I have created a new, temporary blog for this ridiculous blogging class I'm taking. It's about the 1970s:

http://the-seventies.blogspot.com.

So far I'm struggling, but standards are pretty low in Blogging 101. Feel free to comment; I'm being graded on "community."

I won't deny that during my last week of work I settled some scores.
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As the 1980s wore on and the sociopathic aura of Reaganism settled over my little suburban street, I remember feeling deeply cheated to have grown up in the eighties. Veterans of previous decades spoke longingly—if annoyingly—about the thrill of living in stirring, decadent times, but I was reasonably sure that the only great adventure offered by this decade was a siege mentality of the few who cared surrounded by the many who didn’t.

By 1984, the decade's fun New Wave early years were over, replaced by a pop culture that seemed formed from an especially noxious and gooey mix of bubblegum and silicone. What wasn't schlocky and insipid (E.T.) seemed vicious and shallow (Andrew Dice Clay) and the Reagan Revolution seemed to give an entire nation permission to let out its inner slick dickhead.

It's possible, of course, that my alienation had nothing to do with the culture. Perhaps I had simply become sufficiently adult, and therefore hip to the world, to become appropriately cynical. It's possible that Americans had always been as shallow and selfish as they suddenly appeared to me around the time of Reagan's re-election, only I had grown out of my puerile Disney-ish fantasies of a nation of people who shared certain humane beliefs.




( In which I drone on and on about the 80s )

On my last day of work at my famously dreadful job, I looked to the right sidebar of my Facebook page to see this advert:


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Last week the president of our board of directors backed up in our parking lot, clipping two vehicles. She then apparently got nervous, threw her car into reverse, and excitedly hit the gas-- clipping THREE MORE vehicles.

That's right: Our board president was playing demolition derby in our parking lot, smashing a grand total of five vehicles in a span of three seconds.

One of the vehicles included the car of my boss, the Chief Operating Officer, who our board president can't stand.

13 more work hours to go before sweet, sweet unemployment.

Livejournal,

I know I have been a little distant lately, but sometimes, you know, a fella just needs a little time to himself.

I know I have been a little preoccupied lately. After several centuries of professional hell, my job is wrapping up. This is a big change. I hope you understand that. For the record, all of my sexual inadequacies-- and I repeat ALL-- are a result of "stress from work." That includes my seemingly unhealthy obsession with Lindsay Lohan upskirt photos.

Once I get this stuff sorted out, baby, it'll get better. You'll see.( Read more... )

I just wrapped up an introductory course in Web site design, a six week course taught by the gruffest and most uncommunicative lesbian I've ever met. (While we were working on our sites, she would mark the end of class by simply getting up, packing her laptop, and silently leaving.)

I am moderately pleased with my second design, which is for Yoko's Woodwind Trio. See for yourself: http://www.trifectawinds.net/. My personal site, on the other hand, moderately sucks. I will not be linking to it.

Since I am taking a bullshit class in fucking BLOGGING starting July 6th, I may end up creating a new blog that, unlike this piece of self-absorbed claptrap, may end up having some sort of focus. So look for that.

Also, check out the blog I am maintaining for my father! I have been encouraging him to write down some of his stories from growing up in Meigs County, Ohio-- a dismal little piece of Appalachia on the Ohio side of the Ohio River. His stories have a sense of humor that can only be described as "broad." But I have grown up hearing these tales, and am pleased that he's writing them down.

That site is: http://meigscountystories.wordpress.com/

More to come about the truly odd place that is Meigs County. Stunning preview: Ambrose Bierce was born there!

Yoko's last day at her job is in two days.

She moves to DC in 13 days.

I anticipate resigning from my position in 19 days-- and will likely finish working in six weeks.

In the next three months, we have to get this house ready to sell-- and then actually get it sold. Then there will be the schlepping of stuff, job searching in DC, apartment searching. In the meantime, I will be taking twelve graduate credits before the end of the year.

As much as I dread the grueling pace of change, I have to admit that it has given me a definite lift. What's frustrating, in fact, isn't that things are changing too quickly, it's that, now that the process has started, that it's moving too slowly.

This weekend I was in Connecticut to attend my nephew's graduation at UConn, an event that unfolded with all of the solemnity of a pep rally. At one point, a very hefty family a few rows ahead of left only to return a few minutes later with nachos and hot dogs. At they returned to the section, you could see the entire section rolling their eyes as if to say "trashy people." The looks quickly turned dumbfounded as the crowd realized that this graduation, which was being held in the 10,000 seat basketball arena, was being treated for all intents and purposes as if it were a Huskies basketball game.

My nephew, for his part, seemed to take a delightful amount of bemusement from the ceremony-- when he wasn't looking bored silly-- the exact same mix of emotions that once led me to skip out on my graduation ceremony. Twenty years out, I envied (an envy that at various points of the ceremony verged on the palpable) the youth and possibility of the graduates, wishing I had possessed the direction that these kids appear to possess (but mostly probably don't.) It is strange to see a thousand happy graduates blazing through their graduation day at supersonic speeds, hungry to finally get on with their lives, while all I wanted to do is quietly tiptoe back that moment and linger for a good long while...

I must confess, however, that one thing I don't miss about university are the professors with a missionary zeal regarding ideologies that have absolutely no chance of surviving outside of academia foisting their politics on everyone else. Here is a photo of some feminist professor ruining the student's big day with her own political statement about vagina-power. This, my friends, is akin to pushing the bride out of the limelight at a wedding reception:



May this womyn die and live in a hell populated by nothing but oversexed fratboys.

I ran into the phrase "lèse majesté" in something I was reading and, for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it meant. So I went to trusty Wikipedia which very helpfully reminded me lèse majesté is the criminal offense of insulting a head of state. So far, so enlightened.

As an example of Lèse majesté, however, Wikipedia included this cartoon, a very subtle commentary on William Pitt's threat to suspend habeas corpus.



Since viewing this image, I have been unable to get its essential crassness out of my mind. The image depicts John Bull (the British version of Uncle Sam) letting loose an unabashed gust of flatulence directly in the face of King George III.

First of all, whatever notion that somehow modern minds are corrupt and debased are wiped away by this drawing. Imagine this cartoon being published by any newspaper or magazine in the country. It's simply unfathomable. It is perhaps too base for Hustler magazine.

In a sense, this image is the very essence of satire, stripping this form of commentary to its bare, gushing Platonic form. A man directly farting in another man's face: I can think of no more basic way of depicting disapproval.

Yoko and I were studying the menus at a restaurant tonight-- Vietnam Cafe in University City-- and I couldn't decide what I wanted for dinner. I flipped through the menu, unable to come to terms with the reality that any choice I made foreclosed all other options. It felt very important that I choose the exact perfect dish for my mood.
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I had this notion recently that my life was deficient in whimsy. I guess I was feeling a surfeit of plodding rationality--work, bills, earnest self-improvement--and felt the lure of the silly and stupid. In response to my overly unwhimsical existence, I began re-evaluating my relationship with Nerd Culture, that constellation of misfit subcultures I have traditionally avoided.

Would I have been happier in high school had I fully embraced my inner nerd? (How "inner" my nerd was to others is a question I'd rather not contemplate.) By embracing my inner nerd, I don't mean simply wandering around high school with spaz hair and clothing that contravened every bit of hard-earned knowledge handed down to teenage boys on how to attract girls.

(To any horny teenage boys out there, know that rule one is, "At least attempt to appear to give a shit about your appearance.")

I was, and am, a huge nerd in many respects, prone to orotund pronouncements about things I don't have any real knowledge about--e.g. the music of John Cage or the legal issues surround abortion--not to mention the use of pompous vocabulary like "orotund." And yet I have never been able to fully embrace any particular aspect of Nerd Culture: Dungeons and Dragons, They Might Be Giants/Weezer, or any activity that involves regularly dressing up in costume. As a huge nerd, I find myself invariably turned off by the presence of groups of other nerds. Is this what it's like to be a self-hating Jew?

Yesterday I began thinking about the Society for Creative Anachronism, those folks who dress up in medieval garb and drink mead and (judging by the one event I stumbled into in college) hook up with other SCA nerds. I looked through the Wikipedia site, finding myself suddenly and surprisingly charmed by the mission of the SCA: "The Middle Ages as they ought to have been." (That is, sans the plague, backbreaking toil, bed bugs, and near universal peonage.) I have known many people who have enjoyed the SCA and probably even learned a lot about history because of it. I found myself mulling over whether the SCA could fill my whimsy gap.

Then I searched Google images for the phrase "Society of Creative Anachronism."



I quickly realized that I am such an over-the-top, self-conscious nerd that the notion that I'm being automatically pegged as the "nerd in the room" would drive me absolutely crazy. To be so fucking out there with your nerdiness that you dress your own children in medieval garb for your Sears family photos? It's beyond any level of insouciance I could muster. If you're a nerd, it takes guts to let your nerd flag fly. Paradoxically, nerdiness and self-confidence seem to merge when pushed far enough.

I don't know if I am insufficiently nerdy or insufficiently self-confident to do the straight up nerd thing to the hilt-- and, in fact, this inability probably represents a strange weakness in my character.

Things are in the initial stages of feeling like they’re unwinding in Philadelphia. I have told my boss and our CEO that I will be moving on soon. I recommended that they reorganize and eliminate my position. Upon that recommendation, our CEO realized that he would be to his advantage to get me out of the 09-10 budget—and so he is talking about putting together a nice severance package for me if I leave July 1. So my choice would be: Work until I sell the house, quit, and get no severance—or take a 15 week paid vacation starting July 1. I am leaning towards the 15 week vacation.

For the first few years working for this organization, I would typically run out of things to do in the afternoon, ending up browsing the Web in the late afternoon. I have started to return to those more peaceful times. Almost everything I used to worry about I pawn off to someone else. They are going to have to learn to do it anyway, so they might as well start now. Other things simply aren’t going to be fixed during the next five weeks and not worth worrying about. There are only a handful of projects that I want to complete before I go—projects that I want to complete out of sheer pride. The workload is suddenly, and agreeably, manageable. The clock feels weirdly like it’s rolling back.

I stood in the cold rain for two hours of teabaggin' fun yesterday afternoon fascinated to witness the final stage of the inevitable detachment of the right wing's fury from even the least semblance of reality. The anger itself now seems to be the primary purpose of the anger.

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This is the photo that Yoko has dubbed "The Balls of Damocles."

New paradigm: Modernist art was about breasts, but contemporary art is about penises. This was my profound revelation while wandering through the MOMA on Saturday. I once read a travel piece about New York that called it "Disneyland for adults," a phrase that almost perfectly captures the city. Each and every time I visit, I forget how damn fun NYC is!

( Some photos of non-circumsized New York things )

A sign of just how lapsed a Christian I am, this morning when a neighbor wished me a cheerful "Happy Easter," I was momentarily surprised. I had forgotten that today was supposedly the most solemn holiday of the year.

In my defense, Yoko and I semi-spontaneously decided to visit NYC yesterday, spending an absolutely wonderful day eating terrific food (when in NYC, try Momofuku on 10th Street and 1st Avenue) and a visit to the MOMA. Unfortunately, we were late in leaving and didn't get back until 2:30am. All I could think of this morning was sleeping in...

I have spent the last half an hour making a mix CD for one of the "consumers" at work (a dreadful word that means person with mental retardation that we serve). He has gotten into the habit of singing "Two Tickets to Paradise" every time I pass by. Lately I have been teaching him to extend himself a little, encouraging him memorize the phrase "pack your bags we'll leave tonight." Truly I am doing God's work.

So I have put a mix of music that most cool, smart people would consider dreadful. It's been a joy to put together. It includes Prince, Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, Lou Rawls, Gloria Gaynor-- even, for fuck's sake, Eddie Rabbit. 90% of this stuff I scarfed out of Napster when that was a copyright infringement free-for-all a decade ago.

Record companies, feel free to sue me for using your pirated songs to give a person with intellectual disabilities an hour of enjoyment!

I know exactly what this guy likes (Two Tickets To Paradise!)and it's been unusually fun putting this thing together. No embarrassment, no shame, no obsessing over song order, no trying to add just one smarty-pants esoteric song to make it seem more impressive-- just a simple ordering of tunes I absolutely know this dude is going to dig!