Monthly Archives: October 2013

Force of nature…

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I remember their being a line in an Indiana Jones movie where Indy laments reaching the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. I guess that age comes for all of us eventually, but I was quietly hoping to buy myself a little more time. As it turns out, there’s apparently no bargaining to be done on that score. Time just sneaks up on you and does its thing.

It’s a strange, unnerving thing losing one of the towering figures of your childhood. Even diminished by age and illness, in my head I still thought of my aunt as an elemental force of nature. When I was a kid being with her was like standing in the middle of a hurricane. There was always something going in all directions, but in the center the glassy calm was spectacular. It was really something to see.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days remembering a time when visits to her house meant cousins coming out of the woodwork, my first horseback ride, fossil hunting, learning how to pick crabs like a “flatlander”, and the supreme joy of making a birthday present out of a beautifully wrapped cookie tin full of horse manure. Trust me on that last one. When you’re 7 or 8, it’s possibly the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. The whole time, she was there pulling all the right strings and orchestrating every moment, making sure everything came off just right. Later she taught me that good wine was always worth the money. And I’m almost positive she’s the one that stoked my lust for seeing the world one Caribbean island at a time.

I’m a firm believer of the power of words, but tonight they don’t feel nearly up to the task I’ve set for them. Tonight they look blank and flat and not at all fitting. Tonight feels like looking at the world from an angle that’s inexplicably not quite right. All I’m left with after four days of trying to find the right words is a deep, hollow sadness at what’s been lost and will never be again.

Ah, Sunday…

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It’s the weekly day of rest that is generally anything but restful. Mostly it’s a mad dash around the house doing all the small jobs that don’t seem to get done through the week and I can’t bring myself to do on Saturday as a matter of principle. Throw in the fact that you can feel Monday breathing down your neck and there’s just not much to recommend it.

On the upside, Sunday morning means its time to delve once more into Ye Olde MySpace Archive to see what the cat drug in for the week. Straight from July 2008, we have a few rants about work, the pondering of a new puppy owner, and the pending revocation of my man card. They all feel like posts I could have written in the last six months. Like they say, the more thing change and all…

On an administrative note, the upcoming week is going to be touch and go. I’ll do my best to keep the posts on schedule, but if I drop a day or two I hope you’ll forgive me.

Feigned interest…

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Ah, Friday. One might think this should be the easiest day to feel witty and adventurous in your writing. Maybe it is for some, but for me between the rubber band of the week snapping back, dealing with the typical asshattery one encounters, and my always-present inner sense that something just isn’t right, Fridays are just about universally my hardest day to force something out of my brain, through my fingers, and onto the blank page. I’ve learned to embrace that Friday afternoons don’t give me the warm fuzzy that they seem to give everyone else.

More grudgingly I’ve accepted the lack of a muse on Fridays because typically fewer people are around to read it anyway. Apparently Friday nights are still a big night for people to go do things. Me? Yeah, I’m more interested in getting home and hiding out from the multitude I’ve had to deal with during the week. I’ve always been a little jealous of you people out there who seem to be energized by being around other people. Personally, I find them perfectly exhausting… of course you knew that already. One of the many joys in life for an introvert who’s forced by the way the world works to at least feign a passing interest in socializing.

So what’s the point of this ramble on a Friday night? Well, your first mistake was expecting there would be some point; a moral at the end of the story. Sometimes there isn’t a point. I didn’t set out for tonight’s post to be anything deep or meaningful, so at least in that I can consider it a successful effort.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Note: Usually this space is reserved every Thursday for three of the week’s petty annoyances. Breaking with that tradition, tonight’s post features the one big annoyance we should all be feeling. Tonight I want to talk directly to the blogiverse about the problem with claiming victory.

I’ve seen a lot of articles, Facebook posts, and general commentary claiming last night’s vote to raise the debt ceiling and restart those parts of the government that remained shuttered as a victory. Some say it was a victory for Democrats, others the Tea Party, others hail it as a personal victory for Senator Cruz. They’re all wrong. Last night was no victory. All sides who claim victory are celebrating over ashes – the ashes of dysfunctional Congress, the ashes of a more than $17 trillion national debt, and the ashes of our apparent inability of the great American people to govern themselves at all, let alone do it effectively. Last night’s vote was a failure of our politics, not a victory.

Eventually there will be an unavoidable reckoning that government can no longer afford to do all things for all people. The sooner we make the hard decisions about entitlements, government overreach, and a bloated defense budget, the sooner we’ll have a real victory… but that will never be achieved by men and women who are satisfied holding their breath, stomping their feet, and congratulating themselves when they simply manage to turn the lights back on and kick the hard decisions down the road for another few months.

There must be a grand discussion of national priorities – and nothing can be held off the table. The sacred cows of the left and right must be equally available for slaughter. We, as a country, need to evaluate the role we want government to play in our lives and in the world and then budget and spend accordingly. In his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, Lincoln states, “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Lincoln didn’t save the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Tea Party, or the Toga Party. He saved the country. That’s serious work for serious people, not the work of the raving ideologs on the lunatic extremes. Still, it’s work that needs done. It’s work we must demand of those who claim to represent the people. It’s work that every American voice should cry out for today… that is unless we’re collectively satisfied with increasingly hollow victories and the slow descent of the nation to the status of a second tier power.

Busy and important…

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Imagine, if you will, ten grown adults in a room. All of them are very busy and important. You know this because they’re wearing ties. Ties are always the sign that you are a busy and important individual. They stare intently at the table before them covered with hundreds of sheets of colored paper, as if trying to divine the sanctified intent of the gods on Olympus. Big BoardAfter a brief bit of this intent staring, all the very important and busy grown adults spend the next 90 minutes alternately locked in conversations unrelated to their reason for being there in the room or attempting to stifle yawns and not look completely comatose.

There’s an 11th person in the room, though. He’s not wearing a tie (because he’s a well respected malcontent and cynic – and because no one bothered to tell him in advance that he was going to be part of this particular gathering). He’s the guy in the room whose sole responsibility is for making sure the PowerPoint slides being shown on the “big board” get flipped on time. That’s another way of saying that for almost two hours, his only responsibility in all the known universe is hitting the right arrow on a laptop keyboard more or less in time with the disembodied voices being pumped into the room over speakers.

I realize that being busy and important is most likely a full time job. Still, I think that in austere fiscal environment where we need to make every hour count towards something productive, maybe one of the other ten people in the room could have handled the hard work of being PowerPoint wrangler rather than calling in an 11th and making that his only mission in life. Of course that’s only true if we care about efficiency rather than personal convenience and giving the impression of being too busy and important to add even the most basic and undemanding of tasks to the hard work of sitting there trying not to fall asleep.

Two days…

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I’m back at work. Have been since last week. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped paying attention to the grand game of “How Many Asshats can We Fit in One Building?” that our political “leaders” are playing on the Hill. As bad as it is that Republicans and Democrats seem physiological incapable of talking to one another, that’s nothing compared to the truly remarkable feat of House Republicans apparently not even being able to talk amongst themselves. That takes political incompetence to a whole new level. Impressive work, Congressmen.

From my reading of the tea leaves, we’re inside the 48 hour mark now. Either these jackasses will get around to doing the hard work of governing or they’ll crank the throttle wide open and let it all fly off the rails. I’m a reasonable close watcher of politics and a betting man by nature, but even if I wasn’t owed back pay and had a fist full of cash, I wouldn’t lay a bet on which way this shitshow is going to break.

Universal wisdom is that careening headlong into the debt ceiling would be bad. The fun part? Absolutely no one knows how bad it might be. My reading pegs it somewhere along the scale of Accidental Nuclear Detonation in Times Square Bad. Even if it’s less bad than that, it’s going to be bad. Defaulting on the sovereign debt and/or other financial obligations of the United States is simply unimaginable from any sane, reasonable perspective. To do it over an issue of personal pride or to make cheap political points is damned near treasonous.

We have 536 “leaders” in Washington and there’s apparently not one damned statesman in the bunch.

Celebrating Columbus…

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I’m told by today’s endless media loop that celebrating Columbus Day isn’t cool. Blah, blah, genocide, blah, blah, conquest, blah, blah not a very nice man. Blah. Here was a guy who loaded three small wooden ships, pointed them west, and hoped at some point to find land waiting for him on the other side of the ocean before he ran out of food and water.

Christopher_Columbus“But, but,” they say, “He was looking for the Indies and only landed in the Caribbean by accident.” I suppose that’s true… but since I know people who can’t go across town without using their in-car navigation system, Google Maps, and hand written directions, I’m willing to cut the guy some slack considering he decided to cross an ocean using wind power and maps that were, at best, a wild ass guess of what might be out there.

“But, but,” they say again, “He killed all those nice natives.” Yeah, he did that. Can’t deny it. What seems to be forgotten in the discussion is Europe in the 1400s was a regular charnel house. Between the black plague and the Hundred Years’ War, letting the bodies hit the floor in the new world most likely didn’t particularly strike anyone as an unnatural state of affairs. All of our contemporary assessments of Columbus come from a 21st century perspective that is at least a full lifetime removed from any real concept of mass die-offs caused by war and pestilence.

We simply lack a point of reference for what “normal” was in the late 15th century. Even as a student of history, I always had a problem with those in the business who feel the need to apply contemporary morality to historical events. History is all about subtlety and context… and both are completely lacking when we try to hold Columbus to the standards of modernity.

Today, I’m celebrating Columbus Day. If that’s not cool, well, so be it.

Sunday traditions…

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As often as not, Sunday dinner at my grandparent’s house meant roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and all manner of home cooked food. While I may not have a dozen or more gathered around my table at 5PM on the dot, at least once a month, my house fills with the savory smell of roasting beef as I do my best to keep with tradition. Sure, I’ve made some tweaks to the recipes – I use more garlic than my grandmother would have ever dreamed of, for instance – but the underlying idea is still the same. Sunday dinner is important, if for no other reason than it’s a touchstone with the past.

While we’re on the topic of touching the past, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you that this week’s posts from the archive are now available for your reading pleasure. Pulled into the present from the last half of June and July 2008, today’s posts are a bit more pithy than they’ve been in the last few weeks. They feature a few more explanations of some of the more colorful words and phrases that show up in my vocabulary from time to time. Get your dose of the archives soon, because from the look of things, in two months this particular Sunday tradition will be drawing to an end.

A giant case of meh…

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A giant case me “meh” is what I’ve had all day for some reason. No motivation to do a damned thing. Don’t want to write, or read, or talk, or watch TV, or cook, or clean, or really do anything that my seemingly addled mind could come up with. So here I’ve sat, pinging from thing to thing without Red Stripetaking an interest in any of it. For the record, it’s not going to make my list of recommended things to do on a Saturday. Eventually, even though I still don’t really want to write, I turned up here because in the end that’s always what I do. I write, I rage, I rant, and hopefully when I finish my brain is clear of whatever cloud has descended on it. If that doesn’t work, there’s always cold Red Stripe in the fridge. That doesn’t so much clear the cloud cover as make me less apt to care about it being there in the first place. Sometimes, that’s every bit as good as finding an actual solution. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pillage the fridge. Hooray Beer!

Open wide…

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Life is full of ironies. When I was a young careerist just starting out you, I barely had two hours of vacation time to rub together. What I did have were almost limitless invitations to go places, do things, and generally raise hell while I was young and stupid. Since I never seemed to have the vacation time, I took a pass on most of those opportunities and hoped against hope that I wouldn’t get sick and need to burn off any of my limited reserve of days off.

Now, after a a decade or so of experience, I’m sitting on a pretty respectable war chest of paid time off. What I seem to be lacking are the invitations to raise hell and be stupid. While that’s probably for the best, there’s something disheartening about taking the vast majority of days off over the course of the year to do things like having bloodwork done and going to the dentist. I’m sure this is not how 25-year-old-Jeff planned to spend his days off when he was 35, but there you have it.

Sure, it’s a four day weekend, but I’ll be spending a big part of the first day with my mouth hanging wide open letting complete strangers poke, prod, drill, and fill. If I can manage not to spend the afternoon drooling all over myself, I’ll consider it a victory.