The road to hell is paved with e-courses

I have seen many ads for e-courses on writing. Are these everywhere? Or, have I made the mistake of clicking on one so now I attract them all? It is probably the algorithm, right?

Every time, I feel as though it is specific to me. I feel tormented by the reminder that I have such a hang-up about writing. I feel plagued with bad memories that I don’t want to talk about even to myself.

When I was in college, I was struggling a lot during my sophomore year. The stereotype is to struggle with the freshman year. I did not. That was mostly because I didn’t live far from home and my perfectionism kicked into high gear for that first year. However, when I entered my second year, all those repressed emotions came back to haunt me.

I wanted to drop out of college. My grades were very high freshman year. I started slipping early in sophomore year, but I still kept a decent average. However, I couldn’t live up to the ideas I felt were imposed upon me. I still had not realized that I had been bullied and emotionally abused for years and that it was actually still happening. I had been labelled as the problem for so long that I believed it. I believed that there could be a singular problem in the world and that I could embody it.

Anyway, through a series of difficult and disappointing conversations, I wound up in a screenwriting class. I was amazed that I was actually sitting in a class like that. That experienced became so negative for me that it still haunts me.

The class was smaller than I anticipated. There were only about ten students, give or take. On the first day, the teacher asked us to write down our top ten favorite movies so that we could get to know each other. Then, we each had to read them aloud. Based on the order of the seats, I wound up having to read mine about mid-way through the line of students. As the first few classmates read, I didn’t recognize any of the movies they named. Now, we are all aware that there is high-brow art we have heard about, but don’t actually know much about. I expected my newly minted classmates to name classic movies that I had heard of, but never bothered to watch. However, as we went down the line reciting titles, I didn’t recognize a single movie named by those who preceded me. I was even more confused because the titles were all in English, so I couldn’t even assume they were foreign films.

Well, then, it was my turn. I read my list of popular American movies. I don’t recall it exactly what made my list, but I know Titanic was at the top. That’s when the classmate across from my started laughing. I looked up and he was smirking. I should change my list, right? Well, what would I change it to now? I kept reading. When I was finished and looked up, the teacher had a smug smirk on his face. I wasn’t sure if I was blowing this moment out of proportion in my mind at the time, but it felt like the room was judging me for naming popular, mostly contemporary movies. I was confused. Weren’t these well-known movies that a lot of people liked?

I’m probably not the only one, right? Well, I could hardly listen to the other lists that were read after mine. I didn’t recognize whatever managed to make it through the humiliation spinning in my head. It is only day one though, right?

The class continued to be socially challenging for me. It turned out to be a very easy class to pass because the teacher barely read anything we wrote. In fact, we were expected to write very little. Early on, we had to present a few ideas for a project that we would dedicate the semester to working out. Basically, we would pick a general storyline and write to it, piece-by-piece - or should I say, scene-by-scene.

I wanted to write a story about a group of feminists who went to a modern women’s college. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to happen, but I wanted it to center around the divisiveness of the group when one of the friends became pregnant. I was excited about it. I was also nervous. I was basically in a very fragile emotional state.

I wanted to learn how to build something. Instead, I was handed another hammer to hit myself with. The teacher didn’t like the idea. He made it sound like that would never work. I still don’t understand what he meant. I certainly don’t think the idea was complete, but that’s why I was a student in the class. I had absolutely no confidence in myself, let around arrogance about this idea. I didn’t think this was unbelievable stuff that would get me a movie deal at age twenty. I didn’t even think it would come out well for the purposes of the course. I simply wanted to learn how to write to that idea. He insisted that I modify it. I wanted to learn and do well in the course, so I quickly agreed.

He instructed me to write a story about a group of friends who sexually manipulate each other. Then, he transitioned that into instruction to imitate a recently released film about a politician who pressured his mistress to have a secret abortion. I tried to imitate these stories, but I didn’t even find them interesting. I blamed myself for not finding the stories interesting and then blamed myself again for not knowing how to imitate stories that I didn’t find entertaining.

I had so little confidence in myself that I believed the teacher was trying to help me. I didn’t realize that he was mostly trashing my idea until later. He didn’t even like my half-baked imitations of his ideas, which made me feel even worse. It felt so painful to fail at pursuing my idea and, simultaneously, fail at following his instruction.

I went to every single class and never missed one. I bought the books about writing, but we didn’t cover the material in them, so I stopped reading them when I became busy with the rest of my courseload that semester. I didn’t know how to write a story. I still don’t. I have never met anyone willing to teach me. However, I have met many willing to criticize. Maybe, it simply needs to be natural. That’s what plenty of people say, right? If you have to try so hard, then maybe it isn’t for you. That stings.

I’m trying anyway. Telling a story about how I wasn’t able to write that story. That’s a tad bittersweet. It seems like I was living a story while struggling to find one to tell.

The Natives Go Naive

Just when I think this blog is utterly pointless. Just when I feel like a total and complete fool for trying to write anything at all. Just when it all seems so hopeless. That’s (of course, of course!) when I come face-to-face with the type of ignorance that could drive anyone mad.

Those were only words.

What’s the big deal?

Don’t be so naive.

Grow up.

Get over it.

Honey, I could say the same thing about you. Get over it. The ramifications of emotional abuse are severe. Emotional abuse distorts the way you see yourself and the abuse itself. Emotional abuse should not be overlooked any longer. At a basic level, consider that individuals who suffer from physical forms of abuse often have that abuse compounded when there are emotionally abusive components. Why? A scared person tries to escape at every opportunity. A terrified person reacts with force. But, a numb person apologizes for the abuse she has suffered. Because she knows there is nothing better on the other side of the fence. Not only is the grass not greener elsewhere, but is is often rotten.

Women are encouraged to numb themselves. Dull their emotions. Without those emotions, they are number and more likely to stick around. When you are numb, the ongoing pain is less real to you. We know this. That’s obviously why medical patients are numbed with drugs prior to procedures. What’s the big deal?

How are women numbed? By a steady dose of misogyny every day. Every waking hour. Women are broken down from a young age through objectification. Before a girl enters puberty, she has already been trained through millions of stories and images about what type of women she should be and what type of woman she should condemn. Don’t be so naive. That is called an education! The problem is that the type of woman she should condemn is the type of woman she will inevitably be: a person with a range of emotions, including anger, bitterness, resentment, and jealously; a person with body hair; a person with occasional bouts of misery and despair; a person who experiences varying bouts of loneliness; and a person with sexual desires. All of this is condemned in women. So, the road map given to a girl is a guide to self-destruction. Should she become a woman in nature, she will be condemned. So, instead, she becomes a woman in misogyny.

Do not be deceived. There is nothing natural about misogyny. There is nothing natural about the abuse of man over woman. The preferred analogy of the misogynist is of the hunter-gatherer society in which men hunt and woman gather. Consider the prototypical hunter-gatherer society. I’ll even grant you the gender division. Women stay in the the village, caring for the young and elderly, foraging for fruits and vegetables, and preparing meals. Men venture out of the village for days to weeks at a time; they work together to mostly chase around big game. Occasionally, the men will chase an animal long enough that the animal will become depleted of energy and die. (In traditional hunting, animals did not die from weapons; they died from exhaustion. Recall, that humans have the ability to sweat, which is a trait not shared universally.) These men would butcher and preserve the animal for the whole village.

This quaint picture of a hunter-gatherer society demonstrates the effectiveness of division of labor. Individuals collectively contribute to a goal bigger than themselves, which none could achieve individually. The women benefit from the occasional rewards of the hunt. Meat is rare, but it is calorie-dense. The men benefit from the daily rewards of the harvesting. Fruits and vegetables are plentiful, but offer few calories. Together, the villagers have a diversified diet that protects them from famine.

Somehow, this picture becomes distorted into a catch-all excuse for the abuses of power by men. A man in modern society is a “hunter” who prides himself in taking whatever he wants whenever he wants it. He can “take” businesses, wealth, fame, power, influence, and, most disturbingly, women. This modern “hunter” is self-interested; he takes from others to satisfy his ego. He “takes” from women who are in his own “tribe” or “village” simply because he feels like it. The victim of his “hunt” is not a buffalo, sacrificed for the hunger of his whole village. No, don’t be so naive. The victim of his hunt is his own neighbor. Ask yourself what sort of hunter that is. A man who abuses those amongst him.

Furthermore, consider that the hunters of hunter-gatherer societies did not abuse the animals prior to slaughter. They did not chain the animals up or starve them out. I will not romanticize the slaughter of an animal. It is brutal. It should not be held out over time and prolonged for that is what would make it abuse.

Now, consider the modern “hunter” who makes degrading remarks about the appearance of women, of their intelligence, of their demands for rights. That is no hunter; that is an abuser. Grow up. Look at abuse for what it is. Telling women they are disgusting, legislating their bodies, paying them inadequate wages, assaulting them and coercing them to sign non-disclosure agreements about their own assaults, and calling them liars every time they acknowledge any of this has nothing to do with the “hunt.”

The hunt was for the village. The abuse is for the singular man who is given free reign by a society that loves to hate women.

Don’t call it a comeback

I have rationalism on my mind a lot lately. The idea that we can make consistent and smooth logical decisions is utterly unappealing when you forget all the hype, even for a moment

The world is full of twists and turns, randomness and mysteries; so, let’s break everything down into minute parts and master each lesson progressively while scolding each other whenever one of us becomes overtaken by emotion. What a drag!

We are sold rationalism as something remarkable: you can learn to understand. However, rationalism is the simplest way to humiliate someone. If you can string together concepts in a neat array and present it to another, then you get to call the other person irrational when she disagrees with you. Look, my words fit together neatly! She must disagree because she does not understand. Hence, she is irrational.

Irrational people don’t warrant our respect. Irrational people lack credibility. Therefore, you can curry a lot of favor by appearing rational.

The tricky thing is that hating women is a natural extension of a misogynist culture. Therefore, reason and logic are tilted to uphold the status quo, which is decidedly against women. How can you reason against reason? To be rational, you can’t.

To challenge the status quo, you have to challenge what has already been accepted. Even reluctant acceptance is still acceptance. We know we can live with the status quo. After all, we are already living it.

When you talk about another way, you challenge the status quo. Who doesn’t fantasize about how the world could be better in some way: minute or grandiose? It could be simple: wouldn’t it be awesome if everybody travelled exclusively via hover boards? It could be serious: wouldn’t it be cool if women didn’t have to fear for their safety at work, at home, at any store, parking lot, office building, airport, bus, train, or sidewalk? That would be so cool!

Problems present themselves immediately. It is rational that we don’t travel via hover boards when we have so many effective modes of transportation already. Where could a hover board take you that a car or bicycle could not? We would have to legislate the use of hover boards by writing new laws for personal and commercial use, change requirements for licenses, and implement oversight for hover board manufacturing. Why would we go through all of that for hover boards? Is that any better for the environment? Worse? Is it even safe? How would we compare it?

We cannot conceive of a population that exclusively uses hover boards because we live in a world of cars, buses, trains, planes, and boats. There are plenty of downsides to these modes of transportation: carbon emissions, overcrowding, traffic, seasickness, lack of legroom, etc. However, we see what we would give up more clearly than we see what we would gain. In fact, we compare what we would lose without, for example, cars to what we would gain with a hover board. With a hover board, I guess I wouldn’t need to worry about parking anymore. That would save me time and money. But, what about the rain? What will I do when it rains? I won’t be able to get anywhere without getting wet!

This conflict occurs because we have to give something up. We are not starting from a world where the only means of transportation is our own two feet or the four feet of a larger mammal.

If the only way we could get around was by walking, running, or riding horseback, we would be elated to take the hover boards. We would celebrate the efficiency and the ease. We wouldn’t be worried about rain because we would already be used to dealing with it. The hover board offers us potential. It offers the promise of advancement.

In this more simple world, a rational person would weigh the positives of introducing the hover boards against the negatives of introducing the hover boards. In our actual world, the rational person weighs the positives of introducing the hover boards to the negatives of abandoning the cars, trains, planes, and so on.

Rationalism changes given the circumstances. The rational outcome is subjective. The simple world can choose to introduce hover boards because they are perceived to advance transportation efficiency while the actual world can oppose the hover boards because they are less efficient than what we already have. So, two outcomes to the same question can be both rational and inconsistent.

Now, we cautiously approach a more controversial example. A woman campaigns to become the next President of the United States. (Take a deep breath. I promise this will stay apolitical!) I choose President of the United States with intention because that particular job comes with the built-in role of Commander in Chief of the military; i.e., the job has a military function built-in. For reference, most - though not all, especially in recent years - presidents have served in the military in some capacity. Very few were high-ranking in the military prior to becoming President. This means that you can be completely inexperienced or experienced and unimpressive in military functions and still qualify as President, subject to votes of course. There are military decisions the President has to make, but these decisions are considered a formality for it is the high-ranking military leaders who frame and advise in the process.

If actual experience in the military is unnecessary in practicality and precedent in deciding who becomes the Commander in Chief, then, logically, it follows that you do not need to understand military operations to qualify as President.

So, this woman runs for President. The media pundits ask, “Does a woman have what it takes to serve as Commander in Chief?” and “Will a woman in the White House make us more vulnerable to violent attacks by our enemies?” There are pundits, debates, op-eds to follow.

How do we arrive at this point? We established that we have had presidents with no baseline military experience and presidents with minimal experience. If you are a woman who has zero years of military experience, then how could you have less experience than a man who has zero years of military experience?

What matters is that the woman is a woman with no military experience, not that she has no military experience. We count the female identity as a point against her. When you consider those questions with the assumption that women are inferior to men, the rational conclusion is to fear a woman as Commander in Chief. When you consider those same questions with the assumption that women are equal to men, the rational conclusion is to identify the questions are inherently irrational.

Rephrased, if we considered women equal to men, then those pundits would effectively be asking: “Does a person have what it takes to serve as Commander in Chief?” and “Will a person in the White House make us more vulnerable to violent attacks by our enemies?”

Huh? Can a person do a job? Can a person make us worse off by doing a job? Seems odd all of a sudden.

There are many challenges of rational thinking like this that I plan to further explore on this blog.

See you next time.

x

exception to the rule

There isn’t a place for me in this world. I’m not a cog in the wheel nor a piece of the puzzle. I doubt anyone is though many contort themselves into a variety of shapes. I’m uninterested at this point.

There is no place for me in this world because this world has celebrated abusers for a long time. I would say too long, but a moment would be too long so that is a hard statement to qualify.  

What hurts the most about the bullying that I experienced is that I was expected to take on the role of the abuser as an adult. The taunting, humiliation, and rejection I encountered wasn’t necessarily meant to hurt me as much as it was meant to train me. Be like us. We can protect you from this world if you are obedient. If you disobey, we throw you to the wolves.

If you dress too suggestively as a woman, then you are not believed when you are attacked and assaulted. If you dress too modestly as a woman, then you are not acknowledged when you speak. You have to strike a perfect balance, which, of course, has never existed. Our feminine heroes are ghosts.

Marilyn Monroe for beauty. A mostly self-made woman who had to rely on volatile men professionally and personally in order to build a career only to become more famous for the way she died than for the way she lived. Amelia Earhart for adventure. A daring woman who disappeared into thin air. Rosa Parks for justice. A bold woman who would shock the nation with her courage while profiteers would co-opt her name and likeness for their own agenda.

Hell, even Cleopatra, is now celebrated for her mostly fabricated love story. Apparently, you can be one of the most powerful world leaders in history and still be cast in the role of arm candy. Historians can be quite cruel.

I’m perhaps conflating too many ideas here by suggesting that the treatment of American women in the 20th Century has some sort of thread to Cleopatra in ancient Egypt. However, what these women have in common is that they continue to be celebrated in American media today. However, are they celebrated for who they were or how we can twist their likenesses into marketing?

A male hero is defined by complexity. A female hero is defined by a singular attribute or moment if not by proximity to a male hero. We do not want to see the ruggedness in women. We do not want to see the blood, sweat, and tears of a female body. The blood of a female body? Let’s pretend menstruation doesn’t exist. If we acknowledge it, it is because somebody is acting crazy. The sweat of a female body? Let’s belittle women for sweating in the first place by “studying” differences in strength through arbitrary dumbbell contests. The tears of a female body? Oh, we have no problem seeing that. We have a problem taking it seriously though.

We glamorize the firsts of women. First woman elected to this, first woman winning this prize, first woman climbing that corporate ladder. Yet, we fail time and time again to recognize that these women are meeting or exceeding man-made limitations. What is the significance of being the first woman to accomplish something that men designed to exclude women? We seem to take it for granted that this is so meaningful and important, but what is the meaning and importance? What is it that we are celebrating? 

Very powerful abusers have been caught in their own lies about women. Instead of discrediting these abusers, we have instead allowed them to pivot. Instead of changing corporate structures that have historically oppressed women by relegating them to critical yet underpaid work, we have celebrated those same corporations for having one female board member or executive. It’s incredible because she’s a woman, reads the newspapers. However, that is only incredible because she works for a sexist corporation in a sexist country that supports sexist business practices.

Instead of condemning the ongoing sexism, we are encouraged to celebrate the exceptions. This woman rose to the top of a profession despite all of the men (and many women) who told her she was a worthless subhuman. And, now, we reward her with an executive suite. How amazing! Yet, we don’t pause to question why a woman would need to be subjected to treatment like that for decades in order to hold a job. We don’t pause to question the intelligence or competence of the superiors and colleagues who belittled a person they would eventually promote. We don’t offer any sympathy to the women (and possibly men) who opted out of that exact company for all of the sexist behavior.

Are women who rise to the top of a sexist environment defiant of sexism or imbued with it? After all, how can you rise to the top of a profession without excelling within it? The answer to sexism in corporate American cannot possibly be more female CEOs without equal pay, livable wages, childcare options, independent human resources departments, enforced sexual harassment policies, accessible healthcare, and anti-nepotism hiring.

Yet, we glorify these exceptions because it shows us that it is possible to excel in a sexist world. We put pressure on ourselves and others to be that exception. But, we hold half of the population. Why are we fighting to be an exception? We can overtake the status quo instead of being subjected to it. I do not need to be on par with any man to be great. The world refuses to see this, but that will not stop me from realizing it. I hope it doesn’t stop you either.

Don’t be an exception to the rules. Rewrite the rules. And, when you do, remember those that suffered.

x

when no one reads your emo poetry

I don’t want to focus on how long it has been since my last post, but that is what is on my mind.

I want to focus on what I can create with the blank page, not the blankness itself.

Too much of my life seems to be consumed by filling in the lines. You know how annoying people use children’s coloring books as metaphors for coloring in the lines as opposed to coloring outside of the lines? Essentially, it is a more roundabout way of stating “think outside the box.” Well, anyway, why do we need to color at all? Why can’t we look at a book and marvel at how well the artist drew the shapes and scenes? Why must we always add something to it? Why are we coloring at all?

Is a black and white picture actually incomplete? Hell, is a blank page incomplete? Is a blank page even a beginning? The blank page itself is the end result of a different process of turning a tree into paper. (By the way, does that still happen or is all paper partially synthetic now? Just tell me straight up because I am not in the mood for a Wikipedia-sponsored rabbit hole today.) The process of turning a living organism into paper is itself a science and art. Yet, we largely ignore that because duh, of course, everybody knows that. Then, we sit around and complain that the blank page is tormenting us. It is not incomplete. It is already complete before it ever arrives to us.

We make so much paper, which is an incredible feat of human ingenuity in and of itself. (Obviously, I was not part of any of that directly, so perhaps stating “we make” is a tad of stretch, but duh, of course, you know what I mean.)

I feel obligated to note that this post is written on metaphorical paper as it exists on a blog. However, a similar concept applies. I am utilizing a laptop, produced by engineers, programmers, and factory workers as a finished project, to type this. Furthermore, I am using a website format designed by programmers. This blog post was complete before I even started typing. I am merely adding black text.

There is no purpose to anything I am writing here or on paper. I am merely coloring in or outside of the lines. Now, do not mistake my claims here to say that only physical products exist. For example, there is an inherent contradiction in how I started this post. I was cleverly lamenting those who talk about children’s coloring books. Well, isn’t a coloring book in and of itself meaningless because the paper could have been blank? Certainly, the artist and publisher added to blank pages by including the cartoons or whatever is there, and the cover, and the boring blurbs that everyone nods along to while reading in a oh, that’s nice even though those blurbs are completely soulless and unnecessary marketing dribble. Is the coloring book purposeless? Well, yes, probably so.

There is no great advantage to making a coloring book of trees as opposed to skyscrapers. It is all utterly subjective and likely decided upon by an anxious executive who really needs to increase his sales numbers because the big boss is acting like a big jerk and it is probably due to his ongoing divorce drama but that doesn’t matter because he is going to take it out on our poor anxious executive anyway and the previous frog coloring book did well so that’s what we are doing again final story.

There is very little point to all this writing: novels, screenplays, nonfiction, poetry. It stings me a little to write that as I have elevated those mediums so much in my own head. However, realistically, those are words on a page arranged in different ways. Society creates gatekeepers as a way of making it all sound a lot more official, mostly to enable a minority of people to make an exorbitant amount of money. We make an awful big deal about some letters on a page. Those letters are special! No, wait, those are terrible! We have basic rules that make sense for communication purposes. Then, we layer on burdensome ones because some people decided to be fancy.

We could be pleased with all the paper we have and spend our time filling it with words and colors or nothing at all. However, I often find myself agonizing over how I wrote something awful or, more likely, did not write at all out of fear that I will inevitably write something awful. Either way, I feel consumed by dread because I have learned that is a competition to fill the most blank pages with the most celebrated ideas or words or colors, but those celebrated ideas or words of colors change like the wind.

The idea that there can be a right way to fill a page is like claiming there is a right way to plant a forest. There may be strategies to achieve a replicable outcome or imitate another’s efforts, but how could there be a right way? It is already complete. Writing on this page is not even editing, it is glorified doodling.

Ah, have we landed on that dreadful comparison of how writing is just like life? One of those: we are complete as we are narrative arcs. Eh, I’m not too sold on that one either, so I will gloss over it. After all, I am truly bothered by writing itself.

I’m reaching the end of my interest here and I fear that I have once again written something awful. However, I’m choosing to consider that it is impossible to have written something awful because good writing might be as purposeless as poor writing. The metaphorical blank page of this post has been filled in, but it would have been as perfect as complete without my rambling thoughts.

The blankness of the page is a purpose in itself. It does not require words or lines or color. I’m so quick to try to change it and adapt it for some other purpose. Maybe, for today, I can look at a paper as the final stage of itself. It is complete. I can be serious, playful, or scared in my approach, but none of that changes the paper. So, I present to you my doodle, my graffiti, my splotchy coloring. I took a perfectly good piece of paper and scribbled all over it. Fortunately, there is another stack ready for tomorrow.

Santa Claus: Body Positive Icon?

For all you know, Santa is perfectly healthy and well. He spends his whole year in the North Pole managing the elves and preparing for Christmas. Then, on Christmas Eve, he sets out to distribute his presents throughout the world.

You adore Santa. You have received gifts from Santa and think he’s such a generous man. It’s Christmas Eve and are expecting gifts tomorrow morning, considering how “good” you have tried to be this whole year. Well, it is time to put out the cookies to show gratitude for Santa. However, you’re low-carb and you don’t want any cookies in the house because you’re afraid that you will eat them. Instead, you put out a spread of celery and carrots with low-fat ranch dressing.

You head to bed, but keep tossing and turning. You can’t fall asleep! You’re so excited about the gifts tomorrow. Santa always has the best surprises for you. That’s when you hear a thump in the living room. Could it be? Santa’s down the chimney!

You tiptoe across the hall and down the stairs. He stands by the chimney, pulling present out a present from the big red sack. The wrapping paper shimmers even though the room is dark, except for the tree lights you left on. The bow on the present looks perfectly tied. How does he get every detail just right?!

You don’t want to disturb him, but you can’t help yourself. “Merry Christmas, Santa,” you murmur. He whips around.

“Oh, ho, ho, ho, you startled me, Bambi,” he grabs his chest. “Almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Wow, you really know my name!”

“Of course, I do,” Santa smiles warmly. “I must be going now. Merry Christmas!”

'“Oh, Santa, before you leave, I left you some snacks.”

He beams. “Well, I suppose I could take a snack break. Your neighbors have been very naughty and it’s a long trek to the next name on my list.”

You hurry over to the coffee table on the other side of the tree and present Santa with the vegetable spread.

He looks unimpressed, but smiles nonetheless. “Thank you, Bambi, but I thought you had some cookies and milk for me.”

“I’m actually low-carb this year. I’ve already lost eight pounds in two months. You should try it! I don’t eat anything that has sugar, gluten, and oil and I feel better than ever. This ranch is low-fat and is made with all artificial sweeteners. It tastes even better than the real thing.”

He pats your shoulder. “That’s very considerate of you, Bambi.” He takes some carrots and drops it in his coat pocket. “I’ll take these for the road. The reindeer are very fond of carrots.”

“The reindeer?! No, Santa, these are for you! You should eat them. All that weight is not healthy for you. You could lose weight and probably circumnavigate the globe in half the time. Plus, sliding down chimneys would be a breeze if you slimmed down.”

He shakes his head. “Bambi, I appreciate your concern for me, but I reach all the houses I need to. When I don’t fit through a chimney, I find another way. I like my big belly and the way it shakes when I laugh. Many children recognize me by my belly. It also keeps me warm on freezing cold nights like this when I’m out on my sleigh.”

You can’t let it go. Santa is not hearing you out. “But, Santa, you’re going to get diabetes and heart disease and die young. Don’t you realize how unhealthy your lifestyle is? And, you consider yourself to be a role model to children all over the world? You are promoting obesity! You shouldn’t eat so many cookies. Sugar is addictive. I read about it in the news. You’re basically digging yourself an early grave. Then, what will become of Christmas?”

Santa tilts his head as he looks into your eyes. “Bambi, what’s happened to you, little one? You used to bake me fresh chocolate chip cookies and leave out a cup of whole milk. You even put the milk over ice in case it went bad. You used to ask for a gingerbread house and silly knit sweaters on your list. But, this year, you asked for the Ab-Breaker 3000 and a food scale.”

“Santa, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m on a health journey. My friends said that I was having trouble dating because I was too heavy, so I started losing weight. I’m doing a lot better now. I get more attention and I wear nicer clothes.”

Santa shrugs. “Well, this is all out of my wheelhouse, Bambi. But, I’ll tell you this much. Every year, since you were a little girl, you made my nice list. You treat others with kindness and respect. You do good deeds even when no one is looking. You listen to others when you disagree with them. Up in the North Pole, that makes you a special kind of wonderful. That’s why I came all the way here tonight.”

“That’s sweet of you to say, Santa, but you don’t get it. No offense. Things aren’t like that outside the North Pole. People don’t care about whether I’m kind. They care about whether I’m hot. And, I’m not hot enough, but I could be if I lose some more weight.”

Santa shifts around his bag of presents. “Maybe so, Bambi. But, remember, you’re not the only one I visit tonight. I have millions of more presents for millions of people who treat others with kindness and respect, do good deeds when nobody else is looking, and listen to others even when they disagree. There are many people who are a special kind of wonderful just like you, Bambi. I hope that in your search for something better, you don’t forget what is already good about you.” And, before you could say another word, he scrambles into the chimney and up he goes. Another thump on the rooftop, the reindeers springing into action.

You sit down and dip some celery into the low-fat ranch. The crunch of the celery breaking the silence. It really don’t taste like the real thing, you realize.

You wonder if Santa really gave you what you asked for. He didn’t seem so keen on the Ab-Breaker even thought that was top of your list. You should wait, but you’re already awake. You sit on the floor and reach for the present he left you. It seems way too small to be the Ab-Breaker. Maybe, it’s the food scale. You shake it. It’s light.

You delicately peel the bow and rip open the paper. There’s a notebook. You didn’t ask for this! The cover is white, the pages are white. It is so simple, so ordinary. This sucks, you sigh. As you flip open the cover, you see the inscription: What makes paper special are the words you write on it, the drawings you doddle, the airplanes you fold. What makes you special are the hopes you harbor, the dreams you imagine, and the warmth you spread. Merry Christmas.

scaredy cat

I’m genuinely scared. I am terrified of COVID-19 and today I feel like the walls are caving in toward me. This year, two direct relatives of mine tested positive: one died from the virus within a week and the other survived the virus only to subsequently die to cancer.

I have not had any tests done because I have not experienced the symptoms. I haven’t gone out of my way to get a test because I’m frankly afraid of standing in a line with other people who are going to get tested and possibly have symptoms already.

Now, there is a “mutant” variation and apparently we shouldn’t panic. Two members of my household had colleagues who recently tested positive, one of whom has been admitted to the hospital.

The virus is seemingly everywhere and all this talk about returning to normal and the world opening back up sounds more and more delusional to me.

It reminds me of the weeks after September 11th when politicians and civilians gave zealous speeches about avenging the deaths. Years of that rhetoric went by. Wars fought. Missions accomplished and later disputed. Normal changed.

Perhaps, normal is always changing. I’m scared and I cannot deal with news anchors talking in their monotone voices about best practices for social distancing. I cannot stand hearing public health officials leaving out details to avoid panic. First, they said not to wear masks. Then, they demanded masks all the time. I understanding shifting policies to address ever-changing needs, but obviously they knew we needed masks all along. I’m officially panicking!

There’s a very grim story from September 11th that still haunts me. After the first crash, the workers in the second tower started to evacuated. Some of them were allegedly encouraged to go back inside because their tower was unharmed. This was not a conspiracy; it was an anti-panic measure. Go back inside. This is awful. We’ll take care of it. Then, the second strike.

Sometimes there are reasons to panic. It is not an unnatural state. Alarm bells have a time and a place to be rung. We’re not getting back to normal or at least any kind of normal we once lived. We’re in a nightmare and will be lucky if we make it to the aftermath of this nightmare. But, how can you plan for a new version of the world that is unknown to everyone alive.

The virus is not an invisible enemy. The virus reveals that we are each other’s enemy. Some people compare quarantine rituals and productivity. Others test how much they can bend the rules. And, then there are those that flat-out deny what is happening or at least severely downplay it. When the going gets tough, we’re at each other’s throats.

We like to act tough in the face of a virus. How silly. We’re vulnerable to the virus. We cannot beat it because we cannot override our own mortality as much as we pretend we can.

The virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and we try to separate ourselves from them. They’re elderly and I’m not. They had a pre-existing condition and I don’t. And, then someone in the news looks exactly like us and we avert our attention.

We are not going to beat this one. We could instead surrender to our sensitivity and fragility. We could stay inside and wrap ourselves in blankets. We could stay squarely in our comfort zones. We do not have to attack, attack, attack. We can sometimes retreat and defend our trenches.

I guess that’s not an inspired, fervent message, but I’m tired of the political rhetoric. I’m not interested in hearing about how we can re-enter the world. This is the world now. The world is besieged by a virus. We are not the world on a detour from what the world should actually be. This is not a blip in our human history. This is change thrown our face. We will have to count our losses, grieve our losses, and surrender.

When fighting our own mortality, we always lose. Let’s give up the war chants for a moment. Let’s stop overcoming. Let’s panic in our nightmare. I’m a scaredy cat today. Are you?

Allison Lanyard - Part 1

A Very Important Person You Should Know About because she is related to Very Important White Men You Should Know About

For five years, Allison Lanyard took the Q train from the Upper East Side downtown to Hester Street and tucked herself in a co-working space for budding millennial entrepreneurs. Ms. Lanyard, who designs jersey-knit sweatshirts with inspirational messages for her eponymous athleisure brand, typically sported a top bun and a dewy moisturizer. She worked with her best friend and business partner, Rebecca Stanner, with whom she also shared custody of an adopted cat named Purlina. “I had every girl’s dream,” Ms. Lanyard says.

Then, she lit it up her stable life like a dumpster fire under an abandoned pedestrian bridge.

Over the course of ten weeks, beginning in August 2017, Ms. Lanyard cut ties with Ms. Stanner, abandoned their prized adopted cat, and was formally accused of setting fire to her co-working space. (The charges were later dropped.) What would cause Ms. Lanyard to upend her entire life? As it turns out, she was under the romantic influence of Mortimer Edgar Taulette, the heir to the as-seen-on-television cheddar popcorn empire and a one-time cast member of The Real World: Boise.

“I fell for Prince Charming,” Ms. Lanyard tells me, sprawled on her loveseat in her recently renovated Bedford-Stuyvesant home which sits atop the ruins of the former notorious crack den where the rapper Toothy Pitbull was found dead in 2005. This is the first time Ms. Lanyard has agreed to speak publicly of her relationship with Mr. Taulette - a relationship that changed the course of her life and made her rethink her role in the fashion industry. She says she doesn’t live life by any regrets, offering: “I would rather love a monster than not love at all.”

The decisions that radically changed her life in 2017 have their roots in a chance encounter three years prior. It was an unusually sunny morning in January 2014 when Ms. Lanyard stood outside a Horse Power training studio in Midtown around the corner where, unbeknownst to her, Mr. Taulette was meeting with his family’s attorneys. She had to leave the cycling class early because she started vomiting into her water bottle during the interval climbs set to a remix of Beyonce’s “If I Were a Boy.” With her mouth and rose-gold water bottle caked in hangover vomit, Ms. Lanyard ventured down the street in search of a bodega or pharmacy, anywhere to buy a bottle of water. “I hope no one judges my purchase of single-use plastic,” she recalls worrying.

Raised outside of San Diego, Ms. Lanyard was a “cold” child, always bunching blankets on top of her to sleep, even in the Southern Californian summers of her youth. That all changed in high school when a friend gifted her a pink sweatshirt as a birthday present. “It was actually a mistake,” Nancy Peterman, her childhood friend, recounted. “I forgot it was Allison’s birthday, so I wrapped up a touristy sweatshirt I bought at Big Bear when on vacation with my parents. I hadn’t worn it yet, so the tags were still on.”

Ms. Lanyard had never previously worn a sweatshirt, though she had seen them occasionally in the media. “I finally felt warmth,” she said about that birthday gift. “I probably didn’t take that sweatshirt off for two years straight.”

Ms. Lanyard attended design school in New York and subsequently worked as a receptionist before the 2008 recession. Her hopes of running a fashion empire seemed too grand and her interest began to wane when Ms. Stanner approached her with the idea of starting a clothing line. It was an intimidating proposition: starting a fashion line in the middle of the worst economic crisis recent history. Ms. Lanyard had on condition: they would build the line around sweatshirts.

By early 2009, Ms. Lanyard and Ms. Stanner had toured Vietnam factories to identify the best fits for their burgeoning empire. They had not yet set-up a company or designed their products on sketchbooks, but they had a combined $2.5 million of initial investments from a combination of family and select friends as well as access to a private plane courtesy of Ms. Stanner’s grandfather. They settled on LoveUSA, a factory in southeastern Vietnam that contracted with several large American retailers, including illegal-Fit and and Two Tayght.

As they were on route back home to the States, news broke that LoveUSA was under investigation for a building collapse that killed an estimated 3,500 workers. (LoveUSA has refused multiple interview requests, citing legal constraints.) Ms. Lanyard and Ms. Stanner were devastated as LoveUSA would not be able to take on the contract due to their extensive workforce losses. “Obviously, it’s sad what happened to those women,” Ms. Lanyard told me from her loveseat, “but they are not the only women who lost that day. We had signed a contract for 10,000 units. All that work was down the drain.”

more tomorrow x

I should probably get around to reading 1984.

I spent the weekend staring at my computer. I’m now sitting at my computer in the hopes that I will write something to make my life worth living for and it occurs to me that this is what is making me so miserable.

I don’t care what is on this screen. I don’t care what anyone thinks of what is on this screen. None of it feels real. Sure, it is real. I’m really writing and you would be really reading if you actually existed. (Mind you, I’m not doubting your specific existence but rather doubting the existence of any present or future readers of this blog.) Why should I care anyway?

What is in the newspaper matters so much, but then we throw it away and start again tomorrow anyway. What we eat matters so much, but then we shit it out and flush it away. What I write matters so much to me, but then I publish it and insult myself for not writing again the next day. What is the point of this drudgery?

We have found a way to make perfectly delightful parts of life absolutely miserable. Eating now is both a moral crisis (I’m bad because I want cookies), an ethical crisis (I destroyed the environment because my sandwich meat was shipped from another state), and a personal crisis (no one will love me if I gain weight). We do this all the time.

If you sleep a lot, then you are lazy because you allegedly will have enough sleep when are dead (though you will not because you will be dead). If you sleep too little, you could become disoriented and crash a car. So, now we have sleep trackers? That’s our answer. Let’s buy technology that tracks how much we sleep so that when we can’t fall into slumber, we lie in bed fretting that our weekly REM average will be too low. Just me?

I can’t keep tracking and analyzing anymore. Frankly, I don’t care enough. What is the optimal macronutrient breakdown. Don’t remember. Don’t care. Thousands of ancestors of mine were probably happy to have a slice of bread at the end of the day, but I’m expected to torment myself about fat to carb to protein ratios. Been there and done that. It’s a hard pass for me.

Then, there are credit scores. Criticizing credit scores probably gives the impression that mine is low, but I actually have a very high credit score. That’s exactly why I think it is a joke. My credit score is so high because I hardly use credit. Oh, no, no, no, Bambi, you’re chuckling to yourself now, that’s simply not how credit scores work. You see, there is a complex algorithm that takes into account your credit utilization and age of credit and types of credit lines and even more factors that we cannot get into because you’re too dense, Bambi, and all of that informs your credit score in a very complicated mathematical equation that is changing all the time based on science. Believing your credit score is a reflection of personal responsibility is like believing the free drinks at the casino are for the winning gamblers. A credit score means you are a loyal debtor.

You can track anything nowadays. That’s useful to an extent, but it also becomes burdensome and random. Like, do I really need to know what I ate for lunch yesterday? Do I really need to know how many minutes I was in the fat-burning zone when I jogged today? I should get a writing award for using fat-burning zone in a sentence. And, for your information, I missed lunch yesterday because I wasn’t feeling (emotionally) well and I certainly did not jog today though I did walk.

Anyway, I’m in this weird situation where I cannot stand all the tracking and the micromanaging, but I’m also guilty of this in writing. I wrote here one week ago. I noticed that when I logged in. Well, I looked at that when I logged in. It’s not like that fact was aggressively thrown in my face. So, why am I tracking myself when I write?

Who cares? I don’t even care who is on the bestseller list or winning pulitzers. (Yes, I lowercased that on purpose because it doesn’t have to matter.) I worry that people like that matter more than me, but I’m also bored with all the worrying. Even the people who sit in those fancy rooms probably wonder if they are adequate or if this was their peak and everything is going downhill after this one or who the hell invited John M. to this party? He’s going to ruin my big moment!

Truthfully - as though that’s what I lack - I’m having a blast writing this. I like writing about contradictions and nonsense. It’s a lot more fun for me than useful factoids and neat descriptions of how sunshine falls on someone’s face. I have never noticed how sunshine falls on someone’s face except if that someone is squinting because it is either (A) too damn bright; or (B) not that bright, but just bright in their line of vision. I would argue that (B) is surprisingly the more frustrating of the two scenarios because no one realizes why you are flinching for a while and when they do, there is the awkward series of offers to switch seats, but I don’t want to switch seats - just give me a minute and the sun will go down.

Anyway, let’s revel in the pointlessness. Who needs another succinct blog post about the best ways to organize a junk drawer? Franky, do we even need the ones we already have? Why can’t we meander for a while? Write pointless blogs, read pointless blogs, forget the bestseller list ever existed.

I’m sometimes against the obsession of excellence. It gives me pause to write that, but it becomes such a burden. Even the idea of trying your best can gnaw at me. Maybe, trying is an act that takes a lot of practice. Trying your best might be something that happens over time, but I no longer think it is something you can just do on the spot. We can try to try. Then, we will get better at trying. So, that’s what I did today. I tried to try.

I would let you be the judge of that, Wishbone, but I don’t care enough to ask.

x

Unpopular

I went on a popular social media platform today, so naturally I’m incensed. Let’s call this particular platform: Big Daddy Data. I’ve had an account on BDD for many years, but mostly keep it deactivated. Hence, I don’t really know the layout anymore. I have used it lately though because I have been collecting genealogy information obsessively and I have found a helpful group that is hosted on this platform.

Anyway, I logged in today because I was bored and wanted to entertain myself with by reading postings to the genealogy group I follow. Immediately, my newsfeed pops up and one of the few “friends” I have remaining apparently wrote a long post in support of a famous politician who she felt was wronged by a recent op-ed. Well, I wasn’t about to drown in the river she was crying, so I sought to end our digital “friendship.” Nobody needs more political opinions nowadays. This may sound quite dramatic, but remember that I rarely use this account, so our terminated “friendship”
wouldn’t have been noticeable. Anyway, the format on BDD has changed so much that I didn’t recognize the icons. I was clicking around in search of how to unfollow, when I stumbled upon a page of suggestions instead. Up pops a video that (of course) automatically starts playing. Did I ask to see this video? No? Then, quit it!

Anyway, I see a young girl - maybe somewhere between ten and thirteen years old - and an adult man in a bedroom. I’m alarmed. I didn’t hear any sound, so my computer was either already muted or the video was on mute by default. Then, I notice the title refers to a “period” prank. “Blood” appears gushing through the girl’s shorts and the man starts pouring water on her shorts and patting them. A woman appears, so I assume this was a family unit. My inference is that the mother set-up the girl with some sort of fake blood that leaks into her shorts. The father is supposed to be caught off guard and revealed to be inept at dealing with period blood. Then, I assume it is revealed that it is fake blood at some point with a familiar message of boys are dumb and periods are weird lol. Either way, I was furious. I will acknowledge that I didn’t bother watching the whole video or turning on the sound, but I felt so irritated that this was public at all, let alone recommended to me.

I flagged the video. The closest term I could identify was “child abuse.” I know it might seem a bit extreme, but it seemed inappropriate to me to involve a child in this video. I would even argue that it is emotionally manipulative to the girl to involve her in a prank that involves her own body. Anyway, Big Daddy Data apparently had a reviewer look at it and determine that it was acceptable and sent me away with a thank you for your service but we’re good consolation. The site told me I had the option to block, which I did, but I still feel uneasy.

We already live in a world where girls are given inadequate information about their own bodies and menstruation. We also live in a world where these topics are mocked and not taken seriously even by governing research bodies and government entities. I have no problem with girls making period jokes. I have no problem with adults making period jokes amongst themselves. However, adults using a child to make a stale joke about periods where the child is the central figure of the prank. Hell no! Maybe, it is not an openly malicious form of child abuse, but it is certainly not innocent in my opinion.

A girl’s period is not a joke. Again, if girls choose to make light about their periods or their bodies, I take no issue. If an adult finds it funny to reflect on her own childhood in a humorous way, I find no issue. However, I do not see how it is appropriate for adults to use a girl, whether or not she is their daughter, to make fun of the idea that she has a period. Sure, you can say that the joke was really on the father figure because he acted inept. However, that joke is stale too. The lack of education and awareness that men have about female menstruation is yet another obstacle to feminism in our culture. It has created and exacerbated problems in government, education, and medicine through ignorant policies. I don’t see how it is funny to point out how little many men know about the basic experiences of women.

You can think I’m reading too much into all of this. After all, it is one post on Big Daddy Data. However, it is a post I didn’t look for. It is suggested and promoted.

I believe that girls should be taken seriously by society. They should be the ones who determine when and where jokes are made about their bodies, if ever. Boys deserve better too. They deserve a society that informs them about the functions of human bodies instead of one that feeds them cheap jokes about periods that will make them woefully underprepared to deal with adult women.

x

drab

I really don’t think that I should be a writer. I’m not saying that to be coy or seek comfort or validation. There is no one even here to seek comfort from. Nobody reads this blog, remember? And, when I write that, I’m being honest. There are no visitors to this blog at all.

I’m only here because every single day - without fail - I think about how I did not write. I’m bitter not because I don’t write but because I feel compelled to do so. I absolutely cannot stand it. I find it to be madness. I gauge my days based on how content I can make myself on how I am definitely not a writer nor should I attempt to become one. I find this all perfectly reasonable. So, can someone please explain why I am so goddamn miserable about it and writing on this blog to no one?

I do not understand it and I’m ashamed to admit to any of this even though it is all quite simple because it is so unabashedly lame to say that I’m compelled to write even though I cannot stand writers. I don’t like the word “writer.” I don’t like how writers have conferences and talk about dreadful books and their spiritual connection to hard-bound copies. Gosh. I don’t even like hard copies of books. Way too heavy and bulky. I cannot imagine sitting down to actually read a hard copy book. Frankly, most books bore me so much.

I also cannot stand how writers quote other writers. It makes me cringe so hard. I don’t like terms like “the work,” “the craft,” or “the process.” Those are totally normal words that suddenly become ambiguous and creepy when writers say them.

I also feel like all writers wear sweaters and it annoys me. I know this generalization is way off and, yet, somehow it feels accurate. I can just imagine a bunch of writers in chunky sweaters sitting by an electric fireplace and musing about the process. I almost twitched even writing that down. I cannot stand it! There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess. I don’t know why it bugs the hell out of me anyway.

I don’t want to wear sweaters and talk about metaphors from young adult fiction. I didn’t even like young adult fiction when I was the target demographic. I see so much writing that is more astute and better edited than mine, but I somehow find it incredibly boring. I don’t know how I can consider so much writing objectively superior to mine and also somehow find it dull. I feel like that says something awfully negative about me.

There are so many cultural references and works of art that I just find boring. I don’t even think they are bad or inadequate. I just find them boring. I don’t have full critiques or takedowns. I don’t need them to disappear. I just can’t stand pretending to like any of it.

I find most paintings bland. I don’t know why! I cannot paint. I don’t know how to paint. I find it impressive that people paint, especially when people paint well. Yet, I can go to a fine museum and look at the landscapes and the biblical scenes and think about how difficult it must have been to paint those technically rigorous masterpieces. Secretly though, I’m wondering about lunch and whether the food court will be halfway decent. In the face of masterful art, I ponder about ham and cheese sandwiches? What does that say about me? I find it all so embarrassing as I don’t even like ham.

What further confounds me is that I do not consider my writing to be objectively of high quality. I do truly believe that all the writing that makes me yawn is far superior in quality. Yet, I cannot seem to make myself care. I’m awfully good at pretending to care and about making acceptable observations about art topics, but it all feels like performance art to me.

Why don’t I like and admire what I’m expected to like and admire? I know there’s an obvious argument here, which is that Western art and the English language are not beautiful to everyone. Obviously, there are different cultures with their own ideas about beauty, creativity, and artistic expression. However, I am Westerner from a family of Westerners who all speak English. This is my culture! I’m supposed to like this! I’m supposed to gravitate towards it through some combination of nature and indoctrination. Why am I so bored by it?

When news anchors are pageant queens

Take a news network. The network is owned by a media conglomerate that is run by a board for shareholder profit. News released on the network can affect the shareholder value in that particular media conglomerate and also in other companies. Shareholders and members of the Board of Directors of said media conglomerate also own shares in other firms (and, perhaps, even controlling stakes in other firms) and have an interest in also maintaining high shareholder value in those firms.

Executives at the news network and of the larger umbrella media conglomerate are compensated, in part, in shares of the publicly-traded company that they work for, which incentivizes them to maintain the positive public standing of that company. This is a logical conclusion and in no way limited to media companies. Across a wide range of industries, employees are compensated in stock and stock options with the goal of incentivizing employees to align with the firm’s mission.

Now, we introduce additional parties known as advertisers. Advertisers and the companies they represent want to pitch to consumers. Advertisers pay the news network to play their commercials or run their ads online. Advertisers must think strategically because the news network could run a story unfavorable to the product or service that is being advertised. Likewise, the news network must think strategically because advertiser revenue depends on the network’s ability to provide the ideal target audience. What is the ideal target audience to an advertiser? The specifics may vary in terms of demographics, but any consumer must be open and ready to receive the information presented. In other words, the consumer of the news becomes the consumer of the advertiser. There is no distinction between watching the news and watching the advertisements as the two blend together, quite literally, back-to-back.

The blending of news and advertisement is even more dramatic when one considers the relationship between advertisers and the network. Some of the advertisers represent companies that are also publicly-traded. Shareholders of the media conglomerate may also hold stock or investments in the companies that are advertised on the network. Therefore, it is out of the monetary interest of the news network to speak favorably not just of itself but of the advertisers.

The monetary incentives are clear-cut: maximize profit by favorably reporting on the parent company and companies with a shared financial interest. It would be illogical and financially irresponsible to investigate or expose corruption in any of these organizations as the incentives are aligned to preserve shareholder value.

With this in mind, it is difficult to categorize the content that is published by the news network. News has a connotation of relevant information of the general public. What is in the interest of the general public? That is a tough question to tackle. In broad terms, the general public benefits from transparent governance and the protection of human rights. For the sake of argument, we could extend this statement to mean that corruption, greed, and unethical conduct are, at the very least, not in the best interest of the general public. Clearly, there will always be someone who could personally benefit from corruption and greed; however, in consideration of benefiting the majority, corruption and greed have no standing.

This presents us with a core problem: the incentives of the news network cannot align with interests of the general public. The public has an interest in unearthing corruption. By reporting on corruption, the news network either (1) acts financially against its own financial interest if the corruption contaminates or is perceived to contaminate it or any peripheral parties; or, (2) maintains the status quo as reporting on corruption does not increase profit in any significant way. (Note: consumers generally pay for the services of “news,” not for particular news stories.)

So, what is news? In this scenario, news is information that aligns with the financial incentives of the news network and presented to the audience of consumers susceptible to advertising. The consumer of news is useless of that same consumer is not open to advertising content. The most valuable consumers accept both the stories and the ads.

Your Mission

Your mission - if you choose to accept it - is one that has eluded philosophers, scientists, doctors, soldiers, lawyers, sculptors, accountants, painters, and politicians in every nation on Earth for millennia. You are completely unqualified for the task ahead. Will you accept it anyway?

Your mission? To know your own heart. It sounds simple, almost trite, but do not underestimate the hardship you will encounter should you choose to accept. Your heart has been betrayed before: definitely by others and likely by your own self as well. You have fear and worries that are so justifiable the Supreme Court couldn’t overrule them. You have wounds so deep those creepy fish with the lightbulbs hanging over their faces and three rows of teeth wouldn’t dare swim down that far. You have love so contorted that the lead Cirque du Soleil acrobats at the prime of their careers would shiver if asked to even mimic the labyrinthine shapes. You have hope more hidden than the lost canals of Venice that gondoliers speculate about during their espresso breaks because if it existed, you would have found it by now, right?

Overwhelmed? You should be. Out of your wits? Sounds about right.

You have no reason to believe you can handle this. In fact, believing you can handle this would make you uniquely unqualified to handle this. You must learn to know what you know, but you do not know what you know or how to learn it. You will not know until you do; at which point, you will not be sure which action led you to know. For God, does not know why there is light; yet, God created light.

You are careful with glass because it breaks. You are light on ice because you will fall. You are guarded amongst strangers because they will attack. In this way, you learn because you know to learn. Knowing and learning are inextricably linked. One will lead the way to the other, but one will not lead the other.

If I’m talking in terms too abstract, it is because I myself do not know my own heart nor have I seen that knowledge in another. I have read books, but I have not witnessed knowledge. I imagine that this mission has been attained, but the process is not easily observed. We have a culture of preachers and parishioners, which doesn’t lend itself well to knowing learners.

The one in touch with nature does not write a book manufactured from the destruction of trees. The one in love does not sing in recycled metaphors. The one who sees the world does not take a single photograph.

To write for another is to sacrifice writing for literature. To cook for another is to sacrifice cooking for the meal. To love for another is to sacrifice loving for company. We lose the action of writing, cooking, loving for literature, meals, and the company of others. Then, we demand literature, meals, and the company of others to fulfill us. We distill our creativity, ingenuity, and depression into simplicity only to except simplicity to lead us back to complexity.

You may want completeness, but you do not need completeness. Completeness would not do you any favors even it it were accessible to you in this type of mission. Be an incomplete, unsatisfied, depressive. Let others reveal themselves to be incomplete, unsatisfied, depressives or let them leave unharmed. Not all accept this mission. Should you choose to accept, know that you will often walk in solitude as the preachers and parishioners are unlikely to prefer parks to forests.

Dominic Saul Riverbottom

A Very Important White Man You Should Know About

These days, Dominic Saul Riverbottom is at odds with the exact people paid to protect him: his family’s legal counsel. He is seeking to unlock his $50 million trust fund by his 30th birthday to advance his life’s mission: reinventing the trailer park into an anticapitalist retreat.

“I want to build a world where the priviledged learn what it is like to suffer with dignity,” he said.

A “trasher” since college, Mr. Riverbottom views his family’s fleet of private jets and yacht club memberships as an embarrassment to his sense of identity. Trashers, as they call themselves, are a loosely organized social movement that believe fundamental truths about capitalism can be gleaned from cultural motifs typically associated with the lower end of the working class, dismissively known as white trash.

In purchasing trailer parks to run as anti-capitalistic retreats, he plans to dismantle capitalism from the inside. The ultimate goal: to end income inequality in America.

Mr. Riverbottom’s grandfather co-founded the Energy Vikings International Limited Corporation. As one of only six heirs, he expects to receive more than $100 million by his 50th birthday. He exemplifies a seeming contradiction: a trust-fund kid and a trasher, situating him in a rare and coveted position among the wealthy in the fight against economic inequality. He describes his plight as “what it means to be with the masses, when you’re born better than the masses.”

“At a young age, I learned that wealth was my birthright,” he continues. His family has contributed to some of the most respected liberal social justice groups in the country, including the National Coalition for Illiterate Toddlers, the Center for Insecure Atheists with Religious-Based Names, and the Fight for a Sunny Tomorrow (which is a national leader in the crusade to end racial inequality amongst television meteorologists.)

“My inheritance has been held in real estate holdings all of my life. All land was once shared by native tribes, which means that my family’s wealth is derived from the murder of natives. If you think about it, my parents might as well have executed the tribes themselves with a machete. Owning real estate for the sole purpose to living in it is a crime against civilization.”

So, what does it take to embody the trasher spirit? Though perceptions of the movement vary, Mr. Riverbottom has taken a path widely embraced by his peers. He purchases a trailer park, preferably one nearby an international airport, and converts some of the vacant units into what he refers to as learning pods. There is a careful balance he is still trying to strike: “You want to keep actual white trash families in the park to keep it realistic, but obviously we need space for the learning to take place.” This learning is more of an unlearning to his socially-minded peers.

Upon arriving at one of of Mr. Riverbottom’s four parks, you will likely be greeted by the local residents, a mix of ex-convicts and single mothers toting crying babies on their hip. These are your neighbors, or “guides” as the retreat literature puts it. “They have no formal training, which is what makes them so important to the learning process for the guests,” Mr. Riverbottom explains. “None of our guests have ever met people who are so uninformed. It is a breath of fresh air for many though it can sometimes prove shocking.” In many cases, this reporter found that many of the guides also lacked a general formal education.

Stays at the parks range from one night to an entire year. “It really depends on how much you need to detoxify your relationship to materialism,” explains Mr. Riverbottom. “Some people can ground themselves within a week or two. I’d say that three months is the average, but I don’t want to discount the few who have taken the whole year. Sometimes, you just really need to get in the mud and do the deep work.”

Visitors can expect to engage in activities that include classes on moonshine production, shooting old cans with rifles, and DIY home maintenance. “At the end of your stay, we expect that you discover a different side to America. You’ll be more secure with yourself as you return to your everyday life." You will certainly get your hands dirty, as this reporter did in a mud-wrestling elective. And, hopefully, you will also get your mind a bit wiser.

Stays at the parks range from $300 to $500 per night. Discounts on longer-term bookings are negotiable. Classes are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Travis Leonard Drinkwater

A Very Important White Man You Should Know About

Travis Leonard Drinkwater, known by close associates as Tray, is a man about town if you happen upon the highbrow hilly landscape of Greenwich. Popular amongst men and irresistible to the opposing sex, Mr. Drinkwater likens himself to a contemporary Frank Sinatra. “I’m like the Sinatra of Greenwich. Everywhere I go, people look. They just can’t help themselves,” he wryly told me on a sunny afternoon at the kitschy hotspot, Dorian’s Attic on Bandwith Street.

Mr. Drinkwater has the assured sophistication of James Bond, but the mysterious scent that would be more fitting for a Bond villain. That scent is called nouveau riche (all lowercase by design) and is available exclusively at the up-and-coming Sag Harbor cat cafe Kisses and Scratches. When I ask about the inspiration for nouveau riche, Mr. Drinkwater pulled out his cigarette and sucked on it dry. “Most would probably describe it as sandalwood and musk, but it is more than that. Much, much more. I would say that more than anything else, it is about despair and horror. It is the second haunted house you’ve ever been to. Like, the first time you go to a haunted house as a kid, you don’t know what to expect. You’re scared and excited and maybe even a little turned-on. But, then the next year, you go back, and you start to notice that all the goblins are really just out-of-work actors embroiled in an early mid-life crisis and that you’re paying to be scared. It’s all very transactional.” The waiter, a bronze statuesque man of no more than twenty, interrupts us to caution about the cigarette. Mr. Drinkwater returns the cigarette to his pocket, but he is jumpy, so we excuse ourselves from the table to take a cigarette break by the curb.

“This is my city,” Mr. Drinkwater smiles as he gestures toward the discreetly elegant row of boutiques and cafes, serving the elite of the Greenwich suburbs. Mr. Drinkwater moved to Greenwich as a spry nineteen year-old after his mother divorced his second step-father, Henry Gables Jackson (of the Jackson steel empire). It was around this time that Mr. Drinkwater attended Connecticut College for a year, but found the courses too dull and his classmates to be a cross between “inane and insane.” However, his year at university was not all for naught as it inspired his latest venture. While at college, he encountered classmates from every state, but those who stood out to him the most were his middle-class peers. “I couldn’t believe how much they cared about labels,” Mr. Drinkwater said as he slid a second cigarette out from his tweed blazer and smoothed it between his index and middle finger as though scratching an itch. “It was like drowning in a sea of Lacoste polos.” It was not only the fashion choices that repulsed him. “All they ever talked about was studying and finding corporate jobs. In the course of a year, I didn’t meet a single person who had ever been been further east than Spain.”

As we worked our way back into Dorian’s Attic, he went on to explain how his upbringing that consisted of shuttling between the house of his father, a partner at Bogush, Bangush, and Bozus and his mother, an heiress to the diamond mines of northern Rhuhipnil, may have underprepared him for the social aspects of college. “Woefully unprepared,” he remarked. “But, at the same time, there is so much more to life than passing your classes and working in an office. That’s what my classmates didn’t understand. And, they certainly didn’t seem to appreciate my bigger ideas about the world.”

As we settled back into our chairs to dig into the avocado and kale soup that our bronze waiter eagerly rushed to our table, Mr. Drinkwater explained why he would name his newest venture after the classmates that he found so blasé. “I wanted a scent that was erotically trashy. Like a busty cyclops. I want nouveau riche to represent everything that is wrong in the States and everything that is sexy about the States at the same time.”

So, is nouveau riche a product or a statement? “Both,” Mr. Drinkwater asserts. “When you wear nouveau, you will smell a bit like trash. But, then it becomes normal to you, so you don’t actually know that you smell like trash after a few hours. It is a way to experience the world as a member of the nouveau riche, to desperately claw at culture without the good taste. Of course, some will buy the fragrance without knowing what it actually means. That’s the thrill of it for me as an entrepreneur. I have to attract the actual nouveau riche to make the effect realistic. This is part capitalism, part social experiment.”

At $75 for four fluid ounces, nouveau riche certainly makes a statement. It has the lightness of a body spray with the after-punch of a cologne. An online store is in the works, but for now, the exclusive retailer is Kisses and Scratches, 63 Overall Road, Sag Harbor.

dumb dumb

I’m worried that this attempt at an adventure is coming to a screeching halt. I have not written in over a week. I have thought about writing, but, once again, did not write at all.

I was offered an interview for a job next week. This would be a full-time job that would either replace or supplement my part-time job. I’m conflicted. First of all, I agreed to do the interview, so I will just do that and let whatever happens happen. Second of all, with COVID-19, workers are losing jobs right and left anyway.

I’m disappointed in myself because I feel like a sellout. I don’t think that I have earnestly tried to be a writer and I don’t even respect writing that much. I don’t know why I think so much about it and also look down on it.

I don’t have to quit writing on this blog, but I don’t exactly trust myself. If I work full-time and maybe also have a part-time job - again if - would I actually write here for no readers? I hardly write here with a part-time job. Plus, I wrote even less when I was fully unemployed.

I feel like my life is small and cage-like. I feel like I don’t have a path. Hell, I don’t even feel lost because I don’t feel like I have anywhere to go to be lost. I would like to have more money. I would like to be more independent. That means a full-time job. I should be excited, but I feel conflicted.

I want to write and write and be free. I have probably spent ten minutes writing, but feel annoyed and bored with myself. Who would read this? I would probably tell myself to shut up by now. I’m trying to be more kind to myself though. That’s not what a kind person would say. That’s not what I would say to anyone else. Yet, here we are.

I guess you never know what will happen. I could choose to be open. I could choose to be free. I could choose it each and every day. Why shouldn’t I write on a blog that nobody reads? Who else is going to tell my story?

I don’t like to think of what I write here as my story as it is full of anxiety and sadness and loneliness. Maybe, that’s what this chapter speaks of. There is no point of rushing through a chapter just to see what happens. Each chapter has a place and a purpose. This is the anxious, sad, lonely chapter where I write a blog that nobody reads. This is the chapter of severe regret and mild hope. This chapter is tedious and hard and the main character is getting on my damn nerves. This chapter matters. The other chapters won’t make sense without it.

we will see, won’t we?

Writing sounds like such a drag right now. I don’t know why I insist on trying to write when I complain about it to myself every time I try to do it. Does that mean I don’t actually care about learning how to be a writer? Am I in denial?

It seems like I am convinced that I don’t actually want to write and use every thought as a sign that writing is a bad idea. It sounds pretty consistent with my insecurities about writing and about what writing, or even aspiring to write, says about a person.

I fear that writers are soft and self-centered people who do not contribute to society. That’s why I feel so awful about wanting to write; I fear that wanting to write makes me a soft and self-centered person who will not contribute to society. That’s pretty uncomfortable.

And, no, I don’t care to explore that further at the moment.

On a lighter note, I might have the opportunity to take on another part-time job. Oddly, two part-time jobs do not make a full-time job when you think about benefits or lack thereof. I don’t mind though as I’m not that interested in a full-time job as it makes my anxiety and my perfectionism spike to epic proportions.

Anyway, that’s all filed under to be determined for now.

new show

I found a new show to watch. I’m watching it now. I feel like I’m avoiding my life by watching this show. I’m concerned about that.

I have work to do tomorrow. I’m nervous. I’m nervous when I have work about whether I’ll do a good job or do the right thing or obsess too much or not enough. I’m nervous when I don’t have work that no one cares and that I’ll never progress in life.

Basically, I’m nervous.

subpar

I don’t understand why I feel so much pressure to have no problems. Problems abound everywhere. Yet, we’re supposed to constantly problem solve and overcome? But, sometimes let it be. What kind of shoddy life guidance is this? I’m so over messages about life sometimes.

I feel like I need to change the world. Trust me, it sounds as bonkers to you as it does to me, Wishbone. The idea of addressing all the icky parts of society gives me a reason to wake up each day, but it is those same icky parts that make me stay hidden once I’m awake. Can you relate at all?

I’m so confused about what I’m supposed to be doing at any given minute. I feel like I do not have any of the makings of an adult, except for a driver’s license. I do not know what is so great about people. People seem pretty awful to me. There is so much pettiness about who said what and who went where. I don’t understand why so much of conversation revolves about random things other people said and random places other people went. It makes my head spin sometimes when I think about how much time is spent on discussing the random habits of random people.

That is part of the reason that I’m disillusioned with celebrity culture and even the news in general. It’s not that I don’t believe it. It’s that I don’t see why I have to care anymore. So, this politician - who represents a state that I don’t live in - said this offensive thing. What am I supposed to do about that? Write an angry tweet? Bang my fist on the table? Now, this actor - from a movie I didn’t watch - is an alcoholic who cheated on his wife multiple times. And, I need an entire exposé about it? What should I do with all of this useless information?

I’m struggling with problems and with the idea that I have problems at all. I’m confused about why I would resolve those problems when more will appear. If I don’t address my current problems, will new ones appear anyway and compound my existing problems? Is that why I should address it? Why can’t I just ignore everything? How do I know what I can ignore and can’t ignore?

I’m also confused about why there are so many products advertised to me. It is exhausting. Then, there are lifestyle choices advertised to me at every extreme: minimalism to yacht living; veganism to all fried food diets; living in the woods to only communicating through a screen. People seem excited by all of these choices. I just feel overwhelmed by it. I feel consistently unsatisfied by my appearance, my personality, relationships, career, goals, to do list, etc. I don’t ever feel adequate. I don’t know if anyone does. I don’t know if anyone ever has.

I want to be enough for someone. I don’t think I’ll ever be enough for myself. I don’t think this world will ever be enough for me. I live a small, scared life. I tried living bigger and I got burned. Now, I’m scared. And, I keep hoping that someone will tell me the exact right thing to do and I’ll feel so happy and never be sad again. But, that doesn’t make much sense. I’m responsible for making the decisions. I’m the one who is going to learn to trust herself. It sounds nice, but feels absolutely awful. So awful that I can’t stand it. It sounds like freedom and sounds like a burden at the same time. I’m lost. I want to be found, but I don’t want to go looking for anyone.

funeral for my pet paragraph

I’m so bummed. I was writing something that seemed exciting and then clicked the wrong button and now it has totally disappeared. I was actually super proud of myself for a minute there and now I feel crushed. I guess that this may be a moment for me to grieve the words that are no longer.

I tend to write each word like it is precious, as something to be admired and worshipped. Hand-selected for an exact moment in time. However, when I read through what I write afterwards, it all looks so random and ill-conceived. The content seem stale and boring; even worse: it sounds like a thinly-veiled tirade about myself. It is hard for me to edit my own words because I do not want to admit that I don’t need all of them. So much is invested in each sentence because it is so hard for me to write from an emotional standpoint.

I put so much weight on each sentence and post that I cannot do the actual work of lifting the message to anything I admire because I admire writing as an act itself way too much. I elevate the form to the point that I constantly feel like an imposter for writing an blog in a small corner of the universe. I believe that every poorly written blog post is a disgrace to the art of writing, an art which has to remain sacred in my eyes. The problem is that it has become so sacred that I’m not allowed to partake in it ever. That’s why it is so hard for me to write. I have seemingly endless ideas and words, but the art form is so precious and perfect that I cannot enter until I am precious and perfect, which never seems to actually happen to me or to anyone. That’s what I hate my own writing. That’s probably why I hate the writing of so many others.

It is like building a cathedral so beautiful and ornate that no one feels worthy of praying inside of it. Who could ever be as holy and as pure as the building itself? Prayers and fears seem small and hopeless within the biggest cathedrals in the world. Who am I to even pray to a God this great?

It might be time to leave the cathedral behind for now. I might need to reduce the glamour of writing. It is words on a page. It doesn’t have to be life-changing every time or ever at all. It doesn’t have to be profound. It can be an activity just like any other. Maybe writing should be less of worshipping at the cathedral of art and greatness and everything holy and more like taking out the trash just because it is collection day.