The pile

It was a hot day.  The Universe knew that on such a hot day the task would be arduous and thankless.   It cursed humanity for global warming under its breath as it took off its shirt and turned on a fan in preparation for the strenuous exercise. The universe looked around, found the shovel and made sure it had some cold water nearby for later. 

The first few shovel fulls were easy enough, but then the stench hit the Universe's nostrils.  As it paused to contemplate the pile of manure, The Universe was grateful for the fan because it seemed to dissipate some of the stench that emanated from the disturbed pile.  

The work progressed uneventfully, but eventually The Universe's arms began to ache.  It's foot slipped slightly on a fresh patch of manure and as The Universe steadied itself, its aching arm faltered and its wrist twisted awkwardly.

The Universe watched as if the event transpired in slow motion.  The shovel slipped from its grip and the load it was carrying flew through the air toward the fan.  And then it happened.   Donald Trump became the GOP candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. 

Warning signs

"In retrospect, the warning signs were there," a concept immortalized by Frank Sinatra in the line "a Monday morning quarterback never lost a game."

We only see the warning signs in retrospect, while they are in front of our noses we don't understand them as warnings. They say that if you place a frog in warm water and turn up the heat gradually, it will not realize it's about to boil to death and will just sit in the water.  On the other hand if you place a frog in hot water, it will immediately jump out.  I've never tested this theory personally, but so they say…

In a tranquil field in what is now Montana a T-Rex looks up from his meal, ruffles his feathers, squawks and squints at a bright light in the sky.  He doesn't know that the bright light is a warning sign that this is his species' last meal. He smooths his feathers and calmly rips another bite of flesh from the dead Triceratops in front of him…. Had the T-Rex been able to look ahead a few days he would have seen the water around him boiling and he would have jumped at the sight of the meteor.

On August 24, 79 AD, Augustus, a prominent resident of Pompeii, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, stood up in his small, windowless, but lavishly decorated bed chamber and stretched his arms over his head. Standing there, he heard a slight commotion from the atrium of the house just outside his room.  He steps out into the atrium to find his wife, son and servants grouped together in the vestibule whispering in hushed tones and looking out of the front door.  Their beloved mount Vesuvius seems to be spewing smoke… Had Augustus been able to look ahead a couple of days, he would have seen the water around him boiling and he would have jumped at the site of that wisp of smoke.

Pride filled Edward John Smith as he stood on the bridge of the Titanic.  The great ship's maiden voyage was a triumph and certainly a feather in his proverbial cap… Well you know the story… Had Captain Smith been able to look ahead a few hours, he would have seen the water around him boiling and he would have jumped at the announcement of possible icebergs in his ship's course.

When German Jews saw legislation after legislation being passed to curtail their rights; when they were required to register and wear an identifying star on their clothes… were individuals able to feel the water getting hotter? Some jumped out, but many didn't.  We simply do not feel the water around us start to boil, we are not able to discern current information from signs of foreboding disaster. We don't see the warning signs until they have passed.

Joe Blow, a regular American citizen gets up in the morning and checks his iPhone for any news he might have missed while consorting with Morpheus. The news feed tells him that Donald Trump has won the Republican nomination and is a candidate for the office of President of the United States of America…

Of rhinos, supreme court justices and compassion

As John Donne so eloquently put it: No man is an island,[…] any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. 

It was true back in Donne' late 14^th century when the entire human population was a mere 500 million people, but does it continue to be true today when we are  7 billion? Not really. When I was a little girl there were 70 thousand black rhinos in Africa and nobody talked about conservation or habitat, now there are only 2 thousand left and the world is scrambling to save the few that remain. The less you have of something, the more precious it becomes.  It's the most basic principle of economics and it applies to our appraisal of everything in the world, except, of course, for diamonds, which is a very common stone and has a completely artificial valuation.

There are simply too many people in the world for an individual to be valuable. We've become inured to the tolling of the bell. Compassion used to be a quality, now it is a weakness. And you don't have to go back very far for confirmation of that statement.  Recently I re-watched MASH on Netflix and was struck by the compassion and commitment exhibited by those characters who existed in a world with 70 thousand rhinos. When I watched the series in the 80s the level of compassion and commitment portrayed seemed natural to me as a child living in our society. Now, thirty years later and from the perspective of a somewhat cynical adult in 2016, the compassion and commitment exhibited by those characters seems exaggerated, even caricatured.  That level of compassion simply does not exist in the real world today.  It's gone, and we are not even ashamed of ourselves for allowing it to go extinct. Our compassion is our valuation of the individual.  The more people there are, the less valuable each becomes and the less compassion we feel. There are enough of us now that compassion is more endangered than the black rhino. The tolling of the bell has become background noise that we simply cannot hear.  

Every problem in the world today, from climate change to our intolerance and lack of compassion, can be attributed to the over population of humans on earth.  Think about it.

I've said all of that because I believe it to be true, not because there is something in me that feels guilty about celebrating Scalia's death and is looking for some sort of moral justification or force majeure for skipping around the room singing "ding-dong the witch is dead". 

A printer, a printer, my kingdom for a printer!

So I recently moved from southern Brazil back to California. The first order of business was to set up an office space from which I could continue working.   I brought my laptop with me, signed up for an internet connection, assembled a desk I purchased from Staples, bought a second monitor and I was ready for anything the move or the job could throw at me.  Or so I thought.

The second order of business  was signing up for some sort of health insurance.  I chose a plan, sent them the application along with a sacrificial offering from my bank account and I thought I was good to go.  Not so.  They requested I send them an explanatory letter for why I was entitled to enroll in their precious system outside the regular enrollment period.  The move, of course, qualified me for the enrollment, but the explanation had to be sent either by regular mail or faxed to the insurance company. 

The requirement of a letter highlighted the problem that I had not bought a printer.  I didn't think I would need one any time soon.  I’m a reasonable person and I consider the whole situation when looking for a solution for a problem.  I had several choices.  I could print the letter to pdf and take it to a print shop, have it printed and post it on my way home.  Straight forward and simple, I thought.  Or I could take the pdf to Office Depot, have it printed and faxed all in one trouble-free transaction.  I considered that they might even be able to fax the file without printing it first.  And I could take the word document to the management office of the apartment complex where I rented and they could easily print and fax the letter for me.  In short I had several choices to send this letter.

As I was pondering which solution would be most convenient, I spoke to my mother wondering which she thought would be easiest.  If real life came with a soundtrack, as it should, this is where we would hear ominous thunder in the distant background.  My mother calmly said: “It’s a letter, you know you could write it by hand, don’t you?”

Once I managed to convince myself that life has meaning, that I am a capable and useful person and that I should not throw myself out the window… I went out and bought a printer. 

The Silence

Every morning they found solace in an age old routine.  She got up first, used the bathroom and went into the kitchen to make herself a bowl of cereal and brew a pot of coffee. The regrets she carried on her back had the weight of a century each morning as she walked down the hall, through the family room and into the kitchen of the rented house.  Her husband of thirty seven years stayed in bed.  He never got out of bed before she had left the bedroom and bathroom. In fact he hardly stirred as she performed her morning ablutions.  They had long since given up on the niceties of morning greetings and inquiries as to how the other had spent the night.  Whatever fondness and respect they had shared decades ago was never nurtured by either, and over time withered and were forgotten, like so many memories.  Now the silence between them was like another person in the house, it filled a void, had a personality and in those moments when it happened to be absent, it was missed.

The couple had married while in High School.  She got pregnant and he got a job as a mechanic in a rundown shop run by an alcoholic. They had never been properly in love when they got married, they were simply together because they were embarrassed about being alone,  but that was not something they had ever discussed. They had a baby boy, who they named Bobby,  now thirty seven years old Bobby is the father of two children and goes by the more formal version of his name.   Only his parents still call him Bobby and no one ever corrects them. 

Bobby would have been an only child if after a few years his brother The Silence had not joined the family.   The Silence started small, one might even say premature.   It was conceived when the alcoholic boss gave the husband a small raise and the husband requested that the 30 additional dollars a month be paid in cash so he could have some money in his pocket without the wife nagging him about groceries and gas.  The Silence grew stronger and at a much faster rate than its older brother.  In fact, Bobby had been just six years old when The Silence had a huge growth spurt and lodged itself permanently in the house.  The spurt was nourished by some fishing trip and a ‘stay with mother.’ The Silence had never been sure about who had gone where and when, it was too small to remember.  But every year it still celebrates the date as its birthday.

Over the years the silence became an integral part of the family.  It lived mostly in the spaces between the husband and the wife.   In the car The Silence sat on the hand break between the front seats and commented loudly on the driver’s skill, speed, route and on the fact that a mechanic shouldn’t be driving this broken down piece of shit.   During meals it would sit on top of the table between the husband and wife and comment on the monotonous and repetitive cooking.   In bed it slept between the husband and the wife and yelled threats like “if you fart under the covers again I’m going to kill you” and spat rhetorical questions like “did you even brush your teeth today?”  All in the most absolute, sacrosanct silence.  For years now the husband and the wife had given up expressing all those things that The Silence screamed so loudly every day.

The Silence had been happy throughout Bobby’s childhood.   It attended little league games, visited the library and had ice-cream at the mall once a week.  Its days were joyful, but for as long as it could remember The Silence hated Sundays.   From an early age it remembered going to something called church where the husband and the wife spent  an hour in silence listening to a preacher, which wasn’t bad, but then to The Silence’s complete despair they socialized with people, smiled and made conversation as if The Silence had never exist.   It was awful.  But The Silence knew that the torturous charade never lasted and that all would return to normal on the car ride home.  

After Bobby grew up the husband and the wife stopped attending the church theater and The Silence experienced some of the happiest years of its life.
When its elder brother went to college, The Silence had the run of the house.  It went everywhere.   And there were moments of great happiness as it had never experienced before.   When a mobile phone would ring and the husband would look at the caller id and let the wife’s call go to voicemail, it felt wonderful.  When the wife’s girlfriends inquired after the husband and she exhaled contempt out of her nose in reply.   That was all wonderful too.   Even on Sundays.

When Bobby decided to get married, The Silence experienced a rough patch in its life.  But it always recovered each morning when the husband and wife so diligently adhered to their routine.   And a few years later came the time when Sundays once again became dreaded.

On Sundays Bobby, his wife and the grandchildren came to visit after church.   On those dreadful days the house was filled with the laughter of small children and stories of the week.  A great living light filled the house on Sundays and The Silence became dim in its brightness.  Oh what horrible days Sundays.   On Sundays The Silence clung to the memory of the morning routine the husband and the wife follow each day.  That memory gave it the strength to endure in the light.  

And so The Silence continued for many years.   Until one morning the husband packed a suitcase and walked out of the front door.   But the wife never motioned to stop him and she never asked him to stay, so The Silence never worried.  But it should have.  For a few months after the husband left The Silence was lonely, almost forgotten.  One day the wife walked into the kitchen and made French toast instead of cereal and then something horrible happened.   She hummed a little ditty while she flipped the toast!!   The Silence immediately got a headache and retired to a corner of the living room, next to the phone. 

A few hours later divorce papers arrived by courier.  But since the wife signed them without reading a single word, The Silence remained hopeful, but its head was throbbing now.

Life is always absurd, you just have to look

Today I walked over a historic monument into a 700 year old institution and paid to contribute to the deaths of thousands.

You don’t believe me, do you? Oh ye of little faith. It’s true! Everyday life is a surrealist experience if you stop to examine it. 

This morning I left my apartment, turned right and walked down to the street. A block later I descended one of four pedestrian staircases of this overpass:
  

 
Built in 1926, it is apparently an engineering feat that required the removal of a hill.  I happen to be very fond of this overpass, but I frequently question sanity of the multitude of tourists who come to Porto Alegre and stand on this overpass to take pictures of themselves just standing there.   I watch them and think that they probably get excited about warm milk…  It is a historic monument in the city of Porto Alegre, which is not saying much about historic monuments in Porto Alegre.  And so this morning I walked down one of its staircases.

I walked three blocks and turned left and into an institution that dates back to 1305.  On January 15, 1305 Dinis I, the 6th king of Portugal, instituted a system of ‘cartórios’ , or registry offices.
 These are outdated, useless institutions that have remained mostly unchanged for 700 years. All of the work is paper based and labor intensive.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that computers are only used as bona fide typewriters to generate more documents. The main function of cartórios in Brazil is to perpetuate the quagmire of bureaucracy  that stagnates that country and deprives of oxygen any hint of progress. And so I walked into the belly of this paper pushing dinosaur and had my signature notarized on a piece of paper.

The piece of paper was a sworn translation I did the day before. Only the few, the proud, the stoopid are allowed to do sworn translations in Brazil – you have to take a test that is only offered once every 30 years and receive official credentials.  In fact, these sorts of sworn translations only exist in Brazil and are only required by Jurassic governmental institutions.  And there I was in the belly of the dinosaur notarizing my signature on the fossilized remains of what was once a promising economy. The paper allowed a South American equivalent of Phillip Morris to import 15 kg of tobacco from well fed Fiji farmers, who exploit malnourished Fiji peasants, to produce cigarettes that will destroy the health of thousands of smokers, who are fully cognizant of the risks!  And this morning there was I, wallowing in the quagmire of Jurassic bureaucracy, paying for a service that will perpetuate this absurdity for future generations and inadvertently, or advertently as the case may be, contributing to the death of thousands of smokers. 

Everyday life is always absurd, you just have to look.

Vanity

The young man selects the prefect smooth, round, flat stone on the shore of the lake.  He brushes it off with his hand and examines it carefully. Needless to say that the stone is very excited with all the attention.  It had heard of rocks having been picked up by such creatures and taken away from the lake, it overheard words like ‘aquarium’ and ‘flower garden’ and ‘bookends’ and it could hardly wait to discover that brave new world away from the lake.   After all, it had spent the last 10,000 years working its way to the shore for just this opportunity. 

The young man examines the surface of the water, extends his arm and flings the stone with the force and ease of someone who has done this many times.

“I’m flying!” exclaims the stone,  “I’m freaking flying!” It’s an incredible experience for the stone, it had never heard of flying stones before. It had heard of precious stones, broken stones and once it heard some horror story about something called gravel, but it had never heard of a flying stone.

“I am the most powerful, the most awesome, the most amazing stone in the world”  it shouted as it soared through the air a few inches above the water. Below, it could see the water shimmering and the blurry outlines of other stones on the bottom of the lake.  “Hey guys! Look at me!” it yelled at the rocks on the lake bottom. The angle of its trajectory started descending and the surface of the water came closer and closer.  Suddenly the rock skipped on the surface of the water and continued its flight.  For a moment it could clearly see other rocks on the bottom of the lake and imagined they were awestruck by its magnificent powers. “I can float! I can actually float! I’m the only floating rock in the world!” The second time it ascended into the air, the rock was giddy with its new-found grandeur.  By the time it skipped on the surface once again it was convinced it was the most magnificent rock in the universe. “I am the culmination of geological formation!” it shouted.

Then it skipped no more and quickly started to sink. Sinking was also a curious new sensation, but rather unpleasant when compared to floating and flying. As it landed on the bottom a moss and grime covered stone welcomed it with a “hey, whassup?” as the sediment that had been disturbed by its landing slowly settled on top of the newcomer.

Magnificence is an illusion of circumstances, in the end you’re really just a rock.

hypocrisy is the core of all convictions

If you live in the modern world and you have convictions you are a hypocrite.  You are, you just never stopped to think about the subject.  It’s an unfortunate fact. Allow me to illustrate:

 Do you think the mining industry is evil and is damaging the environment for future generations? If so, you must not be reading this on a computer that used silicon in its microchips, right? Or a cell phone, or satellite service, or a modern car or a microwave or a remote control, staples, aluminum foil, frying pan, canned goods… You can’t shake your fist at the anti mining protest rally and then drive away in your new car, that would make you a hypocrite.

Are you a vegetarian and against animal testing? But do you have leather shoes and a matching purse, leather seats in your car, a leather couch? An eiderdown comforter, fur trim on your coat, blue suede shoes... no? good for you.  So how certain are you that the glycerin in your soap isn’t from animal fat? Completely sure? Good for you.  Gelatin in anything you eat…  Collagen in any of your foods cosmetics or creams?  Ever had a diet drink, with an animal tested sweetener? Any diet drink, ever, would have been tested on animals.  No diet drinks, nice! But still, most processed food ingredients and medications are tested on animals before being released to the market.

So are you anti logging and all of your furniture is from salvaged wood?  Save our forests! What about your picture frames, toothpicks, chopsticks, paper, cardboard boxes, envelopes, buildings, window frames, the dashboard on your new car, pencils, drywall, baseball bats…  The books you own, the s’mores over a campfire, your fireplace, xmas trees, you enjoy the products of the logging industry, don’t you? well then…

So you are anti Wall Street and think those fat cats who ruined the economy should be taken out and hung? Do you have a bank account, a mortgage, car financing, a credit card?  But they are all from reputable institutions you claim… fine.  Who owns that reputable institution? What institutions is it connected to? Did you know that the top 700 share holders in the market have the potential to control 80% of the market value through their influences? Do you seriously think your credit card, mortgage and car payments are not in one of those pockets? Right…

Oil companies are evil giant conglomerates that are ruining the world.  Nothing around you, not one thing around you, hasn’t been through oil to get to you. (you in oil post)  From the fresh fruit you bought at the farmer’s market to the shampoo you used on your hair, to the picture you took of your child.  It all used oil to get to you.  And think about this, nothing in your life has ever been plastic free.  It was either packaged in plastic (or coated cardboard) when you bought it, it was shipped on a pallet that was wrapped in plastic, it had a plastic tag, bubble wrap, etc.  and plastic is oil. You can’t live in your house and claim oil companies are evil without being a hypocrite.

Religion, are you religious? Do you subscribe to a religion that claims to be benign and all caring but everyone from other faiths will burn in hell for all eternity?  Think about the hypocrisy behind that. 

I don’t have to point out the hypocrisy in politics, it’s self evident.

Are you an honest person who never lies?  Really?  Not even to smile broadly at someone and say “hi, how have you been?” even though you don’t remember who the hell he is?  Or to nod your agreement with the group/boss/priest/judge/parent/friend/coworker though your opinion may be different.  Or to say “I’ll workout extra tomorrow to make up for today”.  Ever call in sick to work when you weren’t?  Ever make any new year’s resolutions? Keep them all? Lying to yourself is still lying… and hypocrisy is still hypocrisy.

So you donate to UNICEF, charities and save the fillintheblank because you want to make a difference. But then you don’t neuter your dog.  But the gas in your car comes from countries where women are treated as property.  But your iPad comes from a factory where workers are treated as slaves. But much of the textile you wear and use is produced by people who live in misery and squalor. Most of the modern consumer goods in your home were manufactured or assembled by people who have a standard of living that would kill you in less than a month. You can’t enjoy the benefits of slave labor/contribute to animal overpopulation/contribute to the development of misogynistic economies, turn around and donate some cash and say you’re not a hypocrite.

Your convictions are not compatible with the modern world. They simply are not.  It’s not possible, in today’s world, to have convictions and not be a hypocrite. 

So be the best hypocrite you can be. It's all any of us can do.

Here's how you fix the world

“Mommy, mommy, I throwed the ball”
The mother smiles at her three year old’s absolutely adorable and intuitive conjugation of the verb to throw, but still she corrects him.
“It’s ‘I threw the ball’ dear, not ‘I throwed the ball’”
“Why?” is the immediate response, and the standard retort to almost any statement she makes these days.
“Because it’s an irregular verb,” she explains. But by the time she finishes her explanation his mind is already concentrated on other things and the notion of an irregular verb is much too abstract to even ask why.

 In all languages around the world that interaction is nearly ubiquitous.  But what exactly did that child learn from that interaction? Did he learn to conjugate an irregular verb? Probably not.  He did however, learn that there is right and there is wrong and there is a reason.  He learned that he should opt for what is right even if he doesn’t understand the reason. He learned that opting for right is a path to self improvement.   It’s a basic lesson for a developing brain: there is right, there is wrong, choose right and you’ll be better off. There, at that moment a synapse is formed in his brain to distinguish right from wrong and opt for right in order to be a better person.

As I walk around Porto Alegre, I frequently eavesdrop in the conversations of passersby,  (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, it’s infinitely more entertaining than anything on TV)  and I’m frequently dumbfounded by the incorrect use of the language, in this case Portuguese.  The phenomenon is more glaring here than it was in Mountain View or Sunnyvale (CA) where I lived before.  But I’m certain that if my life had been less sheltered and I had spent more time in less privileged communities, the phenomenon would have been just as glaring in English. These people are usually very poor and uneducated. When these people were 3 years old no-one told them “this is right dear, that is wrong, choose right,” because no-one around them had enough of an education to know the difference.   On a daily basis these people are exposed to media that demonstrates to them through examples that their use of the language is different for the use of the language made by ‘successful’ people.  But it’s too late.   At the age of 3, while their brains were forming synapses that would serve them for the rest of their lives, no-one around them had enough command of the language to teach “right, wrong, choose right,” “right, wrong, make the choice that improves you.” By the time that person is 6 years old and finally goes to a public, underfunded, violent school for an indifferent education, it’s too late, his brain is already formed.  The critical period in brain formation is before the age of 3 and that critical lesson will never be ingrained and instinctive in his thought processes unless it is taught from birth.  He will learn right from wrong, and he may improve his life, but it will not be instinctive.  It will not be part of his brain’s physiology.

Underprivileged communities everywhere in the world are characterized by the improper use of their local languages, along with criminality and a complete lack of opportunity for social mobility. And everyone believes that poverty propagates a lack of education and social mobility.  It does, absolutely. But there may be a very basic underlying reason for that.  It’s not just that people in these communities can’t afford better schools, it’s that children under the age of 3 in these communities are never taught awareness of self improvement through these basic lessons a mother gives when she herself knows the difference.   It has been shown that in extremely poor communities, the children of women who receive the most rudimentary education are more likely to leave abject poverty and lead productive lives.  This is because they are able to teach their children from birth that there is right and wrong and a choice must be made.  And that lesson teaches her child self improvement, and an awareness of self improvement gives her child opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to him.

There is right, there is wrong, I must chose and the choice I make improves me. It’s simple, but it can’t be taught in school, it must be learned from a caregiver before the age of three.

Do you want to fix the world?  Here’s the solution, it’s surprisingly simple:  give each woman the most basic, rudimentary education and the miniscule amount of power needed to protect and teach her child.  Mind you, it’s not about correct grammar and a literary education. Basic grammar is just one of the foundations the society where I live and where you live.   A Massai woman isn’t going to correct her daughter’s grammar, she’s going to show her to proper technique for making flour from the grain they harvested. But if she knows that when her daughter is 7 years old she will become the fifth wife of a 40 year old man in exchange for a cow and five chickens… she may be less emotionally invested in the child’s early education. 

Name a current social problem in the world: a rudimentary education and a miniscule amount of power to protect her child is the solution to the root cause of that problem. 

a fly on the wall, you know?

You know when you’re sitting in your living room and suddenly a bean of sunlight streams into the window and you sit there staring at it?   You know how, like, after you’ve been staring at the beam of sunlight streaming into your living room you see hundreds of dust particles just floating there? And then you start to think, wow that’s a lot of dust, I should clean the house more often? But then you don’t because you don’t like to clean house?  And then you start thinking, crap I wonder which one of those dust particles is going to make me sneeze for an hour?  And then you know when you go to the mall and you’re having some frozen yogurt and you see a beam of sunlight with dust floating in it, and you think wow the mall is cleaner than my house?  And then you think you should spend more time at the mall, but then you don't?  And then you start thinking about when you’re walking around the house and you stub your toe a stool that you left in the middle of the room because you were going to clean something up high but then you didn’t? And then you curse and say ouch? You know? And then you start thinking about all those poor little flies.

Do you see what I’m getting at?

No?

You know when you’re writing a blog post and your readers can't figure out what you’re talking about?  Sheesh, I’ll explain.

Flies have to fly through those thousands of suspended dust particles all the time, all day long, for all of their lives.  And then you think about how fast flies fly and you wonder how many times a day they go wham into a dust particle, that to them is just about the size of that stool you left in the middle of the room. And then you know when you start wondering if flies curse and say ouch all day? And then you know when you sit there wondering whether flies displace enough air to move dust particles out of their way before they the fly smack dab into them?  And then you start thinking about 6th grade science and you remember that flies have five eyes.

You know when you’re walking down the street and you get some dust in your eye and you have to stop walking and rub your eye until the dust stops irritating your eye? 

You see what I’m getting at?

You do? Good for you!

And then you think about how glad you are that the piece of dust in your eye isn’t a stool.   Well, anyway, next time you wish you were a fly on the wall… don’t!  It’s just not as glamorous as it seems, you know?

The demise of perfection or the day I read Dropped Names by Frank Langella

The demise of perfection or the day I read Dropped Names by Frank Langella

There have ever only been two perfect men in the history of humanity:  my grandfather and Frank Langella.  My grandfather, because he died when I was 14 before I had found fault in him.  If he had lived a few more years and I had known him when I was 16, perhaps his perfection would not have endured the onslaught of the rite of passage we call adolescence and its ravenous disinterest in everyone and everything.  And Frank Langella because when I was 17 I rented a VHS tape and at the exact moment my interest in the movie was about to be consumed by my newly found ravenous disinterest, the heroine was startled by a man in her hotel room, and there on the TV screen was the most beautiful, the most handsome man I had ever seen or imagined. I had to rewind the tape (yes, VHS tapes had to be physically rewound and phones had cords!) to discover the name of this Adonis.  Once I eliminated Lesley Ann Down and John Gielgud as possible candidates I was left with Frank Langella.  At 17 you are able to reach absolute conclusions with absolute certainty without the tiresome bother of consideration and critical thought. It’s a gift we lose with age. At 17 my absolute certain conclusion was that any man who looked like that had to be perfect.

Over the years I lost my ability to jump to absolute conclusions, which is probably for the best, though I miss it occasionally.  Without that ability I never again deem any man perfect at first glance, that particular super-power faded and was gone by the time I was 20. Furthermore, I realized that Mr. Langella couldn’t possibly be perfect, no man is, and that his claim to perfection was solely based on the warped workings of my 17 year old brain.  But I enjoyed having that one perfect thing, there are so few perfect things that even imaginary perfection is in short supply, so I kept it. Why not? In the private universe of my mind, the scale of male perfection went from Pewee Herman to Frank Langella, all men fell somewhere in between, including Paul Reubens and Frank Langella.

I’ve watched most of Frank’s movies and I’ve been privileged to see him on stage a few times.  And that was the extent of the information available to me about the real Frank Langella. I’m not inclined to read gossip magazines or search for information on the lives of people I think should be left to live their lives in privacy. So I knew absolutely nothing about him, until he moved in with Whoopi Goldberg.  I heard about that. It couldn’t be helped, though there were unconfirmed rumors of an aging Yupik Eskimo in Siberia who knew nothing about it at the time.  Complete lack of information is extremely conducive to imaginary perfection, as you might imagine.  So he remained perfect over the decades. 

I just finished Dropped Names by Frank Langella. It’s a very well written, interesting and clever collection of stories about encounters with people who are now dead.  Needless to say that by the time you amass a “collection of stories about encounters with people who are now dead”, you’ve probably done some introspection and analyzed your relationships and existence, so there is some of that in the book as well.  If you’ve read this far, I highly recommend the book, for whatever that recommendation is worth.  And I’m sure that the devastation it caused in my life will not befall other casual readers.

While I was reading the book responsible for the complete eradication of my imaginary standard of male perfection, I often found myself looking up from the book and around the room as if I had been reading something subversive that could somehow compromise my good character and feared that someone might be watching.  The book describes relationships and expounds on the author’s opinions and impressions of some well known people.   It felt much too intimate to be proper.  It wasn’t the intimacy Mr. Langella shared with the people described in the book that felt inappropriate to me.  It was stranger than that.   It was a sort of unshared intimacy.  A unilateral intimacy, if you will, derived from an insight into the personal thoughts and relationships of the author, things I was never meant to know. It was as if I was peering into his relationships with these people, into his thoughts and opinions; that he was sharing moments and situations I never sought to know.  I felt an intimacy unbeknownst to the other person in the intimate moment.  I’m sure the peculiar feeling was a result of the remnants of some warped conclusions of my 17 year old brain.  But my present brain paused to consider the situation.  What would you call that? Unilateral intimacy… After some thought I realized that anyone with any moral fortitude would call it voyeurism.

Not only has Frank Langella managed to loosen my extremely fragile hold on imaginary male perfection, he has made a voyeur out of me, obliterating both a treasured delusion and whatever moral high ground I held over the average peeping tom. Next time I run into a peeping tom not only will I be completely unable to gage his masculine wiles, I won’t be able to toss my nose in the air and leave in a huff of superiority. This is obviously a very serious problem that will impact my daily life. But I really should have known that nothing good could come from reading this book, since years ago Frank Langella nearly had me arrested for groping.

It was an off Broadway play and he was playing a Cyrano de Bergerac sans panache, which I found an odd choice because without panache Cyrano is just a guy with a sword. But any way, where was I? Yes, groping.  In a scene too boisterous to be restricted to the stage Mr. Langella and his rival came down the aisle in some well rehearsed sword play.  At a specific point in the interlude they were fighting right next to my aisle seat. In a lunging motion Frank Langella’s butt was mere inches from my shoulder.  The butt of the only living perfect man was literally inches from me.  My mother, sitting next to me, in her infinite wisdom realized the rarity of this once in a life time opportunity and verbalized the fleeting magic of the moment with the whispered words “grab it”.  I doubt Mr. Langella remembers two women desperately trying to contain a most inopportune and inappropriate guffaw inches from his butt during a performance. But I’m sure the subsequent police report would have contained the words ‘groping in a public venue’.

Somewhere in the rules of depravity there must be a loop hole that provides absolution of guilt associated with present day voyeurism if the object of the voyeur had in the past also been the intended object of groping in a public venue.  It’s the old stand-by “I can’t be a voyeur, I’m a groper” defense we’ve all used at some point.  You haven’t? Really? So it’s just me then.

The point I’m trying to make is that this book will not shatter your frail grasp on delusional male perfection, it will not make you question the quality of your character and it will not remind you of judgment calls that might have landed you in jail and banned you from Broadway audiences.  That’s just me.  Most people will find it a beautifully written, perfectly entertaining, insightful and memorable collection of stories.

Even if you are not delusional and living in an imaginary world where Frank Langella is perfect, go read the book! It’s called Dropped Names.  You can get it here: Amazon Don’t worry, it probably won’t make you want to drown your morally weak, reality recognizing self in a glass of wine, that’s probably just me again. 

Fire Ashton Kutcher hire Donald Trump

Fire Ashton Kutcher hire Donald Trump
The thing that makes Two and a Half Men work is extremes.  The show’s humor is mostly derived from the extreme flaws of the characters.  Charlie wasn’t a self centered womanizing alcoholic, he was the most self centered, the most womanizing alcoholic ever. Berta isn’t a housekeeper with a bad attitude, she’s the housekeeper with the worst attitude ever.  Evelyn isn’t a bad mother, she’s the worst mother ever. Jake isn’t dense, he’s a black hole.  Rose isn’t an insane stalker… well you get the picture.  Now we have Ashton Kutcher as Walden, the heartbroken, computer geek billionaire.  The problem is that he’s not the most heartbroken computer geek billionaire ever.  He’s not even the geekiest computer geek or the most obnoxious rich guy ever.  He’s just a regular guy.  No extremes anywhere.  He just doesn’t fit into the recipe, he’s bubble gum in a French restaurant.   So here’s my suggestion: fire Ashton Kutcher and hire the most obnoxious rich man in the world to play the part. But that’s not all, if you act now you also get the most ridiculous hair and the sorest loser in the world thrown in for free!!  He's perfect for the part.

I just can't give a hoot

A well dressed, somewhat distinguished gentleman walks into an UNICEF office.  He approaches the young woman at the front desk with a “Good morning, I would like to buy a fuck.”  The young woman is, as you might expect, shocked and somewhat offended.  She snaps at him “Excuse-me? How rude!” She eyes her phone and tries to remember the extension for security.  “Not at all!” the man says in a defensive tone. “You’ve been asking me to give a fuck for years, and I have! Now I’m all out of fucks to give and it’s ruining my life.”  The woman pulls out a laminated phone list and confirms that security is extension 155, she then looks at the man, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”   “You don’t understand,” says the man.  His tone becomes depressed as he continues,  “I gave a fuck about global warming and now politicians tell me it’s a hoax.  I gave a fuck about education and now schools refuse to teach evolution.  I gave a fuck about the overpopulation problem and the church proclaims contraceptives as the work of the devil.  I gave a fuck about world peace and they elected GWB twice! I’m just out of fucks to give.”  The woman is a little more sympathetic now, but her hand remains on the receiver. The man continues with a tear in his eye “The other day my son brought home a lousy report card and I just didn’t give a fuck. My boss told me I had to take a pay cut and I just couldn’t give a fuck.  My wife said she’s sleeping with the pool boy… you see what I’m getting at.  They think I don’t care, but the problem is that I’m all out of fucks.”

“Sir, I don’t think I can help you.  Have you tried giving a hoot?” His exasperated look told her she’s stating the obvious. “Of course I have, but it’s just not the same. Once you’ve given a fuck, a hoot is just so understated. You feel like you’re not doing enough”.  She tries again, “Well, sir, that’s not really our core business, we mostly sell Christmas cards,” she points to a lovely display of cards in a corner.  “I know,” says the man with a sigh “I tried Greenpeace before I came here, they gave me a t-shirt”.  The man looks defeated as he walks toward the door.  The receptionist hears him mutter “I’ll try Washington, they sell so much bullshit, someone is bound to have a fuck or two for sale.”

from great to pathetic in a single statement

I voted for Obama and I’m going to vote for him again, not because he’s doing a stellar job, but because president Romney would be disastrous.   It’s a sad state of affairs when in an election in the most powerful military power in the world, the strongest economy in the world, the greatest advocate for democracy in the world, the choice for president is between mediocre and incompetent evil.

You might jump to Obama’s defense at this moment (‘cause if you’re jumping to Romney’s defense, stop reading and go away), saying that I’m being unfair, that his presidency has been marked by major positive accomplishments, that he has improved America's standing around the world, passed a healthcare act that aims at providing all Americans with adequate care, improved veteran benefits, ended the Iraqi war, stopped US torture of prisoners and, at the very least, scratched his head over the Guantanamo conundrum.  Yes he did all of those things and what’s more, he got his daughters a puppy! 

So why is it that during a recent interview with Brian Williams (see it here) he described the Bin Laden raid as the ‘most important single day of my presidency’?   Was Bin Laden evil? Absolutely!  Did Bin Laden need to be brought to justice? A resounding ‘yes’!  Did Bin Laden deserve to die? I’d have to go with ‘probably’ since he seemed to be an overall waste of oxygen. However, if ‘the single most important day’ in the presidency of the most powerful military power in the world, the greatest advocate of democracy in the world, the strongest economy in the world is the murder of one sickly evil man, then it’s not a really a great world power, it’s just pathetic.

Stuck in a rut

Little Red Riding Hood is startled by the little girl who just materialized in front of her.  She stumbles a few steps back on the road to grandma’s house and asks: “Who are you? Where did you come from?”  Lily can’t believe her own eyes and is just as startled as her hooded page mate.  “My name is Lily, my mother was reading me this story for the millionth time, she reads it every night, and my eyelids got heavy and I shut them…” she looks around at the damp forest, “suddenly I was here talking to you.”   

Once the original fright wears off  Ridding Hood relaxes, dusts her hooded cape and picks up her basket.  “Well I suppose it is a road, I should expect other travelers occasionally.”   Lily, who knew the story by heart, was quick to correct her erroneous assumption.  “It’s not a real road, it’s just a, a story, and aside from the wolf there really shouldn’t be anyone else here.   I’m not supposed to be here.”   Hood looks startled again, “did you say ‘wolf’?”  Lily is irritated with Hood’s ignorance of the plot, “yes I said wolf, what’s the matter with you? Everyone knows about the wolf eating the grandmother,  ‘what large eyes you have my dear’ and all that stuff.”   Hood seems surprised “a wolf eats my granny? How’s that supposed to happen? she’s safe at home.”  Lily explains, “he pretends he’s you and she lets him in the house…” but as she hears the words she finds her explanation somewhat farfetched, as does Hood who retorts “a wolf fools my grandmother into thinking he’s me and she lets him in, that’s fresh.”   “Well, it’s true!!” protests Lily.

At that moment a vivacious figure emerges from the trees,  “Hi there youngsters”  chirps the wolf.   Hood looks his way and comments on how busy the road is today and Lily again informs her that it’s a story, not a road and that this is the wolf not a passerby.  “Me a wolf? Nonsense,” cries the wolf in a self righteous tone, “I’m a traveling salesman.”  Lily cannot stand his smug lies and cuts him down immediately “a salesman you say?  Where are your products? What’s with that snout and that tail?”  Hood studies the wolf and agrees with Lily “you don’t look like a salesman.”  The wolf realizes he has hit a snag, but he’s been stickier situations, “Did I say salesman?  Yes, er… I meant I’m a er… well, you startled me and I was scared… yes, that’s it!”  He stands taller and continues “I’m the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz and I was wondering if you had any courage in that basket of yours.”   Lily is incensed at that bold lie “No he’s not, he’s the wolf, look at him!”  Hood examines the wolf carefully and finds his explanation plausible, “what with the snout and the tail, you could be the cowardly lion.”   Lily is almost screaming now “ There’s no lion in this story! That’s the wolf!”

The wolf continues his lion-in-need spiel  as Lily considers the entire situation.  She concludes that deception is part of his nature, a survival mechanism.  No matter what she says to him, he will not deviate from his crooked path, so she turns her attention to Hood who is about to give the wolf directions to grandma’s house: “If you tell him where you’re going he will eat your grandmother and get killed by a lumberjack, who I suspect is a operative for the logging industry; he shows up out of nowhere and makes  logging seem downright heroic. But I digress… stop talking to the wolf and let’s go back to your house. ”  Hood ignores Lily’s warnings and continues her conversation with the wolf.  A few seconds later the wolf is racing through the forest, Hood turns, waves goodbye to Lily and continues down the road to grandma’s house.

Lily sighs her frustration as she watches Hood disappear in a bend.  But she learns a valuable lesson: some people are just stuck in a rut and can’t get out, even with the help of others. Tomorrow night when she asks her mom read the story again she’ll try to talk some sense into the grandmother instead.