7 posts tagged “i am so awesome”

I quote:

Being culturally literate means being able to get your bearings quickly in a book, which does not require reading the book in its entirety--quite the opposite, in fact.  One might even argue that the greater your abilities in this area, the less it will be necessary to read any book in particular.

--from How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read *

*(a book for pundits?)

So I'm not jaded and easily bored--I'm culturally literate.  Imagine my pleasure at discovering this fact. 

See, a while back I started noticing that I take much less pleasure in works of "serious fiction" than I used to.  I'm what they call an avid reader, and I've always included serious fiction in my lists of things that I love to read.  But, god, the last few years, I can hardly stand most of it.  I am already familiar, very familiar, with the standard tropes and motifs of serious fiction, and, honestly, they bore me.  Yes, I get it--these two people are troubled, deeply troubled, by the idea of sexual intercourse.  They're indecisive, not because they're childish and incompetent but because they're deep and complex.  Their insecurities are, of course, what make them so very real and yet so very serious.  It's all so very deep that I feel entirely suffocated by these unpleasant beings you have described.  These people you have drawn into your story are not people I would ever tolerate in real life, so why should I care about them on the page and in my head? 

Rubbish and poppycock.  I veer now towards nonfiction and the completely unserious types of fiction that are going to at least give me exciting reading, even if it isn't very deep.  I read a lot of Agatha Christie and Dick Francis, tossed in with my nonfiction, all of which, I assure you, is entirely serious.  I'm reading On Persephone's Island right now, an account of a life in Sicily, and it's so gorgeously and effortlessly spun that I don't ever think about the writing.

Let me back up.  It's a problem for me when I'm reading the book and instead of being entirely engrossed by the story or the characters, I'm thinking about how clever the writing is or this or that theme or motif.  I want the damn book to suck me in, entirely.  I will give myself over to Agatha Christie, body and soul, and let her characters inhabit me.  I will not do that to most of the "serious" fiction that I encounter these days.  There are exceptions.  I find Ian McEwan to be a compelling writer, along with Don DeLillo and a few others (does Cormac McCarthy count?  I guess he's a "serious" writer now, although when I first encountered his books, he was more of a cult figure.  Hmmm.  I just noticed a peculiar similarity among these three guys, the structure of their surnames.  Interesting.).  I feel the same about movies and music, too.  I don't want to be thinking about how clever the structure and form are--I want the movie or music or artwork or book to possess me.  In a way, I want to cease to exist for a time or at least let my self be subordinated to this other. 

Soup wrote a funny thing about Coldplay yesterday, and Coldplay is a perfect example.  I get what they're doing.  I do.  They're men with feelings (and possibly jaundice).  They are totally unafraid, to express their feelings.  Great.  Unfortunately, since so many have done that already, I'm feeling a little, oh, uninterested.  I will gladly take one thousand Blues Explosions shouting, "Baby, baby you sure like to fuck!" at me before I will listen again to a very serious, very emotional man trying to make his feelings sound like they're actually something that nobody else has ever thought of or felt in, like, the whole history of humanity.  Because, seriously, that's how we all felt when we were teenagers, but at some point, man, you have to realize that your feelings aren't usually that unique.  I think Brian Eno said something like his advice to songwriters was to write songs that didn't use the words "I," "you," or "love." 

Now, again, there are exceptions.  Sometimes the way those feelings get expressed is so new and fresh that the feelings themselves are almost made new.  To me, this is where American Music Club and Morphine come in.  Sometimes the lyrics are so completely honest and simple that you get sucked in by their elegance.  For me, this is why songs like "Here Comes the Sun" rank among my favorites--it's so clean, so pure that it perfectly mirrors its subject and it gets me every time.  Sometimes the artist finds a way to really open up to the universality of the feeling, and that can be great, too. 

And sometimes, the super geniuses like Frank Black, just don't talk about feelings; instead they write energetic pop songs about Isaac Asimov novels.  Note to Gwyneth Paltrow's husband:  Sci-fi novels are a bottomless well of awesome songwriting topics.  I need more pop songs about the colonization of Mars, I really do.

At least when Jon Spencer (or Chuck Berry, for that matter) gives me music that is about one thing and one thing only and that thing is just sex, at least then it comes from the, um, heart.  What I mean is that it's so straightforward and honest that I don't have to think about it.  There are no games there.  And so, again, I can lose myself in that.  I cannot lose myself in Coldplay.  If I'm sitting there thinking and analyzing then my self is fully present and active, and, god, that's what I read philosophy for, not what I put a CD on for.  Banal poseurs.  I'm opening myself up to be completely possessed by you, the artist, and instead of taking me and giving me ecstasy, you just want to pull up a chair and chat about your feelings.  But, you know what?  I can find someone who will just cut the crap and give me joy, so I think I'll move along.

So, artists of the world, you are hereby on notice.  I am culturally literate, not merely jaded and bored and grumpy, so I have this sudden credibility that I never knew I had.  You are on notice that the bald fact that your relationship with your girl/boyfriend is completely fraught with clinical baggage (or bagged with clinical frottage, whatever) does not make you interesting or deep or worthy of my attention in any way.  The fact that your parents were kind of shitheels, ditto.  The fact that you smoke and drink too much, double dog ditto.  *sigh*  I'm going to go skim some books now.

Why do you think it is some people don't get along with you?

I am given to understand some people think I am judgmental.  Feh.  I say most people are not judgmental enough.

And, if we're being honest here, I don't care if everyone likes me.  If I did, I guess I would try to be nicer.  But I don't, so I go on being my harsh, abrasive self and kind of not caring about other people's feelings and still enough people like me as I am.  My husband thinks I'm a freakin disaster, but he seems to enjoy the spectacle. 

Double feh.

First and foremost:  TO THE PEOPLE OF BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA (except electric firefly):  YOU ARE IRREDEEMABLE ASSHOLES.  Also, do you really think the Marine Corps is going to be intimidated by a mass public breastfeeding?  THIS IS WHY PEOPLE MOCK LIBERAL ELITES, YOU IDIOTS.  YOU COMPLETE, UNMITIGATED IDIOTS.  Semper Fi, Rob Riggle!

Second, and making reference to the very same episode of The Daily Show:  My husband (ex-military, sort of--I don't feel entirely sure the Jieitai [Japan Self-Defense Force] constitutes military, but they pretend they do) and I were watching Jon Stewart interview that dude, Lt. Gen. Whatever, and we couldn't help but notice that these two men are from entirely different planets.  They were both apparently speaking English, American vernacular, yet they were not having the same conversation at all.  It was awesome.

Next:  WTFF?  Yeah!  Fabulous!  Teenagers have no fucking idea about anything at all in history, but they are so great at using Facebook!  They are choosing (that word is used many times, because the fact that something is chosen is enough to give it validity and force, at least in the world this lady inhabits) to spend hours and hours not doing homework or bothering about who this Hitler dude is but reading and writing about themselves and reading and writing in order to socialize!  So, see?  Teenagers can read and write!  They can completely comprehend LOLcats and txt msgs that involve complex code-substitutions of numbers for syllables (like Prince didn't totally already do that shit back in the 80s), so they're totally smart.  So just get off their backs, old people!  You crazy old people who want, like, coherent thoughts and maybe writing about something other than myself.  You suck with your whole "knowing about history" deal.  Because it's not the same as what teenagers used to do, just writing in a diary or something, because this is totally, like, online, and teenagers today spend upwards of 2 hours a day doing this newfangled diary-writing, whereas you oldsters had to do, like, chores or some shit and learn about boring stuff like wars.  Yes, I see this logic so clearly.  Srsly, this is one of the lamest fucking articles I've encountered in a while.  FEH.

And finally, my old friend Linda Hirshman has an article in Slate again.  Ah, how nice, how refreshing.  She uses the example of Silda Spitzer to make the case that women should keep their paying jobs instead of staying home with kids (for those of you who don't know, Hirshman hates women who stay home with their kids).  First off, hasn't poor Silda been used enough?  Fucking leave her alone.  I don't know why she stood on those podiums (podia?) with her slimy husband, but that isn't my business.  But for fuck's sake, Linda--the woman has enough to deal with without being made an "example" of by some vicious little "feminist." 

Second, OK, go read the piece.  Her case for not quitting your day job consists primarily of:  1.  You just never know when your husband is going to get caught paying $4300 for a night with a ho and your whole world is going to come crashing down on you!  2.  When that world comes crashing down, your social standing is likely to come down a notch.  I mean, you know, you're probably still going to be quite well off--especially after the alimony!--but you will now be only the divorcee Spitzer instead of the governor's wife.  OMG!  Like, OMG!  How humiliating, this precipitous decline in standing among the elite philanthropist types.  It's almost as unbearable as finding out your husband goes to hookers. 

Nevermind that Hirshman's "opt-out revolution" doesn't really exist (does a revolution really exist if it only marginally exists among the richest classes and not at all among the rest of us?  I hardly think so), she again bases her entire argument for keeping your day job on wealth, power, and social status.  The problem with doing this is the same problem Kant identified with moral judgments and arguments of this type.  To someone who cares little about validation from outside, whether that validation is derived from money or a certain social position, the argument becomes meaningless.  Most of us like to make money and no one likes to be really impoverished, sure, but not all of us derive our ethical compass and sense of self-worth from whatever pays the most, Linda.  Nah, Linda, if you want to be convincing, you need to convince me why I should give a fuck about the old man's game of corporate rat-racing and expensive toy accumulation and the jibber-jabbering of the caviar-eaters.  So far all I've heard is because that's what will make other people, especially those old white men we all love to hate, think I'm worthwhile.  But the secret here is, Linda:  I already know I'm worthwhile.  I have no need of their validation. 

It snowed all day.  All day and most of last night, and apparently it's set to do it again tonight.  When that happens, you have to really stay on top of the snow removal or else you get stranded (particularly when you drive a Toyota Yaris that has, like, 5 inches of ground clearance).

So I was out shoveling out the driveway (or, really, mostly sweeping it, as it is very, very dry snow) and a neighbor came up riding an ATV with a snowplow attachment and offered to plow our driveway out for us.  I respectfully and gratefully declined--it was nice of her to offer.

But this is one of the things that I think is so intensely stupid about modern American life.  It's a driveway and a front stoop; it took about 10 or 15 minutes of sweeping to get it totally cleared out (granted that has a lot to do with it being such powdery snow).  Meanwhile, for those 10 or 15 minutes, I created no pollution, I spent no money, and I got some exercise.  I also got to have fun with my son, who loves helping sweep and shovel, and the dogs who enjoyed wading through the virgin meter or so of snow accumulated in the front yard.  Why would I want a machine to do that for me?  What would I really gain from it?  I'd get less exercise, pump out noise and air pollution, and free up 10 minutes maybe ...to do what, exactly?

There is a pattern in which Americans will pay for something to make their life more convenient by doing some bit of trivial work for them, then pay to go to a gym or pay for exercise equipment (which, likely, they don't use enough) and go do that separate from their chores, then in the overall scheme of things, it's saving them nothing.  Maybe they get a little extra time, which most studies suggest they spend sitting unproductively on their asses watching reality shows.  Feh. 

I think about the garden the same way.  True, it's a lot of work, although it could be done in easier ways than I did last year, and the canning and freezing take time and effort and forethought.  On the other hand, it's work that, again, creates relatively little (canning and freezing create some, but far less than the alternatives would) pollution, gives us exercise and vitamin D from all the being out in the sun.  The alternative is to not garden, work more hours for money that I can then exchange for food--food that creates an unknown quantity of pollution and does not require me to exercise.  Most importantly to me, the time spent gardening is time spent with my family, as we garden together, while time spent working more hours to make more money is time spent away from my family.  It's also time spent caring for living things and getting back in touch with nature and the season cycle.  My most high-tech piece of gym equipment is a wheelbarrow, and my son is getting quite an education while we're out there, too.  It's all win-win. 

Our bodies need to do hard work, and so do our minds.  The human body and brain were not meant to spend most of the day sitting, let alone sitting reading gossip web sites and watching TV.  Until T and I are much too old and infirm to handle a snow shovel and a rake, I expect we'll carry on like this.  You wanna feel our biceps?

Right now, I am not up to the task of turning this into a coherent post.  There are just a variety of related things that have been rattling around in my confused, oxygen-starved brain for a few days, and I need to lay them out here. 

• I've read several articles, in print and online, lately that suggest that "guilt" is something unnecessary and that judging others for their decisions is always (or at least usually) wrong (nevermind the judgment inherent in that).  Guilt is a way that we recognize that we've done something wrong.  There exist people who feel guilty all the time over every single little thing, I know, and those people may need therapy.  But I don't think that is most of us.  If you're feeling guilty, it is possible that your conscience is attempting to communicate to you that you have done something wrong, harmed someone, violated the moral code.  As for being judgmental, why is it wrong to have standards that you expect yourself and others to live up to?  Since when did we decide that any choice is equally OK, as long as that choice does not involve spanking your children, an act which is clearly the worst thing any human could possibly do?  Charles Taylor gives a very good accounting of why all choices are not equally valid or good, at least not in a society that wants to maintain some sense of morality.  Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing people will generally listen to.  Hmmm, I think there's an essay in this month's Harper's that also touches on this, how we are now meant to respect any idiotic belief, so long as it is sincerely held.  *Note to self:  Reread that essay and also Charles Taylor and make little Invader Zim-like hand gestures of frustration because you are the only person alive who still cares about this.  (I know, that last is an exaggeration.  I know.  I've had pneumonia, and I'm feeling bloody sorry for myself.)
• Stay-at-home dads are kind of awesome.  But what's even more awesome is when people, like Kimura and some hippie dude commenting on this essay, recognize that the supremacy of WORK is fucking bogus.  I've said before that one of my problems with most mainstream types of feminism is that it completely buys into the capitalist hegemony, the superiority of paid work and conspicuous success.  Some of us say fuck all of that, I am SOOOO not giving my life over to some asswipe who gets to decide what my time is worth, I am SOOOOO sick of all the time you people fucking waste in committee meetings that accomplish nothing.  I guess if you like doing all that, well, someone needs to keep the stock markets open, so go for it.  But don't sit around and tell me how much meaningless work I do in a day because I actually change my son's diapers by myself (or used to when he wore them) and wash dishes and such.  You do at least as much meaningless work in a day as I do.  A lot of the work of life is tedious and crappy, whether it's paid work or unpaid work.  Just because you get paid for your time (in units of currency that are gradually decreasing in value, too, you human slave) doesn't mean what you do is inherently more valuable in moral terms than what I do is.  Conclusion:  Fuck the corporate hegemony!  I could totally make a rap song out of this.
• On a related note, I am disturbed by something I have seen on several feminist sites lately--I'm calling them feminist, incidentally, because they call themselves that.  I have no idea if this represents any kind of majority of feminists or not--I hope not.  There is a set of work, mostly that work associated with the house and raising children, that many people find tedious, frustrating, and not important enough to do for themselves.  Their careers are more challenging, interesting, exciting, important, satisfying, etc.  And yet if you suggest, even a little, that middle class, American white women only have the "freedom" to choose the career over the housework because they step on the backs of the colored and the poor, those white women will cry out in rage at you.  The general thrust of their cries will run, "That work isn't inherently demeaning."  Ummmmm...am I the only one who thinks maybe someone is contradicting herself here?  If it's too tedious in comparison to your thrilling career, if you find it mind-numbing and stultifying, do you mean seriously to suggest that it's only that way to you and to no one else?  Do you mean to actually try and tell me that all those impoverished women, some of whom have left their own children and families in their home countries to come here and take care of yours, have done so because nothing thrills and satisfies them more than raising someone else's children?  Are you the most disingenuous bitch ever put on the face of the earth?  The point of noting that white American feminism steps all over the colored and the poor is not to say that white women should all, therefore, go back to being housewives.  The point is--well, there are several.  A)  As in Western Europe, families (including single-parent households, of course) should receive more support in general, including universal health care and all of that, so that all women and men have more choices and better options.  B)  The implication in the economics of these nanny and daycare situations that we currently have is that raising children is not valuable work.  We Americans, as a society, do not value it.  C)  Uh, well, personally, I think it's quite classist and a tad bit racist to say that work that is too tedious and demeaning for you to do is perfectly fine for the underclasses.  Because, um, they don't have the same high-powered mind that you have?  Or...I'm struggling here to find a way to make it better...because you have some kind of rich-white ADD and can't tolerate the mundane tasks of existence that the poor cannot escape, but because the poor are not subject to the rich-white syndrome, they don't get bored the way you do?  WTF?  Grrrrrrrrrrrr. 
• Pneumonia sucks. 
• I really, really hate it when people automatically assume that most people can't "afford" to choose to be stay-at-home parents.  For one thing, the expenses of holding a job if you have children often make the job next to worthless.  Daycare is expensive (and often, let's face it, shitty) and nannies even more so.  Commuting is increasingly expensive.  The extra meals out of the house, the more expensive wardrobe (yes, I am assuming that work clothing generally costs more than at-home clothing--however, unless you wear your work clothes all the time, even cheap work clothes cost more because they entail having a work wardrobe and an at-home wardrobe, in addition to the fancy clothes for dates or whatever--also, work clothing often seems to entail the extra irritating expense of dry cleaning)--all this crap adds up.  After taxes and all this crap, working can be expensive.  I actually can't afford to work outside the home; I can't afford not to work, either, so I work part-time at home, although I resolutely maintain my self-identification as a stay-at-home mom because that's how I mostly think of myself.  Anyway, for another thing, some of us have made the decision that there are any number of expenses we will just forego so that we can afford to stay home and raise our kids.  We don't have satellite TV, for example, which basically means we get only ABC.  Yay, ABC!  We don't have cell phones, iPods, or any other gadgets at all.  We keep our housing costs in check by living in a tiny, old house in the boondocks.  In other words, if staying home with your kids is the most important goal to you (and, it should go without saying, I am NOT talking about single-parent households where there is no choice), you find ways to cut back on what you spend so that you don't need as much income.  In our case, we never realized how much we would have to cut back when we made this decision, because we naively assumed that America's economy was just and sane, but we both agreed that children should be raised by their parents, not by (under)paid help.  And so we make do.  I know I bitch about our poverty mightily on this blog, but most of the time, it's alright.  I bitch here because this is my space to bitch.  In real life, we're OK--at least, thank God, we never ever fight about money.  We made our choices, we take our lumps.  Alls I'm sayin is there are a lot of other people who could easily "afford" to stay home if that was their priority.  That it is not says more about them than they apparently like to think it does.
• That being said, we cannot afford to have another one.  Sad.  That makes me sad.  The last time I was pregnant, I lived in an idyllic land where health care was affordable (pregnancy is oddly not covered by the Japanese national health insurance, but the prenatal visits were still affordable).  I also lived at that time in a land where the assumption is that families will live off of only one income, and most jobs seem to pay accordingly.  Here in America--and this is partially related to the success of '60s feminism and also related to our misguided economic policies more generally--we assume families will need two incomes, and jobs pay accordingly.  This system forces the choice either not to have kids or to come up with ways to manage kids and careers--except for those of us who say "fuck off" to capitalism and consumerism and instead stay home and garden with our kids.

List five reasons (at least) why you are awesome.
Submitted by goobers18.

I should think my awesomeness, already apparent to everyone, is of the type that can hardly be defined, let alone summarized in a neat, bulleted list.  The awesome is too great to be contained by you and your numeric-organizational fetish.

*sigh*  Well, here are 5 reasons why I am awesome today:

1. I get phone calls in the middle of the night from Australia.
2. I can teach Australians to make pancakes over the phone in the middle of the night.
3. I watch Invader Zim with my 2-year-old, thus introducing him to important vocabulary such as "doom" and "filthy humans."
4. The pumpkin polenta I made...yes, awesome.
5. I grew both the pumpkin and the thyme I used to make the pumpkin polenta.

So, I took my kid to the Barnes and Noble today, because in their kids' section, they have one of those big Thomas the Train sets, all set up for kids to play with.  My son loves it.  We don't want to buy him one because of the whole lead paint deal...paranoid, I know. 

When we got there, there were three or four other kids around the table, toddlers of various ages, playing.  My son is not a very pushy sort by nature--like a good Japanese, he'll (mostly) wait his turn and not shove or snatch or get whiny and crappy.  On the other hand, if you have 6 trains to yourself and there are other kids standing around without any, my son thinks you could probably share one of those trains without causing yourself too much stress.  After all, you'll still have 5 trains to his 1.

But, alas, these kids were not the sharing, patient types by nature.  They were the grabby, whiny, pushy types by nature.  Ideally, at least to my retro mind, this is where parents come in to tell their little savages the Mr. Rogers message.

As I looked around, I saw one dad sitting in a chair nearby snoozing.  Snoozing?  Dude, I could totally kidnap your kid right now if I wanted to and, like, ship him off to do child labor in India.  Wake the fuck up. 

Another mom was out of eyeshot, browsing a couple rows over.  I only knew she was there because, finally, when her kid let out an ear-piercing shriek because one of the other little primates had taken "his" train, she came over.  But, basically, she might as well have been snoozing as well for all the freakin guidance she was offering her son in ways to play nice.

Another parental figure was...I dunno, totally AWOL.  Never did figure out where she/he might be.  The miniature tyrant was being nominally watched over, I found out rather late in the game, by a tween-y sort of girl who was completely ignoring him in favor of gossiping with her tween-y friend.  The two of them sort of perked up and started paying attention to him after I stepped in to lecture him--after he had pushed my son a couple of times (without even saying "excuse me" or "sorry"--what is the world coming to?) and stolen every last train on the table from the other kids (one of whom let out the ear-piercing shriek, as noted above--my son did nothing except look at him confused, like, "Dude, chill.  This isn't how we play where I come from.  What's your problem?"

I'm a total beeyotch, and I'm pretty comfortable with that, so I said to the kid, "These trains are not your trains.  They are here for everyone to play with, and that means that you need to share them with other kids who want to play.  Shoving will not be tolerated here.  Also, if you do not intend to go around the circle track at roughly the same speed that the other kids are going around it, you need to step aside and let them pass.  Otherwise, you could play on the inside track there.  Are we clear?"

His sister (? the tween-y girl) suddenly realized I was lecturing her charge, and she became a little more interactive with him, at least in terms of monitoring his brattiness, and play afterwards went much more smoothly.

I was the only mom/parental or other authority figure who consistently monitored my son's behavior.  My son actually apologized to someone he bumped into.  When he had two trains and realized there was another girl who had none, he gave her one, with prompting from me, but without crying or whining at all.  This isn't some kind of miracle, and it's only partly due to his nature.  The other part comes from the fact that I'm sitting right there watching him, and he knows what I expect.  He knows quite well that if he gets too grabby and pushy, I will remove him from the store and his playtime will be over.  George Bush may have won the presidency that way, but it isn't tolerated in our house.

It might also have to do with the fact that, while I was sitting there, I actually interacted with my offspring.  He asked me questions and told me stories about his play and the train tracks, and I listened and responded appropriately, you know, like I cared.  The thing is that I interact with him because I care, but it has unexpected benefits, too.  He is way ahead of his age group in verbal skills; he is way ahead of them in problem solving, too.  He is on the cusp of being able to read.  He can identify all the major species of trout.  He uses the words of civility (e.g., "please" and "excuse me") consistently and appropriately.  He is incredibly self-confident (really, to the point of being fearless), and I think that has something to do with the fact that he is so good at playing by himself and with others, because he has so little neediness.  Also, he doesn't wail for hours when I leave, like some people's children we won't mention.

OK, sorry, the point wasn't to get all braggy about my kid and my parenting.  I know some of this comes from him, naturally, and I only get so much credit (and, yet, all the responsibility? that ain't fair!) for it. 

The point is that the Thomas the Train playset here in Barnes and Noble is NOT A FUCKING BABYSITTER, AND NEITHER AM I.  If your kid is there playing with it, you really need to paying some attention to your kid and his/her behavior.  Because, see?  THIS IS A PUBLIC PLACE.  And even though our children are very young and therefore still quite primitive, NOW IS THE TIME TO START TEACHING THEM CIVILITY before our entire fucking nation ends up...oh, wait a second.  Nevermind.

Sorry to have shouted.