Author Archives: jdtharp

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Bullying. If the media is to be believed, basically every form of social interaction is now considered bullying. Look, I get that we want to protect kids from all the mean, nasty things in the world, but the fact is sometimes the world is just a mean nasty place. There were plenty of bullies around 20 years ago when I was in school. I’m sure there were plenty 50 years ago, too. It’s not exactly like this is some new danger society has never faced before. Is bullying wrong? Of course it is. Should we be aware of it and try to reduce it? Of course. Once upon a time, if you stood up to a typical bully they went away. From the news coverage of those who choose to off themselves or shoot up the place in response to a bully’s taunts, I wonder if we’ve collectively raised a generation that simply doesn’t know how to actually stand up for themselves rather than immediately lurching to the extremes.

2. Healthcare.gov. I’m pretty sure if my boss gave me three years and $500 million and told me to build a website, he might have some actual expectations that at the end of three years I’d have at least a working prototype. Sure, it might need some of the rough edges smoothed out over time, but the damn thing would have at least the basic functionalities built in – like being able to register as a user. If at some point in the process, I realized things weren’t working out, I’d at least have the stones to fire off a red star cluster and call for assistance. Instead, we have a dysfunction website that no one is willing to be accountable for screwing up. Maybe I’m just doing the whole work thing wrong. It could be time to go see what jobs Health and Human Services has available. An employer with no actual expectations would have to be a pretty relaxing gig.

3. Buying off the rack. I’m not now, nor have I ever been a small guy. A side effect of this is my neck has to be correspondingly thick to support the giant gourd that sits atop it. While I’m not and will never be known as a clothes horse, I do from time to time, have to find something to wear that isn’t a polo/khaki combination. Let’s just say finding a collar that fits around my pillar of a neck with sleeves that don’t stop halfway up my forearms is something just shy of seeking the holy grail. Of course when you do find one of these mythical shirts, they’re never on the $19.99 sale rack, they’re always way in the back on the $75-full-price-thank-you-very-much section of the store… and that’s a real pisser for something I’m going to wear once and then relegate to the back of the closet because I hate wearing a tie.

Beautification…

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Walking out of the office yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that six very classy eight foot by four foot, edge-lit LED, etched glass murals that had been installed while I built slides, scampered between meetings, and fought with our dysfunctional network. I immediately wondered how many man-hours of salary we gave up for that little beautification project. Then on second thought, I realized I don’t actually wonder about that. The answer would probably make my head explode.

Upgrade me…

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I’ve given up on try talking myself out of having the latest, greatest iteration of Apple’s phones and tablets. That sooner rather than later I’ll end up with one of the two new iPads announced this afternoon is a foregone conclusion. Now it’s a simple question of which one I’ll bring home with me.

I’ve really come to like the size of the current Mini as opposed to the “full sized” original iPads. My only disappointment from my Mini is the non-retina display. It’s been sort of like going back to standard definition television after watching everything in HD. Sure, you can do it and it’s perfectly serviceable, but it’s well off the mark from being optimal. The new Mini resolves that issue and adds a whole lot of added horsepower to boot. Of course with the new full sized model being a slimmed down version of its former self, it’s a tossup which one is going to end up being my go-to tablet for the next year.

The only thing I know for sure is after last month’s fiasco of waking long before the crack of dawn and standing in line for four hours to be met with “sorry, sold out.” I won’t be lining up for this launch. I don’t mind standing in line when I know I’m going to have something to show for the trouble, but with Apple product launches I no longer have that old warm fuzzy that they’re going to fill their own supply chain first before making units available for other retailers. Whenever they can ship it to me from China is just going to have to be fast enough this time around.

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.