicans. Obama was nominated by the Working Families Party in addition to the Democrats. I checked Obama's name in the Working Familes column. So there.

Forgive me if you've seen this before, but since I'm on a little civil rights tangent today, here is some of the Tao of BB King:

"Water from the white fountain didn't taste any better than from the black fountain."

How good is that? Not only is this quote one of my all-time favorites, but it's also--for better or worse--more or less a perfect simplification of how I approach life. So what if someone feels like he is better than you? So what if you're getting a bit of a raw deal? Are things ok? If so, what else really matters?
If you need $10 and by chance you find two $10 bills on the sidewalk, then some jackass comes by almost instantly and steals one of them from you, hey, great, you've got the $10 you needed now. And that's enough. $20 might be better but come on, now you've got what you needed.
You give me water and I will drink it. If you are doing it hatefully or ignorantly to try to make a point, well too bad for you that's your problem not mine. Maybe it's weak or nonconfrontational but it is what it is and I'm not losing sleep over it. I know I'm the better man and I don't have to prove it to you. So good luck with those ignorant presumptions of yours.

Enough with the Ignorance Already, People

I've been inadvertently reading a lot of political election-related content online the last couple days. It's pretty easy to ride the wave of web info in this particular subject, and I've got to say I haven't stopped myself. Something that caught my attention was California's Proposition 8. It's a proposed ban on gay marriage in the state, something doubly important because California is one of only three(1) states that actually currently recognizes gay couples.
Many states have put gay marriage bans to a vote in the last few elections, so that on its own is not noteworthy. But the current polling on the issue that calls the proposal's chances a toss-up is, especially when you consider that California has the fifth-highest percentage of same-sex households in the nation, as well as the ninth-highest score on a liberal-conservative Likert scale (meaning it's the ninth-most liberal). So what we have is quite clearly a very liberal state, and beyond that, in fact a very progressive state, which has been traditionally gay-friendly so that it's population is made up of a high number of gays, but that is still about a 50-50 shot to outright ban gay marriage in less than two weeks.
I find this slightly amazing. But I find the culture that allows Prop 8 to be a toss-up and not a clear failure endlessly more amazing.
What is a gay person? What is so fundamentally different about a gay person that should disqualify him or her from being married? What is it inside a seemingly rational person that prompts him from deciding that a gay person is so different that he should be disqualified from marriage?
A gay person is not an animal. He is not a monster or a devil. He is not an infidel worthy of assassination.
I try pretty hard to understand both sides of any issue. I mean I can empathize very well and I try always to give the benefit of the doubt. But the continued prejudice against homosexuals in this country--LEGAL prejudice--is just embarrassing. There is no argument, there is no appropriate opposing viewpoint. If you oppose gay rights today it is just like if you had favored slavery in 1850. People who oppose gay rights have to know that they are on the wrong side of history, that opposition to equal rights has, in the long run, been defeated every single time in the history of this country. You can fight it all you want today--and you might be able to prey on certain fears or ignorances--but you will lose in the end. I guarantee you will lose because you have nothing to stand on but hate. Were the US a fascist country, then the ultimate resolution of this issue might be in doubt, but fortunately for us, it is not.
I don't know how many times I can say this or how many times I can be utterly disappointed in the American people and especially those in power who allow these things to happen. There is simply no excuse.

I understand now of course that banning gay marriage is a more specific issue than general gay rights, that there are narrow factors at play, that it can be more of a political issue than a civil one.(2) But I know that this is about more than specific laws or political procedures. It's about fairness and the freedom to live in this country as a human being. It took a war, but eventually no one worried about whether or not it was prudent before ratifying the 13th amendment to the constitution (3), they just did it because it was right. It's a shame we had to effect such a serious course of action as a constitutional amendment, but that speaks more to the sorry state of a large minority of the American population at the time that was ,as we all know, on the wrong side of history.
Unfortunately since close to half of the people in the largest and usually one of the most progressive states in the country still seems to oppose equality for homosexuals, maybe we'll eventually need to draft another amendment.
I'd rather that we as Americans woke up and stopped being so goddamned ignorant.


1. I'm counting Connecticut even though it hasn't taken effect there yet.
2. So let's talk about them briefly. You could argue that gay marriage should be banned because god wants marriage to be one man and one woman. Fine. Make it a church issue. Let dumbfuck preachers decide who they want to join in holy matrimony. But then you'd have to eliminate the tax breaks for married couples cause that would be 1) unfair and obviously discriminatory, and 2) a clear violation of the constitution's separation of church and state. If you get rid of the federal tax breaks and simply make marriage a religious ceremony (as it should be), then I think over time, the idea of "marriage" would rightfully lose some of its perceived luster, as more and more people in this country seem to be making the inevitable drift away from organized religion. Back to the point though. Putting the power in the hands of the churches would clearly have the effect of legalizing gay marriage because the whole reason these ballot initiatives are always for a BAN on gay marriage is that some churches have already stepped up and begun marrying homosexuals in some states. And as much as I like to find flaws with religion in general, it's adherents are not all bad of course, and their overall mission is to spread good, so definitely some preachers and churches actually support equality and happiness and love for all. Good for them. Welcome to modern civilization. Or to the ideals of their friend Jesus.
3. Abolition of slavery, of course.

Yes, There Are Other Options

Let's stay mostly topical today. Politics. Elections. Votes. If you know me, maybe you know that after the 2004 election I enacted a boycott against both of the two major parties in the US, vowing never to vote for a member of either one again.(1) The reasons for this boycott, or more specifically for this extreme distaste for the major parties that precipitated their boycott, are somewhat lengthy and complex, such that I'd rather not partake in the argument now. Another time, I promise. Suffice to say that I'd much prefer a political environment where many different ideas or platforms have room to be taken seriously, and where people don't have to compromise their beliefs in order to fit into one party or the other.
Of course what I'm talking about is being elected, since any person can support any other person or belief, but it's a very different thing to have actually hope that their candidate has a chance to get elected. A member of a third party could never get elected to national office in this country as it's currently operated. The two major parties are simply too rich and powerful, suffocating any possibility for another voice. The only option is to change the election system.
The US currently uses a plurality voting system(2), which just means that the most votes win, no many how small a percentage that person has. I encourage you to read up on it yourself, but trust me that this system inevitably leads to the two-party system. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: negative votes. It's called a balanced plurality system and it's actively and thoughtfully proposed by someone named Donald Kronos.(3)
If we can vote for someone, why can't we vote against someone? It's so simple and obvious. More importantly, it much more accurately reflects a voter's intent, which is really the whole point of getting off your ass and voting in the first place.
Take 2004 for instance. Many people did not like George Bush. Many. Many people also did not like John Kerry, but were forced to vote for him as their only chance to speak their opinion about Mr Bush. So in this particular election, you could say that a lot of independent voters cast votes for the Democrat when really they were just voting against the Republican. After time this dissatisfaction would manifest itself in more varied parties winning more and more votes, until ideally anyone would have a chance.(4)
A side thought on this: imagine the possible effects of negative voting if it were enacted for the first time in 2004. Presumably Bush would have had almost as many negative votes as positive--totaling millions of each--while Kerry would have likely garnered slightly more positive than negative, though with ridiculously fewer votes in both column. Let's play with this example:
In 2004, a total of 121,069,054 votes were cast for either Bush or Kerry, 62,040,610 for Bush, 59,028,444. Let's assume that of Bush's 62M, 38M were actually "pro" votes, while 12M were "anti" -Kerry votes, with 12M belonging to independent or 3rd-party sympathizers drawn in by the close race. Similarly, we'll assume that of Kerry's 59M, 9M were pro votes while 40M were anti-Bush, with 10M others. This is very rough, but it covers the national consensus somewhat at least. What we're left with is Bush at -2,000,000, Kerry at -3,000,000, and 22,000,000 votes that would have been spread around amongst the smaller party candidates. The highest-polling of these was Ralph Nader at close to half a million votes. But that's positive votes, so theoretically he would be our winner, depending on how those 22,000,000 people decided to cast their ballots. Amazing.
This is no personal reflection on everyone's favorite consumer advocate(5), but that result sounds better to me.


(1) Technically, this boycott was broken when I voted for the "Republican" Michael Bloomberg for mayor of New York in 2005. Mr Bloomberg switching to Independent in 2007 merely made official what was quite obvious for the duration of his public life as a "Republican." I say I keep my honor.
(2) Go ahead and wikipedia that, I did when I was curious about different electoral processes. You would be amazed at how many different ways there are to choose a government. Not just half-baked systems either, as many countries (democracies of course, big ones too--Germany) use completely different systems than we do.
(3) See his full blog for multiple variations on the balanced plurality theme. He has a three-step proposal: negative votes, multi-stage voting, and split votes, but I prefer the first and simplest of those described on its own here.
(4) Lookup "feedback" to understand this differently. Basically, the results of one election will directly influence the voting behavior in the next, and so on. This results in the consolidation of power in two major parties. It's why the Democrats, and not some third party, are now in power after general dissatisfaction with the Republicans the last few years, and why the Republicans took power in 1994 after the Democrats were turned out, and on and on through history.
(5) Sometimes you just have to love the guy though: when asked about possibly spoiling a Democratic victory in 2008: "Not a chance. If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, and emerge in a different form." Couldn't agree more.

my radio news

some things i'd like to comment on after hearing the business report from joe connolly (that's him to the left) on wcbs 880 this morning at about 7:52am:

(but first a few perhaps interesting words about wcbs 880. this is the station on which my radio alarm clock is set and which wakes me up at precisely 7:48am each morning so that the first thing i hear on a weekday is the traffic and weather report, given on the 8s of course. they do traffic first, then weather, the timing of which has prompted me to often consider switching my wake-up time to 7:49 instead of 7:48, so as to eliminate my hearing the traffic report, which since the subways are pretty much invincible this report is of no use to me but since the nyc metro area is chock full of auto commuters, and even more full of auto access points and roads, the traffic report takes quite a long time to get through. in spite of this consideration, i've held fast to the 7:48 alarm time.

i am a slow waker, and so even after the traffic and weather reports are done i usually linger in bed for several minutes if i don't simply hit the snooze and fall back asleep alogether. after weather the two main radio hosts come in and give short news briefs and then will often (i can't say always here because i don't pay as much attention during this few-minute interval) send it out to mike saranac for a news bit. this news bit is thoroughly annoying for me because mike saranac must live somewhere in nassau or suffolk county and must refuse to file reports from anywhere else because his reports are always inane, rarely newsworthy, and invariably about something long-island-related. i know they need to spend some time pandering to what must be a sizable chunk of their morning listeners, but it drives me nuts to have to hear dumb community news about long island when they are obviously pressed for time. the following statement is undoubtedly colored by my displeasure for the reports, but mr saranac's voice and reporting style i find to be wholly pathetic. he inflects his voice like he's trying out either for a national news job or the carnival barker's hall of fame. i hate it.

anyhow, moving along, after mr saranac's waste of precious seconds, 880 always sends it out to joe connolly of the wall street journal for the aforementioned business report. this report is noteworthy only for it's pacing. it's a perfectly standard and boring report but mr connolly--perhaps deliberately wanting to distinguish himself from his time-conscious colleagues--speaks extremely slowly and heavily, actually pausing even in the middle of phrases instead of merely between them. (an example: "the hou-sing market....spurred by slow-er.........than...expected em-ploy-ment.............numbers..........has fallen a percentage...............point....to-day.") no matter how many times i hear this guy, and no matter how groggy i may still be, it amazes me both that he chooses to speak so deliberately and that his bosses at the station allow him to do it. i can't tell if he's just be a totally pompous dick or if his pace is a carefully considered antidote to the fast-paced speech of the other radio personalities.

to contrast mr connolly, the regular traffic guy, whose name for some reason i can't recall, packs a ridiculous amount of verbal information into his alloted time. he speaks so fast that it seems almost a different language in the way you are forced to pause and digest bits of words before jumping back into the flow and realizing that you've just missed a few phrases. even if i'm paying attention to him, by the time i've had the time to comprehend that there was a tractor spill on the hutch, the traffic guy has already moved "over and across the tappan zee." whoever this guy is, he's impressive, so impressive that you can pretty easily tell when his replacement is on the job.)

so that's my wcbs 880. such a small part of my existence but such a constant and consistent one.

1. a kid at a brooklyn job fair which received three times more applicants than available positions was the only one hired on the spot because he was also the only one wearing a necktie. i'm pretty sure this bit of odd news was mentioned in mr connolly's report to show with a touch of shame how sad it is that kids, specifically inner-city ones 1) don't have any respect, 2) are stuck in a terrible job market, 3) are ignorant of what small things they must do in order to get ahead. basically: look, kids, just show some respect for the workplace and wear a tie and you too can break free from the cycle of poverty.

i have a slightly different take on the kid-at-job-fair-wears-tie-gets-hired story. i think it's pathetic and sad that something as arcane and arbitrary as a necktie would prompt an employer to hire one person or not hire another. are these people (the employers) that lazy? granted, you can call the other kids lazy too for not wearing a tie but that doesn't change the fact that a tie doesn't in itself carry any value or bestow upon its wearer any value. it's just a piece of fabric. maybe this respectful little worker drone was actually packing heat at this job fair, heat which he used on his trip to mug another worker drone and steal his tie. i suppose you could give him points for ambition (if you're into that sort of thing. i'm not) or determination, but let's get real about the tie nonsense. when i was finishing up college i was worried that employers would put too much stock on simple grade point average when i thought that was a somewhat shallow way to evalute a candidate, but gpa is far more reliable than a damned tie. i wear ties on the weekend, maybe i should be appointed to the supreme court.

2. another business news bit centered on how sales figures are being reported down dramatically across all sectors, "from boutiques to bartenders." not positive the first one was "boutiques," but it was something alliterative with "bartenders." either way, the point remains, namely: i guess those stimulus payments are having the desired effect. i've yet to enact the intensely spiteful plan i hatched to invest my $600 in foreign companies, but maybe some other people have beaten me to it. of course that would be dumb since the dollar is worthless and in fact all the american companies are presenting themselves as gold mines to foreign investors, which is why american companies are slowly being bought by foreigners, which reminds me of an article i read in the times about how anheiser-busch is going to be sold to an international company likely soon for the above-mentioned reasons. apparantly miller and coors are already foreign-owned. who knew? i guess now there truly is no reason to drink inferior "american" beer.

ipod/stroller digressions

fuck all you people and your ipods. there is enough white noise drifting through my world today that i really really don't need your trebled dissonance permeating my consciousness during our shared 18-flight ascension of the elevator shaft. i'm sure it sounds quite lovely way back there in your ambivalent eardrums i'm sure, but out here in the other 99.99999999% of the world it's quite obnoxious. i don't mean to be too utilitarian here, but we of the rather vast majority would appreciate if you might sacrifice whatever joy it causes you to pass the volume meter beyond what can be contained to your own audibility so that we can catch a break.
now that i've got that little bit of nuisance out of the way, let me turn to the truly evil consequence of the small white menace: complete social and spatial ignorance, where i place particular selfish emphasis on the latter. i've had just about enough of having to bump into someone because said someone is mindlessly drifting in and out of the reasonable or expected flow of pedestrain traffic.
do you know how some people think it ought to be illegal to drive while talking on the cell phone? ipods are only very slightly less malevolent devices. it's been proven that drivers have less awareness when talking on a cell phone, not to mention that it usually means the person is using only one hand to drive. i've always been annoyed by the inconvenience it would cause to ban cell phones while driving but resigned to complete agreement with the reasons for and the effects of such a law. for me, it seems like anytime there is a car accident, three questions arise when wondering how it happened: was he speeding? was he drinking and driving? and was he on the phone? any of these three questions answered affirmatively will cease any investigation because they are accepted as severe hindrances to safe driving.
before you call me a prude, just stop and think about what it means to live in a crowded place such as nyc. we all learn very early on that one of the important sacrfices we must make is to always share at least a little consideration for those around us. if we all walked around the city with utter self-determination, then the violence levels would be off the charts.
now let me make another car-related example. imagine a smaller city with no traffic lights. what would happen, or what would drivers be forced to do? after an intial period of accidents, of course, drivers would learn that they can't go careening through intersections, that they must stop and consider other drivers going the other way, and eventually a simple kind of truce will be formed wherein every driver understands that he has a responsibility to every other driver not to crash into them. cars running into each other can kill, people doing the same usually do not. this is no excuse for people to behave differently than cars (controlled by people, yes i understand).
pedestrians learn at least one basic rule of high-traffic movement early on: always stay to the right. if this rule were not followed, there would literally be chaos in the streets of new york. allow me to suggest another extremely important rule: when a large group of people is approaching a single person on the sidewalk, it's the responsibility of the group to partially give way to allow the single to continue along unabated. basically, if you are taking up more space that you should reasonably be expected to, then you must move. if you're carrying a wide load of groceries, i'm sorry if it's heavy but you don't get the whole sidewalk. this rule is especially important if you're carrying an umbrella: if you're one of those dicks who uses a giant golf umbrella to navigate the city, then you sure as shit better be the one who's constantly raising it up above everyone elses so you don't knock into them, and you also better be a passive walker, never cutting in front of people or making unnecessary passes.
now, i suppose it was inevitable, but this whole thing has led me to baby strollers. i hate baby strollers. they serve a need, and i accept that. but if you think that because you happen to be pushing a stroller, then you are entitled to whatever path you choose as you walk down an extremely crowded steet, well you're sadly mistaken. you and your giant stroller are taking up much more than the expected amount of space, so it's you who should be patient and try to accommodate everyone else walking down the street. instead, because of little precious sitting in the stroller, these people pushing them have the highest sense of entitlement. get this through to yourself: you are not more important than me simply because you have a child. it was your choice to burden yourself, do not take that shit out on me.
even a bit more on the strollers:
1. i'd like to take a swing at the genius designer who decided that these damnable things needed to be so big. there are cars in europe smaller than some baby strollers. a kid is maybe 2.5 feet tall and weighs maybe 40-50 pounds. think of a sack of concrete. do you need something so massive to push around a sack of concrete? if what you have is bigger than what you need to move on bag of concrete, it's too big.
2. people pushing strollers have a harder time navigating crowded streets, obviously. this can cause the pusher of the stroller to get agitated, obviously. when standing behind theses behemoths, these pushers can also tend to get a sense of invincibility (call it the SUV principle). what happens is, people use the fronts of their strollers as plows. this is not only unnessarily aggresive and rude, but also extremely selfish on behalf of the pusher at the expense of the presumably precious cargo just inches away from the parts being used as plows. sometimes, it is ok to tell other people how to raise their kids, that's all i've got to say about that.
3. if i am ever stricken with a case of fatherhood, i can assure you that i will do all that's in my power to avoid adding to the scourge of the city. i've seen people who tie a sheet or some other large garment around their back/neck so that it forms a pouch in front into which you can easily and comfortably fit a child too small to walk on its own. this is a superb solution to the problem and i salute these people. it's not hard to be reasonable toward others. it doesn't take a huge sacrifice. just a small one, or a tiny amount of thought.

1. "God is great, you know. God is great. That's I been telling them."
"Yeah, every day, that's what they say. God is great."
"Uh-huh, God is great, every day."
-The entirety of the words heard just now during a one-floor ride on the freight elevator here at 90 Park Ave, exchanged between the elevator operator and a postal employee doing his morning rounds.
You just can't get away from it.

2. This morning on the elevator TV the news page displayed three bullet-point items. First one: "Sen Kennedy still in hospital recovering from seizure." Second one: "China plans three minutes of mourning today." The third one was of course superfluous.

3. Sara wanted me to watch "Angels in America" with her and so I did. It's six hours long, so my doing so does represent some kind of a commitment (though I did once read an 1100-page book at Jocelyn's behest, so this sort emasculation is not without precedent).
Hopefully this is not a sign of ignorance, but I was a little distracted by how gay it was early on. As it progressed, it was perfectly natural, but at the beginning it just seemed like too much. Of course I didn't know that homosexuality was the central theme, so it only made sense that nearly every character was either openly or closeted gay. Nonetheless, it took an hour or more to get used to it (as I am a fan of realism in movies).
It's a well-done movie (can you call it a film if it's made specifically for TV, in this case HBO?) based on a play that forced me to actively wonder how it might have been staged and whether or not the transformation to screen was effective. In the end I decided yes it was good but not great in this regard. The aspect that was spectacular was the acting, but then I guess it's to be expected when Al Pacino and Meryl Streep play large roles. The former is perfect for his part as he gets to do his Pacino intensity thing but he was also effectively kept in check unlike many of his more recent performances where he's just a silly representation of a charater as opposed to simply a character. I particularly enjoyed his speech patterns and general delivery (I think I might be becoming a speech/delivery fetishist regarding movies; this is also one of the main reasons I loved my boy Javier Bardem so much). Streep is also pretty much classic Streep: calm and not always the center of attention but pretty much always the best person on screen and the reason every scene she's in works so well. In this as in many of her roles, she's somewhat underappreciated unless you're looking for her.
The real reason the acting was so amazing though was not the top two names but all the rest. Everyone does very well. It's such a comprehensive display of good acting that I'm forced to give the director and the writer some credit for it. In fact, the only actor I didn't like a lot was Mary-Louis Parker, whom I think a lot of people liked. Maybe the guy who played her husband was just above-average as well, but that would be nit-picking.
Jeffrey Wright in his two roles was awesome. He played a gay queen in the most substantive one and was never ever overplaying it: that is impressive. That role was maybe the most important one in the whole movie and he was amazing. I've got to save some specific praise for a guy I'd never seen before named Justin Kirk who played what I think is the one main central character, if one exists in this movie. First thing I will say is this: I guess it's only been less than five years since this debuted, but I'm somewhat amazed that I haven't heard or seen much else from him in the interim. He played probably the most flamboyant character but like Wright he did it with a measured brilliance. As the movie progressed, I found myself wanting more and more scenes with his character, which I think is saying something considering both the talent he was surrounded by and the sheer length of the movie. I could be wrong, cause this is the only role I've ever seen him do, but if I were making a movie, no matter the subject, I think I'd find a way to get him in it, and that's about the best thing you can say for an actor.

4. In talking to her about the movie, of course encompassing the topic of homosexuality, Sara expressed to me her strong distaste for the way people use derogatory terms--even in jest and privately amongst a few friends--such as fag or retard or the like. Now, this is a definite talking point because the way I interact with people quite often is to say or do things that might knock the person off-balance a bit or make him feel uncomfortable. This can sometimes be achieved through a well-placed taboo word. I never do this in company that would be offended by it, and I'm quite sure (you can't ever be completely sure in our culture) that I don't actually harbor any predjudices or hatreds for minority groups, so I've never felt regretful about using these terms in such a way. Also, I'm actively aware of the power and the ugliness of these words (that's why I've used them for their full effect), so I feel a little more qualified than some ignorant cuss to use them every so often. However, as Sara effectively pointed out, even if somehow used respectfully or comically or privately, a word like fag is still a largely inappropriate word. It only has its power because it's derogatory and necessarily tied to it's insensitive genesis, so even using it as a jarring point in an attempted humorous way still must call to mind the ugly nature of the word, therefore of course reinforcing and perpetuating the ugliness. This is a big thing to realize.
But the biggest argument against my using these words is that, no matter how sensitive and sympathetic I may be to actual stigmatized groups of people, and no matter how certain I am that my usage of filthy words isn't directly injurious to anyone, it's really not up to me to decide whether a word is offensive or not. Since I'm not a homosexual and have never been subjected to the negative emotional impact of the word faggot, I am in no position to decide when it's ok to say it and when it's not. I thought about this for a while and concluded that it's really just that simple. And I can't now really find a way to justify using words like that, so I've resolved to stop doing it. But since it's almost second-nature to use them, albeit sparingly, I've asked Sara to mention it to me when I do slip up. So perhaps you will start to notice this in my speaking going forward. It will not be an accident. I'm curious to see how it goes.