I got to thinking today about words. In particular, swear words. Why is it... HOW is it that certain words in our language achieve such power and supposed potential for damage to the young and the frail that they are restricted from use? I mean, they're just words.
I won't pussyfoot around here. "Fuck" is probably the worst word any mother could hear her seven year old child say, followed a close second by "cunt" (which is first, depending on the woman who hears it). But why? It's just a word! Into common usage we accept "screw" as a substitute for "fuck," yet they both mean the same thing. I could say, "Screw you!" on television, which means the same thing as "Fuck you!" "We're screwed." "We're fucked." They mean the same thing, connote the same feeling of defeat or doom, yet if I say the former on TV or radio, I or the station owner could receive a huge fine.
I wanna know why this is! We try to protect our children from hearing such language, we try to discourage our children from using such language, yet we all have ventured into that weed patch ourselves when we thought we were cool or when we just got fed up with something. For some of us it's just a part of our everyday language. Hell! For some of us it's our mother tongue!
Is it possible that words evolve like everything else? I can remember when "sonofabitch" used to be bleeped from movies brought to TV, but now it's pretty much a standby TV swear word. I remember when I heard "bastard" used as a swear word on TV when I was a small child, and feeling shocked when I heard it. "God damn" took a little while longer, but you'll hear it occasionally on your grittier TV dramas. A couple of years ago, on "NYPD Blue," "bullshit" was getting a once-an-episode free pass, and I never heard about any complaints. "Shit" alone never got play, but it was apparently okay if it was identified as the bovine sort. And as for "shit," I think "crap," "caca," doo-doo" and "turds" are words just as offensive, yet they're allowed on TV these days (mind you, it's not to say that I'm offended by any of these words. I just think they're just as strong) (and, mind you, if Sergeant Sipowicz had ever blurted out, "That's a load of bull doo-doo!" I would have shit myself laughing!). In its final season, "Chicago Hope" pushed the envelope in one episode when one of its characters told another, "Shit happens." I didn't witness the episode myself, but I heard the clip played on the radio the next morning. I never heard about anyone lodging a complaint. And what about "fart?" At its worst, "fart" was inappropriate. Kids could say it. If anyone said it, kids -- and most men -- would burst into giggly laughter, yet it appeared to have the same restriction on television as "fuck!" It wasn't until the mid- to late 1990s that Roseanne Barr Arnold took on convention and not only used it on her sitcom, but she devoted a whole episode to the topic. Of course, all the headway and groundbreaking made by Stephen Bochco and Roseanne and the writers of "Chicago Hope" were undone with Janet Jackson's tit flash...oops! I mean her breast-baring on live television. She sure fucked a lot of shit up with that little episode.
Why can't we just drop the pretense? Almost all of us say these words, even if it's only once in a great while. They're part of our language. Look in any dictionary worth its salt and you'll find them all. And regardless of whether we say them or not, we hear them just about everywhere we go. If we, as parents, are with our children when someone on the street starts using such language, we spirit our child(ren) away to a "safe" area, where they can't hear those words. The same should be done in the home. If something objectionable is mentioned on TV or radio, protect the kid by switching channels or by switching the thing off. Don't take it upon yourself to petition the FCC to remove a show from the air. Don't presume that I want or need your protection.
I say television should reflect our society as it is, not as the Puritans who influence the FCC wish it to be. If you are offended by language or nudity on a particular TV show, change the channel, not the network! You say you don't have to listen to such vile language, and you're right. So, CHANGE THE FUCKING CHANNEL! Does this mean I want my kid to hear Big Bird cussing out Oscar? No. But if I don't mind if he hears Detective Sipowicz telling a murder suspect that his story is full of shit, then that's my prerogative. If I DO mind if my kid hears such a thing, then he goes to bed, or neither he nor I watch the show. Don't try regulate MY viewing because you don't like what you see or hear on a particular show.
Comedian George Carlin achieved notoriety when Howard Stern purposely aired his "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television:" shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. And then there were the discretionary words like "balls" and "prick." "NYPD Blue" alone knocked three of those words off that list, plus both of the discretionary words above. I think it's only a matter of time -- perhaps a decade or three, as cable continues to erode broadcast's viewer base -- before we'll be able to hear common street language on free television, if we so choose. The Darwin Etymology.
Okay, I had a few beers tonight with some guys I work with, and I'm pretty damn tired, so I'm sorry if I rambled. The Point: words shouldn't be powerful as words alone. The power is and should be in ideas. No words should be banned from the airwaves, just as none is banned from our everyday speech. Insert thought-provoking, insightful ending here.
dassall
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Salt Lake City
As you already know – if you’ve read my earliest posts – I travel frequently. As I write, I am on a United Airlines Boeing 737-300 headed for Salt Lake City, Utah. I go there with some hesitation in my heart. It’s purely psychological, as nothing happened to me there, and nothing happened there to anyone else to make me wary.
I had just gotten out of the shower in my room at the Little America Hotel. I had used the hotel’s alarm clock to wake up, and I left the radio on while I went about my morning preparations. As I toweled off, I heard one of the on-air personalities interrupt the others by saying something to the effect of, “I know this sounds crazy, but I just read on the news wire that one of the towers of the World Trade Center is on fire.” The day was September 11, 2001. The reactions to the comment were of incredulity. “Yeah. Apparently a plane crashed into one of the buildings.”
I immediately turned on the television, for some reason thinking that a hapless, wayward single-engine Cessna’s pilot had experienced the worst day of his life and had made a fatal mistake in the sky above Manhattan. I vowed to flip through the channels until I came to the first images of the scene. I wound up on the local CBS affiliate, slaved over to the network, and the image I saw was of both towers with thick, black smoke pouring out of them. By about two minutes I had missed the live shot of the second plane coming in. Of course, just as everybody else in the world, save for a sinister few, I had no idea what was going on. I saw a huge, gaping hole roughly the size and shape of a large airplane in the tower nearer the camera, and I thought to myself, “That was no Cessna…". And then they replayed what had happened only moments earlier: the second plane. I said aloud to the otherwise empty room, “That was no accident!” In the back of my head I had this faint hope that some navigational system had gone horribly haywire, but my logic, flawed as it may be at times, said that was impossible.
Within minutes I heard the unconfirmed report of four airliners – two from United Air Lines and two from American Air Lines – that were unaccounted for. And the even shakier rumor that there had been some hijackings. And then there was a report of a “bomb” exploding at the Pentagon.
“We’re under attack,” I muttered aloud. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I sat at the desk, fired up the laptop and sent e-mail to my wife. I couldn’t think clearly enough to know what time it was in Chicago at that moment, nor could I know if she was watching the events unfold on TV. All I know is that I didn’t want her to be in her downtown Chicago office tower where she worked at that time. I remember writing something to the effect of, “I may be overreacting, but I don’t think you should be downtown today. I know the Sears tower is a couple miles away from you, but if it’s a target it’s too close. Please go home where you’ll be safest.” (By noon, Chicago time, the downtown area was all but deserted, on the strong recommendation of Mayor Daley.) It was another full hour or so before I heard the word, “attack,” used by any reporter, interviewee or hired expert at CBS.
My co-worker and frequent travel partner was in the room across the hall from mine. I called him on the phone and asked, “Are you watching TV or listening to the radio right now?”
“No.”
“Turn on the TV and find any news program.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“If I told you,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe me.”
Half an hour later he knocked on my door. When I opened it, the look on his face told me that he had done what I told him to do. We headed down to the hotel restaurant for a breakfast I certainly didn’t feel I could eat. We rode the elevator down to the first floor and walked to the restaurant, a trip of about four minutes. Where the hostess normally guided us past the bar and into the dining room, on this morning she took us straight into the bar where there was a television set in every corner, each tuned to a different network. I walked in to the bar and saw the same expression on every face. I looked at the nearest TV and saw nothing but clouds of smoke.
“Now what happened?” I asked to no one in particular.
Someone said, “One of the towers collapsed.”
I don’t remember what I said, or if I said anything. All I remember is that my knees buckled and I dropped to the floor. I kneeled in the middle of that bar for about a minute with my hands covering my mouth. As no one else in the country could at that moment, neither could I believe my eyes. And it seems in that moment I desensitized. Yes it was all horrible, and I was sad and angry at the same time, but I knew in that moment there was nothing I could do but watch as history unfurled in a dazzling electronic display before my eyes. When the second tower fell I simply said to my co-worker, “There goes the other one.” Inside I was screaming, but no emotion showed from me.
We walked the half-mile from the Little America hotel to the Salt Palace convention Center. Our stage had been up for a couple of days already with one general session already under our belt. When we walked backstage there were heated discussions about canceling the rest of the convention. We set ourselves up as an information center, projecting onto the huge 9x12 screens the convention center’s CNN cable feed. The reactions varied from people crying as they watched, to people making angry, anti-Muslim comments or threats, because by that time the general consensus among the expert analysts was that this was an al-Qaida operation.
Also by that time, the FAA had ordered closed all airports nationwide, so our client decided that, since everybody was essentially stuck in Salt Lake City, they might as well put the convention on, if not as planned, then slightly altered so as not to focus so much on fun, but rather patriotism.
In the vast hallways of the convention center there were TVs set up every fifty yards or so, and every one of them had a crowd of people in front of it. It was mesmerizing: even while looking at the images of the rubble and carnage of the fallen towers, no one could get his head around the reality that they were gone. They were really gone. I stood toward the end of the convention center farthest from our session hall, staring, just like everyone else, at a TV monitor. There was a woman beside me. I don’t know if she was with our client or not. Then, between us from behind stepped up a short Asian or Filipina woman who, judging by her uniform, must have been a convention center employee. And she must have been working alone deep in the bowels of the convention center because she stared at the TV with us for a few moments, and then asked the two of us, “What happened?”
I looked at the other woman beside me as she looked at me. If the look on my face showed only half as much shock as hers did, then I would be surprised. The first thing on my mind to say was, “Where the hell have you been all morning?” But I didn’t say that. I just told her that there had been terrorist attacks in Washington and New York City, where planes had been hijacked and crashed into the buildings.
The poor woman’s eyes nearly fell out of her head and her hands came up to her mouth. “Oh my god!” she gasped. “My husband works there!” And then she turned and ran away through the crowds of people. To this day I have no idea which “there” her husband worked in. The other woman and I looked at each other in horror, for we had just casually tossed out the facts, but we had brought this woman’s world crashing down around her. Of course, we had no way of knowing, but I still have that awful feeling of responsibility for, at the very least, frightening her nearly to death.
A couple of hours later my wife called me on my cell phone. I had not heard of anything bad happening in Chicago, so I was confident that she was okay. Nevertheless, when I heard her voice and knew she was safe, I couldn’t contain my emotions. I ran outside with the phone to my ear, both to get good reception and so that as few people as possible would see me blubbering on the phone! But blubber I did, and I don’t know why. I can only guess that it was being freed to release my emotions to someone close to me, as well as the relief that she was indeed home and safe. It took me a while to compose myself.
The convention continued, but it was a very somber, subdued event. But the number one concern on our minds, after wondering how many people might have died in the attacks, was how we were going to get home. There was no sign that the FAA would be opening the airports soon. Local news reports and people who were trying to get home were saying that all of the rental cars were gone from the city. However, the owner of our company saw an angle. All rental cars were gone, yet all airports were closed. All major airports have car rental offices on or very near their properties, and he knew for a fact that the Salt Lake City airport had them ON the property. He had one of the crew drive him to the airport where he was stopped by security. He told them that he had flown out of Salt Lake City a few days earlier and had just made it back to town, and now he needed to get his car out of the parking garage. The guard let him pass. He promptly went to his favorite rental agency and rented the two biggest vehicles they had available: a Ford Excursion and a Ford Expedition.
The next morning fifteen of us in two large vehicles set out from Salt Lake City for Chicago. For the most part the two days on the road were somber ones, listening to the radio reports from the World Trade Center and by the many “experts” who had a point to make. There were a few laughs, a few jokes to help lighten the mood, but it was one of those times when, though it felt good to laugh, it was a laugh laced with guilt, and with dreadful wonder about what the future must now hold for our nation.
And now, a hair past four full years since that awful day, I’ve returned. She’s a beautiful city, best bedecked in sunshine or a blanket of snow, or both. But there are certain corners of the convention center, certain views down a street or of a unique architectural structure that trigger memories of that sad, sad day. It is my hope that this stay in Salt Lake City will erase the bad memories I have of her that are not even her fault.
dassall
I had just gotten out of the shower in my room at the Little America Hotel. I had used the hotel’s alarm clock to wake up, and I left the radio on while I went about my morning preparations. As I toweled off, I heard one of the on-air personalities interrupt the others by saying something to the effect of, “I know this sounds crazy, but I just read on the news wire that one of the towers of the World Trade Center is on fire.” The day was September 11, 2001. The reactions to the comment were of incredulity. “Yeah. Apparently a plane crashed into one of the buildings.”
I immediately turned on the television, for some reason thinking that a hapless, wayward single-engine Cessna’s pilot had experienced the worst day of his life and had made a fatal mistake in the sky above Manhattan. I vowed to flip through the channels until I came to the first images of the scene. I wound up on the local CBS affiliate, slaved over to the network, and the image I saw was of both towers with thick, black smoke pouring out of them. By about two minutes I had missed the live shot of the second plane coming in. Of course, just as everybody else in the world, save for a sinister few, I had no idea what was going on. I saw a huge, gaping hole roughly the size and shape of a large airplane in the tower nearer the camera, and I thought to myself, “That was no Cessna…". And then they replayed what had happened only moments earlier: the second plane. I said aloud to the otherwise empty room, “That was no accident!” In the back of my head I had this faint hope that some navigational system had gone horribly haywire, but my logic, flawed as it may be at times, said that was impossible.
Within minutes I heard the unconfirmed report of four airliners – two from United Air Lines and two from American Air Lines – that were unaccounted for. And the even shakier rumor that there had been some hijackings. And then there was a report of a “bomb” exploding at the Pentagon.
“We’re under attack,” I muttered aloud. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I sat at the desk, fired up the laptop and sent e-mail to my wife. I couldn’t think clearly enough to know what time it was in Chicago at that moment, nor could I know if she was watching the events unfold on TV. All I know is that I didn’t want her to be in her downtown Chicago office tower where she worked at that time. I remember writing something to the effect of, “I may be overreacting, but I don’t think you should be downtown today. I know the Sears tower is a couple miles away from you, but if it’s a target it’s too close. Please go home where you’ll be safest.” (By noon, Chicago time, the downtown area was all but deserted, on the strong recommendation of Mayor Daley.) It was another full hour or so before I heard the word, “attack,” used by any reporter, interviewee or hired expert at CBS.
My co-worker and frequent travel partner was in the room across the hall from mine. I called him on the phone and asked, “Are you watching TV or listening to the radio right now?”
“No.”
“Turn on the TV and find any news program.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“If I told you,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe me.”
Half an hour later he knocked on my door. When I opened it, the look on his face told me that he had done what I told him to do. We headed down to the hotel restaurant for a breakfast I certainly didn’t feel I could eat. We rode the elevator down to the first floor and walked to the restaurant, a trip of about four minutes. Where the hostess normally guided us past the bar and into the dining room, on this morning she took us straight into the bar where there was a television set in every corner, each tuned to a different network. I walked in to the bar and saw the same expression on every face. I looked at the nearest TV and saw nothing but clouds of smoke.
“Now what happened?” I asked to no one in particular.
Someone said, “One of the towers collapsed.”
I don’t remember what I said, or if I said anything. All I remember is that my knees buckled and I dropped to the floor. I kneeled in the middle of that bar for about a minute with my hands covering my mouth. As no one else in the country could at that moment, neither could I believe my eyes. And it seems in that moment I desensitized. Yes it was all horrible, and I was sad and angry at the same time, but I knew in that moment there was nothing I could do but watch as history unfurled in a dazzling electronic display before my eyes. When the second tower fell I simply said to my co-worker, “There goes the other one.” Inside I was screaming, but no emotion showed from me.
We walked the half-mile from the Little America hotel to the Salt Palace convention Center. Our stage had been up for a couple of days already with one general session already under our belt. When we walked backstage there were heated discussions about canceling the rest of the convention. We set ourselves up as an information center, projecting onto the huge 9x12 screens the convention center’s CNN cable feed. The reactions varied from people crying as they watched, to people making angry, anti-Muslim comments or threats, because by that time the general consensus among the expert analysts was that this was an al-Qaida operation.
Also by that time, the FAA had ordered closed all airports nationwide, so our client decided that, since everybody was essentially stuck in Salt Lake City, they might as well put the convention on, if not as planned, then slightly altered so as not to focus so much on fun, but rather patriotism.
In the vast hallways of the convention center there were TVs set up every fifty yards or so, and every one of them had a crowd of people in front of it. It was mesmerizing: even while looking at the images of the rubble and carnage of the fallen towers, no one could get his head around the reality that they were gone. They were really gone. I stood toward the end of the convention center farthest from our session hall, staring, just like everyone else, at a TV monitor. There was a woman beside me. I don’t know if she was with our client or not. Then, between us from behind stepped up a short Asian or Filipina woman who, judging by her uniform, must have been a convention center employee. And she must have been working alone deep in the bowels of the convention center because she stared at the TV with us for a few moments, and then asked the two of us, “What happened?”
I looked at the other woman beside me as she looked at me. If the look on my face showed only half as much shock as hers did, then I would be surprised. The first thing on my mind to say was, “Where the hell have you been all morning?” But I didn’t say that. I just told her that there had been terrorist attacks in Washington and New York City, where planes had been hijacked and crashed into the buildings.
The poor woman’s eyes nearly fell out of her head and her hands came up to her mouth. “Oh my god!” she gasped. “My husband works there!” And then she turned and ran away through the crowds of people. To this day I have no idea which “there” her husband worked in. The other woman and I looked at each other in horror, for we had just casually tossed out the facts, but we had brought this woman’s world crashing down around her. Of course, we had no way of knowing, but I still have that awful feeling of responsibility for, at the very least, frightening her nearly to death.
A couple of hours later my wife called me on my cell phone. I had not heard of anything bad happening in Chicago, so I was confident that she was okay. Nevertheless, when I heard her voice and knew she was safe, I couldn’t contain my emotions. I ran outside with the phone to my ear, both to get good reception and so that as few people as possible would see me blubbering on the phone! But blubber I did, and I don’t know why. I can only guess that it was being freed to release my emotions to someone close to me, as well as the relief that she was indeed home and safe. It took me a while to compose myself.
The convention continued, but it was a very somber, subdued event. But the number one concern on our minds, after wondering how many people might have died in the attacks, was how we were going to get home. There was no sign that the FAA would be opening the airports soon. Local news reports and people who were trying to get home were saying that all of the rental cars were gone from the city. However, the owner of our company saw an angle. All rental cars were gone, yet all airports were closed. All major airports have car rental offices on or very near their properties, and he knew for a fact that the Salt Lake City airport had them ON the property. He had one of the crew drive him to the airport where he was stopped by security. He told them that he had flown out of Salt Lake City a few days earlier and had just made it back to town, and now he needed to get his car out of the parking garage. The guard let him pass. He promptly went to his favorite rental agency and rented the two biggest vehicles they had available: a Ford Excursion and a Ford Expedition.
The next morning fifteen of us in two large vehicles set out from Salt Lake City for Chicago. For the most part the two days on the road were somber ones, listening to the radio reports from the World Trade Center and by the many “experts” who had a point to make. There were a few laughs, a few jokes to help lighten the mood, but it was one of those times when, though it felt good to laugh, it was a laugh laced with guilt, and with dreadful wonder about what the future must now hold for our nation.
And now, a hair past four full years since that awful day, I’ve returned. She’s a beautiful city, best bedecked in sunshine or a blanket of snow, or both. But there are certain corners of the convention center, certain views down a street or of a unique architectural structure that trigger memories of that sad, sad day. It is my hope that this stay in Salt Lake City will erase the bad memories I have of her that are not even her fault.
dassall
Tubes
This thought occurred to me today: we, all of us living things, are really just tubes. We take food into the tube, the tube does stuff to the food to keep us living, and then we push out what’s left of the food that we don’t want or need, and to make room for more food in our tubes. Seeing as how food is being processed by our tube, both ends of the tube, if not cleaned or cared for properly, can be pretty smelly at times.
Some of us are systems designed simply for the purpose of finding more stuff for our tube and, in some cases, to be put through other tubes(!). In other words, some of us are beings that simply provide for the tube. Others of us are systems for which the tube provides. The tube sustains us as we do other things. We do not exist solely for the tube, as evidenced by the occasion that we get so consumed by other things that we “forget” to feed the tube.
Anyway, that was my weird thought today.
Another thought I had, this one long, long ago but that has stuck with me, is that most things on our planet – man-made or naturally occurring – are, simply put, just containers of other things. If you think in that mode, you’ll see that it covers just about everything.
Almost anything: a garage contains a car contains a person contains organs contain blood (et.al.) contains cells. A house contains all your stuff which contains everything else. A house: container of containers.
It works even in the abstract: a photograph may not contain an image, as it is photo-sensitive chemicals on paper (or, in the digital sense, magnetically excited oxides arranged accordingly, and then stimulated electrons on a screen and/or ink on paper), but the image itself “contains” memories for us or for posterity. A skull contains a brain contains thoughts and memories.
And with that I must cease this post. I’ve just gotten too deep for myself.
dassall
Some of us are systems designed simply for the purpose of finding more stuff for our tube and, in some cases, to be put through other tubes(!). In other words, some of us are beings that simply provide for the tube. Others of us are systems for which the tube provides. The tube sustains us as we do other things. We do not exist solely for the tube, as evidenced by the occasion that we get so consumed by other things that we “forget” to feed the tube.
Anyway, that was my weird thought today.
Another thought I had, this one long, long ago but that has stuck with me, is that most things on our planet – man-made or naturally occurring – are, simply put, just containers of other things. If you think in that mode, you’ll see that it covers just about everything.
Almost anything: a garage contains a car contains a person contains organs contain blood (et.al.) contains cells. A house contains all your stuff which contains everything else. A house: container of containers.
It works even in the abstract: a photograph may not contain an image, as it is photo-sensitive chemicals on paper (or, in the digital sense, magnetically excited oxides arranged accordingly, and then stimulated electrons on a screen and/or ink on paper), but the image itself “contains” memories for us or for posterity. A skull contains a brain contains thoughts and memories.
And with that I must cease this post. I’ve just gotten too deep for myself.
dassall
Thursday, September 22, 2005
I Wonder...
Is it just me, or does "Austin, Texas" sound a lot like "ostentatious?"
os·ten·ta·tious adjective marked by or fond of conspicuous or vainglorious and sometimes pretentious display
Nothing against Austin. Just noticed it and... well, you read the question.
os·ten·ta·tious adjective marked by or fond of conspicuous or vainglorious and sometimes pretentious display
Nothing against Austin. Just noticed it and... well, you read the question.
Monday, September 19, 2005
It's My Sidewalk, Too, Dammit!
I really hate you fuckers who think you're the only people on the planet. I take a walk down any city street, or in a mall, or anywhere more than ten people gather for whatever reason, and I see it. It's a sidewalk or walkway, four to thirty feet wide, and you're there: you fuckers who don't notice any other humans besides yourselves. You walk in groups of two or three or four or more, all in a line abreast (that's shoulder-to-shoulder for those of you about whom I write). No matter how wide the thoroughfare, you expand to occupy the entire width. And then there's me. Alone. Carrying stuff. Lots of stuff. A cake in a box. A jug of milk. Clothes for/from The Salvation Army. Grandpa's favorite bowling ball. I face you and you face me as we walk toward each other. To one side of your horde I have the curb and certain death by traffic. To the other I have the unyielding brick façade of the Fourth/Fifth National American Bank. We draw exponentially nearer. Collision is imminent. And does any of you move?
HELL NO. Why? Because I'm not there! At least you don't see me. Therefore I'm not there. And because I'm the polite one, the one with a minute smidgen of manners, I slow. I stop. I step aside while not a one of you reciprocates to allow me to pass.
And sometimes its worse if I'm behind your group. Why? Because the more of you there are in the group, the slower you must walk.
So from now on, I will no longer give 100% of the sidewalk to you. I will no longer be the one expected to get out of the way. If you're stupid enough not to acknowledge my approach and give at least half your body width to match the half of mine I give, then you're stupid enough to get run over, with a little extra shoulder thrown in for good measure, a little reminder in case you forget how stupid you are.
*SIGH*
dassall
HELL NO. Why? Because I'm not there! At least you don't see me. Therefore I'm not there. And because I'm the polite one, the one with a minute smidgen of manners, I slow. I stop. I step aside while not a one of you reciprocates to allow me to pass.
And sometimes its worse if I'm behind your group. Why? Because the more of you there are in the group, the slower you must walk.
So from now on, I will no longer give 100% of the sidewalk to you. I will no longer be the one expected to get out of the way. If you're stupid enough not to acknowledge my approach and give at least half your body width to match the half of mine I give, then you're stupid enough to get run over, with a little extra shoulder thrown in for good measure, a little reminder in case you forget how stupid you are.
*SIGH*
dassall
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Nostalgic Wax
This afternoon I was folding laundry and listening to the ‘70s channel of the Dish Network’s satellite music service. The Carpenters song, “We’ve Only Just Begun” came on and I looked at the screen and noticed the name of the CD from which the song played was titled something like, “Greatest Hits, 1969-1981.” Now, I don’t know if I’m a child of the ‘70s or the ‘80s. I don’t really know exactly what that term means. I was a child during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I became a teenager in the ‘70s, and finished high school and reached legal adulthood in the ‘80s. So what the heck am I?
But back to the topic at hand. I thought back to 1981. I turned seventeen that year. I started my senior year in high school. I was a lanky, gawky, geeky, nerdy kid who thought he was the funniest in his class. I thought today about thinking back 25 years back then. Back then, 25 years ago was 1956. I remember thinking that the ‘50s seemed like such a remote, primitive time compared to all the technology we possessed in the heady days of 1981. I thought about all the things we had at the time that hadn’t even been imagined in 1956. Man hadn’t been to the moon. Hell, man hadn’t even been to space! No one had even THOUGHT of going to the moon. Okay, I guess a lot of people had thought about it, but few had ever thought it could or would be done, and certainly not within the next fifteen years.
Personal stereos. The Walkman. Twenty-five years earlier, the transistor radio was still a marvel. And now we had a personal stereo, and it was capable of playing music of our own choosing, on a cassette tape! In two separate high-fidelity channels!! Who in 1956 would have ever thought they could do that? Color TV? Perhaps it was available, but who had it? Who could afford it? Cable TV? It existed, perhaps, but strictly for people in areas where TV signals were blocked by big geography, like mountains. The personal computer. We were learning BASIC language on what came to be not-so-affectionately referred to as “Trash-80s.” (the Tandy-Radio Shack TRS-80.) And I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I had to know this stuff. As it turned out, I never really learned it! I could list thousands of innovations that were in use in 1981 that hadn’t even been dreamed of in 1956 – that is, if I knew all of them – but I’m babbling again.
My point…finally. Twenty-five years of history is not as remote when you’ve lived it as when you only read about it or see it in movies or TV. When I saw “1981” on my TV screen this afternoon, I did sort of a nanosecond flashback that covered the time-span of 24 years and change. I tried to think of the ‘80s as remote and primitive as the ‘50s, but my brain couldn’t do it. I lived there. It didn’t seem remote and primitive at the time, and it doesn’t seem that way now. CRAP! Most of the time it seems like just a few days ago! I tried to picture the thoughts of a 17-year-old today thinking back to what it must have been like to be alive way back in the early ‘80s when his mom and dad were teenagers and, well, I still couldn’t do it.
But I do get it when I see a movie contemporary of the time, or a photo what shows some “new” technology, or the rare home movie (super8, thankyouverymuch!), or the even rarer home video, that can serve as time capsules. That’s when the new, streamlined items of “convenience” just appear absurdly large and cumbersome today.
Picture your average kid doing the average thing today while doing nothing: playing with his/her Game Boy. I don’t remember the year, but I do remember the game: Mattel Electronic Football, perhaps the great-granddaddy to the Game Boy. It was a handheld game, slightly larger than today’s less sleek Palm-style PDAs. It had maybe six buttons on it, four of which were used to maneuver a solitary little LED blip between various arrays of other little LED blips. If you tried to get your blip to occupy the same diode that a “defender” blip occupied, or the “defenders” caught up to your blip, you were tackled. The sound at the tackle, which I can only guess is an electronic rendition of a referee’s whistle, is forever preserved for posterity near the end of Supertramp’s “The Logical Song,” from their “Breakfast In America” album, which came out in 1979, thus dating the game actually before the ‘80s. This game was outclassed a year or two after its debut by Coleco’s version of electronic football. This game allowed a player to “throw” a pass! My best friend’s younger brother had this game, and it made me envious. And even I was shocked at how quickly the fervor for these games spiked (these toys were forever sold out, especially during the holiday shopping season) and then waned. I begged for this toy for a whole year, got it at Christmas, probably 1980, and by March of ‘81 I never played with it again.
I babbled again. These toys were just simply controlling little red blips on a diode array. Twenty-five years later, on a toy essentially the same size, we have highly detailed, highly sophisticated animations that we can control with buttons and maneuver our characters through incredibly intricate mazes and imaginary worlds, and entertain ourselves for hours and hours.
But I cannot allow myself to think of Mattel Electronic Football, or the AM/FM stereo/cassette player Walkman, or the 64Kb computer as 25+ year-old relics, for to admit that they are relics, so must I admit am I.
And I just can’t do that.
dassall
But back to the topic at hand. I thought back to 1981. I turned seventeen that year. I started my senior year in high school. I was a lanky, gawky, geeky, nerdy kid who thought he was the funniest in his class. I thought today about thinking back 25 years back then. Back then, 25 years ago was 1956. I remember thinking that the ‘50s seemed like such a remote, primitive time compared to all the technology we possessed in the heady days of 1981. I thought about all the things we had at the time that hadn’t even been imagined in 1956. Man hadn’t been to the moon. Hell, man hadn’t even been to space! No one had even THOUGHT of going to the moon. Okay, I guess a lot of people had thought about it, but few had ever thought it could or would be done, and certainly not within the next fifteen years.
Personal stereos. The Walkman. Twenty-five years earlier, the transistor radio was still a marvel. And now we had a personal stereo, and it was capable of playing music of our own choosing, on a cassette tape! In two separate high-fidelity channels!! Who in 1956 would have ever thought they could do that? Color TV? Perhaps it was available, but who had it? Who could afford it? Cable TV? It existed, perhaps, but strictly for people in areas where TV signals were blocked by big geography, like mountains. The personal computer. We were learning BASIC language on what came to be not-so-affectionately referred to as “Trash-80s.” (the Tandy-Radio Shack TRS-80.) And I could not, for the life of me, figure out why I had to know this stuff. As it turned out, I never really learned it! I could list thousands of innovations that were in use in 1981 that hadn’t even been dreamed of in 1956 – that is, if I knew all of them – but I’m babbling again.
My point…finally. Twenty-five years of history is not as remote when you’ve lived it as when you only read about it or see it in movies or TV. When I saw “1981” on my TV screen this afternoon, I did sort of a nanosecond flashback that covered the time-span of 24 years and change. I tried to think of the ‘80s as remote and primitive as the ‘50s, but my brain couldn’t do it. I lived there. It didn’t seem remote and primitive at the time, and it doesn’t seem that way now. CRAP! Most of the time it seems like just a few days ago! I tried to picture the thoughts of a 17-year-old today thinking back to what it must have been like to be alive way back in the early ‘80s when his mom and dad were teenagers and, well, I still couldn’t do it.
But I do get it when I see a movie contemporary of the time, or a photo what shows some “new” technology, or the rare home movie (super8, thankyouverymuch!), or the even rarer home video, that can serve as time capsules. That’s when the new, streamlined items of “convenience” just appear absurdly large and cumbersome today.
Picture your average kid doing the average thing today while doing nothing: playing with his/her Game Boy. I don’t remember the year, but I do remember the game: Mattel Electronic Football, perhaps the great-granddaddy to the Game Boy. It was a handheld game, slightly larger than today’s less sleek Palm-style PDAs. It had maybe six buttons on it, four of which were used to maneuver a solitary little LED blip between various arrays of other little LED blips. If you tried to get your blip to occupy the same diode that a “defender” blip occupied, or the “defenders” caught up to your blip, you were tackled. The sound at the tackle, which I can only guess is an electronic rendition of a referee’s whistle, is forever preserved for posterity near the end of Supertramp’s “The Logical Song,” from their “Breakfast In America” album, which came out in 1979, thus dating the game actually before the ‘80s. This game was outclassed a year or two after its debut by Coleco’s version of electronic football. This game allowed a player to “throw” a pass! My best friend’s younger brother had this game, and it made me envious. And even I was shocked at how quickly the fervor for these games spiked (these toys were forever sold out, especially during the holiday shopping season) and then waned. I begged for this toy for a whole year, got it at Christmas, probably 1980, and by March of ‘81 I never played with it again.
I babbled again. These toys were just simply controlling little red blips on a diode array. Twenty-five years later, on a toy essentially the same size, we have highly detailed, highly sophisticated animations that we can control with buttons and maneuver our characters through incredibly intricate mazes and imaginary worlds, and entertain ourselves for hours and hours.
But I cannot allow myself to think of Mattel Electronic Football, or the AM/FM stereo/cassette player Walkman, or the 64Kb computer as 25+ year-old relics, for to admit that they are relics, so must I admit am I.
And I just can’t do that.
dassall
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Reunion
"Rudy" was just a dumb kid back then. Fresh out of basic and tech school(s). A child of money. His first duty station was at Wüschheim Air Station in what was at the time West Germany. He was my roommate. We were three to a room in the dorms. My other roommate -- let's call him "Floyd" -- and I had gone through the most recent bout of training enroute to this duty assignment in the same class, which was where we had formed our friendship. We were two of a kind -- a couple of goofballs. We were experienced, veteran airmen for we had each been in the Air Force for a full two years. Yes we were dumb kids back then, too, but what dumb kid KNOWS he's a dumb kid? We were older than "Rudy," and that gave us the occasion to think we were smarter than he.
Almost from the start "Rudy" got on our nerves. He was gifted in many ways. He was endowed with great looks that he didn't have to cultivate or fabricate -- with the restrictive military regulations regarding appearance, there was only so much a young man could do with his hair, yet "Rudy" could walk into a room at a club, and within seconds be in conversation with two or three women.
And he was endowed with a natural charm: what his looks attracted, his charisma won over.
And he was just plain ENDOWED! (He was my roommate. There are certain things you never want to see, but you see them anyway!)
He was talented. He could do with his hands and a pencil or pen or paintbrush things we couldn't even picture in our minds. The "back office" took advantage of those talents and put him to work not out in the elements like the rest of us hardened, experienced airmen, but in the squadron office, painting murals and unit logos.
This kid seemed to have everything I did not. Needless to say, I was envious.
Not long after he had arrived in our room, he had a favor to ask of me since I had a car. I obliged. Without going into detail, I will say it involved going out "on the economy," or into the town just off base. The directions he had been given were erroneous, and finding the store meant asking a local. I had a limited understanding and vocabulary of German, but I managed -- with much difficulty -- to speak to and understand an old villager. "Rudy" seemed in awe of me after that incident.
"Floyd" and I worked the night shift, sleeping through the day. "Rudy" would come in after his painting and artwork shift ended at 5:00pm, turn on the stereo, converse with friends at the door, and generally disrupt our sleep. We asked him to stop it, but he just didn't seem to get it. After several failed efforts to get him to consider our needs, to consider the importance of a full night's (day's!) sleep, "Floyd" and I lobbied the dorm chief to have "Rudy" relocated. The request was honored. "Rudy" was out.
"Floyd" and I, from that day forward, harbored a resentment toward "Rudy." I know that my resentment was more for "Rudy's" gifts than for his inconsiderate attitude. Nonetheless, I participated in daily trash talk about and to "Rudy." Yet, as mean as I felt I was toward the kid, he always seemed to like me. If he saw me in the club on base, he always came over to my table, two drinks in hand because one was for me, and he would join me, if only for a few minutes. To the two or three women who would always stop by to talk to him, he would introduce me as "the coolest guy" he knew. It never rubbed off. When he left the table, the girls left with him. As always, my resentment of him magnified with every reminder of what he had that I did not.
My time in the Air Force came to an end when my tour at Wüschheim was finished. I went home, moved on with my life, losing track of all of my friends but one, a guy I had known since tech school, almost at the very start of my service. About three years after I got out, I received a phone call out of the blue from "Rudy." It goes without saying that I was actually dismayed that he had found me. Why was this guy calling me? Didn't I abuse him enough? We chatted for a while, and he told me of the trouble he had gotten into in the Air Force and out, all of it to do with drinking. The thought in my head was "Stupid 'Rudy.'" We finished our chat, and I hung up the phone and all but forgot about him.
Nearly twenty years after getting out I've found myself thinking about "Rudy" a lot. It started off with an e-mail to "Floyd," who's still in the Air Force and facing retirement soon. We shared a few memories, and "Rudy's" name came up. We trashed him, as always, but afterward I realized that while I trashed him in the present, the person I saw in my memory was the nineteen-year-old kid who had come stumbling into my relatively comfortable world twenty years ago. That bothered me about me. So I tried to imagine what he could possibly be doing today, but the only image I could conjure was the scrawny, wiry kid with the stupid smile on his face and a drink in his hand. I projected that forward twenty years, and the only difference was that he had a few wrinkles on his face.
Then I found myself on a plane, for a business trip, touching down in "Rudy's" home town. The wonder stirred up in me again, and I knew I just had to try to look him up, see if he remembered me, and see if he would care to get together for old time's sake. Much to my surprise, he was there. It took a simple search online, and one phone call. Two days later we sat facing each other across a table, chewing the fat enthusiastically, poring over old photos he had brought along. And I saw that he was a lot like me. He still has his hair (I don't), but he's stacked on the pounds in the past few years, just like me, a testament to the good life he lives with his wife and daughter. The former ladies' man has been married for twelve years. He owns his own business(es). What shocked me to learn was that he admittedly had probably not been sober for more than eight hours straight for practically his entire four-year stint in the Air Force. The party boy straightened out and got his degree, and he now does for a living the thing he loves more than anything else to do: art. Seated across the table from me was the "Rudy" I wished he had been back then. I can't help but think that his undiscovered drinking problem while in the Air Force was the sole reason why he was so unbearable back then, as well as why he was so oblivious to the indifference and thinly veiled hostility we sent his way.
He had been a talented, intelligent, "dumb" kid whom I believed had everything, yet didn't know how to behave in the world around him, and it took a couple of really hard knocks to get him to learn. But it took twenty years and an impromptu reunion for me to learn that, for everything he had that I didn't, "Rudy" envied qualities and talents I possessed of which I was never aware, or which I would never acknowledge.
What's the lesson here? I can't seem to put it into words. It's all about self-worth and envy and using what you have to make yourself more than what you already are rather than to make others seem less than what they are. But I can't seem to put it into words.
To "Rudy," my new old friend.
dassall
Almost from the start "Rudy" got on our nerves. He was gifted in many ways. He was endowed with great looks that he didn't have to cultivate or fabricate -- with the restrictive military regulations regarding appearance, there was only so much a young man could do with his hair, yet "Rudy" could walk into a room at a club, and within seconds be in conversation with two or three women.
And he was endowed with a natural charm: what his looks attracted, his charisma won over.
And he was just plain ENDOWED! (He was my roommate. There are certain things you never want to see, but you see them anyway!)
He was talented. He could do with his hands and a pencil or pen or paintbrush things we couldn't even picture in our minds. The "back office" took advantage of those talents and put him to work not out in the elements like the rest of us hardened, experienced airmen, but in the squadron office, painting murals and unit logos.
This kid seemed to have everything I did not. Needless to say, I was envious.
Not long after he had arrived in our room, he had a favor to ask of me since I had a car. I obliged. Without going into detail, I will say it involved going out "on the economy," or into the town just off base. The directions he had been given were erroneous, and finding the store meant asking a local. I had a limited understanding and vocabulary of German, but I managed -- with much difficulty -- to speak to and understand an old villager. "Rudy" seemed in awe of me after that incident.
"Floyd" and I worked the night shift, sleeping through the day. "Rudy" would come in after his painting and artwork shift ended at 5:00pm, turn on the stereo, converse with friends at the door, and generally disrupt our sleep. We asked him to stop it, but he just didn't seem to get it. After several failed efforts to get him to consider our needs, to consider the importance of a full night's (day's!) sleep, "Floyd" and I lobbied the dorm chief to have "Rudy" relocated. The request was honored. "Rudy" was out.
"Floyd" and I, from that day forward, harbored a resentment toward "Rudy." I know that my resentment was more for "Rudy's" gifts than for his inconsiderate attitude. Nonetheless, I participated in daily trash talk about and to "Rudy." Yet, as mean as I felt I was toward the kid, he always seemed to like me. If he saw me in the club on base, he always came over to my table, two drinks in hand because one was for me, and he would join me, if only for a few minutes. To the two or three women who would always stop by to talk to him, he would introduce me as "the coolest guy" he knew. It never rubbed off. When he left the table, the girls left with him. As always, my resentment of him magnified with every reminder of what he had that I did not.
My time in the Air Force came to an end when my tour at Wüschheim was finished. I went home, moved on with my life, losing track of all of my friends but one, a guy I had known since tech school, almost at the very start of my service. About three years after I got out, I received a phone call out of the blue from "Rudy." It goes without saying that I was actually dismayed that he had found me. Why was this guy calling me? Didn't I abuse him enough? We chatted for a while, and he told me of the trouble he had gotten into in the Air Force and out, all of it to do with drinking. The thought in my head was "Stupid 'Rudy.'" We finished our chat, and I hung up the phone and all but forgot about him.
Nearly twenty years after getting out I've found myself thinking about "Rudy" a lot. It started off with an e-mail to "Floyd," who's still in the Air Force and facing retirement soon. We shared a few memories, and "Rudy's" name came up. We trashed him, as always, but afterward I realized that while I trashed him in the present, the person I saw in my memory was the nineteen-year-old kid who had come stumbling into my relatively comfortable world twenty years ago. That bothered me about me. So I tried to imagine what he could possibly be doing today, but the only image I could conjure was the scrawny, wiry kid with the stupid smile on his face and a drink in his hand. I projected that forward twenty years, and the only difference was that he had a few wrinkles on his face.
Then I found myself on a plane, for a business trip, touching down in "Rudy's" home town. The wonder stirred up in me again, and I knew I just had to try to look him up, see if he remembered me, and see if he would care to get together for old time's sake. Much to my surprise, he was there. It took a simple search online, and one phone call. Two days later we sat facing each other across a table, chewing the fat enthusiastically, poring over old photos he had brought along. And I saw that he was a lot like me. He still has his hair (I don't), but he's stacked on the pounds in the past few years, just like me, a testament to the good life he lives with his wife and daughter. The former ladies' man has been married for twelve years. He owns his own business(es). What shocked me to learn was that he admittedly had probably not been sober for more than eight hours straight for practically his entire four-year stint in the Air Force. The party boy straightened out and got his degree, and he now does for a living the thing he loves more than anything else to do: art. Seated across the table from me was the "Rudy" I wished he had been back then. I can't help but think that his undiscovered drinking problem while in the Air Force was the sole reason why he was so unbearable back then, as well as why he was so oblivious to the indifference and thinly veiled hostility we sent his way.
He had been a talented, intelligent, "dumb" kid whom I believed had everything, yet didn't know how to behave in the world around him, and it took a couple of really hard knocks to get him to learn. But it took twenty years and an impromptu reunion for me to learn that, for everything he had that I didn't, "Rudy" envied qualities and talents I possessed of which I was never aware, or which I would never acknowledge.
What's the lesson here? I can't seem to put it into words. It's all about self-worth and envy and using what you have to make yourself more than what you already are rather than to make others seem less than what they are. But I can't seem to put it into words.
To "Rudy," my new old friend.
dassall
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Okay
It's great to feel great. Sometimes it's good to feel bad, even though we may not like it. Emotionally bad. It can give us the oomph to improve ourselves or our surroundings. Physically bad, not so good.
But what about that vast area in between? We don't feel great, but we don't feel like crawling under a rock to die. We don't even feel good. Or melancholy.
Today I feel ...okay. I've done nothing great. I haven't helped anybody, nor been helped by anybody. I didn't give scads of cash to a needy organization, didn't give blood. I didn't offend anyone intentionally, nor am I aware of having done so unintentionally. I made some people laugh. Some made me laugh. But aside from laughter being special in its own right, it was nothing special. I'm not especially happy, but neither am I especially unhappy.
"Hi. How ya doing?"
"I'm okay."
One can read so much into "okay," as though it were a mask for underlying distress. And we do use it that way:
"How ya doin'?"
"(Well, my mother-in-law moved in yesterday and she's a terrible cook, yet she insists that she cook for us, and her favorite ingredient is beets; and my daughter's dating a medical school student, but my daughter's only fifteen; and my wife just discovered a large lump in her breast, but) I'm okay."
But sometimes we're just okay. Not bad. Not great. Not angry. Not joyous. Not hungry. Not stuffed. Not sleepy. Not terribly alert....
So the next time someone says he's "okay," he probably is just that. Just realize that you just failed to make his day great. Face that challenge and perhaps you will have lifted your day up from "okay" to ...something better than "okay."
Okay?
(I had this idea for a GREAT post, but then I ran out of steam, and it turned out merely okay. Sorry.)
dassall
But what about that vast area in between? We don't feel great, but we don't feel like crawling under a rock to die. We don't even feel good. Or melancholy.
Today I feel ...okay. I've done nothing great. I haven't helped anybody, nor been helped by anybody. I didn't give scads of cash to a needy organization, didn't give blood. I didn't offend anyone intentionally, nor am I aware of having done so unintentionally. I made some people laugh. Some made me laugh. But aside from laughter being special in its own right, it was nothing special. I'm not especially happy, but neither am I especially unhappy.
"Hi. How ya doing?"
"I'm okay."
One can read so much into "okay," as though it were a mask for underlying distress. And we do use it that way:
"How ya doin'?"
"(Well, my mother-in-law moved in yesterday and she's a terrible cook, yet she insists that she cook for us, and her favorite ingredient is beets; and my daughter's dating a medical school student, but my daughter's only fifteen; and my wife just discovered a large lump in her breast, but) I'm okay."
But sometimes we're just okay. Not bad. Not great. Not angry. Not joyous. Not hungry. Not stuffed. Not sleepy. Not terribly alert....
So the next time someone says he's "okay," he probably is just that. Just realize that you just failed to make his day great. Face that challenge and perhaps you will have lifted your day up from "okay" to ...something better than "okay."
Okay?
(I had this idea for a GREAT post, but then I ran out of steam, and it turned out merely okay. Sorry.)
dassall
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Good-bye, Gilligan
Yesterday's (Tuesday September 7, 2005) news of Bob Denver's death hit me kind of hard. But what hit me even harder was hearing that he was age 70! Qualified as a "Boomer," born in the last official year of the post-World War II baby boom, I identified on a couple levels with the show for which Bob Denver was forever instantly identified, and the role which conferred upon him the status of Pop Culture Icon.
First - though I learned this long after the show had ceased production - the show and I were the same age. When I learned of its first year of production, I watched with a renewed interest for insight into the lingo, fashions, and social behaviors of the mid-1960s.
Second, I grew up on the show. Very short-lived, off the air before I was even aware that the glowing noise-box in the living room had a purpose (or does it?), it thrived in later years in synidication, as it does in places still today. When I was a small boy I used to get angry that they could be so close to rescue, but it would somehow get screwed up, and whether justified or not, Gilligan was always held to blame. And when it wasn't justified, I got even angrier. Of course, I never understood or cared that their rescue would have meant the end of the show.
When I was a little older I always wanted Gilligan to succumb to Ginger's temptation. Never mind that her intentions were never in anyone's best interest but her own! And when I was a teenager my testosterone-flooded brain was certain that, though the cameras couldn't show it, the girls and the boys were getting it on regularly! That is, except for Thurston and Lovie, whom, even in my worst nightmares, I couldn't picture doing THAT!
And yet older, knowing most, if not all, of the gags and jokes, I appreciated the show for its Hollywood humorcraft: bump, set, PUNCHLINE! Never mind that the laughter came from a can. Nevermind that, no matter how brilliant the professor's next idea, they would never get off that island. Nevermind that, no matter how alluring and willing Ginger might seem to be, Gilligan still had to wander off into the jungle and violate a papaya.
As I reached adulthood I realized I prefer Mary Ann. I actually even met her - Dawn Wells, that is - at a TV station where I worked in 1996. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon! You figure it out.
So, though Bob Denver passed with little notice in the shadows of Katrina, and of Justice Rehnquist, my heart broke a little. He was forever young in his Technicolor red shirt, pale blue jeans and sailor's hat, so it was a shock to hear his age, just as much as it was a shock to hear he was gone. He was part of my psyche. I've long since reckoned with myself that it was indeed Gilligan with whom I identified on the show. I wanted those responsible to receive his blame. When it was his fault, I felt bad for him. I wanted him to get Ginger because I wanted Ginger! Then I wanted Mary Ann! And then I wanted them BOTH! He is part of my sense of humor, that slightly slapstick, slightly dopey deadpan I lay on my friends, family and co-workers. Indeed, he is part of my life.
Willie Gilligan, I'm sad to see you go.
dassall
First - though I learned this long after the show had ceased production - the show and I were the same age. When I learned of its first year of production, I watched with a renewed interest for insight into the lingo, fashions, and social behaviors of the mid-1960s.
Second, I grew up on the show. Very short-lived, off the air before I was even aware that the glowing noise-box in the living room had a purpose (or does it?), it thrived in later years in synidication, as it does in places still today. When I was a small boy I used to get angry that they could be so close to rescue, but it would somehow get screwed up, and whether justified or not, Gilligan was always held to blame. And when it wasn't justified, I got even angrier. Of course, I never understood or cared that their rescue would have meant the end of the show.
When I was a little older I always wanted Gilligan to succumb to Ginger's temptation. Never mind that her intentions were never in anyone's best interest but her own! And when I was a teenager my testosterone-flooded brain was certain that, though the cameras couldn't show it, the girls and the boys were getting it on regularly! That is, except for Thurston and Lovie, whom, even in my worst nightmares, I couldn't picture doing THAT!
And yet older, knowing most, if not all, of the gags and jokes, I appreciated the show for its Hollywood humorcraft: bump, set, PUNCHLINE! Never mind that the laughter came from a can. Nevermind that, no matter how brilliant the professor's next idea, they would never get off that island. Nevermind that, no matter how alluring and willing Ginger might seem to be, Gilligan still had to wander off into the jungle and violate a papaya.
As I reached adulthood I realized I prefer Mary Ann. I actually even met her - Dawn Wells, that is - at a TV station where I worked in 1996. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon! You figure it out.
So, though Bob Denver passed with little notice in the shadows of Katrina, and of Justice Rehnquist, my heart broke a little. He was forever young in his Technicolor red shirt, pale blue jeans and sailor's hat, so it was a shock to hear his age, just as much as it was a shock to hear he was gone. He was part of my psyche. I've long since reckoned with myself that it was indeed Gilligan with whom I identified on the show. I wanted those responsible to receive his blame. When it was his fault, I felt bad for him. I wanted him to get Ginger because I wanted Ginger! Then I wanted Mary Ann! And then I wanted them BOTH! He is part of my sense of humor, that slightly slapstick, slightly dopey deadpan I lay on my friends, family and co-workers. Indeed, he is part of my life.
Willie Gilligan, I'm sad to see you go.
dassall
Katrina's Refugees
I've heard several people -- politicians, city workers, some plain folk on the streets -- complain about the use of the word "refugee" in regard to the citizens of New Orleans displaced by the tragedies in their city. With all the important issues regarding the care of the city's residents, the least important is what to call those people forced to flee -- whether by fear, floodwaters, or the mayor's evacuation order. They're refugees, plain and simple.
From Merriam-Webster Online:
ref·u·gee
Pronunciation: "re-fyu-'jE, 're-fyu-"
Function: noun
Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Latin refugium
: one that flees; especially (emphasis theirs): a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
The term "especially," as far as I'm concerned, is insignificant here. The average New Orleanian (so I made up a word!) who finds him- or herself transplanted to Pocatello, Idaho, might as well be in a foreign country. The important phrase in the definition, in fact THE definition, is "one who flees." These people have fled. They've left their homes and have washed ashore, as it were, in lands foreign to them (Minneapolis?! That's about as opposite from New Orleans as you can get!)
They're refugees, plain and simple. Everybody else just deal with it.
dassall
From Merriam-Webster Online:
ref·u·gee
Pronunciation: "re-fyu-'jE, 're-fyu-"
Function: noun
Etymology: French réfugié, past participle of (se) réfugier to take refuge, from Latin refugium
: one that flees; especially (emphasis theirs): a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
The term "especially," as far as I'm concerned, is insignificant here. The average New Orleanian (so I made up a word!) who finds him- or herself transplanted to Pocatello, Idaho, might as well be in a foreign country. The important phrase in the definition, in fact THE definition, is "one who flees." These people have fled. They've left their homes and have washed ashore, as it were, in lands foreign to them (Minneapolis?! That's about as opposite from New Orleans as you can get!)
They're refugees, plain and simple. Everybody else just deal with it.
dassall
Monday, September 05, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Hurricane Katrina, another thought afterthought
Okay, some four days later, I FINALLY hear via MSNBC that some other countries have offered aid: Great Britain offered half a million aid packets. Afghanistan pledged 100-thousand dollars in assistance, though that seems to me like they're just giving some of OUR assistance money BACK. And would you believe it? Some of them are our "enemies:" Iran; Cuba; China. Hugo Chavez, dictator of Venezuela, offered aid.
So, I feel a lot better about the rest of the world than I did a few days ago. Now it's all about quelling the rising ache in my gut about our nation and what went wrong before Katrina ever spun up over Africa.
And another thought...I've watched CNN for the past six days and seen no mention of foreign aid, yet I happen to catch five minutes of MSNBC, and there's a story. What's up with that? What's CNN's agenda?
dassall
So, I feel a lot better about the rest of the world than I did a few days ago. Now it's all about quelling the rising ache in my gut about our nation and what went wrong before Katrina ever spun up over Africa.
And another thought...I've watched CNN for the past six days and seen no mention of foreign aid, yet I happen to catch five minutes of MSNBC, and there's a story. What's up with that? What's CNN's agenda?
dassall
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