The Aerie
Watch out what you wish for
TITLE:you may get it.
After completely lacking any work for the last six weeks of the
summer, the predicted autumnal rush has arrived. I presently am
working on two contracts, and will soon be working on a third. Well,
hopefully.
With a fourth off in the wings somewhere.
Not complaining. Not complaining at all. Let's just put it this way: I
could take all the income from two of the contracts, and just about
erase my credit-card debt. About. It wouldn't address my other debts.
So, no, I'm not complaining, I'm grateful. Appreciative in a way that
I haven't been for a while for the opportunity to do challening,
interesting work at a good rate of pay for good folks.
It's funny how this little brush with poverty brings me back to the
beginnings. From the top of my game in pure technical consulting, I
find myself back in my early-1980's mindset -- except this time in
business rather than in computer technology. There's a lot similar
between the early 80's and today: back then a conservative ideaologue
was escorting us through recession, militarism and deficit spending,
and so it is today. Work was hard to come by and employers were
arrogant and miserly, accustomed to 300 applicants for every job.
Then as now I was trying to run a business, and I didn't know how easy
I had it then: it seemed like a terrible amount of work.
I lived cheap. I lived tight. I balanced my checkbook after every
check to make sure nothing would bounce. I ran up my credit cards. I
clipped coupons. I ate bad cheap food.
Back then I didn't have a house and a family to support, but I did
have college classes that I paid for myself.
Even when I was first married we were living pretty tight,
particularly after I quit one job (a move I only regretted during the
darkest days of unemployment when I thought I might never get another
job, and then only briefly). We had two incomes, but we were also
saving for our own wedding and honeymoon, so we were living tight.
A lot of that's coming back now. We're learning all sorts of things,
like the fact that you can get good movies and DVDs, free, through the
library. You may not be able to get something immediately, but you can
get everything eventually, and free.
And Savers, a store just one notch higher on the scale than Goodwill
(or maybe identical, I don't pretend to be an expert). We outfitted
the entire family for autumn for next to nothing there. Which proved
advantageous since either the iron, or I now suspect the dryer, have
been ruining my shirts with scorch marks. (I think clothes are getting
caught between the front edge of the dryer drum and the dryer body and
pinched round and round, leaving a scorch. Whether its that or the
iron I better figure out before I have no presentable clothes to wear!
We watched the entire Lord of the Rings DVD and extras while I ironed
and used hydrogen peroxide to remove what I could of the marks.)
So we're back to the early, broke days of our marriage, when
innovation replaced cash -- when rather than throwing out a scorched
shirt we figure out how to remove a scorch mark. When we appreciate
good deals on food. When we actually don't waste a cent. When we learn
to appreciate things that should be appreciated rather than taken for
granted: eating dinner out; eating dinner out someplace nice; the
goodwill and support of family and friends; and the difference between
hard work and free time.
One big difference though is the stress... if anyone had asked, I
would have expected this time to be a lot more stressful than when we
were younger. But, oddly enough, it isn't. Mostly that's because back
then, I didn't know what not to worry about. Nowadays, well, there
really isn't much to worry about. If we have no money, we can't pay
bills, period. If our debtors get mad, they get mad, too bad.
Of course, it helps to have work on the horizon. Just as when I was
unemployed long ago, the darkest time had to be about the beginning of
this month, when there was no work, and no sign of work. That really
sucked, and I had some really down days. It was hard to maintain any
energy for the struggle.
But even then I found I was more able to sometimes put aside the
fretting and just say "Well, I may as well enjoy myself if I'm going
to be idle." Which is not to say I was always, or even frequently
successful at it, but it did work sometimes, which is more than such a
notion worked in the 80's.
So we're coming out of it, I think. Slowly. It would help if some of
our own debtors would pay us the money they owe us. But we ought to be
able to get by and start seeing some better days ahead.
Meanwhile, there's lots of work to be done to take my mind off the
emptiness in my wallet, and the deep holes in my budget.
Good work.
[1]Last
Time to get out the scraper and scour the inside of my skull of these
random thoughts that keep building up like plaque on an artery wall...
Wegman
[wegman-william-dog-walker-2803637.jpg] You have to admire [1]William
Wegman. Well, you either have to admire him or baste him in Chuck
Wagon dog-food gravy and toss him into a studio full of his own
models. I mean, does the world need any additional evidence of a pact
with the Devil than this one-trick pony?
[scan25.jpg] Wegman does ONE thing, and one thing alone -- he dresses
dogs up in human clothing. And not just any dogs, only a FEW dogs, and
all of them Weimaraners from a single family. Why? Why does this work?
How is he able to make a living off of what in any other person would
be considered a very particular fetish?
No, not since Julia Roberts married Lyle Lovett has there been better
evidence of a soul sold to Satan...
Yu-Gi-Oh
[wallpaper5.jpg] Okay, okay, Saturday morning cartoons ARE a vast
wasteland, granted. Most of the programs are thinly-disguised toy
commercials, interrupted periodically by commercials for sugar-coated
cereals based on the toy, with a free toy inside.
Now, all that acknowledged, the whole trend of programs that started
with the dread "Pokemon" seems to be hitting the gutter with this
thing called "Yu-Gi-Oh." If you haven't seen it, you've got this
little weiner who runs around with three friends, and they all battle
this villain who looks like Don Johnson from Miami vice. The Weiner,
whose name is Yu-Gi-Oh for no discernable reason, wears an large,
metallic, upside-down pyramid on his chest. Periodically the pyramid
somehow forces the weiner straight through his adolescence and he
becomes a grown up little weiner, which is only discernable because
his voice becomes deeper. No muscles. No facial hair growth. He
doesn't even get taller. He just gets a deeper voice.
It's the Scooby Doo of its generation. Twenty years from now a single
thin slice of the population will wax nostalgic over this show, and
bring in Michael J. Fox to star in the live-action version, and the
rest of the population will look at each other and say "What's the
point of this?" But I would argue that Yu-Gi-Oh is worse than Scooby
Doo.
Feature Scooby Doo Yu-Gi-Oh
Ridiculous Name Yes Yes
Repetitive Plot Yes Yes
Lousy Art Hanna-Barbera Manga
Action Sort of None
Product Tie-in No Yes
AH! And HERE we see the difference. Where Scooby-Doo and Yu-Gi-Oh
diverge is that Scooby-Doo had less product tie-ins at the time it was
first aired. This has of course been rectified following the launch of
last summer's Iraqi-anti-aircraft-missile (launches poorly, climbs
slowly, hits nothing, crashes, burns, and draws retaliatory fire) of a
feature length Scooby-Doo movie.
But where I'll defend Scooby Doo over this drek (and believe me, this
hurts) is that Scooby Doo at least featured people doing something.
Something ridiculous? Sure. Implausible? Of course. But at least
running down a long hallway past the same repeated
end-table-and-picture decoration involves running. Yu-Gi-Oh, if you've
never seen it, is an animated show in which people play cards, while
other people watch the card players. There are animated monsters that
run around, but they're restricted to an electronic playing surface.
And occasionally the little Weiner grows up, wins, and then returns to
being a child again.
But that's it. Two people play cards and make grandiose threats at
each other: three or four other people watch the card players, weeping
or making encouraging noises.
That's it.
The only characters more inert than those pictured in Yu-Gi-Oh are my
kids, seated slack-jawed in front of the tube. Why do I let them watch
this drek? If you're not a parent then let me clue you into something:
it's not like the parents are in control here. You're going to stop
them? Okay, man, okay: you turn off the TV, forbid Yu-Gi-Oh, and are
faced with three rabid cathode addicts. What are you going to do with
them, or get them to do, for the rest of the time that the show is
airing? Remember: three of them, one of you.
You're not going to get them all to do chores. You may get ONE of them
to do chores, but while you do so, the other two will go turn on the
TV again. You could throw out the TV: they'll go watch at the
neighbor's house. But I know, if you don't have kids, you're thinking
"Well, if -I- were their parent, I'd..."
Believe me: you're wrong. You have to choose your battles, and this is
one you would lose, one way or another...
Blocking doors with chairs
[prod_MM_CIN_main.jpg] There are TWO commericals in circulation these
days that feature a door, blocked by a chair wedged under the
doorknob. One is a commercial for Cinnamon Chex, and the other I can't
recall right now. Here's what's notable about both of them:
In both cases, the doors open outwards.
It's such a small thing... But doesn't ANYONE on the set point at the
shot and say "Won't the door just open out, and the chair will fall on
the floor?" And not just in one commercial, but in BOTH? (Yes, if I
can remember the second one I'll replace it in here.)
Yes, I know, these aren't big, world-shaking issues. But they ARE
niggling little things crusted on the inside of my brain. And now
they're in yours, so there you are. Need a scraper?
[2]Last
I am beside myself this morning. I am constantly surprised by the
depths of my grief over this event. I cannot understand why I am so
upset by the remembered events of this day last year. I guess I wish I
wasn't. I guess I want to be able to put a handle on it. I can't name
anyone I knew personally who was lost in the tragedy. If I could, I
would focus my pain and grief upon them. Instead I am simply
aggrieved, bawling into my Kleenex at the whole nightmare of that day,
heartbroken at each story of the dead, at the torn threads of love and
association lost to this horrid madness.
Hopefully the pain will bring growth. Hopefully something will be
learned, something will be changed, something will be stronger and
something important improved. Hopefully we'll all be better people for
this. Hopefully we'll learn something that will change the world.
Hopefully they will not have died in vain.
[1]Last
I've long considered myself a cynic and a skeptic, a hardbitten soul facing the world with a smirk of resigned amusement. But the truth of my posturing was revealed a year ago when the planes slammed into the Twin Towers. In fact, I'm not tough at all.
I had already had a week-long training session scheduled to start in New York city on September 17th when nineteen lunatics carried out their infamous plans. Upon reflection a year later, the odds of being scheduled to be in Manhattan that week seem pretty slim.
I was deeply affected by what I saw, both the normal and the exceptional. The busy streets of New York's concrete canyons were little different, although smaller than I remembered from my childhood. The pairs of armed National Guardsmen scattered on various streetcorners were exceptional. The sidewalk hucksters, nothing new. Their wares -- misspelled patriotic T-shirts and American flag pins -- were exceptional.
(I distinctly remember one T-shirt for managing to spell the same word two different ways in one sentence: "America: You may destroy our buildings, but you can never distroy our spirit!")
My friend Sager joined me in visiting Ground Zero while its hideous remains reared high over the rescuers. A very moving and painful journey. While I was there, a small, blond woman in front of me began sobbing, clutching a crumpled kerchief in her hand while she bit her knuckles and stared at the towering wreckage. I reached out impulsively and placed a hand on her shoulder. She glanced back at me, gripped my hand a moment, and squeezed it gratefully, then turned back to the scene.
Many times I could forget the tragedy, while absorbed in the minutia of a Midwesterner's visit to New York: not being run over; catching the right train; negotiating the dark alleys and bright streets.
But sometimes I'd turn a corner and be struck again with the fresh pain of the event. One day I wandered away from class at lunch in search of a camera store, and stumbled across a neighborhood pizzeria. As I left, there around the corner was a fire station, and within the open doors, a shrine to the five firefighters they had lost a week before. Portraits on the wall were surrounded by letters of condolence, and on the floor were flowers, votive candles, cards, and children's stuffed toys. Standing before their rigs, surviving firefighters spoke with people off the street about their experiences.
Most moving of all were the shrines to the missing. Every light post and building face bore dozens of posters in search of loved ones, every inch of space covered with paper and tape. Public spaces in Times Square and Union Station had sprouted spontaneously into memorials, cards and candles and flowers everywhere. In Union Station, a particularly moving scene: ten yards of flowers and candles had been subjected to rain the night before. Passersby had given up their umbrellas, and positioned them over the photos, the toys, the candles and the cards, to keep them out of the rain. Other papers, less fortunate, had fallen sodden upon the umbrellas, fixing them into the shrines in a grievous papier mache.
As the rains threatened to claim more posters one night, I made my way back to my hotel from Times Square, looking closely at the posters of the missing. Out of all the thousands of posters of thousands of victims, my eye fell upon one: a picture of a tall, vivacious, lovely woman, with the name "Dr. Sneha Ann Philip."
It seemed to me the very statement of the tragedy: beautiful, smart, successful, a woman of the East married to a man of the West, she was everything that America had to brag about. Opportunity, diversity, equality, and promise, all snuffed out in one horrible moment.
I carefully took down one of the posters, feeling ashamed as I did so -- was I being macabre? Was I removing the poster that would otherwise lead to her discovery? I didn't know, but I knew the rains would soon claim this one. I rationalized that at least I'd be saving one poster.
And so I returned home with the poster, a grim memento of my trip. And, a month later, looked online to find out what had been learned of the fate of Dr. Sneha Ann Philip.
The results were no less tragic, for all that they were unusual.
Of all the thousands of posters of thousands of victims, the one I had picked out was unique. Dr. Sneha Ann Philip was not, apparently, a direct victim of the attack on the World Trade Center. Dr. Philip had in fact disappeared from the neighborhood surrounding the World Trade Center the night before.
For her husband, this was no relief from the nightmare. Where the families of the tragedy faced one set of horrors, he faced another: that his missing spouse would be overlooked in the face of the larger nightmare unfolding around him. Several media outlets learned of his situation, and stories were run on [5]TV and in the [6]press, hoping to uncover her fate.
On the afternoon of September 10th, Sneha Philip left her apartment, and did some shopping. Witnesses, security cameras, and charge receipts trace her movements until about 5:30 p.m. When her husband returned home at 11:00 p.m., she was nowhere to be found. Less than twelve hours later, the World Trade Center collapsed. She has never been seen again.
A memorial service is planned for her, on Saturday, September 14th, 2002. To this day no one knows her fate. Was she a victim of foul play on the evening of the 10th, within blocks of the World Trade Center? Or did and her husband somehow miss each other, and then as a physician was she caught up in the tragedy of the next day? Or are other possibilities true: bitter, cynical notions too cruel to voice, but all too common?
It seems we'll never know. And so, in a new and twisted way, the lunatics of September 11th have claimed another victim. A victim whose fate may have been fulfilled before their own, but whose destiny they nonetheless obliterated.
Rest in peace, Sneha, wherever you are.
I actually don't have a problem with the idea of an army of some sort
going in and waxing Hussein, and that's a lot coming from someone who
drove to D.C. to protest the Gulf war.
However, what I need before I'll back such an effort is one or more
trusted voices authenticating evidence linking Saddam to the terrorist
activities of recent years -- either WTC bombing, or the Yemen port
bombing, or any of it. I wish I could say I trusted our President on
this, but I'm sorry to say I can't. He has had an agenda from the
first day of his presidential campaign, and I need someone slightly
impartial. Who? I don't know, but I'd say a nice bipartisan
congressional committee might be a start.
I can't help it that I don't trust the man, or the cabal that got him
elected. If they were smart, they'd've addressed the question of
national trust by now... but if they were smart they wouldn't have let
Bush deny needing congressional approval for an Iraqi invasion one day
before seeking it from the Saudi Ambassador. Kinda ticked me off, that
did.
I don't have a problem with us attacking militarily any head-of-state
who heard "Let's go bomb the Americans" and replied "Sounds good,
here's $2 million American dollars since my own currency is worth
shit."
The problem is, I suspect that it's as likely that the Saudi royal
family (or some faction thereof) is behind these bombings as that
Hussein is. And that's what sticks in my craw: that the Saudi's are
probably laughing up their sleeves as they sell us oil on the one
hand, and fund Al Qaeda and Hamas on the other.
The real question is, were that the case, would America the crude-oil
junkie be able to shake the addiction in order to kick its dealer's
ass?
And if we did, would we do it the RIGHT way -- which in my opinion
means planting ourselves in the Mideast for the long haul and shoving
education, democracy, women's rights and health care down their
feudal, misogynistic 12th-Century throats? That's what gets me
nervous. I don't know if we have the political will for something with
more than a six-month horizon, 9/11/2001 notwithstanding.
I think we are culturally capable of doing it: being willing to
sacrifice lives, money, and effort to bootstrap an important region of
the world into the 20th (if not 21st) century. It would take at least
20 years, maybe more, but in the end I can see a Mideast where the
actual tenets of Islam hold sway rather than the mad ravings of those
who would pervert it.
The alternative is that in 20 years it will be much the same as today,
althought possibly more radioactive.
I don't see it as classic imperialism, I see it as cultural
imperialism. I see us leaving their nation-states in place, but
forcing their culture to change. I see it as a cultural clash, brought
to us by the Mideast itself. THEY came here and bombed New York -- so
we go there and educate their kids that such things are wrong. Is our
culture perfect? No. But I'm willing to say ours is BETTER than
theirs, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
Now, "better" alone does not entitle us to act against them. And
they're welcome to their culture if they leave us in peace. But if
their culture WON'T leave ours in peace -- if, for example it suddenly
starts adopting jihad against the U.S. as a way of life -- then we are
justified in taking action.
Which, coming back around to Hussein, means simply this: if America is
asked to invade Iraq, with no more explanation than "George Bush said
so," to destroy with no intention of nation-building afterwards, then
I'm against it. If we do that, we'll simply cause more trouble for
ourselves later.
But if we go in there with proof of Iraqi complicity in terror against
the U.S.; intending to set up a real democracy; and are willing to
invest for the long haul (in the face of real opposition from many
sectors), then I'm for it. While our efforts in Afghanistan are not up
to my criteria for success yet, we at least haven't pulled completely
out of there and left them to feud among themselves.
I doubt the situation will be so clearly set forth for review,
however.
One thing we'll want to be careful about, too, if we do this, is Iran.
They're taking baby steps towards US reconciliation, but I would
hardly blame them for being nervous when they find the US invading
their neighbors on both sides. If France invaded Canada and Mexico, I
doubt the US would feel really comfortable with the idea. Well,
assuming France actually had some military capabilities...
[1]Last
The 9/11 anniversary is upon us, which fact was brought home to me
this morning when I went to give blood.
I first gave blood last year, on 9/12, as a reaction to the events of
9/11 (combined with the fact that I was working next door to the Red
Cross center at the time).
I had had several false starts before that. Once I raced to a
company-sponsored blood drive, only to discover upon arrival that I
had a fever and high blood pressure.
The first time I was very anxious about giving blood, but now that
I've done it a couple of times it's a non event. Particularly today --
the guy who tapped my vein was so skillful I didn't feel anything. Not
a pinch, not a nip. He said "Make a fist," and I waited, and I waited,
and then he put tape on my arm and I looked and the needle was in
place.
I spoke with a fellow donor afterwards, while we were eating the
snacks and juice provided. He had received his two-gallon pin, and I
asked how long he'd been donating. "I started last year after 9/11,"
he said.
I was confused -- I'd donated every 56 days since 9/11, and I was
nowhere near a gallon. Then he revealed that he's been giving
platelets -- they take out the red blood cells, and put back the blood
plasma. They can take twice as much (in terms of total red blood cells
if not volume) at once, and can do so every 30 days rather than every
56.
So I'll have to see about going that route soon. Not for the sake of
getting gallon pins faster, but because apparently it's more useful to
the Red Cross. Once again, I'm a little anxious, but not terribly so.
When I was in college I used to give blood plasma for cash, which
sounds like the same process, but reversed -- take out the fluids, put
back the cells. Had a few disasters there, which had soured me on
giving blood.
Once a nurse had clipped a pair of scissor-like clamps to her lapel:
when she turned away from my couch the clamp handle swung out and
caught the tubing running to the needle in my arm. Fortunately I saw
this, and as she stepped away I gripped the tube and jumped up to
follow her, lest she tear the needle right out of my vein. But it
kinda left me nervous last year, when the new Red Cross building went
up right next to my employer.
Then came 9/11, and suddenly my fears took on a new perspective,
appearing much smaller than they had. But they're still there.
Everytime I wince before they stick the needle in me I think about the
kind of terror that would make a 100-story leap a preferred choice,
the kind of pain that one would feel when a loved one never returned,
and it makes a needle-stick a trivial thing.
I spoke to a fellow yesterday and he wanted to make an appointment for
next Wednesday, 9/11. I said, "I don't know -- that's going to be a
weird day." What I meant by that, although I didn't feel comfortable
saying this to a mere business acquaintance, was that I think I'm
going to feel a lot of repercussions from what was, at least for me, a
very traumatic event.
His response to me was, "Wednesday will only be as weird as people
make it. For me, business as usual."
Something seems wrong about that. It seems like denial. I mean, you
can try and pretend that 9/11 didn't happen, but it did. And it
changed things, and it OUGHT to change things. It's called learning,
adapting, and changing, it's called survival. If you pretend it didn't
happen, you're just asking for trouble, you're just asking for it to
happen again.
[1]Last