800. Waiver Wednesday

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Lucky number 800 falls on a Wednesday and just in time to drive me back into a sports conversation. This 1o minute talk isn’t so much about the playing of sports as it is about the paying of sports. The off season is about contract negotiations and maneuvering around those fairness rules designed to keep all the best players from loading up on one team.

We know from Ray Allen’s defection to the Heat that the rules are broken. In fact, they’ve been broken in spirit for a long time. The way the rules are broken are not the way it seems on the surface. The way the rules are broken is that they unduly penalize teams for bad signings. The Knicks signed a slew of players who they thought were good and would work together. Fast forward to 2012 and we are looking at a team that needs to manipulate the system through sign and trade in order to get enough mid-level players to form a deep veteran bench. They are so hopelessly over the salary cap that signing a guy like Jeremy Lin, a decent but flash in the pan player, is going to cost them a huge penalty in the long run. Worst of all, cutting players doesn’t solve the problem. The only way to unload mistakes is to trade them to a team, leveraging away your future, in most cases, to do so.

The Knicks have a deep front court but cannot afford a backcourt or any players of the caliber needed to slow down the Heat, or perhaps even the Nets at this point. My personal belief is that Carmelo is the problem. While a gifted scorer, he is simply a black hole on the offensive end of the court. Once he gets the ball, it is not going to be in anyone else’s hand, effectively making him the end-user of the offensive play. Like a geek with a laptop, he will only pass it back to an experienced offensive technician in the event a problem arises he can’t handle himself. We know how rarely he believes that happens. There is a theory that he needs the ball to stay motivated, to find his shot, etc. unfortunately, he is teemed with spot op shooters and drivers that need a dynamic passing point guard to coexist. He cannot coexist with said point, and this has created offensive struggles, the only reason we didn’t see that in the playoffs is because the point guard in question was not there.

The Knicks cannot move ‘melo, even if they wanted to. Nobody wants that monstrous contract. S they need to commit to building around him, which they can hardly do given cap restraints. So, as a result of poor planning over the years, they won’t be good for many more years unless the players they have become the players NY needs them to be and in a hurry.

799. On human interaction and core need

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Some time ago Maslow penned his hierarchy of needs. This was meant to classify, and to a certain extent quantify, the needs that every human has. I believe he was successful in establishing a base to which we can all ascribe individual needs. I do think it bears mentioning that we layer interactions in a way that obscures and even controverts these needs. I’m talking about the way we interact on a daily basis in social circles. All of it points back to Maslow, but it is so layered by the root differences in how we interpret information and how we send information that it has become a science (psychology) to peel back those layers in order to reach back to the root of what an individual is trying to achieve through action.

Once upon a time I had a colleague that was always angry. She wasn’t ‘in your face’ angry, but she wore this incredible burden of, ‘you don’t have it as bad as I do, so you can never understand my reality.’ This was probably true for her. The perception of ease and entitlement she wore was built from her difficulties and lack of entitlement, so understanding her point of view in relationship to my own was darn near impossible. That relationship was further hindered by my ‘shit happens, so go get a shovel’ approach to life. However, I really wanted to know what lived at the core of that feeling. Where is Maslow was this coming from? I believe now that it came from that love-belonging stage, or one step further at the level of esteem, where in a sense her esteem may be tied to external attitude and reflective of those around her. I.e. “how can you say these things and act this way while I am going through what I am going through. You need to be knocked down a peg or two.”

I can certainly relate to that feeling. I understand feeling like you or your situation is not recognized or even under appreciated, heck, at the core of my being is a man who is not recognized as valuable–in the way he wants to be recognized as valuable–by his family and peers. I will probably right a book about that one day, about how that feeling at first drove my writing and then murdered it, but that is a topic for another day. The feeling behind that topic is that same core motivation I believe made that colleague, and many other people behave in a bitchy way. It made them unlivable to a certain type of person who they felt was a challenge to their sense of things and order in the world.

This turned into a bit of a ramble, but the moral of the story is that at the core of all interaction is personal need and the quicker you can recognize the core human need that someone is trying to fulfill in their interaction with you, the faster you will find your way to better relationships and better communications with those around you.

Some Thoughts:
1. 3 blanket night last night. We don’t have heat in the basement level of this dorm where I am staying. Despite the suddenly cold night, I really have enjoyed being out here amongst the trees.
2. I think one of the core questions one should ask of any current and or perspective employee is: in a perfect world, what does your job and your workplace look like. Stay on them until they give a real answer. Don’t accept the ‘my job is lying on a beach in Miami crap’ because that is not true. Explain that it must exist in parameters of state and, to a lesser extent, function.
3. Writing hard right now. Loving it like a fat kid loves cake.

798. Human Noise

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One of the oldest memes I know follows the idea that writers work alone. We hole up in black caves or forest hideaways joined by our thoughts and a bottle of Jim Beam, perhaps even absinthe, if we can find it. This may be true for some, but the majority of writers I know deplore these conditions. In fact, I am most prolific when writing in a crowded space, when human noise washes over me, separating me from any possible distraction.

Human noise is conversation, it is the slamming of doors, the skidding of feet on carpet, the heavy breaths of a walker who has gone too far too fast. It is arguments and washing machines and ringing phones. Human noise is a refrigerator hard at work while light jazz eeks out from recessed speakers. It lives in common rooms, in Starbucks cafe’s, in the subtle glances of waitresses at the Village Inn curious to why you hold their table for hours.

Walden claimed that he went off into the woods for months to pen his work, but the truth is he craved human noise. He would trudge back into the city and seek out human contact before returning to his isolation and his words. I have tried to write in the way we are told to imagine Walden wrote and I too opted for an escape. I found my way to diners and Walmart McDonald’s, Fry’s Marketplace, and anywhere that promised a chair and a half decent cup of coffee. That human noise drags the words out of me and leaves me feeling fulfilled and refreshed in the way that only walking the streets of New York comes close to duplicating. Even there I would stop at a corner, at a bench or a bus stop and pen a few words before moving on. I would look up at the sky, catching hold of a thought and follow it to its eventual conclusion. There is a happiness in the bustle of life that silence cannot bring, and I am grateful for it.

Some Thoughts:
1. Being at Evergreen State College invokes feelings of summer camp in New York. Everything is tucked away and surrounded by trees. We are literally a forest that sprouted buildings and fields. I am having a good time with good people, and looking forward to the next few days.
2. That being said, times like this always remind me how different and out of place I feel around academics, that sense of not belonging also triggers memories of youth when I was one of three or four black kids in my school. This modern difference is not of race but of reason. I feel like the only sci-fi geek in the group. I feel unique in other ways too, but I find that uniqueness always feels like a separator as opposed to something that makes me one of them, and that leaves me feeling very much alone.

797. On a Jet Plane

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Before the criminal horde rises up and storms my house, I have left people in place to defend it–and watch the kids. That being said, I am presently soaring through the skies in the belly of a Southwest Airlines 727 filled with 120+ souls all directed at Seattle. The vacation I wrote about yesterday is taking place in Olympia, Washington, a small town an hour or so outside of the Seattle sprawl and home to The Evergreen State College. The moments leading up to the trip reminded me how haggard I have become as a parent with no real separation from my kids in a year, and highlighted a peculiar phenomenon I only really see in airports: The binary division of humanity.

There are two types of people in airports. There’s the extremely cute and well dressed set who, even if lowered to the comfortable flight wear of jumpsuits, still manage to look bright, alive, and energetic. Then there is the other crowd, the gray swath of humanity trudging through the airport proper as though, regardless of destination, the act of flight is a toll as great as that of Atlas forced to shoulder the world. These people not only dress in the dark and worn colors of the defeated, but they look beaten, and tired, and old. Sadly, I joined that rank years ago, so I am going to focus on the other crowd.

What makes them look so vibrant? At first I honestly thought it might be a socio-economic class thing. For the most part these folks are nicely dressed, leading to my presumption. However, I grew up in NYC where class mixing is a prevalent as breathing and this clear distinction never appears to me outside of airports. Suspicion aroused, I thought about this distinction longer and came to a conclusion, the separation is psychological. It isn’t even coming from the people who seem happier. It is coming from the people who don’t.

Often times people tell me when I walk into a classroom I seem happy and unburdened. I might not always feel that way, but that environment does as much to raise my spirits as it does to crush the spirits of those who notice my apparent carefree glee. That separation of attitude inspired by space is the very thing I must be observing in airports. For some folks the ‘port is a happy spot. For others it is the onset of a long and uncomfortable flight. I’m 6’3, so you can guess what camp I fall into.

So there: mystery solved.

Some Thoughts:
1. One thing that the show Newsroom talks about is the idea that nobody reports straight news anymore. Instead the message is bent to reflect a position or spark an argument. News people large becoming creative writers. They spend more time contextualizing than reporting. I noticed a headline re: the jobs report that exclaimed, Weak Jobs Report to become a problem for Obama’s Message? What made this all the more difficult to digest is that this was the first and only article the paper did explaining the Jobs Report. I would have preferred an article that read, “Jobs Report Flat” and went on to explain what that actually means as opposed to putting it into a political context and then speculating on how it could affect the November elections. Just tell me the dang facts.
2. I have about 6 usable shirts. It is time to go shopping and get some big boy clothes.
3. I will be starting a gym membership as soon as the vacation is over. The goal is to shed 20 lbs. Then I will go shopping again and get more shirts and even a pair of pants or two.

796. Vacation

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I’m not even sure what that term means anymore. For me it means an escape from the daily routine and an opportunity to engage in real thoughtful dialogue and spend hours writing one of my projects. Once upon a time I thought vacation was about beaches and semi-nude women. There’s something to be said for that, but I’m more interested in having a chance to own my writing; to really explore the worlds that exist in my mind and seek a permanent home on the page.

Every year my office provides $3000-3500 in travel and registration monies to help us become better at our job. It reminds me of something Daniel Pink talked about in Drive when explaining the 20% solution. I’m paraphrasing here, but the idea was that people who get up to 20% of work time to pursue their own projects tend to be better workers, especially in ROWE (results only work environments). Likewise, the opportunity to travel and to grow my understanding of teaching and learning serves as a catalyst for better classes as well as making me a more productive member of the job force. That second part is a result of being able to step away from routine, because I find that routine is deeply destructive to the creative mind. The more I drowned in the seas of routine, the further I drifted from the shores of creativity.

I haven’t had a vacation in 11 months. There were many opportunities, but I couldn’t take advantage of any. I’ll be using that full allotment in the coming year and bringing a fresh burst of knowledge and creativity to my campus.

That all starts tomorrow.

795. A short and meaningful review

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Once upon a time I heard a quote that went something like this: It is better to be presumed a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I’m paraphrasing for certain, but the idea remains. I desperately wish that idea had been transmitted to the makers of Mass Effect 3. By caving to criticism and expanding the ending, the makers of ME3 removed all doubt that they are indeed human and capable of failure on a, well, massive scale.

The original ending to ME3 sucked.
It was horrible in many ways, but the worst aspect was the failure to determine your own path. Many have pointed out that none of the endings of the 3 games permitted you to chose your own path, but those endings, while representing a narrowing of choices, did so in a way that left you feeling that the choices you made up to that point impacted the ending moreso than impacting the cut scenes you saw. ME2 provided an opportunity to save a Reaper base or destroy it, and the battles leading up to that climax spiraled off in a dozen different directions, each of your choices leading to the life or death of a close companion. I played that ending six different ways, finally reaching one I was comfortable with and carrying it forward into ME3. Imagine my surprise to learn my choices in the ME3 ending we’re meaningless.

The choices in the series finale were limited at best.
You got to chose who came with you, but unlike in 2, this has no bearing on the life and death of anyone. In fact, no matter what I chose to do throughout the game, it ends in one of three ways. These choices were predetermined and unrelated to player action–the antithesis of the games message and sometimes tag line.

    Spoilers ahead!

The lack of choice could be forgiven, if the Internet meme could be believed.
Many of us felt that the entire ending was a hoax. We realized early on that ME3 felt like a form of indoctrination. Many Internet authors blogged on the subject, and events in the game seemed to suggest that this weak ending might actually be the greatest ending since Metroid. The belief goes like this: Shepard is being indoctrinated; bent to the will of the machine army. Everything you see on screen suggests this. If your go through past games to read and listen what is said about indoctrination, the entire ending sequence and the dreams that lead up to it reek of indoctrination. They are identical to the existing evidence. We few proud Internet believers felt we had defeated indoctrination by resisting the will of the machine at the end, this boy AI who tries to convince us to synthesize with the machines. I held my head high and marched proudly into the forums claiming those who thought the ending sucked actually sucked themselves for not ‘getting it’.

Then Bioware promised an upgrade.
That upgrade was crap. What they did instead of proving the meme was to refute it, hammering home the point that this was not indoctrination but a crappy ending that presented limited choices and few real ways to ‘win’. They added extra cutscenes to close loopholes and loose ends. They improved upon the epilogue to show us what happened to the Mass Effect Gates. They even added fourth choice–the choice to walk away and let the machines win.

Guess what, everybody loses now. Now we know the original ending was actually poorly constructed. All they did was patch it up, and by patching it removed the meme, removed the idea that there could be something more, something worthwhile, to this. Now we are left with a crappy and unexplained ending about a game that made terrible sense up until the end.
now.

794. Post July 4th Day

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I tried to work this morning. It was after I drove to the airport to grab my mom-in-law. I tried but I slept, and my kids, who didn’t sleep, played until fatigue drew them into mortal combat. I encountered the same message throughout the day. Not one person who enjoyed a late Wednesday enjoyed a healthy Thursday.

I number myself among the sleepy and the wounded. Despite an incredible level of calm in dealing with the kids, I passed out at least two times (not including right before this post), missed coffee and failed at assembling a ceiling fan. The last part could be the fault of the manufacturer. What I found in the box is not what I see on the box. So, I put that project off and went to a basketball practice where the players were out of sorts and we coaches were dead tired.

It reflects in tonight’s blog.

793. On the merits of working with your hands

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I used to leave my kids with a friend and fellow coach. His wife was my middle boy’s preschool teacher. Every weekday morning I dropped off the younger two with Coach and went about my day. At the end of the school year coach announced that he was no longer going to be doing daycare. He needed to get back to what he loves, and that is building things.

I respect that. In many ways I envy those who work hard labor, keeping their bodies strong and fit. I envy their skill at wiring and ability to look back on their hard work and see a building where once only a pile of timber stood. I’ve always been more of a cerebral guy, my building acumen ending at a opine of Legos and never stretching into hammer and nail. Lately I have begun to change that, and it feels incredible.

Today I put the finishing touches on a ‘Rock wall-styled’ ladder for the loft I built earlier in the week. I used all of my tools, cutting and mounting wood, screwing everything in, and making sure all the wiring worked. I built something and it felt good.

This morning I started hanging pictures and shelves, partly in preparation for my mother-in-law’s arrival and mostly to continue that high of accomplishing something physical. When I committed to writing as a profession I gave up being a Dj–a job that was a mix of the physical and mental. I tried semi-pro football for a season, but having kids meant there was no time to practice at the level I needed in order to achieve real success. Building and designing fulfill me in a physical way and make me feel more accomplished than a guy who sits around and plays video games all day long.

Next thing I should build is a better backyard.

792. Musings from the Newsroom

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I am certain HBO’s new series The Newsroom will not run its course. It may not last longer than 8 episodes, because it is too real. It tells the truths and fires off memes that need to happen. I wish a real newscaster would pop off the way that Jeff Daniels does in the first ten minutes. I wish someone would stand up and say the truth that nobody is willing to acknowledge.

America is not the greatest country in the world. We haven’t been for the 37 yrs I’ve been on the planet and I’m guessing even longer than that. It took an HBO drama from Aaron Sorkin to give voice to what many people are thinking.

I think the problem that we make as Americans is falling back on that old trope of America the Beautiful instead of falling back on that old ‘we gotta fight to be the best’ attitude that was most prevalent after, well, we shed ourselves of Britain.

Liberals are losers. Hell, I’m a liberal and I admit that those in that particular party take a beating because we take everything the other party throws at us and turn the other cheek. You’d think they’d call us the party of Jesus Christ, but it is the other way around. Republicans are idiots and savages, because the party caters to the base and the base is uneducated, racist, full of expectation, and entitled. If this offends you then you’re either part of that base or you presume to be. However, if you’re reading this you are probably dead wrong and, IMHO, a closet liberal who hasn’t figured out that the party you pledge to isn’t the party that fights for you. They never did. You aren’t the one percent.

I want to be a part of an America that pushes the world forward into something wonderful. I want to be a part of America that views hope and change as shining qualities and not political gambits that can be easily crushed by terrible political ads and dead-end campaigns. I want to believe we can be better and I want to work my butt off to make those changes.

Just tell me when we can get started.

791. Reflections on a Monday Night

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I found a moment to collect my thoughts amidst the steady din of three young souls crying out to be heard. Life has been good and hard and amazing and difficult and sad and never lonely. I spent the last 24 hrs living another man’s life, a carpenter’s life I suppose. I built an indoor treehouse. A loft really. It consists of 4 posts spread around a raised platform and anchored by a rim of boards. It looked odd and fell over a lot until I realized that the structure needed a crossbar to support the legs. I used the leftover wood to place two crossbars and voila! kid land.

Sadly, this does not make me a better or even happier father. It remains another moment of disappointment. The kids love the structure, but never bothered to acknowledge that I built it. Maybe deep down inside (maybe right at the surface) I feel the need to be recognized for my efforts, and It is really sad when not even your kids are willing to do so. Of course, this is the life I chose on a really basic level. I come from a home where my work, skills, and effort were thankless. I married into the same environment, and now I have kids that carry on that grand tradition. So, maybe the problem is with me and this seemingly foolish need for recognition (positive, because they’ll heap on the negative like pouring water on a fire).

What I do know is that tonight I stood in my backyard and listened to the world move around me. In that sound of barking dogs, distant trains, and families gathering around the television set I found a certain peace. It is the peace of knowing that I am a part of something that can be as wonderful as I allow it to be or as terrible. The power is in the perception.

I don’t get to have very many solitary moments in the summers, but I get to have time with my family. I get to wakeup well after the sun touches the sky. I get to play video games until I’m burned out on the games and often the systems. I get to stand outside feeling the warm summer breeze and enjoying the sounds of the world hustling along.

Doesn’t sound bad at all.