Pig Zen

Stanford Dish, July 2008.

So when it first came out, I was a big fan of Stuff White People Like. It made me laugh and cringe because it poked fun at a demographic truly deserving of it, i.e., mine, and the author’s. And then I read some comments posted on one of the entries, and I haven’t been back since.

While the most referenced social theory on the internet explains what elements are required for this bizarre behavior, I still don’t understand what people get out of swooping in and shitting on others. I think this is more proof that adults are constantly seeking some excuse to act like kids and the internet provides the perfect outlet for all the juvenile vitriol that didn’t manage to escape in those pre-teen years.

I understand that a big part of it, especially on the snarky blogs, is that too many people just don’t know where to draw the line. If saying the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes is funny, making fun of his genitals and his parentage is hi-larious.

Spirited discourse has been around on the net since the beginning. Everything that happens now in web discussion sites happened on Usenet 20 years ago. Except back then, people could actually spell and knew proper sentence structure. The people calling you out regularly knew more than you. Also, it took at least a couple of volleys back and forth before someone claimed to be oppressed and someone else brought up Hitler. Now we just cut to the chase.

On the Stuff White People Like blog, there was a smackdown over something really stupid, and two factions developed: the geeky, obsessive-compulsive faction; and the … well, the “get over it” faction. One of the commenters on the latter side looked at the others and said something like, “see, the regular folks have invaded the Web now, once again reminding you geeks that you’re still second class citizens, forced once again do our homework and watch as we steal your girlfriends”. And that person was right.

Now, most of the people that support you often shout their loud “me, too’s” because they’re members of your cult of personality rather than because they’ve actually thought about what you’ve said and can articulate why they agree with it. They’re only mildly annoying, of course, until their defending you to the hilt starts driving people that have something meaningful to say away. Your choir can be a great ego boost at times but they don’t add much to the all-important signal-to-noise ratio we obsess about.

We want to be surrounded by like-minded folks with a couple eloquent and intelligent members of the loyal opposition thrown in to mix things up and keep us on our toes. That really is what it was like in the early days, and still is when you find a site in its infancy.  Instead, most of the big blogs have turned into the textual equivalent of talk radio: the host might have something interesting to say even if you disagree with it, but it’s not worth wading through all the ditto heads and tangential name-callers.

A sign at the Las Vegas Hilton (near Paradise Road), June 2004.
This is like a magic trick: once you know how it’s done, it’s not as wonderful anymore.

I have a theory: things are more bearable if one is not trapped into doing them. I’m willing to put up with a lot more if I know I can do just a little bit extra to get out of it. When I’m stuck in a bad situation, I have to deal with both the badness and the fact that I can’t escape. I guess it’s a form of claustrophobia. Just knowing there’s a way out takes some pressure off, even if that way out isn’t feasible.

Lately that way out isn’t quite as obvious to me. I feel stuck in many different ways and I’m tired of it — I’m not used to feeling powerless. I guess I’m a spoiled brat: woe is me, too many things are outside of my control and I don’t like it!

Feeling trapped and powerless is a sort of definition of being in danger, and Psych 101 taught me that triggers the fight-or-flight response. It makes humans act like animals and animals act irrationally. I don’t want to do that; I can hardly rationalize most of what I do when I have a clear head.

I’ve been trying to make rational changes to free myself from this trapped feeling, and to little avail. My patience is wearing thin. Often when people feel trapped, their irrational response puts them in a worse situation than they were in before. That’s the stuff cliches are made of. Nobody wants to be cliche.

From the London Eye, March 2003.

I really want to go on a trip. And, to be perfectly honest, not a trip back to the Old Country. I used to kid myself by saying one of the reasons I stayed close to my family was so that I wouldn’t have to spend vacation time to visit them — while I miss them dearly, vacation time should be saved for new adventures, not re-hashing old ones.

At this point, I don’t even think I’d be all that picky. It doesn’t have to be Hawaii or Paris or Tokyo; I just want to wake up and not have to see my alarm clock and the pile of laundry that never gets any smaller first thing. I was thinking about this the other day, how my mood is so often set by my surroundings. Being in a strange place sets me on edge enough that I don’t get bogged down by the routine. Consistency can lead to redundancy, and it’s much easier to have some external force mix things up rather than having to do it myself.

What good comes of travel? A big driver for me is food; every place should have something worth trying, and I do my best. Being a wannabe photographer means I’m constantly squinting and searching for a different set of pictures to take. There’s the people, too; there’s nothing like seeing a big haired Texan, or a broad-shouldered Chicagoan, or an aggravated New Yorker in their native environment. The Bay Area is so accepting, or so busy with other things that it doesn’t have time to care, that we don’t have one stereotype that’s useful for generalizations and jokes. Finally, there’s the little differences: stop lights oriented horizontally rather than vertically, pizza shops instead of taquerias, Duane Reed drug stores instead of anything else. The little differences are the salt on any trip.

One of the saddest things that comes from even being a little environmentally conscious is how not friendly airplane travel is. The thought that something that feels so right, so useful, so important, can be wrong and will someday be even less accessible is very disheartening to me. Until then, it’s just another shameful and decadent pleasure, like a red sunset or a bottle of fizzy water from a far off land.

Everyone that has wanderlust dreams of getting in the car or showing up at the airport and just picking a destination and hoping things work out for the best. I’ve been almost seething with jealousy when I read about others’ travels lately. I either need to decide the barriers I’ve put up around taking some time off are either unimportant, or they’re insurmountable enough that I should just let my mind wander for now and hope that my body can follow later.

Monterey Bay Aquarium, January 2008.

At least a couple of times a day, something makes me stop and think to myself, “I should write about that.” That happens to every blogger, right? What I’m not so sure about is how many of us forget those inspirations long before words en up on a screen.

I have four (yes, four) different notebooks with which to record sundry ideas as I pass through the day. I have a fancy smartphone with a memo section and an email thingy and I think I can even get a to-do list for it. Hell, if I have time to read the blogging inspiration, I probably have another few minutes to at least outline the damn post. Yet I never do, and then night comes and I have to struggle to throw an idea together or seek out an artificial prompt.

Some of that comes from my desire to keep certain things in certain places. I’m not sure what difference it makes, but while I’ll spend a few stolen minutes here and there to read, I’ve never written a blog entry at work. I also have this constantly overblown faith in my own memory. “That’s brilliant, there’s no way I could forget that!” is always followed by “now what was I supposed to remember again?” Usually within five minutes. I forget more stuff by 9 am than most people do all day. That’s why I try to sleep in until 10.

Maybe I’m self-censoring too. I don’t like most of my writing even though I think it’s important for me to actually do the writing. Since I’m unwilling to invest in myself, I probably wouldn’t bother to write at all without the possibility of an audience. The only reason any of this is here is because I made some sort of commitment to myself to really try at this post-a-day challenge thing even though I’m usually left uneasy and disappointed when I’m finished.

Am I better or worse off for not posting most of the things I think about? What about everyone else? What’s to be had from a cacophony of self-published voices besides dischord and a headache? Maybe it’s the same thing as a grade school orchestra recital: we go through them because everyone deserves to try, and maybe, just maybe, there’s one player who can hit the right note.

Stanford Dish, July 2008.

Another day, another case of writer’s block. Mind Bump to the rescue again:

Do you spend too much time on the internet? What should you be doing right now instead of blogging?

A particularly fitting question. Herself’s mom came up here yesterday to help with the post-extraction convalescence. I think she thinks we live in squalor. While we don’t have an insect or plague problem, on some level, she may be right.

Most of our living room is filled with boxes that haven’t been touched since the movers dropped them off. I claim there’s a Catch-22; the boxes take up all the room where we might unpack the stuff from them. My years spent studying Murphy’s Law leads me to believe that the minute we dig into them, something will happen that would cause us to move, and I can’t abide wasted effort. Also, the cats like to climb on them. Really, though, it’s that we’re lazy. Really, really lazy.

The armchair psychologist explanation I have for why the boxes sit there is that it’s a battle of who could care less. I think we both believe that it’s mostly the other person’s stuff, and thus the other person should take charge and do the unpacking. We both bring a certain stubbornness to the relationship that resembles the same sort of thinking that brought about the Cold War. It would be impressive if the side effects were something more constructive than a minefield-like array of junk all over the floor.

I’m not mad about it — I don’t bear any significant ill will over the pile as it’s as much my fault as hers, although I do swear to myself every time I stub my toe or crunch something as I make my way to the balcony door.  It’s just there, a sort of monument to tenacity. I like monuments, they offer a sense of history. I wouldn’t necessarily miss it if it were to go away, though.

So, instead of writing this story about the boxes in the living room, I should be doing something about it. That, in the end, is often what blogging is all about.