Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere

 

★★★—Eh, it was fine. Following around a bunch of boring douchebags who constantly do and say outrageous/stupid things gets old super quick. The doc doesn’t really take these losers desperate for attention to task in a way that’s worth watch. I think this could have been done better. It gives these guys too much of a platform, doesn’t go at them hard enough. For the most part it implies people who give these dudes the time must be really lost… what they touch on briefly at the end is that the people that watch, and are being influenced, are children. So, yeah, fuck these guys. We get a glimpse of this disturbing, dangerous world, but it could have been more. 

Slanted: The things you do to become the promcoming dance queen

★★★—Watched this last night at AMC Scream Unseen event. If you love Mean Girls and body horror, then you’ll probably like it. First off, there is a character named Cat Fisher, which caused me to audibly groan when her name gets said at the climax of the movie. Not where you want to be watching a movie when the shit starts to go down.

However, for an ok movie, this really disturbed me, and I’ve been thinking about it all day. The idea of completely changing who you are externally is nothing new. Hell, some people do it IRL. But this transracial concept is extremely interesting. Sort of touches on a lot—assimilation, belonging, beauty standards, race—and it’s heavy with metaphor. But it all felt a little obvious/shallow. Just sort of throws these ideas out there without any real emotional payoff, with a few exceptions, notably when the parents celebrate 10-years in America while their daughter goes to the big promcoming dance, which she is absolutely obsessed with. I get that maybe some kids do care about such things, but it is such a trope at this point that you really must do something extraordinary to subvert it. I feel that it had potential there but didn’t get over the hump. 

Ger

That said, the performances were flat out stellar with the females being especially strong. Shirley Chen and McKenna Grace (just saw here in Scream 7) take turns as the lead. Both knock it out of the park. Vivian Wu plays the mom, who maybe stole the show. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan from Never Have I Ever is very good. Then there was Amelie Zilber, the alpha mean girl from the high school. She basically IS Regina George. Except hotter and more of a bitch. Good god she is fine. Kind of reminded me of Mia Sara. Her character was flat AF though with no emotional payoff. She is just kind of there, being horrible, and then suddenly not. 

Overall, the tone might be the biggest problem. In immigrant teen satire territory at times, but then with disturbing body horror thrown in making it not funny. Then it ventures into heartwarming, coming of age with a deformity with a meh, lame, run-of-the-mill ending. Result is some ick/WTF, and a feeling like maybe director Amy Wang either lost creative control and/or focus at the end. 

American Carnage - Diego Hallivis - 2022

★★-Another America themed movie for those less inclined toward blind nationalism. Fucking terrible. Get Out vibes with camp thrown in. The story is a mess, and they waste Jenna Ortega's talents. 

Gist is a governor gives an executive order to apprehend the children of undocumented immigrants even if the kids were born here for harboring fugitives. The detained youths are given a chance to avoid charges by volunteering at an eldercare facility, only to uncover a shocking conspiracy masterminded by the governor and the facility's supervisor, putting both the young volunteers and the elderly residents in extreme danger. 

In addition to Ortega, the movie stars a bunch of people I don't really recognize. They include Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (he's the lead), Brett Cullen, Eric Dane, Jorge Diaz, Allen Maldonado who's my age and plays one of the “kids” (he's basically a minstrel character), and Bella Ortiz.

Seemed fine for a while and then goes off the rails, and then really goes off the rails. Two twists is one twist too many. Though I'm all about the movie's “agenda”, it wasn't a winner. Usually all about a twisted horror-comedy, but this didn't work.

In the Heat of the Night - Norman Jewison - 1967

★★★★★-First ever viewing of this profoundly outstanding film. Skilled direction and compelling performances. Deserves its stop on the AFI Top 100. 

Set in a racially tense small town where a black detective, Virgil Tibbs, from Philadelphia helps solve a murder. That's the gist, but it's deeper than that, going into racial inequity in the deep South while telling a compelling story and not getting preachy. It refrains from contrived inspirational moments, thank fuck, and instead presents complex, flawed characters. Truly masterful filmmaking. 

Stars the Sidney Poitier as the black detective opposite Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront) as the racist sheriff. Commanding performances from both of them indeed. I got more impressed with Poitier as the movie went along. He drips poise and dignity. Sort of hard to believe he didn't even get nominated for an Academy Award for this performance. Feels like a glaring omission that he wasn't for a timely film about Southern racism. Though Steiger's performance also really blew me away as well and he definitely earned his Oscar. 

Others you might recognize include Lee Grant (Damien: Omen II, Mulholland Drive) who is a real beauty who holds her own, Warren Oats (Badlands, Stripes, The Wild Bunch), and a young Scott Wilson (he was Herschel in The Walking Dead,one of the killers in In Cold Blood, and had a small but memorable part in one of my favorite horror comedies of all-time in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon).

As much as any movie I can think of, the setting is also a character in the film. Feels like an authentic, hot and grimy small Southern town. Every scene is vivid, gritty, and real. 

The racist stuff can be pretty hard to watch. People in this town just lose their minds seeing a black guy. Pretty disturbing that this is how it was and probably still is in some parts. Multiple attempts are made on Virgil's life. The most powerful scene, for me, was when he goes with the sheriff to question the richest guy in town. Out front there is a racist statue and he employees black people in menial jobs that he obviously doesn't think highly of. He tells Virgil, while in his greenhouse, “Of all the orchids in this place, you should prefer the epiphytics. I wonder if you know why.”

“Maybe it would be helpful if you'd tell me,” Virgil says.

“Because, like the Negro, they need care and feedin' and cultivatin'.”

Uh, yeah, thanks for that insight, bra.

When Virgil questions him about the murder, the guy slaps him. Virgil, without missing a beat, slaps him back. Incredulous, the guy asks the sheriff what he is going to do about it. When it's clear he isn't going to do anything, he says he could have had him shot for that not long ago before crying like a punk. We then get one of the many attempts on Virgil's life, this seemingly unconnected to the slap. 

So, yeah, great film. All this said, however, the end was sort of a letdown. Builds and builds and then it's over. Also, for a hot shot detective, Virgil's police work and theories seem pretty suspect. Still though. Best movie about the South I can think of. Available on the Criterion Channel.

Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World - Adam Curtis - 2021

★★★★★-Holy shit. A masterpiece six-part BBC documentary series from Adam Curtis about how our contemporary existence, which emphasizes individualism over collectivism, is completely shit, totally unfulfilling, and was designed as a way for the powerful elite to keep citizens in control. “All human beings live in a made-up dream world of stories, which give them the illusion that they are in control,” he says. “But really, there’s something else inside them that they will never contact.” Goes through all of the intricacies of how it got this way. I think this is supposed to be a kind of call to wake-the-fuck-up, but doesn't exactly offer a way out of the mess, not that it really needs to. The documentary is more impartial observation.

It really goes deep, discussing things like the fall of the British Empire, American imperialism, China's political crisis in the wake of the Great Leap Forward, and the resurgence of Russian nationalism. It goes through all this and more whilst telling individual stories that came out of those systems. 

All this has led the perpetual creation of conspiracy theories and grasping at dangerous national myths. This while also coming to a sobering realization in the failure of technology to emancipate society envisioned by techno-utopians. The result was a surge in populism in the West, culminating in Brexit and Trump, as people looked to radically alternative visions for the future, allowing for those in power to push beyond ethical boundaries that should have served as breaking points. Like I said, holy shit. 

Curtis first blipped on my radar in college when I stumbled upon his BBC documentary series Pandora's Box: A Fable From the Age of Science which aired in 1993. It deals with the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. Also in six parts, each episode deals with a theme. They are: Communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy of the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana in the 1950s, and the history of nuclear power. It blew my mind. 

At some point in the last year I heard an interview with Chuck Klosterman where he talked about Pandora's Box and Adam Curtis, focusing on this new documentary and how heavy it was. That shit is my brand, so I'd watch until my brain hurt, turn it off, and start up again the next day from where I left off. It took me forever to watch it. But holy shit, did I love it. As a guy who fancies himself a media theorist, I'm not sure if it is for everyone, but it is definitely my jam. 

One of the things I enjoyed most was the lesson of the oft-forgotten historical figure whose influence triggered ripples that continue into the present. Individuals like Michael X, Afeni Shakur and her son Tupac (who took on the persona of a character to create change only to live as a cartoon), Arthur Sackler, Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's wife), Murray Gell-Mann, and others are explored to provide some context behind the turmoil that engulfs the world at present. 

It also details the struggles faced by those marginalized by society. Some examples. The story of a woman seeking a sex change in the 1970s that is forced to undergo demeaning psychological evaluation. The reality of the Ethiopian famine which led to Live Aid which is remembered as a kick ass concert but was really a scandal that throws us into the complexities of humanitarian intervention that resulted in the exploitation of the narrative for personal gain. 

Yeah, this mesmerizing series rocked me. The main point that I walked away with is that humans inhabit a simplified dream world that defies rationality. In an era of individualism, rather than attempting to alter this dream world, governments fight for its preservation. The allure of appealing to reason and effecting change on a grand scale is rendered obsolete as we are content with the dream, like in Brave New World. This controlling our collective rage (done on a global scale) is a means to consolidate power and eliminate political adversaries. The disheartening truth is that all endeavors to radically transform the world lead to profound pessimism with the responsibility lying on the individual, rather than society as a whole. As individuals turn inward, the management of this attractive yet pessimistically curated dream world becomes a hybrid amalgamation of psychology, economics, and finance. The dream world thrives as through its meticulous cultivation by the ruling class.

This is something I think about constantly as I recycle, eat a vegan diet, and just basically try and live simply. It's all just a drop in the bucket, my actions. It shouldn't be on us to change the world. Sure, we probably all do our part, some of us anyhow. But it should really be on the ruling classes to get the real problems figured out. But why do that when they can just distract us with bullshit while preserving the status quo. Yeah, if I were teaching a class, this would absolutely be on my syllabus. I've got like 12 pages of notes, but nothing I really say about it is going to do it justice. 

You can watch it for free on YouTube here. It will blow your mind. Plus, the soundtrack is incredible.

The Hunt is the okayest movie of all time

The Hunt. "Globalist elite liberal cucks." This movie. Blumhouse flick. Extremely polarizing. Political satires do that. I thought it was fun but problematic. Controversial, supposedly. I get it, for sure. A lot of people saying it wasn't worth all that drama. Probably right. I mean, it was just a movie that no one was going to see that didn't really say a whole lot. Like The Joker but not exactly going to get a standing O at Cannes. I think it was supposed to offend pretty much everyone, but I suspect it gets Trump supporters more accurately than the "liberal elite." It is sort of lopsided. As a liberal, I don't identify with anyone. Maybe the main chick, but not really. For the right-wingers, there is probably a stereotype for you.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: The Hunt is successful enough as a darkly humorous action thriller, but it shoots wide of the mark when it aims for timely social satire.

It's alright. Love the main girl. Betty Gilpin from GLOW. Not crazy about the MAGA agenda. Gist of the movie is that twelve mostly "deplorables," self-identifying, wake up in a field and are hunted by liberal elites for being terrible. These are the type of people that kill endangered species and throw around words like "cuck" and "snowflake." This hunt was sort of a Pizzagate type of myth in conservative talk cirlces. People were getting shit for it like liberals do when jokes are made so they figure, if we are going to lose our jobs and what not for this joke, let's do it for real. Whatever. It's dumb. Also, this is basically how Trump supporters see themselves: persecuted by liberals for their racism and cruelty. Fuck off.

Most of the people are easily dealt with. They are all real dumb. Not Gilpin though. She is basically The Bride from Kill Bill. Like Kill Bill, the action is pretty sick. I'm usually not a big fan, but I love the close-quarter, hand-to-hand shit that this Gilpin chick and the heavy, played by Hilary Swank, do so well. Their final blowout is indeed amazing. Top three chick-on-chick fight scene, for reals.

Bone I have to pick is that there is a pig and it dies. Have to watch it used as bate and get shot. Too sensitive for animal shit. Favorite scene though was when everything that goes down in the convenient store. This is shit is cray and not going to spoil it. When they find out where they are is also pretty fun. Plus, you know, the fighting.

People I recognize are many.  Ike Barinholtz who is the dumb guy in everything who is probably most known for The Mindy Project (I like this guy), Macon Blair from Green Room and Murder Party which are both solid AF, Dennis from It's Always Sunny,  Justin Hartley from that show I don't watch This is Us (he is the drunk one, so I'm told), Amy Madigan who was the mom in Field of Dreams, Emma Roberts from American Horror Story and Scream Queens, the singer Sturgill Simpson who is really having a moment right now (see The Dead Don't Die), and a much thinner Ethan Suplee who was the fat guy in Varsity Blues among other things whom I was happy for but then realized he is a Scientologist so fuck him.

No way that Gilpin doesn't win the movie. This probably launches her into stardom. But maybe not considering COVID-19 is tanking everything and probably ruining box office numbers/careers that aren't super established.

Googling Yourself Can Be Interesting

Quitters never say die.

If any potential employers were to Google my name, Aaron Brewington, there is practically no chance of me ever getting a job in the future.

For the longest time the number one thing to pop up was a list of registered homeless persons living in New York, it was funny to everyone in college, not so much now though. I wish I could say that would be the worst thing with someone who shares my Christian name, but no, it gets much worse. These are the things my namesakes have done in escalating order.

First up there is the AB who was once the maintenance supervisor for some Podunk county school system until he was charged with felony official misconduct when a program he was running with the local prison that allowed non-violent inmates to work on school grounds doing maintenance work, he instead transported two inmates off-campus to his home where they could work on his tobacco farm.

Next, there was the AB who severely injured his passenger, one Alicia Seedorff, while trying to drive home after drinking in bars, one of which was named One-Eyed Jakes, that served him to the point where they should have known he was drunk. The result was he lost control of his vehicle, left the road, rolled, crashed and ejected Seedorff from the vehicle, thus explaining the severer injuries.

Most heinous of all is the incident involving an Aaron Brewington, though he was not the shooter here, that ended in the death of a 5-year-old in Harlem. 18-year-old big brother Rayshawn Brewington was fucking around with a 9-millimeter Ruger pistol in the bedroom he shared with his two brothers at a homeless shelter when the gun fired a single bullet, striking his 9-year-old brother, AB, in the shoulder and hitting the boy, Lonnie Brewington, in the head. The accident killed Lonnie later that day. This whole thing is so sad and depressing though I am not sure if I am going to end up posting it.

But there are some good things about just good old me. There is my blog, of course, and a picture from a high school reunion of sorts, and my Div School stuff, and my articles with the High Point Enterprise. But the blast from the past I enjoy the most that was quite unexpected and touching seeing after a few years out of my alma mater Kenyon College was a write up about my IM basketball team that ended up winning the A-League title my sophomore and senior years. Play with that team was one of the funnest things I remember about college. We were ridiculous. We had the best player in the school on our team, Colin Hodgkins, and all of the kids were just great guys who had game and knew how to celebrate a post-game victory. I leave on this piece written in the Kenyon Collegian in March of 2003. Most of it are inside jokes that most of you won’t get but hey, I might explain them later.

***

Quitters never say die, win A league title

In the Ernst Center Mar. 27, the Quitters defeated the Cougars 48-41 to win the 2003 intramural A-League Championship.

The all-sophomore team of Ben Golden, Aaron Brewington, Jon Echlin, Sam Farmer, Eric Fitzgerald and Colin Hodgkins were 9-2 on the season. They finished the season on a six-game winning streak.

As Brewington nailed six three-pointers to start the game, the Quitters jumped out to an early 24-5 lead. The Quitters' man-to-man defense kept the Cougars from entirely erasing the lead. The halftime score was 31-17 in favor of the former varsity athletes. Although the Cougars battled back to eventually cut the deficit to two points, the Quitters held on to secure its championship, getting key buckets from Farmer and Hodgkins. Team captain Fitzgerald kept his team in man-to-man defense, which ultimately secured the win.

In the semi-finals, the Quitters knocked off Shark Attack behind Hodgkins's 22 points. The Cougars beat Team Sykes.

The Quitters, a compilation of two teams known last year as the Quad Squad and Rim Jobs, lived up to its name early in the season when two original roster players quit the team for personal reasons.

Michael Jackson 'Beat It' To Death

Just when you were getting over the death of Ed McMahan or hearing about Farrah Fawcett, everyone went wacko for Jacko’s departure.  Not that there needs to be another “Michael Jackson Dead at 50” blog article—considering everyone and their siblings (Jermaine) are throwing in their two cents—but can’t people just chill out.  Maybe I have no room to speak here since I did gain some notoriety when David Foster Wallace committed suicide but I will nonetheless.

All the news has been talking about is Jackson this and Jackson that, meanwhile there are still things going on with Iran, North Korea, the Rep. Gov. of South Carolina, and some football coach got gunned down in his weight room.  It always seems that when shit hits the fan for the GOP, poof Michael Jackson dies, and guess what gets the coverage.  CNN, the big networks, ET Exclusives, number one on Twitter, it is big news but why does anyone really care.  I didn’t get all up in arms by the fact that no one gave a shit on TV when DFW offed himself and he was pretty much my God.  I don’t think toning down the MJ love will bother anyone too much.  Besides, these are the same folks that talked about how his dermatologist was taking him to Mexico to get his little Jackson bleached so it couldn’t be identified in a lineup.  And the last “megastar” you say, have people already forgotten Britney? 

But it is funny how celebrities always go in threes and how these three—McMahan, Fawcett, and Jacko—were at the top of their shitz in something.  McMahan was a part of the most viewed television program ever, Fawcett had the most sold poster ever—um, ger, by the way—and Jackson had the number one selling album of all time. 

But even though he was clearly the King of Strange as well as the King of Pop, his career was one of my first clear-cut memories.  At a year and a half, I remember without a doubt when the video for “Thriller” premiered and waiting for it beforehand.  I remember this because nothing before or since scared the piss out of me more than that video.  I wouldn’t even watch it again until I was 15—but then I did I saw what a little wussy I was as a kid. 

So now that the man with a million faces is no more, I will leave you with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog covering one of the Michael Jackson pedophilia trials.  Enjoy. 

Lost in the Junkhouse: Our Excursion to Cook's Flea Market

For whom is this flea market fun?  Not for lovers, as my female companion and I discovered.  For us it is a place of fear and confusion... Having only spent about 45-minutes at Cook's Flea Market (CFM), I couldn't imagine a more depression inducing place and I will never go back.

Last Saturday, before entering the 155,000 square foot building that houses some 500 booths, I couldn't help but compare it to a state fair.  There were wagons selling all sorts of carnival-esque foods along the grounds.  The building itself, which has seen better days, seems to be an old warehouse.  It seems that this is a "new" location for CFM since across the street there is an abandoned building that still has "Flea Market" above its front doors (we actually thought that this was CFM and that it had went out of business) so can only assume that CFM is actually expanding, though I can't imagine why.  Parked in the main lot were a bunch of motorcycles and some bizarre looking automobiles painted in bright colors with strange logos on them that made me think their drivers either had a sense of humor I didn't get or else were insane.  One car that stuck out was driven by an early twenty something black kid with gold plated teeth that matched the gold rims of the car itself which was painted purple and had on its hood and on its side a picture of Dino from The Flinstones.  It was surreal.  

Once indoors, it is hard not to notice all the neon lights in the front center of market.  Its dissonance reminds one more of a strip club more than say Vegas because of how out of place they seem there, drawing your attention to outdated electronics in a warehouse filled with more things that are outdated.  It seems sad.

The people inside were a curious bunch indeed.  For starters, CFM has to be the wife-beater wearing capital of the world.  Per-capita I am confident there has never been such a high ratio of A-shirts vs. sleeves as inside those doors.  It was close to 1:1.  While there I was unfortunate enough to get stopped by carney-like-vendors twice, I guess I look like an easy mark.  The first person to approach me was a young girl who kept asking me if I was a musician and what band I was in.  She was apparently a rapper and wanted me to buy her CD for $10 which I honestly didn't have, not that I would have bought it if I had, and was under the impression that this... flattery?... would get me in the right mind to throw away money on a genre of music I explained I don't particularly enjoy.  When this didn't work, she informed me that "us musicians have to look out for each other."  Ah, I see.  So after explaining, once again, that I was not in a band or whatever, she kept insisting I was a musician because I, she could tell, appreciated art.  I guess she had a point, but the only music I was interested in making was that of my shoes squeaking as I hightailed it out of the area.  I ended up avoiding the isle she was in for the rest of the excursion.

I wish I could say that the second time I was stopped went more smoothly and made me feel less like an asshole but it did not.  The incident I am about to relate started when we entered a booth selling old video games that were greatly overpriced on systems that are notoriously unreliable.  Immediately upon entry, the kid behind the counter stared at me to the point of it being uncomfortable.  I had learned my lesson before and was avoiding making eye-contact.  The booth was crowded and I hoped that this and my refusal to look up would spare me.  But no, the staring continued, I was doomed.  When I finally looked up, the kid instantly started in like I knew everything about him and had background on the subject he decided to go into detail about.  Never did he mention video games, mind you, his chosen topic was some sort of dirt track racing, telling me things like he did $1000 worth of damage to his car which he bought for only $500 all because he was so used to racing bikes and took the turns like he was on a dirt-bike.  He went on and on about it like I cared about what he was saying and wasn't practically pushing my female companion out of the shop.  What does one do when someone begins a conversation like this? which starts right in the middle of a contextless story that he not only doesn't understand might make others uncomfortable and make him appear self-absorbed but also wants you to respond and show that you care about this and by extension him.  What does one do?  I opted for a "wow, that really is something," before leaving the booth and then CFM.

That encounter really freaked me out.  Part of it was the unprompted conversation.  Part of it was the kids creepy appearance: he was a country boy with really bad teeth (both yellow and crooked) and a tongue-ring gauged down to the size of a AA battery.  But there was something else that I didn't see until I talked to Sara about it and she made me see it differently in a way that ties into the whole CFM.  What she said was "the kid is probably very lonely... and you know he gets made fun of a lot."  Once again, in her infinite wisdom, the old female companion has made me a better person by forcing me to empathize.  With the help of her words, I realized CFM is a place for all that is unwanted.  I am not just talking about the crap that is being sold either, which includes dogs in sad little cages, no, unfortunately the aura pervades among the people selling their trinkets or whatever in the booths of the colossal structure that reeks of rejection and hopelessness.

If It's a Happy Death You Want, Assisted Suicide Probably Not the Way To Go

So, Albert Camus's A Happy Death isn't all that happy of a book.  Go figure.  With the word "Death" right there in the title, capitalized and everything, and a work of Camus, the third of his five novels I have read (The Stranger and The Plague before it), I wasn't exactly shocked when things don't exactly go/end well.  Basically a preview of The Stranger, the novel features a guy named Marsault (similar to The Stranger's Meursault) who commits a weird unmotivated murder (though it is sort of an assisted suicide), starts out living a boring and unhappy life, has a bunch of relationships he would classify as meaningless, autistically despises social norms, and is pretty much indifferent to everything.  But he finds happiness.  Throughout this book, the most important thing in life is "the will to happiness."  However, other things are also necessary, for example time and money.  Time is the most important because one needs it to be able to find their true calling, which is basically doing nothing.  To be a bump on a log though, one needs money.  I hear that.  

This is where the murder comes in, happening at the beginning of the work though chronologically speaking it takes place in the middle.  Marsault kills an invalid who all but asks him to do it after he has taught the protagonist the secret to happiness, which he cannot partake in because he lost his legs, and ends up taking enough cash to live out his days comfortably.  For the rest of the book he learns to do just that, finally living it out just before he dies a horrible death delivered via tuberculosis.  Ah the irony.  

After finishing the novel, I described it thusly: "typical Camus, existential bullshit."  Yep, life is pretty absurd.  Camus always makes that pretty clear.   But then again, Camus's work usually ends up being sort of uplifting, despite how bleak everything is on the surface level, because it teaches us the need the importance of living instead of droning on half dead.  And believe it or not, A Happy Death is one of the author's happier novels in that it shows that his protagonist knows how to enjoy life in a way that we wouldn't consider too socially repulsive or anything. While The Stranger is the better book, in a strange way, A Happy Death actually illustrates that suicide isn't a logical option because we always have that ability to create our own joy, though we require enough time and money to do so.  In his own words, Camus wanted us to use "our money to gain time," instead of using "up our lives making money."  If only we could all afford the time.

In Petrol Speramus: The Impending “Crude Awakening”

The excrement of the devil, black blood, the blood stream of the new economy, the blood of the dinosaurs, the blood of the earth, black gold, Texas tea—oil—the subject of Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack’s documentary A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash is one of the most terrifying films I have ever seen; however, after doing some research and talking to some environmentalist acquaintances, it seems that this is more or less environmental propaganda. First, the filmmakers show us that “We use it [petroleum] for everything.” Then they tell us that “Collapse is only a few years away.” Before finally telling us that the world is going to end unless shit changes and we basically start using solar energy, as nuclear, hydrogen, and bio-diesel are no good.

Points the film makes, rather overtly, I might add, are as follows: Oil is our God. No matter who people say their deity is, they actually worship petroleum. Up until the 1950’s, the U.S. was the leading producer of crude oil, in many ways it built our economy, we were the Saudi Arabia of the world, and like with most things America dominates, it was thought that this was what it was going to be like forever. After that came Venezuala for our consumption while Russia depended on the city Baku. These places have been totally annihilated as a result of their loss of petrol-dollars. Oil is a magnate for war. More and more oil is going to come from exceedingly unstable places of the world. A guy named M.K. Hubbert came up with this bell-shaped curve aptly called “Hubbert’s Curve” that shows when oil production and consumption both peak and then abruptly drops off. This took place in December 1970 when the oil production in the U.S. peaked and then we had to go elsewhere for our oil. Everyone has because the only place in the world that hasn’t peaked is the Middle East, and evidence suggests that they too have actually peaked though getting accurate numbers out of them is exceedingly difficult. Once the peak of oil has been reached it probably means the peak of sustainable life. Once that happens then holy shit. Cities in the U.S. are built around the need to drive, unlike in Europe where cities were in place before the car was invented.[*]

Not only that but Saudi Arabia’s instability is a formula for major, major conflict. In the last 20 years there has been a huge drop in the per capita income of the Saudi, from $28,000 to $6,000 a year. Islamic fundamentalists are being bred by the minute as their government is seen as corrupt and sending all their country’s money to the U.S. and they hate both America and their own leaders who use our military capabilities against them. One commentator says “What we are looking at is a multigenerational resource war.” He later explains that even if you hybridize every car on the road right now, we would still be consuming the same amount of gas in a decade because of the ever increasing need. Biodeisel, hydrogen, ethanol, nuclear, wind, none of these things are really more than a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of oil we depend on.

Once we hit Hubbert’s Peak unprepared as we are, then its only a matter of time before economic collapse. When that happens, poof, no more technological society and things will get incredibly, incredibly grim because the financial system is built on petro-dollars, it all comes down to cheap energy. Only the top one percent of the top one precent will drive a car or fly in an airplane. Your grandkids may never ride in an airplane.

By the time the film was over I was stockpiling water and gasoline and trying to figure out how I would make it from Winston Salem to Indianapolis on foot or whatever now that World War III was going to happen at any second now since we are very clearly going to run out oil in a couple of weeks or years or what have you. Outkast’s song “Da Art of Storytellin Part 2” came to mind and I considered buying a rocket launcher for when raiders came once we go beyond Thunderdome if you will. But once the female companion came home, of course, she was able to make my neurosis apparent as only she is really able to do when it occasionally springs up. And seriously, it is hard not to feel sort of insane just thinking “when we reach peak oil, I am going to be prepared,” but who knows. The female companion, who grew up having heard that Jesus was going to return at any moment to usher in the apocalypse, basically told me that this was just another form of the craziness that she had to deal with everyday from like birth until college where she became, like me, an existentialist.

However, I do think we greatly need to curb our dependency on oil—I mean it’s not going to last forever. This film, though it is probably propaganda, does end up being pretty solid and informative. I only hope that it is information that should be taken with a grain of salt.

[*] Something to think about: a 16 oz. bottle of drinking water will run you around $1. With 128 ounces in a gallon that comes out to $8 for a gallon of good old H2O, with which we could not live with out. The last time I got gas it cost me $1.58. Gasoline is just about the least expensive liquid we can get here in the United States.

Two Readings of Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, while not the most significant book that lead me to pursue literature as a career—comint at different stages of my life, as though preordained, those would be The Stranger (12th grade), The Divine Comedy (junior year of undergrad), and Infinite Jest (my 1st [and part of my 2nd] year out of college)[*]—this is the book that started process. “She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted,” (72). That is, Bradbury’s novel was the first thing I ever read that I considered a serious work of fiction that taught me the incredible importance of books and also that there is something not right underneath the surface of our existence that is sucking the lifeblood right out of our veins.

The first truly great book I ever read, almost a decade ago, there have been something like 500 books since that time. Of that 500 I would consider 150, give or take 50 or so, to be very good to great. Starting the school year after my 451 experience, I immediately found myself reading my next installment of literature’s heavy weights. That Year I had my first taste of Beowulf and Chaucer and Coleridge and Mary Shelley. My senior year was defined by works of modernism—Hemmingway, Camus, Joyce, Fitzgerald, H.G. Wells, etc—and then in college, the deluge. As of that time, I have averaged a book or so a week. Of say any given 50, I would find around 20 to be quote unquote “Great.” Many of those great ones are written in the same vein as 451. Of course there are the political philosophy works that are all amazing and I developed a quick attachment to them after the move from public to private school the summer after 451 had rocked my worldview. Lord of the Flies, Braver New World, 1984, these were a few of the books from the philosophy class I took in high school. My final paper for that class was something about the role of media in dictating policy/political discourse where I incorporated other assigned readings like Hegel and Martin Luther King, the former I remember intense frustration in trying to decode a message I could understand and seemingly write about as though I had understood it. I don’t recall what I got grade wise on the paper (I would assume an A since Dr. Jansen was a notoriously easy grader) but I do remember going into great detail in regards to the similarities between Brave New World’s social critique of media culture to that of 451 and how they both were eerily similar to our 2000 situation and where our nation could be heading if their warnings went unheard.[†]

451 was a love story for me, a heated affair between books and a society that no longer needed them. As such, the statements it makes remain solid. However, after reading it again a couple of months ago, I realized its audience is, for the most part, not the Montag who suspected something was wrong and went against all he had been conditioned to feel, or not feel, but for the Millies who knew something was wrong yet did nothing, in complete servitude to the ever alienating and soul-sucking status quo. And how does it happen? In the words of the novel’s antagonist, Beatty, it was our own doing:

When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I'd say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came into its own. Then - motion pictures in the early Twentieth Century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass… And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm… Picture it. Nineteenth century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the Twentieth Century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. (54)

However, now, in the year 2008, while the world we live in is nowhere near as desperate, in the time between my 1st and 2nd readings of the book, our world does look a lot more like the one Montag lives in. The internet, admittingly, was very much a part of American lives in the late 1990s, but at that stage we were yet to be dependant on it.[‡] Then too we were still slave to time with regards to our entertainment but with shows being “On Demand” via high speed/cable connection, we have the ability to watch whatever we want when we want, 24/7/365.[§] Virtually every book has been summarized and the information out there is truly incredible. People read Sparknotes or Wikipedia for a general sense instead of actually reading a given text. And all this technology, which I have often found myself critiquing, unaware that I was using Mantag’s words when I said “Good God, nothing’s connected up,” (46). And though we do not resemble “The Family,” our families’ are not really connecting all that much, so saturated with media and all. We have also suffered from a devastating terrorist attack in this time between readings, as does the society in 451 which was not an awakening as it is implied to be in the book but the opposite resulting in more loss of freedom and more government control, not to mention a dubious war that is ever present (apparent in our world, literal in their’s) and few of us really understand, it is so heavily mediated.

With these facts in mind, I am greatly appreciative that the National Endowment of the Arts provided me this book, free of charge, as part of their Big Read program. Even if it is not as well written or profound or in any other way as good as I remember it being way back when, it is still one of the most meaningful books I have ever read and has become even more culturally relevant now a decade later. For it is Bradbury’s genius that he is both Orwell with his oppressive regime, placing pressure for the government to change its tune, and Huxley, with his citizens being drugged up, mass media saturated indifferents, which is his genius. He takes the two conceptualists and combines them in a way that is realistic and frightening.

[*]King Lear and Hamlet also had a profound impact on me but reading them at about the same time as The Stranger, the plays took on a less significant role in shaping my way of seeing the world. Then when I reread them in college—3xs each in Freshman Lit, Inro to Shakespeare, and a Shakespeare Major Tragedies seminar, they were too close to either Camus (fr. year) or Dante (jr. year) and sophomore year I had yet to experience real tragedy and loss that would call for a more positive outlook on life than existentialism. Also, some of William Blake and P.B. Shelley’s works have greatly influenced me, especially in regards to my religious beliefs, but more or less just gave voice to stuff I was already feeling and thus was not a total 180 like these other books represented when I first read them.
[†] This was just after the 2000 Indecision when shit first started to hit the fan or roll downhill or whatever. In that election, having voted for Nader, as an 18-year old who knew next to nothing, I had no clue how closely we would actually come to resemble the world depicted in these two books. Even now it is hard to believe.
[‡] For instance, no one would have dreamed of paying bills online then while today hardly anyone I know has a checkbook. Also, email is now the preferred way for any and all to communicate, just to throw a few examples out there of the little ways the internet dominates modern existence with a role every bit as important as TV ever was if not more.
[§] I consider this a pretty good thing for the most part, at least in my case. If the mood strikes me to watch a show, I go online and find a specific thing that I want to to watch. I don’t end up watching crap that I don’t really care about just because it is on at the time when the mood strikes. So I actually end up watching less of my entertainment in that I watch only what I want instead of watching and waiting for a particular program. But still the potential for constant and instantaneous viewing is still there.

An Obama Nation

These are notes that I put together in the days leading up to the election and some thoughts from the day of. I am adding to this and trying to get it published. As always, comminents are much appreciated.

AB

T-minus six days until our great and beautiful nation has a peaceful and wonderful regime change, or to be technical begins one, since the change of power doesn’t become official until the twenty something of the next year. We take it for granted, but this doesn’t happen everywhere in the world. Either way, McCain or Obama, I believe it is going to wind up an improvement, but honestly one would prove slightly better while the other will be a huge milestone and a huge improvement.

With that said, this paragraph is something of personal voter history so feel free to skip ahead, but be warned, there are some pertinent voter controversy tidbits that you may want to read. Ever since I have been of voting age, I have witnessed voting controversy, some of these controversies, I have been directly involved in while others I was forced to watch from a distance. Growing up, I was raised to vote as a liberal, and today I am as far left as you can get, the product of a working class, Irish-American background with an old man who said things like “a working class man voting republican is like a chicken voting for the colonel” and a mother who has spent most of her adult life cleaning the homes of wealthy people (including the home of an ex-girlfriend), I have considered myself too poor to vote for the Republican Party. So in 2000, eighteen-years of age, I voted third party (Green) and watched as the party I second (perhaps third considering I am a registered socialist) most identified with celebrate prematurely and have the election stolen away from them. In all my years as an American citizen, 26-years running, I have only been sicker with the democratic system one other time, which came in November 2004, when I had to wait in line for ten and a half hours just to express my constitutionally guaranteed right of voting. The so called “ground zero” of long waits, this “longest line in America” was the most attention paid to my little college until David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to my graduating class blew up with popularity after the writer’s suicide. On that day, once I was finished up with the frustrating but inspiring experience of casting our votes after thinking that the election was really going to come down to us, suffering through the rain and ridiculous wait, I vowed to never vote again. Immediately after voting, when Fox News was already calling the election a “Bush victory” while other networks were showing some restraint after the 2000 fiasco, I thought I was going to throw up. The next day, in a Shakespeare seminar I was so depressed that I almost skipped, when asked to interpret a portion of a “Macbeth” soliloquy, I responded with basically, “who fucking cares,” and it went over pretty well considering my professor was only a few spots behind me in line and it was no secrete who she was going to vote for, God bless her. But 2006 rolled around, I registered at the last minute, still not really expecting to vote. Plus my congresswoman at the time, up for reelection, a democrat who was bat-shit insane, the now deceased Julia Carson, wasn’t worth the trouble of casting a vote.[*] The night before the election though, a friend of mine who was then in Iraq, fighting for this country that I still naively believe in, told me not to forget to vote. Coming from a combat veteran who was fighting in a war that he doesn’t support, I found my own petty gripes about the democratic system to be insufficient in justifying my staying home and denouncing the system that had previously let me down. So this year, having registered on “Rock the Vote,” I am involved in yet another voter controversy, this time having to do with whether or not I can vote rather than whether or not I choose to. I am afraid that I am one of the many whose voter registration cards has not yet come because my application has gone unprocessed like many other thousands of people who went through that agency. Every four years and some bullshit happens and I am outraged at my American government. Goddamn it, why is it so fucking hard to vote? This is not a good thing and it shouldn’t be stood for, but this too seems to be the rights ploy, making it as difficult as possible for a young, poor voter’s voice to be heard.

* * *

T-minus three. Once I came to terms with the fact that my voter registration card would presumably never come, I got up a little earlier than usual today and took some initiative by going down to the Forsyth County Government Building to register and vote early. With only three hours separating the time I got in line to vote from the time I had to be at work, I was gambling on the efficiency of governmental officials. After the 2004 debacle, I didn’t think this wise, but what was I to do if I wanted to vote? Not too bad this time around, only a two hour wait to cast my ballot. Still infuriating, plus this time I wasn’t surrounded by my nearest and dearest as I was four years ago, though I wasn’t completely alone in the line either, a girl I went to school with was about 15 spaces ahead of me so I did get to talk to her when the winding line snaked just right and we could chat for a couple of minutes until we got too far away from each other and then a few minutes later again converse face-to-face when our spots in line met up. But two hours of wait isn’t nearly as taxing as ten and half. If I would have been in Gambier, I wouldn’t have voted. But I did get to vote and that was that. Now I am done with it and can chill at home watching election coverage on TV while many go out and wait. And wait.

Recently, I heard someone say that “Obama looks presidential while McCain looks like the guy who doesn’t want Barrack Obama to be President.” This turns out to be apt but that seems to be the republican way and it has worked for them in the past. Actually, going back over the past damn near 40-years, it has worked very well with five of the last seven presidents sporting elephants instead of donkeys. Tonight on SNL, McCain made an appearance on “Weekend Update” where he was sort of funny, I guess, in telling of his last minute strategies going into Tuesday, one of which was called the “Old Grandpa” where he basically says “come on people, Barrack Obama has plenty of chances to be President, let me have my turn.” I fail to see how this is all that different from his actual strategy.

* * *

T-minus two. The following is somewhat of a response to a New York Times article from two months ago entitled “The Final Days” written by Peter Baker. According to Baker, the Shrub’s, George W. Bush, legacy depends on McCain winning this election. Though neither likes the other all that much, they found themselves once again connected on the campaign trail. The question that McCain is now asking himself in the Shrub’s 11th hour is whether or not Bush will beat him twice. Win or lose, he is running against a legacy as much as he is a democrat.

McCain knows this. And so does Bush. And so does Obama and most everyone else. Hence the ads that claim McC is a Bush clone and we “can’t afford four more years” and Will Ferrell on SNL doing his W saying “a vote for McCain is a vote for George W. Bush.” For McC’s part, he has been distancing himself as far as humanly possible from the sinking ship that goes way past anything Gore mustered in 2000 with his relationship with Clinton. Unlike Gore though, McC can afford to and he must. Far enough away from the President’s circle of trust and with a well documented history of piss and vinegar candor, McC can criticize W while not seeming like someone who stood back while he screwed up the country or got a blow job from a government intern and then was wishy-washy about it or whatever. Bush, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be all that pissed off about comments like “we’re worse off than we were four years ago,” which is quite the statement since it refers to the ineptitude of a leader from his own party. He lets McC be an asshole and trounce on his Presidency because that's the guy who can validate it. Obama though no doubt went negative (both candidates went negative, of course), at first setting his sites on the past 8-years, and then on the Bush clone himself. Going after the Republican nominee though may give people just the excuse they need to lose interest and stay at home and do bong rips on Election Day instead of taking the trip to the polling station.

Getting people disinterested is therefore going to benefit the GOP just as it did for Bush in 2000 when he nearly lost to the anti-candidate (McCain). But when the anti-candidate has a realistic shot, the candidate begins to do all those things he or she denounced and did not do before that made him or her popular and standout in the first place. We not only get bored of this stuff, we find it uninteresting and toxic to our ideals.[†] Being popular, in other words, barely matters. What is important is maintaining power. This is what Bush has done, to be sure, after all, many admired the man for “sticking with his gut” and not heeding to things like information and deliberation and history that in the days pre-9/11 get in the way of swift, decisive actions. And thus, we have had the Joker for a President from 2001-2008—“I don’t plan, I just do.”[‡] So, of course he found his presidency a “joyous experience,” he was obeying what he thought was a call from God after all. So sure he is with his rightness in his “principles” and his “values” that he doesn’t even toy with the notion that it could theoretically be mistaken. Maybe it’s not God talking to you there good buddy, its Dick Cheney (who may very well be Satan).

* * *

T-minus one. Got around to reading the Rolling Stone piece on Obama from the October 30 issue and it is amazing, actually the second most amazing thing that I have read about the candidate. He is, no doubt, a historic candidate and this is a historic turning point in American history. He has always been popular. He has become even more popular as of recent days because of this whole economic crisis. Iraq has become second fiddle to this whole “Second Great Depression” and McCain handled it poorly. This shift has put Obama over the top with the “meltdown” on Wall Street as well as McCain’s “equally impressive meltdown” by erratically/recklessly handling of the crisis not to mention his smear campaign that resembles Bush’s tactics he was so pissed about back in 2000. But much of the credit needs to go to Obama himself for “displaying precisely the kind of character and judgement we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles.” He has had a big couple of weeks, of course, with the wear and tear of a presidential campaign, a wedding anniversary, the death of his grandmother, and win or lose, the coming days are going to prove extremely difficult and even bigger than the days leading up to Election Day.

Part of his appeal has to be his sense of outrage as most Americans have been outraged for quite some time. In Philly two weeks ago, he called the financial crisis “a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years” and this has been the GOP economic philosophy supported by McCain that insists “the market is king” and believes in the value of Trickle Down Economics that says the super wealthy are the most deserving of massive tax breaks. So when McCain tries to change his tune, America is wise to his tactics.

Things are not good right now, the Bush administration has damaged our country in so many ways. Who would want the job of leading this bruised and battered nation? Obama does. And he is rising to the occasion. Pray for it. Pray for us. God help us.


* * *

Underworld. Woke up and went with my female companion while she went and voted, I having already done so. She gets ready. Dresses like a first lady. I wear track pants, a sleeve on my head, and a hooded sweatshirt.

Once I get back home, I pop in the documentary “Out Foxed” to get me syked for the day’s festivities. There in, Jeff Cohen, former Fox News Contributor, says, “Media is the central nervous system of democracy” and when that it doesn’t run properly, neither does the democracy. So the point is, when right wing propaganda is played around the clock, they distort the news and make it next to impossible to make an informed decision. They misrepresent and then when they are contradicted they speak over the ones contradicting them and claim that they are speaking “the truth” and “facts” when they are being deliberately misleading.

The best part of the video is a segment about Jeremy Glick, a young man that lost his dad in the 9/11 attacks who was on the O’Reily Factor and said that Papa Bear used the 9/11 attacks to project his narrow right wing viewpoint. O’Reily, of course “spins” it after he kicks the kid off his program, calling him “out of control” and claiming the he said that Bush had planned the terrorist attacks. When he tried to sue Bill for defamation, he couldn’t because the guy lies so pathologically that it was almost impossible to prove that he knew he was lying.

I watched the election at a friends house, a partisan house, most of the kids there have parents that voted for McCain. Some are obnoxious, others are cool, all are drunk. When states get called, someone colors them in red or blue on poster-boards of the country. Once the election gets called, we toast to champagne.

I called my parents, we talked for hours, it was a great time and great day the country. I couldn’t enjoy most of it though, the female companion and I were fighting.

One of the first commercials after Obama’s speech I notice is for Vagisil. This is history. History books are being written right now. No time in my life has been more exciting. I am drunk. So is Tom Brokaw. What a country. What a fucking country. I end the night looking at white guys with bad tupes while my beautiful redhead sleeps upstairs while Indiana, the state I was born, goes blue.

[*] A few days before, a friend of my dad’s, an Irish-Catholic guy much like my father, who is very racially conscious, and is married to a black woman, went to a JC political rally and was appalled by the congresswoman who he witnessed attempt to leave a limousine to only fall back in which caused her to lose her hairpiece. In this reported bit of damn near slapstick comedy, JC ended up leaving the wig in the car and some guy ran up to her just as she was about to go on stage for some political rally and threw on her crooked hair which she barely noticed and she had some clueless look on her face throughout the entire speech she read off a piece of paper and the whole thing looked terrible but she still got reelected. She died not long after. That is the system working for us.

[†] For a more eloquent and informed explanation, see David Foster Wallace’s Rolling Stone essay “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub” on John McCain’s 2000 run for the Republican Presidential Nomination and political apathy among the young.

[‡] But where does he get the balls big enough? Well, as it turns out, his religious convictions have the same stink of absolutes that drive his foreign policy. There is a deep need to protect the capacity to will such certainty in the face of daunting complexity and opposition that tere is no way he is doing anything other than what he truly believes is right. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, he is going to stand up there as everybody listening looks pissed and do what he damn well wants. But when you think about his supporters in the Evangelical Right he looks more like a Manchurian Candidate who is a puppet for some group of constituents who want things a certain way and are unwilling to budge. Facts don’t need to stand in the way of bold decisions of unshakable faith when there is need for “righteous actions” in the form of a “crusade” where “evil” is attacked and “God’s gift” of democracy is spread to all.

Former Bush speech writer and religious nut job Michael Gerson (the one who coined “The War on Terror”) calls the Shrub’s non-negotiation “unrewarded heroism/courage” in “doing the right thing under pressure.” As Mike Conway says, “he believes he’s got a role and he’s doing what God wants him to do.” To go again God is certainly something I not going to advocate but to put all you’re faith into something that just isn’t going to work is to turn a democracy into what W wants to eliminate in the Middle East—an oppressive, sectarian government where church and state are one.

An Amendment to “Black Friday”

On a day that I posted about how in the service industry “there is no such a thing as being human,” I witnessed one of the most tender, least bull shitty acts human understanding I have seen in some time, and I must say, it actually moved me. The act, described below, was performed by a girl around 18-yearsold who is somewhat self-conscious and insecure and seemed to desperately want to make an impression on her new co-workers—which is understandable—but these things have nothing to do with why she did what she did or the act itself. While I don’t know what to make of it, in an act of full disclosure considering what I wrote yesterday in my piece Black Friday, here it is.

Sometime during the dinner rush around 7:30 or so, with every table occupied and on a 25-minute wait and the big screen playing the UNC-Notre Dame contest in a town where everyone either loves UNC or goes to Wake and people are intent and focused on food and football, a kid with severe mental disabilities starts shouting very loudly some general football terms that are audible even from the recesses of the kitchen. And people getting uncomfortable in a really bad way—I have people asking for their checks and holding their temples looking down at their crotch and whispering about the kid and the scene he is making—and this isn’t really good for anyone. Servers begin whining, people are staring, I here someone say “why don’t they just leave.”

But just as people are about to stampede for the door, a hostess who started a week ago to the day, came over to the clearly frightened severely mentally disabled boy and his ancient companion (who I assume was his grandfather[*]) and squeezed her way into a one person booth, taking up very little of the kid’s space but still setting with him and just talking and listening to his pleas of “score!” and “touchdown!” Maybe part of it was the fact that he had a very pretty young girl sitting next to him actually giving him her undivided attention that calmed him down, I know it works for me when I am freaking out and my unbelievable female companion shows me that I am worthy of such lavish and unwarranted attention. But as with the case with my female companion, there was something else that transcended simple circumspection. It is shown in words and tone and body language that all say it is ok and you are a person and you are human and you are worthy without having to actually say it.

So as she sat there talking to the unlikely pair, she provided comfort for everyone around her. Obviously for the kid, but also for the grandpa in listening to their story, which she barely mentioned afterwards to the inquiring minds, and then the paying customers who were annoyed with the outbursts and the servers who were having to damage-control their tables and on down the line of employees and customers all with a single act of kindness. It visually illustrated the fact that we all are connected and that can be a good thing. When it was over and the two were gone, I told her something along the lines of “nice job” but it was insufficient sounding like some work related issue which it was not, not really. It went beyond that and I hope she realizes this and retains this quality.

After I had some time to reflect on this event, this lone instance of actual, really deep caring, I started to think that maybe this actually shows how most of us are broken by such places. In this line of thinking, I figured it would take someone who has only been working at it for only a week to do something like this. Later, a newer server who has worked at other branches of the company who is one of the most negative people I work with and bitches a lot and calls people “redneck” or “ghetto” depending on race and is pissed off about something virtually every night though he is a nice enough guy for the most part and has been doing this far longer than I have and is also “educated” apparently had some sort of talking to with the hostess because it was late and she was forced to set people in his section around the bar (though she tried to sit at least two of these tables in my section but the TVs aren’t over there and who wouldn’t rather sit in a table around the bar anyway) and it didn’t look like these folks really gave a shit about when we close (20 and then 15-minutes from when they moseyed on in) and were only drinking water (often times a sign of how cheap the table is comes from the drink order which tells you a lot about the way they are going to tip you[†]) and never even acted like they wanted to be there and have you prepare their drinks and dinners for them.

Afterwards, she was pretty upset and said that she is now “thinking about leaving.” Here is a young female who did an unbelievably kind thing that greatly benefited the restaurant in a way that pretty much went unacknowledged by anyone but me because everyone in there was so self-absorbed. I mean, this was a place where two weeks ago a severely mentally disabled employee (who is so handicapped he is actually appears happy) was coming out of the back when he not only slipped and fell on the hard tile but after landing awkwardly, he like sort of slid, sort of bounced, and racked himself on a pole of the platform where the guys in the back wash dishes. It was incredible as far as falls go. It was the worst one I had ever personally seen in that it was a double edged sword of wounded pride with the initial fall and then the skid into pole resulting in genital anguish. It was also, I hate to say, slapstick comedy. When it happened I couldn’t believe he had actually went down the way that he did, the odds had to be astronomical, and I was frozen for a second, everyone was. But, being right there only a couple of feet away dropping off dirty plates, I went over and helped the poor guy up. Once on his feet, he simultaneously grabbed his elbow with his uninjured arm and his crotch with the arm being held. That is when some people began laughing. It made me sick to my stomach but I can’t say that I blame them. Maybe in the future she will be one of those that laugh and say things like “he really shouldn’t be here” but today she is not. She is human. It is the staying human that I pray she keeps and pray that we all keep.

[*] Something that a lot of times will happen in cases like this is the severely mentally disabled will go unwanted by their biological parents and instead of institutionalizing this person, a family member will take the person in and care for them. My grandpa did this with a second cousin or something who was maybe ten years older than my dad who remembers my grandpa telling him to stick up for him and not let anyone give the guy any shit. So my grandpa and my dad took on a lot of the responsibility with this guy whose story was a very sad one indeed—he was dropped as an infant not once but twice by nurses and went unloved and uncared for by his own parents who wanted nothing to do with the burden of caring for a child with special needs (though it was a different time then, I suspect things like this still happen as they did back 40-years ago). When this guy died in 2003, my grandpa and my dad were the only attendees of his funeral, marking the sad end to a excruciatingly sad life. The point is, I suspect this was a situation similar with a relative stepping in to raise a child with special needs.
[†] For example, it has happened on occasion that a family will come in and when you prepare to ask about maybe bringing them a Samuel Adams Oktoberfest, which really are delicious btw, they cut you off mid-sentence and act offended like you are one of the many salesmen in their lives trying to dictate your purchasing/spending, which technically you are, or like you are stupid for not like knowing that they would never drink ever or at a restaurant that overcharges or in front of children or late on a Saturday night or while operating a motor vehicle or whatever. These people do not tip well. You are extremely lucky to get 10% out of them. The most telltale sign thoughthat your tip is going to be lousy, in my experience, is when the adults in this situation order “water with lemon” and then order the drink for the kids however diminutive such an action appears to everyone involved and makes a point of stating that their offspring would like whatever beverage of their choosing “in a kids cup” as in “he’ll have a kid’s coke” which is free and they typically know is free and involves extra work for you because they are tiny and have lids that make refilling and knowing when to refill a pain because they want to make sure you don’t charge them the buck fifty for a regular sized glass, which I never do anyway, and is yet another way of telling you you are too stupid to see this person is a child and thus gets a free beverage all before the adult themselves try and order a ½ order of ribs or steak off the kids menu to save a couple of duckets because it is the same quality of food at a slightly cheaper price and the whole thing just makes you want to quit and tell them they need to get with the fucking program here and acknowledge what they already know in that servers get paid like shit for an hourly wage and depend on your gratuity to make rent and we are working hard to get a paid just like you are and so on and so forth.

Black Friday

The economy is something I cannot begin to understand. I read reports, ask knowledgeable friends questions, listen to debates, but most of all, I get my feel for the economy by how much money I have left over (or rather how much more I owe) after the necessary expenses are taken care of. According to this system, the only system I can pretend to comprehend, after the bare essentials and one bi-monthly luxury item, my first since May came this past Wednesday so now that is becoming more of a biannual thing it would appear, I can afford to spend about $90 a month. I am someone who has reached a 5-digit salary only once in my life (and even then I literally just broke it) yet I have amassed a 6-digit almost entirely from my absurdly expensive education. While outstanding, my education has made me, I am estimating, about $15,000 in its totality. That is $12,500 for teaching and $2,500 for various writing jobs. That number, as depressing as it is, is about the same as the jobs I have had that require no education or even frown upon it. For example, the summers or 1999 through 2001, when I worked as a lifeguard, I made about $2,500 each year. The summers I was in college I made even less at J.C. Penney’s and landscaping, which was more accurately described as getting high and smashing things with a shovel, that goes for both of those jobs. In those summers I made around $1,500 and then did not work one of those years instead taking summer school. Out of college, post-academia, I did some internet database updating for some company, worked with my mom for a while, had a few sales jobs which I was terrible at and technically lost money, spent two weeks in advertising, and did a brief stint with FedEx. In sum with those odd jobs, I made something like $3,000. Now working in the service industry, don’t get me started on how badly I hate this job, I have probably made about $3,500 in the last three months.

I am not going to add all this up, it is too depressing, but I bet they are even keel. Plus if you count the year I was technically unemployed, a year I spent working for a bookie and gambling, I guess my main source of income that year would be picking NFL winners, filling out March Madness tournament brackets, and getting unbelievably lucky in basically blind draws with the sport of kings (horse racing), I would be better off, financially speaking, if I didn’t even go to school. Because starting in 1999, my schooling has cost me[1] an intimidating six-digit-number that overwhelms me just thinking about. And I have yet to even dent it. Two years at Park Tudor at $12,000 a year, plus four years at Kenyon totaling among the nation’s highest (#2 when I went there which is boasted as though it were something to be really proud of)[2] [3] with a whopping $38,000 price tag (that I consider well worth every penny [it at least in the time I was a student there] and upon my deathbed will probably consider the four happiest years of my life), though no one, save for Colin and Joe F. who are very well off but compared to some of the families there are practically beggars, and in full disclosure, I paid less and than half of that number, and then Wake Forest, in a program I am not even going to finish, I took out over $20,000 in student loans. I am actually starving here, I have lost over 50 pounds in the last year, where am I gonna get that kind of money?

I probably won’t. There are friends of mine here in a similar predicament as mine but are more responsible and these people actually know something about economics. They are basically saying the crisis will probably help us out because with all of this student debt that is going unpaid yet must be paid, the gov. will likely devise a new plan/strategy to deal with it. Our prosperity literally depends on it. Or so they say. Maybe that is one of the reasons the crisis doesn’t seem to scare me all that much, I am a survivor, I live simply and will continue to do so. Even if someone were to say, “Yo, AB! You the bomb! Here is a MacArthur fellowship for your bitchin ass! Have at it,” I would probably give most of money away and with what is left over start some sort of literary journal. I don’t own any big ticket items. The most expensive things I own, my car (which I inherited from my grandpa when he died, worth around $6,000 dollars though I take shit care of it and currently rock a donut as one of my tires) and my watch (my parents’ gift for graduating college which is an unbelievably beautiful and tasteful Swiss made Tissot worth about $600)[4] are things that were given to me and not things I would have spent money on myself to own. Its all just stuff and I pride myself on having virtually nothing.

So the point of this little musing, I guess, is to say that I see people freaking out all the time about this damn “Depression” and it doesn’t really scare me. The big-wigs macking it hard will still mack it hard and the poor are still gonna be desperately poor. Can’t people see that the system is incredibly fucked and one-sided and always going to end with inequality and oppression?

This “Black Friday” stuff I heard all over the radio today—from NPR to local rock-block to ESPN—has got people obsessing. My female companion talks about how scared she is about what all this is going to do to her credit score. Sometimes she gets pretty freaked out about it, especially when she starts inquiring about my debt and my credit, which I know nothing about other than it just has to be terrible.

Yesterday, before I heard any of this business, I went to the bank in order to cash my pay checks from work and found a line that practically went out the door. Wha? It turned out people were freaking out about this whole crisis and running to the bank to pull out their savings—ah la It's a Wonderful Life—or so I believe though it was late in the afternoon on a Friday so who knows. The line, dominated by old people, which makes me suspect that the line did in fact result from the quote unquote “Black Friday” thing, was so decrepit that at multiple times when the teller would call out “may I help you” the hard of hearing senior citizens would stand there staring strait ahead until someone with a better hearing aid finally tapped them and pointed them in the direction they needed to go.

When my turn finally came, I lucked out and came to the same woman I dealt with the last time I was in this particular branch. The first time I had went in there, this woman, young, somewhat attractive, huge rack, tried to set me up with a checking account with them. I went through the motions but I had recently been turned down with another bank because I joined an account with my mom in my name that she had overdrawn. Lacking $400, neither I nor my mom can pay it off, thus I am to remain bankless, at least for the time being. But I was going through this then because the woman said she would waive the check cashing fees on all my checks and maybe it would like go through or something as she said. Then, in late July or sometime around there, she was flirty and accommodating and said that whenever I got a valid ID, don’t ask, I could come in there and she would waive the fees, anytime.

So yesterday, hoping to make good on that proposition, I went to her and reminded her of this exchange. The look she gave me was not the flirty, playful look I witnessed back in July but one of annoyance seeing me now as something of a burden, or so I interpreted. “I personally said that?” she kept demanding to know, also asking a rhetorical “Why would I say that?” that seemed to imply I was either lying or had greatly misunderstood our conversation. She then informed me that the checks would cost $6 each to cash, although that bank did not charge some businesses to cash their checks there. This is what happened to be the case with my employer and this bank. It certainly did clear things up for me then, what I assumed was this attractive and flirty young woman doing something nice for me person-to-person was in fact just doing her job, caring out a function that was as part of her routine as bringing a to-go side of dressing is to mine.

When money is involved it is hard to stay human and when money is tight it is harder still. On nights when I am in no mood to ask my tables what they want to stuff themselves with, as tonight I am sure will prove to be which I am already dreading, when a table of seven, one less than the number of people required to get an automatic 18% tacked on to the bill, spends $150 on food and drinks which constantly need refilling and leaves a $10 tip if I am lucky or a $1 tip on $80 and then say something like “you are an excellent server” and ask me “is that alright?” my job requires me to say “oh yes, thank you very much” instead of the obvious “no everything is not alright, you just gave me a shitty tip and I am working my ass off here” I certainly don’t feel like myself. On these nights, at that job, at any service job, there is no such a thing as being human. There is only the customer is always right and you have to live by it. To hell with you.

[1] My parents, barely making ends meet themselves, have not contributed a penny to my education unlike most people at the three wonderful and expensive schools I attended. Most of my peers were of families in the top 5% of yearly income, at worst, whereas my parents are more like at or below the national median making a combined $40,000ish annually. I tried to use the U.S. Census Bureau as my source here, then some other reputable agencies, but without any economic knowledge or skill, except buying things that are cheap, I couldn’t make heads or tales out of it. But hey, Wikipedia makes it easy, there I get the information I seek with minimal trouble, get class and money involved and information just disappears especially in an economic crisis. So anyway, here is my God damned source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income_in_the_US. Thus I have borrowed and worked, but mostly borrowed, seeing this education thing as an investment that right now is not paying out in dollars like I was told it would. But to be fair its not like I really motivated by moneys, I have never had and don’t really know what I am missing. Nor do I really care to know.
[2] http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/21/education-university-globalization-biz-cx_bw_lh_0121colleges.html
[3] http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2008/03/24/story11.html
[4] Mom and Dad saved up for a year and half to buy me something special for I am the first one in my family to finish college—a family that is so large and reeks with so much Irish Catholic descent that to go through the names of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and so on and so forth would be incredibly involved. So anyway, this is an item I love and I don’t really love stuff. I am in constant panic that I own such a beautiful thing and I am always thinking I will or have lost and I get complimented on about once a month, the most recent one being from a co-worker whose name is Jordan who I think is the type of chick it is probably good to have on your side and reminds you of every cheerleader you ever met, I am sure you get the idea, who said while I was pouring tea out of a bucket into a dispenser “Oh my God, you have a really, really nice watch…It is seriously beautiful,” which, you know, doesn’t suck to hear, but nonetheless, I love it but I could never justify spending that much on myself.

See Also:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/10/if-ever-there-w.html

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/882789?UserKey=