Observations on CNN

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Observations on Marriage

A friend of mine once told me: Find a woman you hate, and give her half of everything you own, and then move on to the next stage of life... It was a lawyers cliche, the wisdom of the self appointed savvy white man, but the greater cliche is that the guy who told me this once is now married with I believe two children.
For him it was a kind of cost/benefit analysis, another part of his endless 'practical' wisdom... putting up with what it takes to have a modern American family was better than being alone. There was no discussion of a middle ground.. to him, you have to indulge her fantasy to get your better reality, maybe your fantasy of sorts.. it's kind of a math equation based in a weird resignation to Karma, finding things "rewarding" as a way to pass the time, and some notion of "how things work" that isn't purely existential. It's like doing easy time... working in the kitchen so you can smuggle food to your cell.. it's not the same as breaking out of Jail. It involves a lot more resignation..
I will go on to say I have never seen a marriage I wanted.. I have seen a lot of women I wanted, even women in marriages with other men, and women maybe I thought I could make happier than the marriage they were in, more honest, I know now marriages are not about honesty, they are a narcissistic fantasy, survival, and unconcious oedipal drives, loaded with denial, and somehow destined to go wrong eventually, with a snap.. the people I meet with happy marriages at present have an endless capacity to ignore the lack of emotional growth occurring to those around them in order to satisfy their primal needs, most notibly procreation. The most annoying married couples are together because they want their kid to look like someone they were sexually attracted to, and that person can afford to lvie the lifestyle they want after the kid pops out. The funny thing is that the more dedicated to procreation they are, the more blind they are to the animalism of it.. the less aware they are of their own emotional needs, or the ignored emotional needs occurring with their spouse, higher and lower,.. it's a shared denial based in biology, ethos takes a back seat, and they act like it's anything but primal, it's a divine charge, the right thing to do, a gift to the world, a religeous obligation ( I don't remember Jesus having kids.. in fact.. I think he treated things like that as a bit absurd, but most people don't read the whole book.. ).
There is a difference between lust and love.. and the more people confuse the two, the better their marriage tends to technically be...  wanting someone to grow, to transcend and free themselves from suffering, or to self actualize.. those things don't tend to go with successful child rearing, which is the point of those contracts.. those other lofty goals are the dreams of recovery boy/girl-friends, the single dreamers and idealists, and also-rans..
There was a time before marriage.. who knows when.. we started to settle down about 8000 years ago.. a friend of mine cited beer as the reason.. we wanted to raise wheat to make beer, so we fuckin gave up and stayed in the same place.. maybe the edge of the black sea before it flooded in, or the rift valley, or Ur, who knows, but we stopped in one place, and there certainly was sex and jealousy before then, maybe even monogamy for extended periods, but there sure as hell wasn't anything like a legally binding contract.. that came from people who weren't bold enough to vote with their feet, so they decided to keep things working to their liking by telling others how to live, and it became enshrined as a virture with all the garnishes..
 Here in America, if you get past the Disney fantasy side of it all, the validated princess, who is in such a narcissistic fervor on her wedding day I wonder at half the weddings I go to if the bride will even remember the grooms name at the Altar.. there is the whole legal side.. 50 states and a few territories who all independently decide, in one or two lgislative chambers packed with not necessarily the most questioning white men, and an office with a big cheese and maybe a few courtrooms, what shall constitute this weird pact between consenting persons who have made enough trips around the sun to sign this contract. It involves basically a bunch of rules you have to choose to enforce in most states, which are arbitrary areas drawn on a map for the most part, and more often than not where there is one of these units, a 'state', there was 'Fault' divorce.. a kind of sanctimonious notion that means that one person can be blamed and held financially liable, or worse yet, access to their kids held as a kind of tool of judgement and behavior modification method, if they don't live up to a societally enshrined notion of what makes that 'union' perfect.. however, it's self enforced, so there are get out of jail cards.. one or both have to pull the emergency break.. if you are swingers, well hell then, if you still want to go home together at the end of the party, no reason to get rid of the tax break, not that they are necessarily wanting to think of it that way, and if they are, it makes it all the more twisted and abnormally arbitrary... although now, there isn't fault divorce anymore.. the last state voted for no fault 3 years ago, New York, but the whole crazy notion lives on in our hearts, and in the perceptions of just about every 'ordely' society, and by orderly, I mean organized around the demands of successful reproduction, because who the hell but a lawyer knew that until I told you...
I guess I figure if you truly love someone, you will choose them every time.. our brains developed to live in societies of 50 to 150 people, that's about as many names and life histories as we can remember, so back in the day walking away from a spouse usually didn't mean you wouldn't see them again... it's a fantasy to want to be with the same person 'For Ever'. We have the capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially the more we separate our logic from our emotions... there is also something nice about reality once it catches up to us and we get past it's worst challenges... the less we have separated the two, the more we fall for these confusing binary notions of good and bad, where morality is paired with creating people who can bring in the harvest and follow orders properly...
Count me out... although I can't deny it seems better than nothing.. does it have to come with all the fucked up baggage.. people who aren't narcissistic, who know what truly caring for the person and not the body or the job or the reputation, usually come with enough baggage and miles on their own.. but those are the interesting ones I guess.. the funny thing is.. those ones, the ones who are above it all.. they are the ones I want to marry...
Catch 22..

What the F%^& happened to National Geographic?

Remember when George Bailey thought this magazine was the Cat's Meow? How it filled him with dreams of seeing the world... would that happen today to a young kid growing up in Wappengers Falls (check out the Capra film It's A Wonderful Life, if you have never lived through an event called Christmas in America)?
Hell no, the F-ing kid would end up a graphic designer, because all we get from National Geographic anymore is Graphics, as if there is nothing left to explore in the world without some robot or animated creature doing it for us.. what the F happened to you guys?
I used to work across the street from the Nat Geo foundation, and I should have realized back then what was going on. Somehow they have lost their principals.Instead of being a scholarly organization, contributing to depth, they have joined the jingoistic idiots society, contributed to the shortening of our attention span, and reveal less and less about the world if it can't be summed up in a graphic that a 5 year old would understand.. what happened to you guys? When I read it now, I resign myself to more idiocy about the latest in aerospace technology or the fight against Al Queda, the same shit they are chasing The History Channel down the tubes to do (Discovery, you're OK, somehow you never pretended to be much else,and your stuff is somehow pretty honest still), conspiracy theory bull shit and all the rest, when back int he day the thing was an extension of the Field Museum of Chicago or Natural History in New York, filled with anthropology and History and cool Archeology.. those of us who dream Indiana Jones style weren't disappointed.. now it's some combo of Tron and Air & Space. Maybe it's being stuck in DC.. like Smithsonian, they think everything has to have mass appeal, it has to be glitzy and some sad compromise that will never offend a Mormon in the Utah Valley, even if it tastes like white bread to anyone with a brain. America wants articles about cute kittens playing with Gorillas.. well hell, serve it up.. we'll find a way to make it pseudo scientific... the concerned housewives who have CNN in the background want to hear more about some pseudo scientific news topic.. here it is on a Yellow Platter, wrapped in 'you'll sound smart at dinner' conventional wisdom.
For a while you guys were loosing me because you were so stuck on global warming,and I ain't denying it, but it got old, and after a while, it felt like you were insulting my intelligence by telling the same story about guys on a glacier taking measurements again and again.. I got friends who do this work, quit making it exotic for the people in Sheboygan when there are still truly exotic things happening in the world. You are getting scooped by Discovery Magazine, where the intelligent but nomenclature illiterate can still go to actually learn about science, so how out some geography for a change, or how bout showing me a beautiful world it actually still takes balls to get to, not some place regurgitated from '1001 Places To Go Before Your Yuppie Boss Fires You'.. And I am not even taking on here what the heck happened to the weird conspiracy theory End of Mayan Calendar garbage that their TV channel put's out on more than occasionally.
I feel like this all started with Ballard, or maybe the board of directors got stuck in some Georgetown or Tacoma Park Chatterbox where they just like to hear how smart they are, but this isn't what the magazine was originally about. I feel like ever since they covered Titanic and Ballard (and incidentally swallowed a huge cover story, not that I am complaining about secretly recovering nuclear material) or maybe it was the Hologram Issue when I was a kid, somehow they fell for whiz bang when the resigned themselves to the fact that the world is getting smaller, but the world keeps changing,and in it's recesses as well there are some pretty cool things still growing in the cracks, that aren't endangered..maybe I am selling them short, maybe I don't know what it's like to be in their editorial meetings, but I feel like it must be like working for Lucas Films with the Chinese plush toy manufacturer on speed dial.. this was a Society, not a network.. get did of Nat Geo Travel and Kids, and all the stupid idiots who grew up obsessed with watch commercials trying to figure out how to spend their inherited millions, and are reliving the latest micro event on Everest, and show me the world again.. please.. so I have someplace to dream about going from Wappinger Falls again. Get some reporters with balls, like from Vice Magazine or that guy who danced all over the world, (Where the Hell is Matt? At least it was beautiful!) and get back to what made us dream, not just stroking our national pride in some mad chase of the latest editorial trend.. for God's sake, you guys were part of our national dignity, our intellectual purview of the world, and I feel like it just washed down the Mayan Calendar drain..

How Yuppies Think

You have likely heard the term.. A lyricised acronym for Young Urban Professional, basically people who have, well, professions, they were the also-rans in college, the guys you always had a running joke with but never felt like baring your soul to... you were kind of underwhelmed with what they did with their life, knew they came from a nice enough family, but always kind of worried about what they really had to give.. They became famous in movies from the 80's, the decade when America made a clean break from it's working and rural class pasts, and created a shiny new world separate from practical realities other than economics. Movies like Working Girl, and like Melanie Griffith, they seemed prey to appetites that others would find a little pedestrian, like Antonio Banderas. They seemed to live a fantasy deferred, and talked about the future and what they would have and do someday. And that fantasy always seemed a bit sad, like something to please their father, but you would never tell them you felt so... They eventually became the but of jokes, and moved into a weird bubble that seemed artificial. After a while, it became harder and harder to give a shit about them... this is how they think:

• Yuppies like the path of least resistance. This makes them by definition mediocre, and on some level unprincipled.
• Yuppies get their ideals from their friends and family, not from learning about historical figures of role models
• Yuppies need approval
• Yuppies will mouth any platitude, but deep down inside they are in it for #1
• Yuppies rarely have a legitimate connection to their surroundings, which they usually view as inferior to some other place they abstractly dream of being. it makes it easier to live with a consumer mentality that they are rewarding themselves for some perceived suffering or deferred satisfaction in a place they are too good for.. if they took the time to realize what was really going on around them, the construct would fall apart, and they would have to divert from the path of least resistance which is usually a well paying job, and a perception of a compromised existence that 4/5 of the world would kill for...
• Yuppies would have no problem seeing others suffer to make their life or the lives of those they think they love safer...
• Yuppies equate money with all the rewards that are worth having in life.. They crave financial security at the behest of all else.
• When yuppies are in charge.. They stack the deck.
• Yuppies like to drink... They think it is a reward, and they only way they can have fun.
• Yuppies like safe edgy, and are afraid to venture into true fetish or pleasure seeking at the behest of security. In other words, Yuppies Love Vegas, but if they loved Tijuana, they would stop being yuppies and become something all together more sordid but human... Which might be their greatest fear.
• Yuppies always claim to want silence and peace and a chance to think, some beach vacation where nothing happens, but in fact, it is the thing they are most afraid of.
• Yuppies, no matter how much they claim to love rebellion and spontaneity, will judge you and discount you if you have not constantly made the same financially self advancing rational and logical decisions they have made.
• Yuppies believe they set the standards for normalcy in behavior, and that doing so is a virtue.
• They judge things outside them by the distance they deviate from that norm
• Yuppies are obsessed with Cancer. Since they play it safe in almost all regards, they feel like Cancer is the one thing that can sneak up on them and ruin the fun they are having being the norm. They mourn people who die of cancer as victims, and they love to mourn victims, since being a victim implies innocence, and they love to see innocence as a virtue. Innocence is usually defined by doing what is socially acceptable, and expecting to not be singled out or mistreated as a result.
• Yuppies love Coldplay, U2, and Wilco. These bands make their money preying upon the emotions of people who are fulfilling other's versions or fantasies of happiness, but are unwilling to stop doing so because they feel it makes them 'virtuous' and 'selfless'.

The Latest Tyranny: MBA's and the New America

"Meet the new boss, same as the Old Boss.."   The Who

Every Country has it's frustrations, it's mentality or self impression that keeps it moving forward limply from where it keeps shooting itself in the foot. America's is the Corporatocracy. I marvel at the evil brilliance of it when I search all over a city for a hotel room where a window opens. Fresh air now has a price.. and when I ask about it, the staff, often with righteous indignation, tell me that opening windows are a safety risk, like they are running a pre school. Nothing ever made me want to jump out more...only in America it seems...
This idea that the logic of the business should be accepted as the logic of the nation, the brave new world ideas of the Koch Brothers and the evil bean counters who have way more influence in the banal Bauhaus postwar world of Shaumberg's and Irvine's and Atlanta's then we want to admit, the world of your sold out cousin, and the world you have to pass through ever time you take a plane, go to a gas station, or have to visit when you go to see that guy from high school you can't help but like even though he moved to some shit hole of big box commerce and those houses that really do, as much as you tried to imagine it couldn't be so, look all exactly the same, for the worst reason of all.. for the school district (where the schools yes, look like prisons or factories, all ready to pump out the next generation of ambitious fucks you can't even imagine could think that way, ready to sell quality of life under the bridge to make you live more like them, to shave one more penny for them at the sake of you), convenience, and some sad fantasy of safety and a back yard.
For those of you who got that the above is code for being racist, unadventurous, formulaic and sold out, I will admit now that the people I am casually blaming are the MBA's who, since WWII, have been calling the shots on what the average American life should be that about half of us seem to be falling for. The marketing fucks you sometimes blame work for the aforementioned... The simple notion of Rational Analysis and Cost/Benefit Analysis, when the don't include human factors, are the notions responsible for depriving us of the charms of a more random and natural life if it doesn't benefit them, like opening windows at a Hampton Inn. These mass decision making tools are taught at business schools, and tell me, do any of your friends go to business school without a greed motive.. is there a business school out there that is what U Michigan or Columbia are to Law, places that train for careers of selflessness (not that I put that on a higher pedestal per se..).. not really. That guy whose dad seemed to have a secret gay crush on him who worked out too much in high school and reminded you of Christian Bale in his grooming habits a little too much, he's got an MBA by now you can be certain.. he didn't get it to make your life better. He might have learned some notion of Enlightened Self Interest, might have taken an ethics class or two, learned to charge you even more to treat you the way a human should be treated anyways (I'm looking at you Ritz Carleton, you soulless robot!) but he is not doing all that math to give you anything he doesn't make the better half on, and that's just the beginning of the tricks he might be mastering. Think about all the shit this last election was about, what Mitt represented... sure freedom, and I am not arguing for more regulations here, but freedom to do all the shit that makes you want to hang yourself before calling your cell phone company, the airlines, or deal with your mortgage broker after he sold off your loan, or the company that laid off your brother or shafted his assumed retirement.. Who.. MBA's, that's who.. and they aren't a race or a class.. it's a way of thinking, kind of a code, it's a mentality that enshrines fiduciary responsibility or financial gain above all else that I am bitching about.. it's what makes life just a little less dignified and a little less livable in the mainstream every day, that extra ad at a sports venue, or the damn new monolith of a bar in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium that takes all the fun out of the ol' cheap seats.. it's the smaller and smaller peanuts on the flight, and the annoying conversation you have to have when you sleep late in a hotel and someone talks to you on the phone as if you abused a sacred right since check out time is right now.. who? MBA's got um by the twat... steer clear if you can...
a peek into enlightened self interest:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/all-marketing.html
A peek into a sadder more conventional form of it, the kind we are most likely to face:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis
after reading this, think of millions of examples, from environmental disasters to the famous alleged case in the 60's of the RAND corporation coming up with a value for the life of a soldier to help make decisions on purchasing safety equipment under Robert MacNamara, who was a business school professor at first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
This makes me realize that perhaps some of my mistrust, though well founded in the present day by the nuisances stated above, leads back to an animosity for what might have been the successful but awful logic that those of us who remember the Cold War called Brinkmanship, the game of chess that seemed to be played at the expense of our peace of mind by those in Government, Business and Politics, the famed Military Industrial Complex of Eisenhower fame. It was at that moment more than perhaps any other in America and maybe the world, that even if it worked on some fucked up level, the game seemed to get out of hand, or if you were from any number of third world countries that got shoved into some awful war due to geopolitical forces like Guatemala or Ethiopia, or places that got contaminated by NBC production and deployment (Nuclear Biological and Chemical), like Hanford WA or the South Pacific, it sure as fuck got out of hand, and it all seemed to go back to paper sense overcoming common sense.. the MacNamaras of the world leading us down a road that the average guy can only scratch his head as to how he really benefits from it, or agrees that it saves him a few bucks and thinks no more, as that must be good, and the closest equivalent today would likely be seen in the conflict of practicality of inertia of how we do things now over action to change that is the battleground of the Global Warming Debate, another mess that, yup, I can kind of blame on the MBA's..it's almost fun...