Month: April 2018

Just thoughts…

Some Thoughts:

1. The other day I heard a story about the ability of men to completely empty their mind of thought–or so that is the excuse their wives use in order to pretend their husbands aren’t bored with their lives.
2. I am in this very happy phase of life where I am in love, wanting to be happy in all new ways, and actively working towards change in my life.
3. No Infinity War review here. Instead I want to focus on the ridiculousness that is Agents of Shield. I watched them pull villains straight out of Mortal Combat (Baraka) and never bat an eyelash at it or the nonsensical nature of their plotline. For the record, it doesn’t correspond with the rest of the MCU.
4. 20/20, after all these years, is still about sex and pretty girls dying.

Well, months of build up and it is finally here. The draft. Something that has been dramatically monetized to the detriment of the recruiting process in the NFL. It is almost like watching someone apply for a job… on TV… and then watching them get hired by the company they didn’t want. The Browns (factory of sadness) and the Jets (factory of shame) both stumbled into some terrible draft picks this season. The Browns missed on a wonderful opportunity to give them another key defensive stopper, opting for the fastest CB in the draft, prompting a C grade from the NFL network. I take the grade extremely lightly. In truth, I remain convinced that the network is the Fox News of football. They have one story. It starts and ends with the QB they think is the best. That QB is Sam Darnold. Now he is a Jet. Of course he’s being seen as the Jet. However, he is yet another USC bust to come play in the factory of shame.

Shame on them for not learning their lesson with Mark Sanchez.

The Giants got a solid RB that is almost universally considered the best athlete in the draft. They also got a A- because they didn’t pick Bradley Chubb, a DE who shows some ability to play 3-4, but never actually has.

Overall, I feel like this is going well so far. At least it is going as expected…

Some Thoughts:

1. Lately I have been feeling more and more that I am living in a simulation–some high level version of the sims in which I am a character whose choices can be fundamentally influenced by outside forces working far beyond the boundaries of physics.
2. Captain America’s old shield also defies physics. Let’s see how the new one works tomorrow–at least until he (or someone else) gets the old one back.
3. For my consideration: Lost in Space (reboot)

They call it the Factory of Sadness. No team in recent history has sucked as badly as the Browns consistently suck. Their last winning season (10-6) was in 2007. The last time they got even close (7-9) was in 2014. They’ve won 4 games since then. This is sucking on an epic level. This is sucking compounded by consistently horrible drafts. I am no mock draft guy. I don’t pretend to know what lurks in the hearts of these men, but I know this: They have the 1st and the 4th pick in the draft and absolutely nobody trusts the process.

Meanwhile a similar slate of hate is being heaped upon the Giants faithful. The moment press smelled blood, the war on Eli Manning was on. Now everyone is saying you must draft a QB and most people are saying that QB is USC’s golden boy. I say nope. Not ever. The track record of USC quarterbacks in the NFL is dismal. The program remains successful in a weak pac-12, but exposed to national competition, QB’s like Sam Darnold end up looking like this:

As a WR, I cringe at how exposed he left his receivers and how myopically he focused on a singular target throughout. He’s not good. He is not Giants material. He’d make for a classic Browns pick though.

 

 

I spent a significant amount of time today thinking about art. The term art is both relative and abstract. It is definable, but that definition encompasses a spectrum of activities and items. I find that art is extremely important, if for no greater reason than to stretch one’s imagination of what is possible and what is meaningful. Recently I heard Daveed Diggs talk about the relevance and necessity of the same Trap music he railed against in his youth. He learned to recognize the value of the voice if for little more than providing a voice and stretching our understanding of possibility in terms of cadence, rhyme variation, and what kinds of stories matter.

Other art forms have the same dialectic. We seek to place value in some things while subtracting it from others in a spectrum relative to our own desires and understanding. Often that is reflective of our own cultural, generational, socio-political, and socio-economic biases. Take for example the recent crowd of youtubers. My kids get very excited about what they do and have to say. This is art to them. It is trash to me. This shows that we see them on different parts of the spectrum and that we, possibly, have different understandings of that spectrum. Yet it is all an art form, regardless of whether I approve of what these ‘tubers are doing or not.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I want to write a story about someone developing an allergy to a person. Where being around them–where they work, live, etc. is toxic. Then I want them to be forced to be near that person for the entire story…

I’ve been filling my head with short stories, trying to piece together a larger understanding of where the science fiction world is and is heading. I’m trying to figure out my place in all of it–reading and listening instead of creating my own slices of magic. It has been this way for a while now. I read far more than I write, but I am reading a better quality of stuff I think. Garbage in = Garbage out. So, the more and better I consume, the better the quality of the fiction that rises from the bones of what I’ve read.

The downside to all of it is that I’ve noticed a lot of trends–especially in the gamer genre stuff. There is a great deal more of the ‘we are living in a simulation’ stuff that was heavily commercialized by the matrix (though born from french philosophy) as well as the game within a game philosophy that posits that within any game there can be layers of games going deeper and deeper. None of it is new thinking or suggestive of any great push forward towards the, ahem, future of science fiction. It feels more like a genre treading water and waiting for a lifeboat to lead them to a new shore.

I’m not the lifeboat. I don’t have any great sci fi or fantasy piece lurking in my psyche. I’m a sociologist and what I write is largely reflective of the society I live in and the science I see projected towards a possible future use or misuse. I like to think I get by with solid descriptions and good character development. I am not breaking new ground.

So, I’m left with this search to find those who are breaking new ground and try to get a sense of what that looks like, either to model work in that vein, try something derivative, or see that new as the direction not to go and through that find the only path left leading into darkness. In the dark is where you find the new and mysterious. I just don’t know that I belong there.

I have not cut my hair in months. I shave fairly regularly, but the gray is creeping across my face like morning fog. There are patches of baldness at the top of my head, which started as coin-sized depressions but merged to form a continent of scalp. Elsewhere the hair has thinned to the point where I can suspect where the next depression may form. Through it all, the tide of my hairline is slowly receding. I have bad teeth. Not yellow, not usually, but not white either. They are bone colored teeth in a bed brown gums that show pink in places and bleed when I brush. Below the neck the situation is not much better. I’m fat. Not bulbous. Not the kind of fat where you develop a ‘front butt’ or wheez when you walk. I’m post-athletic fat. I am the remains of a skinny guy who has seen far too many donuts and far too little exercise. My skin is desert-dry. I can carve white letters across any bare expanse of flesh, and I can see the age lines burrowing deeper into me. I am aging, and I no longer look good.

 

Perhaps this is all internalized admonition, but it is completely relevant thought, because my self-esteem is tied into my looks. I want to be able to present a front of confidence, and if I don’t feel good about myself than I don’t treat myself right and don’t carry myself with the grace and confidence that makes up a part of who I am.

 

I am also terribly lazy, so who knows what actually comes of this admonition and revelation? Perhaps I sink into the ugly and cast myself lower and further into darkness. Perhaps instead I fold the gym and other exercise into a daily routine that adds years to my life and even to my skin. Perhaps I learn more about being healthy and take better care of my face, my teeth and gums, my gut. It isn’t as if I have nothing or nobody to live for. The reality of the situation is that once I found myself here it became hard to even understand how to get out.

 

I do have a reason to live. I do want to get out. I do dread the pain and change that comes as a result. Still, it would be great to feel great about me again.

After a long and fruitful weekend, I have nothing left to say. It all drained out of me. I wish I could end the blog there, call it ten minutes and go to bed, but I have about 8 more to get through. I’m not much for recaps tonight. Here’s what I can offer: won some awards, learned some stuff. That’s about it.

I can say that I am going back to school knowing I have but a few weeks left to endure for the semester and precious little left to share with my students. What I do need to do is grade a bunch of work and provide them with some sense of where things are for them in that sense. This has been a weak (very weak) semester for me, and I need to get back to basics. For me basics mean innovating and really focusing on creating an environment where learning is a byproduct of them pursuing goals.

Like I said, I’m drained. I’m pecking out the remaining minutes, searching for something relevant or at least cogent to say. Don’t have a lot.

 

Lately I’ve born witness to a great many people speaking about Trump, without really speaking about Trump. It goes like this: They speak of a quality or behavior that is reprehensible and then speak to the negative consequences of the promotion of that quality. It never goes well for Trump supporters. I think I understand why.

Most recently I listened to a speaker who was discussing arrogance and confidence. The speaker, a social psychologist, talked about how confidence is positive and arrogance is poisonous and how we can see the effects of each in people in our society. As she explained her point of view I couldn’t help but to think about Trump (a natural reaction) and the people who support Trump. I thought about how they would react to the conversation. They’d know immediately who she was talking about and then something would happen–as it does when I have these talks myself. The supporters would be turned off by her words. This isn’t because they think she is wrong or they support arrogance, but because they support Trump. What tends to happen is that such arguments clog up the cognitive bandwith. Unconsciously, the people who’ve chosen to align themselves with Trump will start to see the speaker as an enemy–the other, if you will. It is hard for us to identify with the other or to accept that what the other is saying might make sense, because the ‘other’ makes us feel threatened and defensive. It is far more difficult to see reason when you see the enemy through the fog of war.

Where political entitities have been most successful is in drawing upon that them vs. us mentality and making it more than a passing then. It is now the way impressionable minds are cultured. To everything.

Some Thoughts:

1. In continuing to reflect on perceptions I’ve recognized that I give red heads a pass on looks. That is to say I have a much lower standard of beauty when it comes to redheads. I’ve noticed this again and again over the past week, and again just now watching someone on TV. Turns out the red hair is what makes them attractive whereas the rest isn’t as much so.

I started this blog with the loose intention of talking about how different it is to be a faculty amongst advisors who are generally not faculty. I found myself writing words of comparison in my head to being a black man. That isn’t a very fair or relevant comparison. It isn’t even a necessary topic, if I’m being honest. I tend to write about what I am dealing with. Right now I am sitting in an Advisor 101 meeting for PTK and wondering how to discretely cross the room and escape.

 

I cannot.

 

I should’ve known what this would be. I did know for sure when the host started off with, “If you do nothing else as an advisor, make sure you sign up new members.” In that moment it became the recruitment song. It became more about PTK-org getting numbers than providing any real advisement and or mentorship. We’ve been here for 15 minutes and it’s the same song. So, I tuned out.

 

Now I’m thinking about writing and all of the great things I want to write and do with this blog space. I’m thinking about my value as more than someone to sign up members to fill someone’s coffers. I am a teacher. I am a learner. I am someone who has a lot to give and wants to give all of it.

 

I am also a man who is sometimes lost in what he wants to receive; in what he wants to do with his time. I am a man who leaves this earth to build a new world in the block simplicity of Minecraft, because I know I can succeed in that world, and I know that failure is fairly real and easy to recover from.

 

I am a man who has passed the crossroad and committed to a different kind of life. I am a man who will be who he was meant to be… I am a man who is learning what that actually means. I am a man who is learning what things bring him joy and what things he thinks do, but don’t.

 

 

Bob Corker, who famously sparred with Trump, did an interview on CNBC this morning that reminded me about how the U.S. really works. Everything from what he said about his past interviews to his stance on why people continue to work with Trump rang true. The biggest message he sent out, in my opinion, was a reminder that Republicans are always going to support a President who passes their legislation–same as Democrats. He reminded me that everything ultimately comes down to that sense of Tribalism. It is very much about what side you are on, and how that side chooses to interpret reality.

So, afterwards I turned on GMA for a moment and then switched to Fox News to see what they had to say. It turns out that Corker is very much discussing the end result of the polarizing influence of the media. It shows in this brief comparative viewing. GMA, whose audience comes from both sides of the proverbial aisle approached two stories very differently than Fox approached the same stories. The first story, the one about the Southwest plane crash, was more about the engine and how often that type of engine is used for Fox. In fact, they spent less time on the overall story than GMA and selectively used parts of the same quotes from the pilot that GMA used. Instead they spent the story–led the story with the fear factor. Later when Fox spoke about James Comey, the differences were even more clear.

Fox focused on this quote from Comey, “All we are in this country are a collection of values,” he said. “And that’s what unites Republicans and Democrats.” The anchors actually laughed, snorted, and derisively shook their heads. Then they brought on a woman, Dana Loesch, who they referred to as a TV show host to give her opinion. What they didn’t explain is that Loesch is the firebrand spokeswoman for the NRA, a deeply political group that has put up a ton of money to support Trump and the Republican agenda that Comey (until recently a registered Republican) appears to be threatening with his words.

So, this is where we are. Who knows where we can go from here.