Monday, May 16, 2011
Back, As They Say, In the New York Groove
I just got back to my humble commode abode, and just wanted to put up a quick post. I'll get to the more substantial material tomorrow. I did have a problem today with Blogger, a "conflicting edit" message which ate my first attempt at this post. Hopefully, Blogger won't turn to custard again. Suffice it to say, I am back, and I'll let Ace Frehley express my feelings for me:
Friday, May 13, 2011
Momma's Mook
This is a bit of a companion piece to my last post. My mom has always been tough as nails and strong as hell, but sometimes a big mook is called for to perform a task. I spent a few hours the last couple of days spreading mulch around her gardens and putting lanscaping pebbles in certain areas that aren't conducive to plant growth. It's been a couple of days humping big bags of landscaping materiel around. I also took some time to chop out some superficial roots around a tree stump with a mattock. The mattock is a precision instrument, requiring a subtle hand. I've never tried to perform an appendectomy with a mattock, but I think I could handle it if I had a copy of Grey's Anatomy on hand to guide me.
Yeah, I've been happily playing momma's mook these past days... doesn't every parent need a strong-backed lummox once in a while?
Yeah, I've been happily playing momma's mook these past days... doesn't every parent need a strong-backed lummox once in a while?
A Woman's Place Is Under the Hood
I posted on this subject yesterday, but Blogger done eated mah post!!
On Wednesday, I drove from my loverly home in the New York Metro Area to Northern Virginia, where my mom has resided for the last thirteen years. As I usually do before going on a road trip, I stopped at the local quick-lube place for an oil change and a check of belts and fluids.
The licensed automotive service technician was a young woman named, appropriately enough, Rosie. Rosie was courteous, professional, and competent- she had my car running like a Swiss watch after an engine flush, oil change, and replacement of the air filter and spark plugs (there was a time when I'd change my oil, and I even replaced the spark plugs of an old Chevette I drove back in the day, but I can't be arsed doing the work now, and finding a place to dispose of the oil properly... plus, I don't have a garage, so I really couldn't be bothered to do this sort of work).
Anyway, the fact that Rosie was performing stellarly in a field traditionally dominated by men did nothing to detract from her femininity. She wasn't trying to be a man, she was trying, and succeeding, to be a damn fine mechanic. She did a credit to her profession, and wore her mechanics' grays with pride. More importantly, having a woman working on my car did nothing to diminish my masculinity. There's been a lot of nonsense about the "emasculation of the American male" (I'd provide links, but the Google results are a fever-swamp of reactionaries and white power and "men's rights" groups). Suffice it to say, if you are a male who feels that he has been emasculated, that's your problem. It sure as hell ain't Rosie's problem, because she's damn near perfect.
On Wednesday, I drove from my loverly home in the New York Metro Area to Northern Virginia, where my mom has resided for the last thirteen years. As I usually do before going on a road trip, I stopped at the local quick-lube place for an oil change and a check of belts and fluids.
The licensed automotive service technician was a young woman named, appropriately enough, Rosie. Rosie was courteous, professional, and competent- she had my car running like a Swiss watch after an engine flush, oil change, and replacement of the air filter and spark plugs (there was a time when I'd change my oil, and I even replaced the spark plugs of an old Chevette I drove back in the day, but I can't be arsed doing the work now, and finding a place to dispose of the oil properly... plus, I don't have a garage, so I really couldn't be bothered to do this sort of work).
Anyway, the fact that Rosie was performing stellarly in a field traditionally dominated by men did nothing to detract from her femininity. She wasn't trying to be a man, she was trying, and succeeding, to be a damn fine mechanic. She did a credit to her profession, and wore her mechanics' grays with pride. More importantly, having a woman working on my car did nothing to diminish my masculinity. There's been a lot of nonsense about the "emasculation of the American male" (I'd provide links, but the Google results are a fever-swamp of reactionaries and white power and "men's rights" groups). Suffice it to say, if you are a male who feels that he has been emasculated, that's your problem. It sure as hell ain't Rosie's problem, because she's damn near perfect.
Arrggghhh!
I know Blogger was more messed up than a football bat yesterday, but I didn't think that it would eat a post I put up, and a bunch of comments. I'm a little ticked off, but I think I can re-write what I'd put up yesterday. The worst part is, I put it up before Blogger "went all to custard", as one of my antipodean informants would put it.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Pride and Primitivism
The outpouring of national pride (oddly enough, not shared by many right-wingers, who are incensed that President Obama's administration killed Bin Laden) inspired by the death of Bin Laden has been somewhat disconcerting to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the evil S.O.B. is dead, but I can't help but think that the whole episode is a glaring indicator that things have gone horribly wrong with American society. Four decades after planting a foot on the moon, our proudest achievement is planting a foot on the neck of a horrible old man? Never mind that Bin Laden was largely a creation of U.S. foreign policy... is this really the best that we can do?
The 1960's saw the dismantling of entrenched, institutionalized racism in this country- the Civil Rights Act ended segregationist policies, and the implementation of affirmative action policies to redress discriminatory practices. By executive order, the federal government did its best to end official tribalism and balkanization in this country. At the same time, the Space Race kicked into overdrive- in 1961, Kennedy made his moon speech, and in 1969 we acccomplished a manned moon mission. The official policy of the U.S. federal government was a rejection of primitivism, and the embrace of futurity- science, rationalism, and a sense of purpose ruled the national psyche. Of course, there was an ugly undercurrent- a backlash against the Civil Rights movement, political assassinations, a pointless war against an agrarian population on the other side of the world, but it looked as if things were going to get better, that a bright future lay ahead.
What the hell happened? In the 1970s, a crisis in the oil supply should have inspired the nation to apply the same can-do spirit to adopting alternative energy as it did to the Apollo program. The space program produced some remarkable successes, but our fascination with space exploration was eclipsed by our fascination with galactic fantasy. Of course, there were some people who were right about a need for long-range planning, but they were held to ridicule:
Yeah, Carter was right- he told the American people that belt-tightening was needed, and that a coherent policy involving research into renewable energy was needed... that sort of fag talk cost him the election, and Reagan began our major leap back into the past (tribalism and all).
Under Clinton's presidency, when oil prices plummeted, there was no effort made to improve fuel efficiency standards, and the automakers used the efficiency loopholes for trucks to usher in the era of the gas-guzzling SUV. Fuel taxes weren't even raised in this era of cheap oil. Yeah, we went along, without thought for the future, and burnt through our fossil fuel "startup capital" without thought for the coming transition. The trade agreements put into place under Clinton allowed U.S. corporations to bypass production, work, and environmental standards through outsourcing. Innovation was rejected, a victim to the profit motive. I have heard stories of IT professionals who were told that they were training staff in India to handle the boring and repetitious aspects of the job, so they could work on more esoteric tasks, but those tasks never materialized, layoffs occurred, and the remaining workers here are working longer hours for stagnant wages.
Bush junior merely doubled down on concessions to the fossil fuel industry while pursuing Operation Iraqi Liberation, and allowing his political allies to engage in tribalism once again. The real end-result of the Bush Maladministration was the wholesale mortgage of the future of American society. He transformed a once great, innovative nation into a banana republic with nukes.
I supported Barack Hussein Obama over Hilary Clinton mainly because I didn't want the presidential election to be a referendum on the Vietnam War era (like the abysmal 2004 election campaign). I also saw Barack Obama as the "nerd" candidate- the cerebral, cool headed policy wonk who was needed to clean up the messes of the last decade. Of course, the "post-racial" America of January 2009 descended into a morass of birtherism and 'baggerism, the tribalism that had been officially ended in the 1960s came back in proxy form, and open racism and the worst sort of "John Birch Society" paranoid style set the tone for the political discourse. My nerdy president has been preoccupied with bullshit, such as addressing the birth certificate false controversy, and allegations of being a communist, a caliphist, or a granny-killer.
Now, two and a third years after President Obama's inauguration, the country is still mired in bullshit- the distribution of wealth is similar to that of a third world nation, and our elected officials are trying to gut the social safety net and keeping the world safe for outdated technology- as Gene Wolfe would put it the technology of the Nineteenth Century brought into the Twenty-First and hard at work. Any attempts to reward companies for reducing the amount of pollution they produce are mischaracterized as punitive measures and fought tooth-and nail. Well-funded special interest groups are seeking to have pseudoscientific nonsense taught in our schools.
Yeah, we killed an evil man, but what the hell have we really accomplished otherwise? There was a time when we shot for the moon and succeeded, but have we grown so debased that shooting an evil old gargoyle living in a squalid compound is now considered a major triumph? To paraphrase Doctor Soberin in the amazing film noir Kiss Me Deadly: How civilized this earth used to be. But as the world becomes more primitive, itstreasures victories become more fabulous petty.
NOTE: By nature, I'm not a pessimist, but I play a pretty convincing one on the internet. It's hard to be an optimist, however, when the species just can't get its shit together, and that a couple of hundred petty, bigoted, ignorant loons, representing a tiny minority of the world's population have such disproportionate power. The past forty years have been a series of missed opportunities, squandered resources, and manufactured crises. It's long past time the country grew the fuck up, and knuckled the fuck down.
The 1960's saw the dismantling of entrenched, institutionalized racism in this country- the Civil Rights Act ended segregationist policies, and the implementation of affirmative action policies to redress discriminatory practices. By executive order, the federal government did its best to end official tribalism and balkanization in this country. At the same time, the Space Race kicked into overdrive- in 1961, Kennedy made his moon speech, and in 1969 we acccomplished a manned moon mission. The official policy of the U.S. federal government was a rejection of primitivism, and the embrace of futurity- science, rationalism, and a sense of purpose ruled the national psyche. Of course, there was an ugly undercurrent- a backlash against the Civil Rights movement, political assassinations, a pointless war against an agrarian population on the other side of the world, but it looked as if things were going to get better, that a bright future lay ahead.
What the hell happened? In the 1970s, a crisis in the oil supply should have inspired the nation to apply the same can-do spirit to adopting alternative energy as it did to the Apollo program. The space program produced some remarkable successes, but our fascination with space exploration was eclipsed by our fascination with galactic fantasy. Of course, there were some people who were right about a need for long-range planning, but they were held to ridicule:
Yeah, Carter was right- he told the American people that belt-tightening was needed, and that a coherent policy involving research into renewable energy was needed... that sort of fag talk cost him the election, and Reagan began our major leap back into the past (tribalism and all).
Under Clinton's presidency, when oil prices plummeted, there was no effort made to improve fuel efficiency standards, and the automakers used the efficiency loopholes for trucks to usher in the era of the gas-guzzling SUV. Fuel taxes weren't even raised in this era of cheap oil. Yeah, we went along, without thought for the future, and burnt through our fossil fuel "startup capital" without thought for the coming transition. The trade agreements put into place under Clinton allowed U.S. corporations to bypass production, work, and environmental standards through outsourcing. Innovation was rejected, a victim to the profit motive. I have heard stories of IT professionals who were told that they were training staff in India to handle the boring and repetitious aspects of the job, so they could work on more esoteric tasks, but those tasks never materialized, layoffs occurred, and the remaining workers here are working longer hours for stagnant wages.
Bush junior merely doubled down on concessions to the fossil fuel industry while pursuing Operation Iraqi Liberation, and allowing his political allies to engage in tribalism once again. The real end-result of the Bush Maladministration was the wholesale mortgage of the future of American society. He transformed a once great, innovative nation into a banana republic with nukes.
I supported Barack Hussein Obama over Hilary Clinton mainly because I didn't want the presidential election to be a referendum on the Vietnam War era (like the abysmal 2004 election campaign). I also saw Barack Obama as the "nerd" candidate- the cerebral, cool headed policy wonk who was needed to clean up the messes of the last decade. Of course, the "post-racial" America of January 2009 descended into a morass of birtherism and 'baggerism, the tribalism that had been officially ended in the 1960s came back in proxy form, and open racism and the worst sort of "John Birch Society" paranoid style set the tone for the political discourse. My nerdy president has been preoccupied with bullshit, such as addressing the birth certificate false controversy, and allegations of being a communist, a caliphist, or a granny-killer.
Now, two and a third years after President Obama's inauguration, the country is still mired in bullshit- the distribution of wealth is similar to that of a third world nation, and our elected officials are trying to gut the social safety net and keeping the world safe for outdated technology- as Gene Wolfe would put it the technology of the Nineteenth Century brought into the Twenty-First and hard at work. Any attempts to reward companies for reducing the amount of pollution they produce are mischaracterized as punitive measures and fought tooth-and nail. Well-funded special interest groups are seeking to have pseudoscientific nonsense taught in our schools.
Yeah, we killed an evil man, but what the hell have we really accomplished otherwise? There was a time when we shot for the moon and succeeded, but have we grown so debased that shooting an evil old gargoyle living in a squalid compound is now considered a major triumph? To paraphrase Doctor Soberin in the amazing film noir Kiss Me Deadly: How civilized this earth used to be. But as the world becomes more primitive, its
NOTE: By nature, I'm not a pessimist, but I play a pretty convincing one on the internet. It's hard to be an optimist, however, when the species just can't get its shit together, and that a couple of hundred petty, bigoted, ignorant loons, representing a tiny minority of the world's population have such disproportionate power. The past forty years have been a series of missed opportunities, squandered resources, and manufactured crises. It's long past time the country grew the fuck up, and knuckled the fuck down.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Been a Weird Week
It's strange, reading (I gots no TeeVee) the right-wing reactions to the death of Bin Laden, and the attempts to delegitimize the President, and to give credit to the Bush Maladministration. I don't think characterizing the death of Bin Laden an "assassination" is a good construction- it gives the creep a legitimacy that he should never have. Also, the proscription on assassination (it's okay to kill a head of state with a MOAB, but not a piano wire), besides being routinely ignored, is really meant as a proscription on asymmetric warfare- assassination is much more feasible for smaller states than a successful military campaign. So, it wasn't an assassination, it was an execution (without trial, of course), or a termination... Bin Laden doesn't rate the term "assassination".
I'll put up a more substantial post tomorrow. On Wednesday, I'll be heading down to Virginia for a few days, so I'll try to put up a barn-burner before kicking off for a few days. I also have to consider replacing the antiquated laptop- she's tired, I'm running an old browser, and I'm having power supply "issues" (cord is somewhat whacked, so I have to hold the adapter to the "port" on back of the laptop). Gotta shop around...
I'll put up a more substantial post tomorrow. On Wednesday, I'll be heading down to Virginia for a few days, so I'll try to put up a barn-burner before kicking off for a few days. I also have to consider replacing the antiquated laptop- she's tired, I'm running an old browser, and I'm having power supply "issues" (cord is somewhat whacked, so I have to hold the adapter to the "port" on back of the laptop). Gotta shop around...
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Mom, an Appreciation
Today being Mothers' Day, I figured I'd write about mom. Mom, simply put, is the best... always has been. There are five of us, so we were never inundated with consumer goods, but the house was full of books, and there was always money for enrichment programs, classes, trips to cultural and historic sites. Mom raised us with a set of high expectations, but gave us a tremendous amount of freedom. People always assumed that she was a strict disciplinarian, but she never had to be- she laid down her rules, she explained why she demanded this sort of behavior, and we lived up to her high standards. Rule number one, of course, was that you had to perform well academically, and the other rules pretty much proceeded from there (regarding attendance, she told us, "The only reason you'll miss a day of school is due to a death in the family... yours."). She gave us plenty of opportunities for constructive recreation, so we really didn't have time to screw up or pick up bad habits.
Sometimes times were tough (mom had to pawn her accordion to buy medicine for one of us) but there was always enough food on the table so that friends could stop by... and they did. The door was always open, and company was a constant. One summer, my college roommate stayed with us so he could work in a Manhattan office rather than a Neenah foundry. Many times, I'd come home from work and find friends over (they had spare key privileges), putting a case of beer on ice and raiding the fridge. When my brother Sweetums took a round-the-world trip, he told people, "If you are visiting New York, call ahead, and stop by", and people did. No matter where you came from, or what you looked like, or what language you spoke at home, the door was open. As can be imagined, there are a lot of "adopted" children, from all parts of the globe.
The door is still always open. Old family friends still stop by in the course of their travels, she has co-workers who call her "ma", and she is a pillar of her neighborhood. Yeah, mom kicks ass. I'll be heading down to Virginia later this week to hang out with mom, and to party with the family of a classmate of my brother Vincenzo who is a member of the extended family. The extended family consists of thousands of people, by the way. Mom wouldn't have things any other way.
Sometimes times were tough (mom had to pawn her accordion to buy medicine for one of us) but there was always enough food on the table so that friends could stop by... and they did. The door was always open, and company was a constant. One summer, my college roommate stayed with us so he could work in a Manhattan office rather than a Neenah foundry. Many times, I'd come home from work and find friends over (they had spare key privileges), putting a case of beer on ice and raiding the fridge. When my brother Sweetums took a round-the-world trip, he told people, "If you are visiting New York, call ahead, and stop by", and people did. No matter where you came from, or what you looked like, or what language you spoke at home, the door was open. As can be imagined, there are a lot of "adopted" children, from all parts of the globe.
The door is still always open. Old family friends still stop by in the course of their travels, she has co-workers who call her "ma", and she is a pillar of her neighborhood. Yeah, mom kicks ass. I'll be heading down to Virginia later this week to hang out with mom, and to party with the family of a classmate of my brother Vincenzo who is a member of the extended family. The extended family consists of thousands of people, by the way. Mom wouldn't have things any other way.
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