Month: January 2018

I started to get a little nervous when the president’s medical examiner started to publicly compare the man to a super human. At one point he joked the president could have had a 200 year lifespan with better eating habits. Then he went on to explain that Trump aced the MOCA mental test in thirty minutes. But here’s the kicker: You’re only allowed 10 for the test.  The following description is lifted from the test itself:

“The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) was designed as a rapid screening instrument for mild cognitive dysfunction. It assesses different cognitive domains: attention and concentration, executive functions, memory, language, visuoconstructional skills, conceptual thinking, calculations, and orientation. Time to administer the MoCA is approximately 10 minutes. The total possible score is 30 points; a score of 26 or above is considered normal”

Add to this the questions about obesity and heart disease, notably brought up and then confused by attacks on Sanjay Gupta, we have a legitimate case of misdirection on our hands. It isn’t the first. I’ve seen more articles about why we shouldn’t be talking about Trump’s shithole comment than articles reflecting on what the fact that our leader says such things actually means. All of it leads to one basic conclusion: We are actively seeking to minimize the crazy that this president not only is but is getting us into.

Nevermind that we are in the midsts of a government shutdown. Overlook the fact that when it happened in 2013 and the soldiers wound up working without pay, the Republicans who forced the issue could do nothing but blame the democrats for not conceding to their demands. Fast forward eight years and we are back to where we started. The republicans are blaming the democrats, the president is going to bed while the government burns (he thought shut down meant ‘go to your room’), and did I mention the sex scandal?

It might have been hard to catch that tidbit amidst all the abuse and misconduct allegations or because he referred to places where he thought the people were useless as shithole countries. It could even be over the debate of whether he said shithole or shithouse and if we should actually care about the semantic specifics of the ‘way to stupid to spawn’ level of remarks.

Whatever part of the tidal wave of bullshit cascading over the white house made us overlook the sex, we did. We still are. Based on reports and on interpretations of statements from lawyers, Donald Trump banged a pornstar in a hotel room while he was ‘happily’ married. Now this is back in 2006. It is a while ago, but it is further testament to the infidelity he openly denies and is chock full of behaviors he claims not to have. In truth, it serves as another large swell of evidence (porn pun intended) that he is a dirtbag and a liar.

And our president.

At some point we need to recognize that a position is only prestigious and respectable as the person who holds it. Trump winning the election doesn’t erase who the man is. Instead it slams him into a pampered echo chamber where even his craziest ideas might gain some traction. Good thing he doesn’t actually have any and is instead pulling thoughts from Fox News.

Wait… how is that good?

Politics is stupid.

Back in 2013 the Republicans used their political leverage in the senate and congress to shut down the government. They blamed it on the democrats, despite the fact that it was them who had the power. Tonight the government was shut down again and the Republicans are blaming the Democrats again. No matter what, one side is always blaming the other. Meanwhile our President is asleep.

No, seriously. He’s asleep. All the news outlets are talking about what could happen when the president wakes up. He’s out cold. The official language about the shutdown from the White House blames ‘Obstructionist Losers’ who they claim to be all the democrats.

Did I mention that he is asleep?

This is the same dude who talked about stamina. The dude who talked about being able to be ready for the 3 A.M. call isn’t up making deals and working through this shutdown. No, the guy is in fact the loser here. And the entire country is suffering from it.

In the intermingled world of personal expression and fame hunting the blog/vlog is king. My children have fallen prey to the meme-driven world of Youtubers trying to express themselves through daily posts. Two of the Talisleggers have formed their own channel. There is no talislegger channel, though the thought has crossed my mind. I let it die midstream, because my immediate thoughts went not to what I would say but how I would brand it. So that left me asking myself the question of why do I post?

The 10 minute rule is highly self reflective. It is catharsis and discipline and, well, an excuse to have to write. I only failed at this during one short period in the last 5 years. It forces me to be a constant writer, if only for 10 minutes at a time. This is my purpose. Now for a channel the purpose would be shameless self promotion–an ego-driven desire to be noticed and eventually compensated. This appears to be the purpose for most of these blogs. Even my boys are in it to get noticed, get likes and follows, and eventually sell merchandise for profit. This feels very much like the misguided push of a capitalist culture.

I think there is a value to finding profit in what you love. I also think that once you are driven or beholden to profit, it changes your relationship with what you are doing. I don’t want to do the rule for profit. There’s a place and space for recognition and this really isn’t it. Follow, if you like, but I don’t intend to shape this thing to grow followers.

There’s a phenomenon in soccer where when a team is up they shift the game to a form of keep away. The goal is not to score but to prevent the other team from having any opportunity to score. In other words, they aren’t striving to increase any form of lead, dominance, or assertion. They’re settling in. They are just hanging on to the lead. Yesterday I was at a wrestling meet watching my kids struggle through their matches. The eldest was winning for a bit and then wound up just trying to hang on and not get beat. My other wrestler took an early and commanding lead and just sort of settled in and tried to hold on to the kid until time ran out. Moments later I witnessed an exchange between two dads who were watching the event. One asked the other how he was doing and the other replied, “you know, just hanging in there.” His friend agreed that this is what he was doing as well. All of this settled in on me like acid, burning through the thick coat of complacency that is suburban life. This morning I finally recognized I do not like my life.

Not any of it.

For a while I’ve been comparing my life to the Todash darkness of Stephen King lore. Everything feels just slightly askew as if I could settle into this form of living and be perfectly complacent, but everything would be just perfectly wrong. I woke up thinking that this isn’t an entirely new feeling. In truth everything has always been wrong, and I’ve settled into this wrongness the way a frog supposedly settles into a heating kettle, never knowing it is being murdered until it is already dead. Well, I’m not dead yet, but I recognize more and more who the murderer is.

Me. Society. The expectations of suburban life. Dramaturgy. Call it a group killing–The Following writ large and true. So, now what? I can’t answer that yet, but my eyes are open. I’m done with the sleepy-eyed beckoning of ‘just hanging in there’ for that is no way to live a life. That, at least, is a strong first step.

Picture this: Donald Trump is running the country. As a result the people around him begin to recognize how to coddle the man and fall into the fallacy of Yes, Yes, Yes! As a result they begin to punish and seek vengeance against those who threaten the presidential narrative. Now I’m sitting in my living room, watching Drunk History, and thinking that this is legitimately the way we will tell the story of the next 3-8 years. Except we won’t be drunk.

I wish we were drunk now. All of us. Maybe it would make a sort of drunk sense that the world is the way it is at the present time. Unfortunately, I’m stone cold sober and so are so many of us. We hear the president is in perfect mental health and think, “Shit, he’s doing this sane??”

I’m not going to get drunk–at least not in the dip my head in the sand or go along with this nonsense sense. I’m going to ‘stay woke’ as the kids say and continue to educate students in the fine art of separating fiction from reality. I’m not just talking about fake news. I’m talking about fake narratives and cultivating the ability to make sense of connections, patterns, relationships, and the like. That is what the modern person needs. I can help them with that.

I’m listening to Tony Robbins the way a person downs an energy drink to make it through that last hour of League of Legends late night play. I need the boost. I’ve been down on me for a while and that is not healthy. Of course the thing about being down is that you reinforce that feeling with that feeling. It quickly develops into quicksand and you find yourself flailing in your own despair and unworthiness. At this moment in my life I don’t have the time to stop it on my own. I can’t pull out a domino ahead of the tumbling line and insure this goes no further. I can’t plow my own psychological fire line. So, I called for backup.

First things first: It is always okay to ask for help. being strong means being able to recognize when you need help. I’ve had a hard road to learning that. This isn’t the Thich Nhat Hanh teaching. This isn’t about seeing within myself. No, that is a different kind of leaning. This is about needing straight up fire. Now that I have that recognition and that strength, I find that I turn to motivational speakers and researchers when I’m in need of such fire. I go to Daniel Pink, to Tony Robbins, even to Kevin Hart. This time I’m looking at Gary John Bishop. I’ll publish his tenets below. That’s really all I have time left to do…

 

Right now there are three Special Forces styled shows on TV. Two are purely military based and the third is SWAT. I’ve yet to watch SWAT but the other two are drastically different. One is focused on the lead up to and the action going through a military operation. The other focuses on the interplay of politically publicized operations, putting them in the fictional world and engaging in a sort of dialogue. Seal Team is more political. It comes from CBS, the channel that brought us Madam Secretary. It lives in the same vein if not the same universe. While it is action driven it is heavily primed on the front end with military language, drills, and stories of Navy Wives. The other show, The Brave, is about the pride of the military and the interpersonal relationships between soldiers and their handlers. For this reason you know all the members of the team and have been ‘read in’ on their backstories. Meanwhile on Seal Team I only know four of the eight members of the team–not including the support staff.

This is not conclusory. This is merely observation on a pair of shows I find interesting in the sense that they are both on air now and placed in prime spots at a time where those spots are about super heroes. I suppose we are making these guys into new versions of superheroes. Or just very old ones revisited.

There are days–entire weeks even-when I think, “bring on the zombies!” If I listen hard enough I can hear humanity falling apart. Maybe I’m wrong. We have experienced a dozen worst decades than this. Still, on the front end of a decade of darkness there is little to point to that is light and hopeful. We don’t have a leadership structure that points towards hope–anywhere.

This is what I’ve noticed over the past few years. At the tail end of the Obama presidency I noticed a shift in leadership both in the political and private sectors. We’ve shifted back to pessimism, down for self ideology, and a heightened desire to take what you can grab as quickly as you can. This is not going away and it will likely get worse, because leadership at all levels and sectors is not at all altruistic.

There is an importance in altruistic leadership. We need people who generally want to make things better and not just want to make things better for themselves or are simply in it for the prestige or money or to check out the role. Still, those are the folks in charge everywhere and after a while it is going to really show.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My death clock date is November 16, 2026. 9 years. That sucks. Of course, a different measure suggests I have longer. I’m going to go with: I need to get my health straight.

“McKayla Maroney Is Completely Unrecognizable Today” This is just one of a dozen headlines stapled to the bottom of every article I read on news sites. I found this particular one on nfl.com and accidentally clicked on it while trying to copy the link to this blog. The page led me pretty much where I expected. It wasn’t the popular aggregator zerg.net, which is responsible for a plethora of links regarding speculation around franchise films and video games. This is kiwiReport, new to me, and all about showing pics of young girls who grew up hot. I hate saying it, but I am thankful every day I was born a man. The level of scrutiny and sexualization placed on women–especially in our country–is so beyond sane that it feels impossible for women to keep up. I remember the hoopla when the Olsen twins, first featured as babies on Full House, turned 18. Suddenly every male in America was supposed to swell at their presence. It’s gotten worse over the years. Recently a 19 yr old girl auctioned off her virginity to the tune of 3.9 million dollars. In business terms, that only happens if the product meets a very high or very specific market set. 

What we’ve done to the idea of sex is completely ridiculous. We have turned American women into an icon of sexuality in a way that is far less about being desirable than it is about being available and satisfying. We built a hype machine that has women trapped into a cycle of objectivity with no possible means of separation.

I am not a fan.