The man himself Sir Rantalot asked me to post
something for his website. Lately
I haven‚t had a strong focus to act like a microscope/telescope/magnifying glass
bringing verbal order to the more or less random events of our lives. Mostly been just been kicking stuff
around.
Enjoying
being a parent. It helps having,
objectively speaking, the cutest kid in the Milky Way. It‚s hard to imagine how much you will
enjoy your kids until you have some of your own; and damn near impossible to
convey in a meaningful way the beauty and delight of their Tabula Rasa
perception of the world, their ever shifting behavior patterns, the satisfaction
of comforting them when they are sad and joy in watching them take hours of
delight in playing with something as simple as a cardboard box. So I won‚t try.
Note
to Broadway: "The Princess Bride" is dying for a musical
makeover. Just a little FYI. Oh, quick rave: „Avenue Q‰ is
awesome. Log off, go run to your
local music store and buy it, log back on, and continue reading.
Is
it just me, or is our generation (I'm 29 FYI) the biggest bunch of flakes
ever? Tossing it out there. I‚m sure are some standards to apply to
quantify this relative lack of consideration/inability to make plans/lack of
calling to cancel/etc. to other generations. Just answer me this: have you tried throwing together 8
20-something people for a dinner/movie/whatever? Wow.
At
the risk of making myself sound pretentious, has anyone checked out "My
Dinner with Andre?" There is a part in there where Andre is talking about
why everyone talks about leaving New York, but no one ever does (which isn't
true. I left NY. But then I didn't grow up there). He says it is because New York is the
model for the new prison, where everyone is both a prisoner and a guard, and
this schizophrenia has people walking around in a confused haze.
This
may sound abstract, but let‚s put it in another context. Say you are an employee and shareholder
of a company. The company wants to
freeze wages and cut staff, leaving those left over double the workload. This will make the share price
rise. Are you for it or
against? Is it a moral judgment,
or are your leanings in proportion to how much share you have and if you are
the one getting the ax? (Quick
note to job seekers: get a job with a private company if at all possible).
Someone
once asked me what I think the biggest problem our country faces right
now. I think it is the continued
stratification of our society and the growing disparity between the rich and
the poor. It’s already epidemic
and has already created an informal class system, which runs against the grain
of what this country is about.
Not
saying we can do anything about it.
It just kinda sucks, that’s all.
I
think the attitude of the ruling class was best summed up in the Mel Brooks
movie "A History of the World Part One" when one Senator begs:
"But what about the poor?" and the entire assembly in unison yells
back "Fuck the poor!"
Truth is beauty and beauty truth.
Living
in the bay area and not remotely being in the neighborhood of even imagining I
could buy a house kinda brings this divide into focus for me. The divide between homeowners and
renters is another focal point of this class thing. The fact that I won‚t own till I move or win the lottery is
just another concrete reminder that our generation will be the first American
one to be materially poorer than the one that preceded it.
My
friend once said that he wasn't rich like my parents. I was aghast because my parents aren't rich. My dad teaches at a community college
and, without disclosing too much, is definitely within the five-figure
range. I worked at restaurants
until I graduated college to augment the bare minimum I was given to live. I guess my friend thought my folks had
dough because of where they lived.
My
parents were lucky enough to buy a 4 bedroom/2 bath house in North Berkeley a
few blocks from campus for around $25,000. Now it's true that this investment has returned probably
50-fold (damn Bay Area real estate is a good investment). But it means nothing until they
actually sell it. In the 6th grade
I had three pairs of identical blue jeans, of which one I duct taped together
because the button came off.
People at Longfellow elementary thought I was the poorest kid in the
class.
My
point is this: my definition of wealth is not numerically oriented but is held
up to this standard: are you working for your money or is your money working
for you? To this my parents and
myself definitely fall into the former.
Quick
aside: what is with this week of mourning‚ for Reagan? Perhaps the public has a shorter-term
memory than even Reagan had himself.
I guess growing up in the Bay Area gave me a somewhat skewed and not so
mainstream perception. Let me put
it this way: I was SHOCKED that
Reagan beat Mondale (I was 9 at the time). I mean, the promise of higher taxes, a choice of a woman as
a running mate-what‚s not to like?
I’m glad Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia
agreed with me. Every other state
was enjoying their “Morning in America.”
And now they seem to be enjoying their mourning in America.
Since
the only other president to die in my lifetime was Nixon, a disgraced president
whose death was more or less swept under the rug, I had no real basis of
comparison for this event. I was
like “What the hell? An entire
week of mourning?”
Am
I the only one who recalls a line from Evita "When they are bringing your
curtain down-demand to be buried like Eva Peron"?
In fact the whole
song is strangely poignant:
O what a circus
O what a show
America has gone to town, over the death of an actor named Ronald
Reagan.
We've all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right
Oh what an exit, that's how to go
When they're ringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like Ronald Reagan
It's quite a sunset
And good for the country in a roundabout way
We've made the front page of all the world's papers today
Oops. I just admitted I could paraphrase
portions of Evita by heart. I'll just
check my heterosexual credentials at the door. At least I got a small assist by the internet.
Though
those who work for the federal government got Friday off to mourn, those of us
working in the private sector still had to go to work. I mildly resented that, as I wanted to
mourn in my own private way. Does
a day at the beach and a movie count as mourning?
Anyways, that‚s what
I got right now.
Toodles.
