Category: Musings

It’s Still a Wonderful Life

It’s interesting to watch It’s a Wonderful Life through the lens of the current economic crisis. Watching the run on the Bailey Building and Loan, and listening to George explain how bank loans work, I’m struck by how far finance as an industry has come, with so many labyrinthine variations on illiquid funds, debt, stocks, speculation, etc. A modern version might go something like this:

“You act like I’ve got the money back in the safe. But it’s in Joe’s house, and he’s mortgaged to the hilt because although he only makes $80,000 a year he wants people to think he makes $100,000, and he wants the jet ski and the Hummer and so you loaned him the money because you were in the same frat and why not? They’re just numbers, ink on a page. Everybody fudges the numbers, even Joe!”

And the scene where Potter tries to buy George out. It’s become the American Dream.

You wouldn’t mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple of business trips to New York a year, maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn’t mind that, would you, George?

I think most of Wall Street sold out to Potter at birth. It’s pretty much the goal of most Americans. But it shouldn’t be; and that’s actually one of the lessons of the movie that people miss.

The movie is trying to tell us that the stuff we think of as “important” – building big things, living the good life, fame, fortune – is so far, far less important than helping people and holding it down in your own corner of the world, wherever that may be.

One of the things Camille Paglia[1] talks a lot about is elevating the trades. We’ve become so materialistic that we assume that anyone who makes less than $30,000 or who doesn’t work in an office is automatically a second class citizen. We’ve got to find some way to be happy with who we are and what we do. Because it seems like no one is.

1.) Who by the way, clearly has a big crush on Sarah Palin, so I take her less seriously than I used to.

Strange Linguistic Coincidences

These things catch in my brain and require comment:

Evan Longoria is the 2008 American League Rookie of the Year.
Eva Longoria is a star of ABC’s Desperate Housewives.

Keller Williams is both a real estate company based in Austin, Texas, and a singer-songwriter from Virginia.

Tucker Max is a fratboy humor author from Georgia and “Tucker Max” is also the shorthand for Tucker Maximum Security Correctional Facility in Arkansas.

None of these statistically unlikely matching sets are in any way related.

Death of a Man, Birth of a Legend

I’ve often wondered why artists are so often under-appreciated during their lifetimes and only after death do they become truly legendary. For example, I’m betting there has been and will continue to be an appreciable spike in the sales of Isaac Hayes’s music this week.

I think the answer is that once an artist dies, then their story is finally written. The book is closed. Only after death can sense be made of their lives and a solid narrative arc constructed without fear of any unexpected alteration. The artist becomes a known and agreed-upon quantity, and their piece of the cultural puzzle is affixed to its proper place, forever.

The Chain of Academia

I know XKCD.com has done well when my brain returns to it weeks later as I drift off to sleep. Here is the gist of a recent ponderable:

Sociology is just applied Psychology
Psychology is just applied Biology
Biology is just applied Chemistry
Chemistry is just applied Physics
Physics is just applied Mathematics

It left me wondering where the Arts fit in, if at all. Are literature, art, or even philosophy merely applied sociology? Perhaps they aren’t involved at all since they’re not SCIENCE.

Love on Paper

One of my biggest beefs with the universe is that there is no reliable way to get to know someone well upon first meeting them. Initially all we have is the physical presentation, and that seems to suffice for most people[1]. It’s always seemed unfair to me, though, that conventional methods for meeting new people (i.e. bars or other social gatherings) take so much time and are so often unrewarding. My problem I suppose is that I’m looking for rare people[2], and they are, by definition, hard to find.

I’ve noticed that when I’m attracted to someone that there are specific things I can point to about that person that appeal to me. Generally, the more I’m attracted to someone, the longer the list of things I love about them. In fact, my ex-girlfriend Natalie once gave me a list of over 100 things that she liked about me. I gave her one as well. And I could do something similar for all the women on whom I’ve had crushes.

As I look at other people’s relationships, I tend to think that they’re just running on random emotional/psychological attraction: tiny causes and effects too subtle or unconscious to be verbalized or quantified. Most people have a physical and emotional template that they’re attracted to for whatever Freudian/evolutionary/behavioral reasons. For myself, I know that in addition to that stuff, I’m also attracted to talents and passions. When I see an attractive woman, I can appreciate the physical beauty, but a part of me stops and says, “you don’t know this person, how could you love her at first sight? Chances are far greater that she’s boring.”

I am reminded of one of the final episodes of Freaks & Geeks where Sam finally gets to date the girl he’s been idealizing all year, and it turns out she’s pretty and sweet but dull. I wonder how many of my junior high and high school crushes would fall into this category. Given the benefit of time, and knowing who those particular women became, I’m sure the answer is: “the vast majority.” Had someone pulled me aside and asked me, “why are you attracted to this girl?” I would have had no demonstrable answer other than “she’s pretty.”

Still, the instinct remains. I could fall in love every day with a pretty girl on the street, but what’s the use in acting on the attraction if the odds are so heavily not in my favor that she’ll be intelligent, insightful, creative, etc.? How does anybody fall in love and have it all balance out?[3] I sense that it’s probably easier for uninteresting people to fall in love because uninteresting people are largely interchangeable. All they have to do is achieve whatever level of socio-economic success and wear whatever clothes meet the societal standard of the day. Being charming and clever are helpful, but those alone won’t help you in the dimly sparkling social jungle that is the New York bar/club scene where love, sex and romance are just another sport at which to compete[4].

So what do oddly shaped, non-interchangeable people do? How do they find each other? Is it even possible?

1.) The fashion industry as a whole is predicated on this predicament.
2.) The Internet has greatly expedited this process, thankfully. Even at a local level (thanks, MySpace).
3.) Based on a discussion I had with two divorcees recently, the answer is, “they rarely ever do.”
4.) I’m trying to think of a satirical swipe to make at Sex and the City here but frankly it’s not worth the effort.

The Unintended Consequences of the Dollar Menu

Last week I went into the McDonald’s Express on 7th Avenue, not because I had any particular craving, just because I’ve come to recognize the McDonald’s (and the even more ubiquitous Starbucks) logo as the international symbol for “public restroom.” At the Express, the menu’s focus is the dollar menu. Now, in a large city, this draws a very specific demographic from the lower end of the economic spectrum. The place was populated almost entirely by sad old folks who are unwilling or unable to shop and/or cook for themselves, and by the apparently homeless and/or just plain crazy. I’m not saying it was like visiting the set of The Fisher King, but it was not your average fast food crowd.

Because I’ve learned my lesson not to use a business’s bathroom without buying something[1], I bought a $1 burger and Coke and sat down to eat (the line for the bathroom had two older ladies in front of me). An older gent sat down next to me and greeted the lady to his right with familiarity; apparently this McDonald’s is the neighborhood cafeteria, or more like the local bar for people whose drinking days are behind them.

Having seen the film version of Fast Food Nation, I’m always aware that there is a reason why the meat costs $1. I don’t eat at McDonald’s often enough for it to matter to my health[2], but it scared me to imagine that these poor souls do. And as fewer young people seem to know how to cook these days, the number of individuals on this particularly sad trajectory will only increase[3].

I’d like to blame McDonald’s or capitalism or whatever Big Evil people like to shoot at, but really it comes down to the individual’s choice of convenience. Cooking a meal requires grocery shopping, pots and pans to wash, and the time and labor of cooking. The only way out of this mess is to get people to enjoy cooking a meal or at least view it as something that must be done, like brushing your teeth. My crackpot scheme would be to change public schooling such that Home Economics is a senior-level, yearlong course; because everything I learned in Home Ec, I forgot by the time I went to college. Nutrition education needs to be expanded in there as well; kids need to know that McDonald’s should be the gustatory equivalent of candy – something that is not to be consumed in large daily quantities. But then there are a lot of things I’d like to change about public schools…

And so it goes.

1.) In ’06 I was locked in to a restaurant over near 48th street after I was seen using the restroom without buying something.
2.) I get the jones for a quarter pounder with cheese about once every three months, milkshakes one month.
3.) I am reminded of a defendant in my dad’s court whose justification for writing hot checks to Burger King was “I had to eat, your honor.” My father then informed the accused of the wonders of the grocery store, particularly the produce aisle.

Sharing a Dream

I was watching the bonus features on Tideland, and Terry Gilliam hit me with this:

The dream that used to stick with me was my ability to fly. But it was never like in Brazil, flying through the clouds. It was only about 3 or 4 feet above the ground. I zipped along at about that height, but i wasn’t touching the ground. And years ago after having dreamt this for so many years I actually had a sense memory of the whole thing. My whole body felt that I had flown.

That is my most frequently occurring dream, and it is so vivid that, when I wake, I remember the experience so well that I feel as though I’ve actually done it. I was really just levitating a few feet above the ground, though. Nothing grandiose. No flying high above the trees. Anybody else have this?

Radio Meditation and My Absorbent Mind

I’ve recently come to realize that my brain absorbs a great many things. This is distinct from learning things, or retaining facts. My brain takes on the characteristics of various sets of stimuli. I’ve always been a sympathetic person, taking on something of others’ experiences, putting myself in others’ shoes. Lately I’ve come to wonder if that tendency is related to my ability to mimic vocal accents after just a few minutes of exposure. Or the fact that, after reading an engaging book, I start to narrate my own thoughts and become obsessed with describing everything around me in the voice of the book’s narrator. This is why I have to limit my exposure to Hunter S. Thompson.

My absorbent mind also tries to comprehend everything when I travel. Traveling means all-new stimuli at all times, and the effect is alternately thrilling and anxiety-inducing. I can turn myself into a nervous wreck trying to comprehend the depth and breadth of New York City, for example. So many people, so many stories, so many understood details and assumptions to absorb.

I’ve been listening to NY news radio station 1010 WINS online in an effort to acclimate myself to the region. It’s particularly helpful and comforting to listen to because of my familiarity with news radio (I spent my first year in Little Rock working as call screener for Pat Lynch’s talk radio show on KARN), and the fact that WINS shares its primary voiceover talent, Jim Cutler, with Little Rock’s KARN (who’s also the voice of our local Fox TV affiliate). Even the AccuWeather meteorologists are occasionally people I’ve worked with at KARN[1]. So score one for the homogeneity of radio.

A pleasant characteristic of the WINS broadcast is its constant bed of fake teletype machines in the background. I like to lay down and listen to it meditatively; the unfamiliarity of another city’s news lulls me into a uniquely dream-like state. I’m taken back to listening to WINS last February at Arika’s place in Brooklyn. I feel vaguely refreshed when I’m done.

1.) Via ISDN line. Yes, America’s local radio weather people are all located at AccuWeather in Pennsylvania.

One Evolutionary Advantage of a Rudimentary Nervous System

Animals like squirrels and small birds often move in short, rapid twitches. I’ve read that this is because their nervous systems are fairly simple, and don’t allow for much fluidity of motion. The other day I began to wonder if this might be a survival advantage for prey animals. Many predators react to movements rather than color or shape recognition, and so the less time a prey spends moving, the better for them.

Also, if you’ve ever wondered why squirrels are so indecisive when they’re in the middle of a road in front of a fast-approaching car, it’s because their first instinct at the sign of trouble is to freeze up and remain motionless. I’d also wager that a car’s fluidity of motion confuses them – they’re perhaps more accustomed to a predator bounding up and down as it runs toward them. Also, they’re most often oriented perpendicular to the car, so they only see the car with one eye, without depth perception. All they see is an object increasing in size somehow. I wonder if squirrels have depth perception at all, actually.

And in other zoological news, a great lesson I learned from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is that moths and other insects are attracted to lamps and flames because their internal navigation systems are going haywire. Many flying insects use distant light sources like the moon as fixed reference points in their flight. But artificial light sources like street lamps make that impossible. We can keep the moon on our left and travel in a reasonably straight line, but a moth can’t keep a street lamp on its left; it will end up circling it forever. Or at least until daylight when the lamp turns off. Or until it plunges into the bulb and dies.

Last night a massive cicada was buzzing my porch, and I made the mistake of turning off the porch light with the door open. He zoomed into my living room and headed for my lamp, briefly stunning himself while I turned the lamp off and turned the porch light back on. He recovered and zoomed back outside. The poor bastard.

Argument Tactics

I’m having a hard time putting into words a very common scenario in debates. So here’s an example:

Issue: Gay Marriage
Side 1: The sanctity of marriage must be protected. Gays must not be allowed to marry.
Side 2: Marriage is already falling apart as an institution. Might as well let gays marry.

Granted that’s not the entirety of the argument (the main thing is the relative morality of gayness), but I hear it a lot. The “might as well” defense. Here’s another example:

Issue: Further development along polluted river
Position 1: The river must be protected. No new development.
Position 2: There are already a lot of worse developments along the river. Might as well build another.

Is “defeatist” the proper term for Position 2? I guess the slope can get slippery where relative measurements enter into it – say if the river is 90% polluted and the new development will add 1% more pollution to it. But as a general principle, isn’t the “it’s already bad, so let it get worse” argument a bad way to go? Am I wrong? I guess it depends on how much of a stake you have in the issue. Personally, I find the sanctity of marriage to be largely irrelevant in contrast to river pollution, but that’s just me.