I've noticed a trend in blogs recently, that seems blogoramic but actually may be more pandemic than that. It's a trend to wax "negative" because of the anonymous mask, and the corollary trend of readers to condemn this "negativity."
But as a recent (anonymous!) commenter on my blog noted, "read the Rant" (from the Cville paper). For that matter, read the Wall, read tags and ink stains in the bathroom cubicle. That is, anywhere the public vox can stand on a soap box without having to own up to the toxicity of what's sudsing forth, the bubbles frothing tend to be coated in cynicism and critique.
But I think this is a good thing, as well as a historical thing -- the critique, I mean. I don't think it's good that the reaction to this undercover critique is -- well, more critique. I absolutely despise the notion that offering a criticism or voicing a de-rosified view of an issue or expressing anything other than sweetness and light is necessarily "negative," which in our Therapy-Speak World means the equivalent of being a "downer" in a circle of potsmokers who are trying to stay "chill" and "high." As in, "Don't be such a downer, dude," says the puffer, as his mate points out the cops are knocking on the front door.
People get fed up with the Ralph Naders and Noam Chomskys for being too green and housed in trash cans. The popular reaction to stark statements against 'all is well'ness is to characterize the critics as making their statements, not out of care or concern or interest in the subject at hand, whether it be the environment or politics or faulty ideologies or bad drivers, but solely for the purpose of being critical.
My mom always hated my father, and then me, for being sarcastic. "It's so unbecoming," she'd say. She was probably right; but at the heart of it, my mother hated my dad's sarcasm because it was used to express his lost idealism, his brokenhearted ideals, his distress over the imperfection of the world, his righteous anger against the evils of humanity. She wanted him to Lighten Up and Be Positive, make lemonade out of hand grenades, etc.
It wasn't that my mother was only a Pollyanna in the sky with diamonds, though she seemed like sometimes. Nor was my father just convinced that all is rotten and going to hell. They both had a jolly goofiness to them, a 60s idealism, and a belief in truth that I find I've inherited, whether I like it or not. No, what made them ricochet to the extremes of Optimism and Cynicism was a differing philosophy about how one should react and respond to the ills of the world. My mother wanted to coat it all in honey, give it a kiss, do a Footloose dance, sing along to the soundtrack she was sure was swelling behind the sky. My father was more of the Tom Paine type; he believed in activism, boycotting and letter-writing, using humor (yes, often the sarcastic kind) and protest (sometimes the bombastic kind) to point out problems so that they could be redressed, things he felt could not be rubbed away by being loved away.
I believe both strategies have their place, and both are errant to think the other facile and useless (they did). My dad thought my mom dumb and simplistic; my mother thought dad to be negative and overly critical and mean. As the combo meal of their jeans that I am -- their McDLT as it were - I am trying to figure out a way to balance their opposite approaches within myself.
So it really irks me when I read this slapdash writing off of any blogger, ranter, writer, or caller for being "negative" when perhaps negativity is exactly what's called for. And yes, the other side of that is, I get terribly irritated when a public commentator or talking head is touted as "smart" just because he or she manages to say nasty things at the drop of a cowboy hat.
All negativity is not smart and/or self-indulgent, and neither is all optimism always benevolent or appropriate or dumb. To subscribe to any blanket summary of either is to give in to simplistic ideology, conveniently invoked when one doesn't want to listen to what someone else has to say.
So there.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Staring at my Teeth
My baby likes to stare at my teeth.
She sticks her finger right in there, right in my mouth, and pokes around, like an eager, first-year dental student.
I'm a little shy about it -- I've never had the most attractive set of munchers. Also, next to her fresh baby gums, my teeth seem carnivorous, almost as adult as the hairy region beneath my underwear. I've eaten a lot of dead meat in my life. My teeth have been around the block. They're kind of ferocious, really. And I don't want her to get any ideas. About being ferocious, I mean. Not yet.
Funny how having a child makes you so aware of the physicality of Being with a capital B. I am only now realizing how much of my childhood I spent roaming the interior playground of my imagination, the continents of books, the planets of fantasy -- how little I know about the three-dimensional space in which we are bound, which forms us.
Just the other day I was telling someone how I can't tell how far away 100 feet is. Or a mile. Or 10 yards.
Don't give me directions using East and West. I know the sun has something to do with it, but when I look around, I don't have a twitch in my nose towards North. My leg hair doesn't just grow on the North side of my legs.
Yes, the virtual reality of video games scares us Adults (are you adult? the world needs more dolts! I can hear my father saying) -- but what about the virtual reality of books? Everything I know comes from books -- and I mean literature, not nonfiction. I mean that what I know about the ocean and the moon and biology and history is a mishmash -- my brain is a vacuum cleaner, literature is the vast carpet, and the bits I know about are the little paperclips and bobbi pins I've sucked up over time. The jumble may or may not make any sense or carry any relevance to real life. It's mostly been fairly accurate -- I have general notions about broad ideas -- but really, it's ideas, not experience, not in-the-flesh facts that I follow when lost, without direction.
But having a baby, suddenly there's this exterior entity teaching me things I never knew before. So I found myself one day staring in the mirror at my teeth, and I discovered something I never knew before -- that they are ridged! All of them! In varying patterns. At first I saw the uneven line under my main molar and I thought, Oh my gosh, I've chipped a tooth! Then I inspected further and saw they are ALL like that. Who knew?
My teeth are fascinating.
Grass is also amazing. I've read plenty of poetry (Whitman, Larry Levis, and books by that woman, teaching stones to talk or something) where the wonders of grass have been extolled, but it's a whole different experience to be on your belly next to a child who is only 8 months old, combing her fingers through the groundcover with a reverence and awe you'd only imagine has previously been granted to Demi Moore's hair. Grass is not just grass - there's little clovers and weeds and all kinds of bugs and budding things and -- once again, I found myself learning something about the world I've been trampling on for years...
No, I don't worry about video games ruining the younger generations. I worry about their lives being crowded with activities, no boredom left in which to explore their teeth, the grass, the patterns in the drywall next to their beds, the multicolored strands of carpet that blend into a solid color in the bathroom... I worry about this for adults, for all of us, that we have no time just to sit around and know where we are. We're constantly learning, taking in, imbibing knowledge ideas sounds entertainment information music etc etc, but our connection to our bodies and to the world, in order to be live, must be fed by those slow, boring moments when we allow our minds to relax and look beyond themselves...
My daughter is teaching me so much, because I am watching her. I hope I will reflect this ability to be interested in the details back to her, so as she grows, she'll learn as she watches me.
She sticks her finger right in there, right in my mouth, and pokes around, like an eager, first-year dental student.
I'm a little shy about it -- I've never had the most attractive set of munchers. Also, next to her fresh baby gums, my teeth seem carnivorous, almost as adult as the hairy region beneath my underwear. I've eaten a lot of dead meat in my life. My teeth have been around the block. They're kind of ferocious, really. And I don't want her to get any ideas. About being ferocious, I mean. Not yet.
Funny how having a child makes you so aware of the physicality of Being with a capital B. I am only now realizing how much of my childhood I spent roaming the interior playground of my imagination, the continents of books, the planets of fantasy -- how little I know about the three-dimensional space in which we are bound, which forms us.
Just the other day I was telling someone how I can't tell how far away 100 feet is. Or a mile. Or 10 yards.
Don't give me directions using East and West. I know the sun has something to do with it, but when I look around, I don't have a twitch in my nose towards North. My leg hair doesn't just grow on the North side of my legs.
Yes, the virtual reality of video games scares us Adults (are you adult? the world needs more dolts! I can hear my father saying) -- but what about the virtual reality of books? Everything I know comes from books -- and I mean literature, not nonfiction. I mean that what I know about the ocean and the moon and biology and history is a mishmash -- my brain is a vacuum cleaner, literature is the vast carpet, and the bits I know about are the little paperclips and bobbi pins I've sucked up over time. The jumble may or may not make any sense or carry any relevance to real life. It's mostly been fairly accurate -- I have general notions about broad ideas -- but really, it's ideas, not experience, not in-the-flesh facts that I follow when lost, without direction.
But having a baby, suddenly there's this exterior entity teaching me things I never knew before. So I found myself one day staring in the mirror at my teeth, and I discovered something I never knew before -- that they are ridged! All of them! In varying patterns. At first I saw the uneven line under my main molar and I thought, Oh my gosh, I've chipped a tooth! Then I inspected further and saw they are ALL like that. Who knew?
My teeth are fascinating.
Grass is also amazing. I've read plenty of poetry (Whitman, Larry Levis, and books by that woman, teaching stones to talk or something) where the wonders of grass have been extolled, but it's a whole different experience to be on your belly next to a child who is only 8 months old, combing her fingers through the groundcover with a reverence and awe you'd only imagine has previously been granted to Demi Moore's hair. Grass is not just grass - there's little clovers and weeds and all kinds of bugs and budding things and -- once again, I found myself learning something about the world I've been trampling on for years...
No, I don't worry about video games ruining the younger generations. I worry about their lives being crowded with activities, no boredom left in which to explore their teeth, the grass, the patterns in the drywall next to their beds, the multicolored strands of carpet that blend into a solid color in the bathroom... I worry about this for adults, for all of us, that we have no time just to sit around and know where we are. We're constantly learning, taking in, imbibing knowledge ideas sounds entertainment information music etc etc, but our connection to our bodies and to the world, in order to be live, must be fed by those slow, boring moments when we allow our minds to relax and look beyond themselves...
My daughter is teaching me so much, because I am watching her. I hope I will reflect this ability to be interested in the details back to her, so as she grows, she'll learn as she watches me.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Where There's Smoke
I'm not an advocate of smoking, but I grew up in the 70s, when most of the adults I knew, including my beloved father, smoked... so, just as I adore the smell of LA smog, because it's what I knew so young, I tend to like the smell of cigarette smoke... And I think it's a bit puritannical and obnoxious to be so antismoking -- I mean, yes, it's bad for you, we know that, but there's so many things we learn are bad for us -- the smell of gasoline and chemicalized cosmetics and plastics and hormone-infused milk and - well, where do I stop???
I find it so amusing that we at this point in time so happily demonize smokers, when not that long ago almost everyone smoked, thinking it practically a beneficial practice.
And, if you go to other cities, or hang around poorer people, or go to China or something, you're in for worse than you are here in liberal Cville.
I find it so amusing that we at this point in time so happily demonize smokers, when not that long ago almost everyone smoked, thinking it practically a beneficial practice.
And, if you go to other cities, or hang around poorer people, or go to China or something, you're in for worse than you are here in liberal Cville.
13 Points About Local Transportation: Bikes are not cars; pedestrians are not bikes; etc.
1. I like bicycles. I remember riding them as a kid, when you were allowed to use the sidewalk, which seemed perfectly normal to do.
2. I do not like driving next to, behind, or in front of bicycles. Cars are bigger, heavier, and go faster, and it is a strain, drain, and altogether stressful experience to try not to hit the bike or anything else. And to see it. And to not want to hit them for causing me such stress.
3. Yes, O Cycler Man, you DO have giant calf muscles. O Yes. But No, O Cycle Freak, you still cannot pass me when I'm driving a car. Your calves perhaps house ten-pound bags of unsalted peanuts, but they are not powered by combustion engines.
4. Yes, I DO know of a driver, a young girl, who hit a tree while she was trying to avoid running over a cyclist on a two-lane road and it was either hit the tree, another car, or the cyclist.
5. The cyclist did not stop.
6. Cyclists tend to be snotty and to think they are great human beings for not driving cars. This does not endear me to cyclists.
7. Neither does the spandex.
8. It would be great if we had bike paths, or if we all rode bicycles. It would also be great if bicycles came with trunks, so you could go shopping on them. It would also be nice if no one had to work more than ten minutes away from where they lived, so commuting to work via a bicycle was a reasonable thing to do. When I lived in Fluvanna, I could not ride a bike to work, or I'd have to leave as soon as I got there. I could not afford to live in town. My choices were very limited. The fact that I drove a car does not mean I was a morally reprehensible human being.
9. Pedestrians do not always have the right of way.
10. If it is 10 pm at night and you are wearing all black, please do not saunter across busy roads where there are no streetlights and expect me not to hit you in my car. Believe it or not, I can't friggin see you.
11. Come to think of it, don't saunter across roads ANYTIME. It just isn't safe. Making drivers skid and break is rude.
12. If I am walking and you are driving, please go ahead of me; don't stop and make me walk in front of you. It should be obvious that, if I'm walking, I'm not really in as much of a hurry as I would be if I had chosen to drive. I want to take my time; you rev on ahead. I'll stroll.
13. Yes, I believe we can all just get along -- but only if everyone stops with the ATTITUDE. Roads are public spaces; we share it, we don't own it, and for anyone -- including cyclists and pedestrians -- to believe their mode of transport morally trumps their requirement to respect the speed and size of anyone else's is not only rude and annoying, it's dangerous.
2. I do not like driving next to, behind, or in front of bicycles. Cars are bigger, heavier, and go faster, and it is a strain, drain, and altogether stressful experience to try not to hit the bike or anything else. And to see it. And to not want to hit them for causing me such stress.
3. Yes, O Cycler Man, you DO have giant calf muscles. O Yes. But No, O Cycle Freak, you still cannot pass me when I'm driving a car. Your calves perhaps house ten-pound bags of unsalted peanuts, but they are not powered by combustion engines.
4. Yes, I DO know of a driver, a young girl, who hit a tree while she was trying to avoid running over a cyclist on a two-lane road and it was either hit the tree, another car, or the cyclist.
5. The cyclist did not stop.
6. Cyclists tend to be snotty and to think they are great human beings for not driving cars. This does not endear me to cyclists.
7. Neither does the spandex.
8. It would be great if we had bike paths, or if we all rode bicycles. It would also be great if bicycles came with trunks, so you could go shopping on them. It would also be nice if no one had to work more than ten minutes away from where they lived, so commuting to work via a bicycle was a reasonable thing to do. When I lived in Fluvanna, I could not ride a bike to work, or I'd have to leave as soon as I got there. I could not afford to live in town. My choices were very limited. The fact that I drove a car does not mean I was a morally reprehensible human being.
9. Pedestrians do not always have the right of way.
10. If it is 10 pm at night and you are wearing all black, please do not saunter across busy roads where there are no streetlights and expect me not to hit you in my car. Believe it or not, I can't friggin see you.
11. Come to think of it, don't saunter across roads ANYTIME. It just isn't safe. Making drivers skid and break is rude.
12. If I am walking and you are driving, please go ahead of me; don't stop and make me walk in front of you. It should be obvious that, if I'm walking, I'm not really in as much of a hurry as I would be if I had chosen to drive. I want to take my time; you rev on ahead. I'll stroll.
13. Yes, I believe we can all just get along -- but only if everyone stops with the ATTITUDE. Roads are public spaces; we share it, we don't own it, and for anyone -- including cyclists and pedestrians -- to believe their mode of transport morally trumps their requirement to respect the speed and size of anyone else's is not only rude and annoying, it's dangerous.
Where students, tourists, and locals crash
It's one of the first things you really notice (besides the awful traffic) when you drive in to Cville from DC, coming down 29 -- a pancake house with a sign on its roof announcing that it's THE place where "students, tourists, and locals meet." And you think, Huh, really?
And then you never go eat there, because you quickly discover that all the bad driving that occurs in this town -- and there is a LOT of bad driving here -- is the direct result of students, tourists, and locals driving here.
The students are all talking on cell phones and ignoring the rules of the road. I know, because one of them ran into me one time, WHILE I WAS STOPPED. She just wasn't paying attention. She was a blonde from Alabama talking on a cell phone, and she didn't really care that she'd rammed my car in the rear end for no reason. Why should she? Her car wasn't hurt.
Tourists, god bless em, get lost. But I don't blame them -- the person(s) who named the roads around here was EVIL. Half the roads change names willy-nilly three or four times while you're driving down them -- Cherry is also Cleveland is also Elliot, for instance. The other half of the roads all have the same name, even though they are clearly different, distinct streets. It's enough to drive any driver mad, tourist or no.
Then there's the locals- the category in which I'll include senior citizens -- sorry folks, but some of you just should not be driving around when you can't friggin' see. Throw in some farm vehicles that don't go more than 10 mpr, snotties on bikes who think they're cars BUT AREN'T, and the dude on the Rascal I saw once just rascalling along also as if a car, the pedestrians who scoff at motorized transport by walking in front of vehicles in that daintily taunting way -- and you've got major chaos.
So yeah, you don't want to meet these people for pancakes. I can't imagine that anyone even goes there. I mean, the sign is big, but could any of these drivers figure out how to get in the parking lot???
And then you never go eat there, because you quickly discover that all the bad driving that occurs in this town -- and there is a LOT of bad driving here -- is the direct result of students, tourists, and locals driving here.
The students are all talking on cell phones and ignoring the rules of the road. I know, because one of them ran into me one time, WHILE I WAS STOPPED. She just wasn't paying attention. She was a blonde from Alabama talking on a cell phone, and she didn't really care that she'd rammed my car in the rear end for no reason. Why should she? Her car wasn't hurt.
Tourists, god bless em, get lost. But I don't blame them -- the person(s) who named the roads around here was EVIL. Half the roads change names willy-nilly three or four times while you're driving down them -- Cherry is also Cleveland is also Elliot, for instance. The other half of the roads all have the same name, even though they are clearly different, distinct streets. It's enough to drive any driver mad, tourist or no.
Then there's the locals- the category in which I'll include senior citizens -- sorry folks, but some of you just should not be driving around when you can't friggin' see. Throw in some farm vehicles that don't go more than 10 mpr, snotties on bikes who think they're cars BUT AREN'T, and the dude on the Rascal I saw once just rascalling along also as if a car, the pedestrians who scoff at motorized transport by walking in front of vehicles in that daintily taunting way -- and you've got major chaos.
So yeah, you don't want to meet these people for pancakes. I can't imagine that anyone even goes there. I mean, the sign is big, but could any of these drivers figure out how to get in the parking lot???
Cville vs. Richmond
I've lived several years in both Cville and Richmond, and while incredibly different places, they share one glaring trait in common -- neither recognizes the existence of the other, except to wrinkle a nose in the other's direction.
Seriously, when I lived in Richmond, I never heard of Charlottesville. No one talked about it. No one visited or planned trips. The map of Virginia included NOVA and the beach, but not Cville.
So when I moved here, I laughed my ass off to discover that the people here think Charlottesville is the real capital of the state -- heck, of the whole country's culture. People in Charlottesville look down their noses at Richmond -- everyone here is trying to be Little California or Little New York, not Little Richmond, after all.
Actually, I've come to consider Cville's self-image as having similar symptoms to what's commonly called 'short-man's disease' -- you know, the short guy who makes up for his feelings of inadequacy and stunted masculinity by behaving like a jerk or becoming ultra successful in a really overstated way. He has to talk about his accomplishments all the time, how everything he owns is top of the line, how all his children are brilliant, etc. -- all of it may be true, but the fact that he must parade it out there with giant flags and flashing lights -- ugh. It's kind of sad.
New York doesn't have this problem, because New York is New York. When NY does something, people pay attention. NY doesn't have to trumpet itself. But do you think Richmond cares that Cville was voted best place to live in America one year? Not really!
I knew this guy in grad school who was both short and from Charlottesville, UVA undergrad, obscure player in a jazz band. David Sher--n. When around him, it was always the David Sher--n show, and he was, of course, the star. And it was friggin annoying and pathetic and obvious that he was really short and couldn't get over it.
Cville is a little town in Virginia. I grew up in LA and London; I never heard of Cville for most of my life. I didn't even pay much mind to Virginia, to tell the truth.
But most places in this country don't know about it. Heck, when my mom flew here from Dallas, TX, the airplane company booked her to Charlotte, NC, because they'd never heard of Charlottesville, VA. Ha!
There's equal amounts of snobbishness in both Cville and Richmond. Richmond, I think, has more Old Money. It's got Civil War monuments, Monument Avenue, etc. Charlottesville has a lot of new money, people starting vineyards, and the Thomas Jefferson Brand. Richmond has a high murder rate; Cville has Art in Place. Both are annoying things I try to avoid.
Anyway, it's just funny how insular this place can be, how egotistical, how shortsighted. We have lots of "Centres" (apparently using the British spelling makes it that much more central?) and foundations and organizations -- that seem to have a mission to serve the state as a whole, or the country, but many only serve Charlottesville. It's quite masturbatory, really. Look how many newspapers we have to talk about ourselves! And blogs! We know we're newsworthy, because we write a bunch of news about ourselves! Four tv stations now! Woo-hoo! Wahoo, I should say. Yes, UVA is the big hitter. People around the country do know UVA. Yeah yeah yeah. But I'm not talking about UVA; I'm talking about Charlottesville -- and there is, believe it or not, a difference...
In one of my recent blogs, one commenter criticized me for not saying whether I was a local, a student, or a tourist. Well, I'm none of the above -- I'm a transplanted resident, like most everyone I meet. And like most people, when I compare Cville to the other places I've lived -- like I'm doing right now with Richmond -- it's hard to give Cville a bad rep, when everywhere else the crime or the earthquakes or the traffic or the accents are so comparatively offensive...
So, I guess the core of the offensive part about Charlottesville in comparison to Richmond is that it's too darn self-aware. It's the poster child for post-modern towns. It's the Disney factor I mentioned before, the Utopian impulse, the idealistic wall, the imitative brick, the yellow bicycles, the lack of a reason for being other than being itself... Sometimes it makes me miss mean old Richmond, crumby, crumbling, homeless bummish Richmond...
Seriously, when I lived in Richmond, I never heard of Charlottesville. No one talked about it. No one visited or planned trips. The map of Virginia included NOVA and the beach, but not Cville.
So when I moved here, I laughed my ass off to discover that the people here think Charlottesville is the real capital of the state -- heck, of the whole country's culture. People in Charlottesville look down their noses at Richmond -- everyone here is trying to be Little California or Little New York, not Little Richmond, after all.
Actually, I've come to consider Cville's self-image as having similar symptoms to what's commonly called 'short-man's disease' -- you know, the short guy who makes up for his feelings of inadequacy and stunted masculinity by behaving like a jerk or becoming ultra successful in a really overstated way. He has to talk about his accomplishments all the time, how everything he owns is top of the line, how all his children are brilliant, etc. -- all of it may be true, but the fact that he must parade it out there with giant flags and flashing lights -- ugh. It's kind of sad.
New York doesn't have this problem, because New York is New York. When NY does something, people pay attention. NY doesn't have to trumpet itself. But do you think Richmond cares that Cville was voted best place to live in America one year? Not really!
I knew this guy in grad school who was both short and from Charlottesville, UVA undergrad, obscure player in a jazz band. David Sher--n. When around him, it was always the David Sher--n show, and he was, of course, the star. And it was friggin annoying and pathetic and obvious that he was really short and couldn't get over it.
Cville is a little town in Virginia. I grew up in LA and London; I never heard of Cville for most of my life. I didn't even pay much mind to Virginia, to tell the truth.
But most places in this country don't know about it. Heck, when my mom flew here from Dallas, TX, the airplane company booked her to Charlotte, NC, because they'd never heard of Charlottesville, VA. Ha!
There's equal amounts of snobbishness in both Cville and Richmond. Richmond, I think, has more Old Money. It's got Civil War monuments, Monument Avenue, etc. Charlottesville has a lot of new money, people starting vineyards, and the Thomas Jefferson Brand. Richmond has a high murder rate; Cville has Art in Place. Both are annoying things I try to avoid.
Anyway, it's just funny how insular this place can be, how egotistical, how shortsighted. We have lots of "Centres" (apparently using the British spelling makes it that much more central?) and foundations and organizations -- that seem to have a mission to serve the state as a whole, or the country, but many only serve Charlottesville. It's quite masturbatory, really. Look how many newspapers we have to talk about ourselves! And blogs! We know we're newsworthy, because we write a bunch of news about ourselves! Four tv stations now! Woo-hoo! Wahoo, I should say. Yes, UVA is the big hitter. People around the country do know UVA. Yeah yeah yeah. But I'm not talking about UVA; I'm talking about Charlottesville -- and there is, believe it or not, a difference...
In one of my recent blogs, one commenter criticized me for not saying whether I was a local, a student, or a tourist. Well, I'm none of the above -- I'm a transplanted resident, like most everyone I meet. And like most people, when I compare Cville to the other places I've lived -- like I'm doing right now with Richmond -- it's hard to give Cville a bad rep, when everywhere else the crime or the earthquakes or the traffic or the accents are so comparatively offensive...
So, I guess the core of the offensive part about Charlottesville in comparison to Richmond is that it's too darn self-aware. It's the poster child for post-modern towns. It's the Disney factor I mentioned before, the Utopian impulse, the idealistic wall, the imitative brick, the yellow bicycles, the lack of a reason for being other than being itself... Sometimes it makes me miss mean old Richmond, crumby, crumbling, homeless bummish Richmond...
People in Cville are Super Duper Nice
I just recently learned that the word "nice" used to mean "exact" and "accurate." I don't mean the word this way. I mean the word in the way it's used now, as in "this pudding is nice" or "that man with the candy is nice." You know -- unoffensive, digestible, possibly a wolf in sheep's clothing, but in reality, just a boring old sheep.
Yes, genuinely so- nice. Nice with a capital N. Friendly with a captial F (especially if the word starts a sentence).
Sometimes, I admit, I long for the urban grit-angst of Richmond (see my previous post). The callous stares of ruffians, the belligerent ink-stained sneers of art students, the superior eye-rolls of the waitrons at the Village, the nose-flaring huffs of Old Moneyites at the museums -- the smell of rotting vegetation seething with Chanel and potchuli and Colt 47 -- vandalism and street art veering into one another -- ah yes, Richmond's a city, even if it is an inbred, bored, stepcousin of one.
Charlottesville, on the other hand, is the Nice Kid on the Block. The people here, even the mean ones, even the selfish snobs, even the pissed-off seniors and the dumbass students -- all of them are, by and large, really Nice. You can count on a general ease of mingling to keep egos from colliding when you run into people (literally, figuratively). From the hot shots of business to the snotty nonprofit wannabe academics to the Tarot reader with barefeet, everyone's pretty darn Nice, and no, that's not a bad thing at all.
Boring, maybe; but not bad.
Yes, genuinely so- nice. Nice with a capital N. Friendly with a captial F (especially if the word starts a sentence).
Sometimes, I admit, I long for the urban grit-angst of Richmond (see my previous post). The callous stares of ruffians, the belligerent ink-stained sneers of art students, the superior eye-rolls of the waitrons at the Village, the nose-flaring huffs of Old Moneyites at the museums -- the smell of rotting vegetation seething with Chanel and potchuli and Colt 47 -- vandalism and street art veering into one another -- ah yes, Richmond's a city, even if it is an inbred, bored, stepcousin of one.
Charlottesville, on the other hand, is the Nice Kid on the Block. The people here, even the mean ones, even the selfish snobs, even the pissed-off seniors and the dumbass students -- all of them are, by and large, really Nice. You can count on a general ease of mingling to keep egos from colliding when you run into people (literally, figuratively). From the hot shots of business to the snotty nonprofit wannabe academics to the Tarot reader with barefeet, everyone's pretty darn Nice, and no, that's not a bad thing at all.
Boring, maybe; but not bad.
Typical Cville: Overpriced, Overdone Hipness
Friday night on the downtown mall. Depressing: there's not any other option. Upside: therefore, everyone's there. The double-edged butter knife of living in a small town - you get community, but when you don't want it, too bad, it's all you've got. (I am not talking about going to the Corner to surf with the college students, pretending you're still one even though you're not.)
First thing: the "chalk" board. Despite the grumbles I've heard from people about the cuss words crowding it out, I love it. Friday night, it's a center of hub of activity. Then I try to write on it - which turns out to be impossible. Why? Because it's not chalk. It's slate. Ah - now I understand why this took millions of dollars or whatever. You can't erase or write on it with any ease. What the heck was wrong with a cheapo chalkboard??? This is typical Charlottesville. Something that's a great, democratic idea, that should have cost next to nothing -- instead, they have to do it upscale, monumentalish, and then it doesn't even really work. That was my first grumble of the night.
Next, as we skirt around the clumps of hippie-musicians banging out clods of noise together, I wonder, as I always do, Where do these people come from? In a town that's so expensive to live in -- impossible to get a room in a house under 350, let alone your own apartment, buy a house, etc., -- where do all these people, espousing cheapness by the colorful rag-wear and dirt in their hair -- where do they live? What cheap rock in the park do they coagulate under?
Because we took a turn down one of the side alleys to check out the restaurant Kiki, only to gag at the small, chic menu with its large, ridiculous prices, the dissonance between the wanna-be-in-New York eatery and the wanna-be-a-carpenter peasantry making my spleen ache. Yet another overpriced restaurant! Guacamole for 7 bucks! And Bashir's was charging $15 a plate -- and it's not that great! It's hummus, for god's sake!
We keep walking, and there's the hoola-hooping belly dancers causing a hoopla, and there's Blue Light Grill, and it's all very colorful and cacophonic and cheerful, but it's also very ... fake. I don't believe it. The Jefferson movie theater -- the one cheap place on the mall, housing Better Than Television in its basement, the one real hippiesh collective with a presence -- offering no more movies, only its closing notice.
There's only one place I've been that tops this crazy stroll through overpriced retail and overdone hippiness -- Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm convinced that the angels and demons of Cville are struggling to get this city to emulate that place.
Santa Fe was awful when I went there several years ago -- stores with crappy, half-painted shelves branded by a top designer and selling for thousands of dollars fronted by poor Indians offering up silver necklaces for two bucks. The place was selling itself as original dirt, as honest to goodness pueblo, trying to appeal to the yuppie tourists' desire to chew off the real bone of the Southwest -- but it was all a sham. Even the museums cost money to get in. A bottle of water cost the same as it does at a concert. It was absolutely horrifyingly false. An amusement ride through culture. I'm surprised Disney doesn't own it, dubbing it "Southwestern Land."
...and then Disney could purchase Cville, "TJ Land,"... or has it already?
Of course, the main evidence that the downtown mall on Friday night is a superficial and costly experience (I believe those homeless-dressing hippies are trust-fund babies) is that there's no black people or Hispanics there! I can only imagine - forgive me if I'm wrong - that I'd find them at that burger joint on Main Street (I went once time - delicious, cheap - I was the only white face there) or at the awesome Mexican food place in the back of the store on Market Street... I don't know. All I know is, all of Charlottesville is not congregating here. This melting pot is missing some important elements.
Dumpster-diving democracy is cool because it supposedly is how liberal white folk can show their intellectual leanings. "I drive a hybrid!" Charlottesville is like any 20-something hipster with rich parents who doesn't know who she is yet, but while she's waiting to discover it, she dresses as if she is not rich, but a poor artist, because we love poor artists, they're so much more real than rich suburbanites... if we don't have a passion, we can dress like we have one, right? But at the bottom of it, at the bottom of the soul of "the best place to live in America," is the same core as any other town - money and the making of it. For all our pretentiousness, it's all about class and wealth. It's like realizing that TJ still owned slaves -- glad he was so creative and idealistic and made his house round, but the truth is, he was the original Disney - and he was just as much a creature of his time as we - as Charlottesville - is.
First thing: the "chalk" board. Despite the grumbles I've heard from people about the cuss words crowding it out, I love it. Friday night, it's a center of hub of activity. Then I try to write on it - which turns out to be impossible. Why? Because it's not chalk. It's slate. Ah - now I understand why this took millions of dollars or whatever. You can't erase or write on it with any ease. What the heck was wrong with a cheapo chalkboard??? This is typical Charlottesville. Something that's a great, democratic idea, that should have cost next to nothing -- instead, they have to do it upscale, monumentalish, and then it doesn't even really work. That was my first grumble of the night.
Next, as we skirt around the clumps of hippie-musicians banging out clods of noise together, I wonder, as I always do, Where do these people come from? In a town that's so expensive to live in -- impossible to get a room in a house under 350, let alone your own apartment, buy a house, etc., -- where do all these people, espousing cheapness by the colorful rag-wear and dirt in their hair -- where do they live? What cheap rock in the park do they coagulate under?
Because we took a turn down one of the side alleys to check out the restaurant Kiki, only to gag at the small, chic menu with its large, ridiculous prices, the dissonance between the wanna-be-in-New York eatery and the wanna-be-a-carpenter peasantry making my spleen ache. Yet another overpriced restaurant! Guacamole for 7 bucks! And Bashir's was charging $15 a plate -- and it's not that great! It's hummus, for god's sake!
We keep walking, and there's the hoola-hooping belly dancers causing a hoopla, and there's Blue Light Grill, and it's all very colorful and cacophonic and cheerful, but it's also very ... fake. I don't believe it. The Jefferson movie theater -- the one cheap place on the mall, housing Better Than Television in its basement, the one real hippiesh collective with a presence -- offering no more movies, only its closing notice.
There's only one place I've been that tops this crazy stroll through overpriced retail and overdone hippiness -- Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm convinced that the angels and demons of Cville are struggling to get this city to emulate that place.
Santa Fe was awful when I went there several years ago -- stores with crappy, half-painted shelves branded by a top designer and selling for thousands of dollars fronted by poor Indians offering up silver necklaces for two bucks. The place was selling itself as original dirt, as honest to goodness pueblo, trying to appeal to the yuppie tourists' desire to chew off the real bone of the Southwest -- but it was all a sham. Even the museums cost money to get in. A bottle of water cost the same as it does at a concert. It was absolutely horrifyingly false. An amusement ride through culture. I'm surprised Disney doesn't own it, dubbing it "Southwestern Land."
...and then Disney could purchase Cville, "TJ Land,"... or has it already?
Of course, the main evidence that the downtown mall on Friday night is a superficial and costly experience (I believe those homeless-dressing hippies are trust-fund babies) is that there's no black people or Hispanics there! I can only imagine - forgive me if I'm wrong - that I'd find them at that burger joint on Main Street (I went once time - delicious, cheap - I was the only white face there) or at the awesome Mexican food place in the back of the store on Market Street... I don't know. All I know is, all of Charlottesville is not congregating here. This melting pot is missing some important elements.
Dumpster-diving democracy is cool because it supposedly is how liberal white folk can show their intellectual leanings. "I drive a hybrid!" Charlottesville is like any 20-something hipster with rich parents who doesn't know who she is yet, but while she's waiting to discover it, she dresses as if she is not rich, but a poor artist, because we love poor artists, they're so much more real than rich suburbanites... if we don't have a passion, we can dress like we have one, right? But at the bottom of it, at the bottom of the soul of "the best place to live in America," is the same core as any other town - money and the making of it. For all our pretentiousness, it's all about class and wealth. It's like realizing that TJ still owned slaves -- glad he was so creative and idealistic and made his house round, but the truth is, he was the original Disney - and he was just as much a creature of his time as we - as Charlottesville - is.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Why are women always weak?
I picked up an atlas of the South Pacific last weekend, a true thrill, bringing me back to my college days studying anthropology, learning about all the various tribes and islands...
But when I got to a phrase describing one of the aborginial groups in Austrailia that said, quietly and without commentary, "...and the men treat the women with brutality and force," I was reminded of another college experience, more a horror than a thrill: that of feeling like everywhere I turned, except for in the surmised mythical pre-historical past in the land of Venus statues, women were treated - are treated - like substandard pieces of crap.
I remember the rage. I remember the articles that argued over the whys... the feminist theorists who tried to argue that the picture was only this bleak because of the way male writers interpreted the tribes they visited... that women did have the power... but it all seemed like a frail attempt to sugar-coat a bitter truth.
So I'm reading the atlas last week and beginning to wonder if maybe the next stage in evolution will be women finally telling the culture (not men; it's a combined reality) to shove it. Maybe the test is to see if women can throw off their master's chains... Maybe it's to see if humanity itself can survive its own brutality against itself... for surely, treating our mothers, sisters, and daughters like shit affects all of us. It makes all of us less. Men can be so dumb and arrogant and stupid, they can act like assholes, and when in power, they hurt millions of people... but if brought up to believe that being a man entitles you to this behavior; if brought up watching your father and other men in your society treat women and children like shit; then you learn that acceptance is gained through violence, through subjugation. You learn that the path to adulthood and adulation is not through being a better person, showing mercy and justice and intelligence and insight, but through making people quake with fear around you, then no doubt that's what you will seek out...
I've watched this gender shit hurt boys as much as it hurts girls. It hurts everyone.
I refuse to believe it's the natural state of things... though again, reading that atlas, I wonder, is it?
But when I got to a phrase describing one of the aborginial groups in Austrailia that said, quietly and without commentary, "...and the men treat the women with brutality and force," I was reminded of another college experience, more a horror than a thrill: that of feeling like everywhere I turned, except for in the surmised mythical pre-historical past in the land of Venus statues, women were treated - are treated - like substandard pieces of crap.
I remember the rage. I remember the articles that argued over the whys... the feminist theorists who tried to argue that the picture was only this bleak because of the way male writers interpreted the tribes they visited... that women did have the power... but it all seemed like a frail attempt to sugar-coat a bitter truth.
So I'm reading the atlas last week and beginning to wonder if maybe the next stage in evolution will be women finally telling the culture (not men; it's a combined reality) to shove it. Maybe the test is to see if women can throw off their master's chains... Maybe it's to see if humanity itself can survive its own brutality against itself... for surely, treating our mothers, sisters, and daughters like shit affects all of us. It makes all of us less. Men can be so dumb and arrogant and stupid, they can act like assholes, and when in power, they hurt millions of people... but if brought up to believe that being a man entitles you to this behavior; if brought up watching your father and other men in your society treat women and children like shit; then you learn that acceptance is gained through violence, through subjugation. You learn that the path to adulthood and adulation is not through being a better person, showing mercy and justice and intelligence and insight, but through making people quake with fear around you, then no doubt that's what you will seek out...
I've watched this gender shit hurt boys as much as it hurts girls. It hurts everyone.
I refuse to believe it's the natural state of things... though again, reading that atlas, I wonder, is it?
Stigmas and the Human Needs
I met this woman who said she had to use a breast pump in a closet at her old job...
We're animals, people. Sometimes I think we forget that. Special animals, maybe. But still, we need things like air and breastmilk to survive; not because we can't invent simulated enivronments; not because we can't make breastpumps and formula with all the stuff we can get by on.
No, to say that we need the earth's provisions and that we need our human exchanges is not a sign of weakness, it is not a slap against technology, innovation, an insult to our highly evolved (but not very smart sometimes) brains. It would actually be quite mature and intelligent of us to realize who we are, to realize that human beings, however brilliant, cannot replace love. We can't replace what happens chemically when a child and mother bond during nursing. We can't replace the sense of wonder and beauty a person feels when swimming in a lake, looking up at the glowing moon and pricking stars...
We need a world we did not invent, hardcode, wire behind the screen. We need that sense of Otherness, Mystery, Beauty, and Wonder that has fueled our myths and poetry and spirituality... for survival. Because we need a reason to survive other than to worship ourselves!
I read science fiction; I love it. But one flaw you see in most (male) sci fi is the premise that we can totally replicate our world in a floating pillbox out in space, and everything will continue as normal.
It's a hopeful notion, but wrong, I fear. And don't bring up the holodeck on Star Trek. The fact those people aren't going more crazy being locked up together in that pneumatic prison is a failure of the writer's imagination to know reality. We need freedom to roam...
Which is something that scares me about life down here on Earth, frankly. Every bit of it being mastered, flagged, walled, labeled, where do we have left just to Be, to breathe, to escape our culture's constant control issues????
We're like a little kid, who boasts that he can build himself a house within his house, and he does so, he puts everything in it he needs... except for a door to get out.
We're animals, people. Sometimes I think we forget that. Special animals, maybe. But still, we need things like air and breastmilk to survive; not because we can't invent simulated enivronments; not because we can't make breastpumps and formula with all the stuff we can get by on.
No, to say that we need the earth's provisions and that we need our human exchanges is not a sign of weakness, it is not a slap against technology, innovation, an insult to our highly evolved (but not very smart sometimes) brains. It would actually be quite mature and intelligent of us to realize who we are, to realize that human beings, however brilliant, cannot replace love. We can't replace what happens chemically when a child and mother bond during nursing. We can't replace the sense of wonder and beauty a person feels when swimming in a lake, looking up at the glowing moon and pricking stars...
We need a world we did not invent, hardcode, wire behind the screen. We need that sense of Otherness, Mystery, Beauty, and Wonder that has fueled our myths and poetry and spirituality... for survival. Because we need a reason to survive other than to worship ourselves!
I read science fiction; I love it. But one flaw you see in most (male) sci fi is the premise that we can totally replicate our world in a floating pillbox out in space, and everything will continue as normal.
It's a hopeful notion, but wrong, I fear. And don't bring up the holodeck on Star Trek. The fact those people aren't going more crazy being locked up together in that pneumatic prison is a failure of the writer's imagination to know reality. We need freedom to roam...
Which is something that scares me about life down here on Earth, frankly. Every bit of it being mastered, flagged, walled, labeled, where do we have left just to Be, to breathe, to escape our culture's constant control issues????
We're like a little kid, who boasts that he can build himself a house within his house, and he does so, he puts everything in it he needs... except for a door to get out.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
AIDS: the fad that faded?
So I didn't really want to watch TV last night. It's too hot for TV. But I ended up switching the box on, because I'd already read and written a poem and put the baby too sleep and I felt restless. No doubt the thing is addictive and I was jonesing.
Anyway, I stumbled upon a Frontline documentary on AIDS, in which Bono from U2 was getting a hug from the Republican old dude after using touching Bible quotes to convince old dude to reverse his aversion to funding AIDS relief in Africa. Bono wore his 'cool' weirdo glasses even with that guy, and when talking to the president, which would have put me off immediately, that and his greasy hair. I don't like Bono very much. He's very much in love with his own voice. You can tell by the way he literally HOOTS through many of his songs. Hooting is cool when owls do it, but it is not very attractive in greasy Irish human males.
Anyway. What struck me about the documentary wasn't the crisis itself, because while it is always chilling to hear again the figures of how many millions are dying with no one giving too much of a rat's ass about it, the level of devastation and corruption and ignorance and politics going into the whole situation is nothing I haven't heard before. I read And the Band Played On. I took a class in AIDS something or other during college. I circumvented my high school principle to get World AIDS Day mentioned on the daily school announcements over the loud speaker. Knowing about and feeling passionate about AIDS was something I grew up with, kind of like Madonna. Like Madonna, the issue of AIDS has changed through the years in its intensity, but it's stayed around.
No, what got me in the show was the activism going on by ordinary people. Bono, of course, has money and leisure time to go quoting Bible verses at any old politician he pleases. But it was the guy in South Africa who refused to take his meds until they were available to everyone that really slayed me. It was the masses in DC marching and screaming for the government to put money in the UN global fund that got me thinking.
Activism is something I wrestle with on and off, because
1) I have a moral prick of conscience. I feel responsible for contributing to terrible things like Iraq and poverty and the degradation of the earth, etc.
2) I know I should be acting on my sense of responsibility, not just having appropriate sentiments and writing about them in my diary or blog. I have a real compunction to 'put my money where my mouth is,' 'walk the walk not just talk the talk,' etc.
3) My parents were missionaries, meaning I come from the kind of stock - I bloom from a stalk - of people who laid their lives on the line for what they believed in. Gave up creature comforts out of a faith in something true that was greater than their immediate pleasures and security and social approval. Their example weighs upon me heavily.
So what's stopping me from raging against the machine?
1) While I admire the impulse, I don't actually believe that marching on Washington does a lick of good. Maybe in the beginning it was a useful strategy. But these days, a million people just doesn't make that big of an impression. It's kind of like American Idol; it begins to become old hat after a while. In my younger days I marched with PETA and for gay rights and signed the AIDS quilt and put Clinton bumper stickers on my car.
2) There's so many issues; which one will I pick to really throw my weight behind? Population? Foster children? Nuclear weapons? Dolphins? I never was good at focusing my interests in a single place. But if I were going to commit to action for a cause, I would have to. There's too many.
So yeah, here I am, doing nothing and feeling ambivalent and vaguely worthless. I don't believe in white rich guilt. I had a friend who lived off a trust fund who wore crap clothes and hung her head all the time, embarrassed for being so rich, and her attitude frustrated me. LIve it up, I wanted to yell at her. Spend it! Have fun! Make the most of it! Be grateful!
Am I just too cynical, too comfortable, to act? Shouldn't I be doing it, even if it has no affect, just because it's the Right Thing to Do? (whatever that is) How does one follow one's conscience?
Ai yi yi. Meanwhile, people die and suffer, and I write a blog, whining and rationalizing, full from eating too much food, drinking water, burning electricity, ... wondering if I'll ever be called into action, if it's really about getting that call, the way my parents feel they were called by god, perhaps I've ignored it, or didn't hear it, or perhaps it doesn't matter what I do or how I do it, just that I do something beyond myself, extend myself in some way, in my neighborhood, wherever...
No, I can't do it. I can't come up with an end to this blog, the narrative poetic lilt into hope and dreamland that ties it all up with a question, a lyric mode of possibility. I really do not know the answer to this at all. There is no way to wrap this up.
Anyway, I stumbled upon a Frontline documentary on AIDS, in which Bono from U2 was getting a hug from the Republican old dude after using touching Bible quotes to convince old dude to reverse his aversion to funding AIDS relief in Africa. Bono wore his 'cool' weirdo glasses even with that guy, and when talking to the president, which would have put me off immediately, that and his greasy hair. I don't like Bono very much. He's very much in love with his own voice. You can tell by the way he literally HOOTS through many of his songs. Hooting is cool when owls do it, but it is not very attractive in greasy Irish human males.
Anyway. What struck me about the documentary wasn't the crisis itself, because while it is always chilling to hear again the figures of how many millions are dying with no one giving too much of a rat's ass about it, the level of devastation and corruption and ignorance and politics going into the whole situation is nothing I haven't heard before. I read And the Band Played On. I took a class in AIDS something or other during college. I circumvented my high school principle to get World AIDS Day mentioned on the daily school announcements over the loud speaker. Knowing about and feeling passionate about AIDS was something I grew up with, kind of like Madonna. Like Madonna, the issue of AIDS has changed through the years in its intensity, but it's stayed around.
No, what got me in the show was the activism going on by ordinary people. Bono, of course, has money and leisure time to go quoting Bible verses at any old politician he pleases. But it was the guy in South Africa who refused to take his meds until they were available to everyone that really slayed me. It was the masses in DC marching and screaming for the government to put money in the UN global fund that got me thinking.
Activism is something I wrestle with on and off, because
1) I have a moral prick of conscience. I feel responsible for contributing to terrible things like Iraq and poverty and the degradation of the earth, etc.
2) I know I should be acting on my sense of responsibility, not just having appropriate sentiments and writing about them in my diary or blog. I have a real compunction to 'put my money where my mouth is,' 'walk the walk not just talk the talk,' etc.
3) My parents were missionaries, meaning I come from the kind of stock - I bloom from a stalk - of people who laid their lives on the line for what they believed in. Gave up creature comforts out of a faith in something true that was greater than their immediate pleasures and security and social approval. Their example weighs upon me heavily.
So what's stopping me from raging against the machine?
1) While I admire the impulse, I don't actually believe that marching on Washington does a lick of good. Maybe in the beginning it was a useful strategy. But these days, a million people just doesn't make that big of an impression. It's kind of like American Idol; it begins to become old hat after a while. In my younger days I marched with PETA and for gay rights and signed the AIDS quilt and put Clinton bumper stickers on my car.
2) There's so many issues; which one will I pick to really throw my weight behind? Population? Foster children? Nuclear weapons? Dolphins? I never was good at focusing my interests in a single place. But if I were going to commit to action for a cause, I would have to. There's too many.
So yeah, here I am, doing nothing and feeling ambivalent and vaguely worthless. I don't believe in white rich guilt. I had a friend who lived off a trust fund who wore crap clothes and hung her head all the time, embarrassed for being so rich, and her attitude frustrated me. LIve it up, I wanted to yell at her. Spend it! Have fun! Make the most of it! Be grateful!
Am I just too cynical, too comfortable, to act? Shouldn't I be doing it, even if it has no affect, just because it's the Right Thing to Do? (whatever that is) How does one follow one's conscience?
Ai yi yi. Meanwhile, people die and suffer, and I write a blog, whining and rationalizing, full from eating too much food, drinking water, burning electricity, ... wondering if I'll ever be called into action, if it's really about getting that call, the way my parents feel they were called by god, perhaps I've ignored it, or didn't hear it, or perhaps it doesn't matter what I do or how I do it, just that I do something beyond myself, extend myself in some way, in my neighborhood, wherever...
No, I can't do it. I can't come up with an end to this blog, the narrative poetic lilt into hope and dreamland that ties it all up with a question, a lyric mode of possibility. I really do not know the answer to this at all. There is no way to wrap this up.
Parking Garage Mayhem
So, the other day, I'm leaving the parking garage on Water Street after working out at ACAC, and I get caught in a traffic jam at the exit.
No big deal, right? Someone's searching the floormats for loose change. I was patient. I wasn't in a rush to get back to work.
But no, we sat there, and sat there. Cars piled up behind me. I'd applied my lipstick and combed my hair. Tweaked the radio. I finally strained my neck out the window and saw to my surprise that the gate was actually up, the booth that holds the MoneyTaker empty.
This is usually good news -- MoneyTaker had to pee, so we get to leave free!
But no, not me, not this time, because some freaking idiot at the front of the line was just sitting there in her SUV, waiting for the MoneyTaker to come back.
No kidding.
Meanwhile, the cars are piling up behind me. Someone honks. Another person tries driving around me, looking for a way to veer out. But of course, we're all trapped. All the other gates are down. There's no way out, there's no way to escape. It was RIDICULOUS.
Finally, the pressure mounting, the dumb person in the front pulled up and to the side to let the rest of us go... before we started ramming her in the rear end...
But I was just horrified and delighted and angered because if this person was just sitting there waiting to pay someone -- I mean, why? Because
a) she was afraid the cops would find out she didn't pay?
b) she didn't know that the open gate meant she could go?
c) she knew she could legally go, but felt that morally she should still wait and pay?
or
d) she wanted to chat with the person in the booth?
I mean, what in the world could have been the reason she was behaving like cholesterol and blocking the flow of the one artery in the garage? If it was any of the above, she was annoyingly inane at the least, or self-centered, or paranoid, or worse - the absolute worst explanation would be if this person was doing (c), feeling herself so morally goodyfied that she was going to pay no matter what. Charlottesville has a few of these types lurking around, self-satisfied creatures who annoy the crap out of me. I mean, they instill in me a deep, cold disgust. They do nothing to help others out of love for others, out of faith -- they do Good Works out of this compunction to Be Good and so fulfill some need for parental approval that never got met; or out of guilt; or out of their extreme egotism. It's one of those three reasons, but they are all equally annoying, especially because these people usually make other people feel bad for not Doing More and Being Better.
Like this one woman I know in town garners admiration and awe from people because she rides a bicycle to work and sits on public committees and lets people walk all over her. But she's not a nice woman; she actually seems self-loathing, self-deprecating, and she's a menacing gossip. She's judgmental and critical of other people (as most self-loathers are) and so uptight and weak at the same time you just want to give her some pot to relax and stain her a little, make her a normal person. She's not "good" because she wants to be, she's good because she works hard at coloring within the lines. She's annoyed that other people don't suffer like she does to color in the lines, too. She's like the little kid in class who tattles on everyone else and holds her bladder all day so she doesn't have to get a hall pass.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for goodness, and honesty, etc. But come on. If the MoneyTaker is peeing, drive through the damn gate and let everyone go. Don't try to show off how conscientious you are. No one cares!!!!
No big deal, right? Someone's searching the floormats for loose change. I was patient. I wasn't in a rush to get back to work.
But no, we sat there, and sat there. Cars piled up behind me. I'd applied my lipstick and combed my hair. Tweaked the radio. I finally strained my neck out the window and saw to my surprise that the gate was actually up, the booth that holds the MoneyTaker empty.
This is usually good news -- MoneyTaker had to pee, so we get to leave free!
But no, not me, not this time, because some freaking idiot at the front of the line was just sitting there in her SUV, waiting for the MoneyTaker to come back.
No kidding.
Meanwhile, the cars are piling up behind me. Someone honks. Another person tries driving around me, looking for a way to veer out. But of course, we're all trapped. All the other gates are down. There's no way out, there's no way to escape. It was RIDICULOUS.
Finally, the pressure mounting, the dumb person in the front pulled up and to the side to let the rest of us go... before we started ramming her in the rear end...
But I was just horrified and delighted and angered because if this person was just sitting there waiting to pay someone -- I mean, why? Because
a) she was afraid the cops would find out she didn't pay?
b) she didn't know that the open gate meant she could go?
c) she knew she could legally go, but felt that morally she should still wait and pay?
or
d) she wanted to chat with the person in the booth?
I mean, what in the world could have been the reason she was behaving like cholesterol and blocking the flow of the one artery in the garage? If it was any of the above, she was annoyingly inane at the least, or self-centered, or paranoid, or worse - the absolute worst explanation would be if this person was doing (c), feeling herself so morally goodyfied that she was going to pay no matter what. Charlottesville has a few of these types lurking around, self-satisfied creatures who annoy the crap out of me. I mean, they instill in me a deep, cold disgust. They do nothing to help others out of love for others, out of faith -- they do Good Works out of this compunction to Be Good and so fulfill some need for parental approval that never got met; or out of guilt; or out of their extreme egotism. It's one of those three reasons, but they are all equally annoying, especially because these people usually make other people feel bad for not Doing More and Being Better.
Like this one woman I know in town garners admiration and awe from people because she rides a bicycle to work and sits on public committees and lets people walk all over her. But she's not a nice woman; she actually seems self-loathing, self-deprecating, and she's a menacing gossip. She's judgmental and critical of other people (as most self-loathers are) and so uptight and weak at the same time you just want to give her some pot to relax and stain her a little, make her a normal person. She's not "good" because she wants to be, she's good because she works hard at coloring within the lines. She's annoyed that other people don't suffer like she does to color in the lines, too. She's like the little kid in class who tattles on everyone else and holds her bladder all day so she doesn't have to get a hall pass.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for goodness, and honesty, etc. But come on. If the MoneyTaker is peeing, drive through the damn gate and let everyone go. Don't try to show off how conscientious you are. No one cares!!!!
The Rise of the Low Rise
My friend was sitting down at Target, recently, waiting for her husband to finish buying a pair of running shoes, when an older woman in her 50s huffed down beside her, squinting at her receipt.
"You have to check everything these days," she sighed.
My friend inquired what she meant.
"I bought pajamas," the lady explained, "Only to find out the bottoms were low-rise. Low- rise pjs! Who ever heard of such a thing? Obviously I had to return them."
No doubt. Another friend of mine tried to buy maternity clothes at Old Navy last year, only to find that all the maternity pants were low- rise. And she didn't feel like showing her belly that much.
It's one thing to make jeans for bony young girls, and certainly I'm all for sexy clothes, but women with figures do not look good in low- rise. For that matter, am I the only person grossed out when along the downtown mall comes a 13-year-old girl whose pudgy stomach hangs over her tourniquet-tight low -rise jeans?
And then there's the styles coming back from the 80s, some of which are okay -- I've always been a fan of the cutout collars of t-shirts, and the belts around oversized shirt dresses can look great -- but bubble skirts? I just saw in Lucky magazine that they're coming back, as announced by a caption that said something about "sophisticated style." Sophisticated? I don't think so. The model in the photo looked like a poisonous mushroom.
Still, low -rise is worse than the bubble skirt, because while the latter is just ugly, the former is most often uncouth. And it doesn't seem to be going away, though eventually, it will, only to cycle back again, because that's what fashions do.
So by the time I'm 55, it will be me sitting in Target, frustrated that I've had to return my gardening overalls, which are somehow low rise, bubbled, maybe even acid-washed...
"You have to check everything these days," she sighed.
My friend inquired what she meant.
"I bought pajamas," the lady explained, "Only to find out the bottoms were low-rise. Low- rise pjs! Who ever heard of such a thing? Obviously I had to return them."
No doubt. Another friend of mine tried to buy maternity clothes at Old Navy last year, only to find that all the maternity pants were low- rise. And she didn't feel like showing her belly that much.
It's one thing to make jeans for bony young girls, and certainly I'm all for sexy clothes, but women with figures do not look good in low- rise. For that matter, am I the only person grossed out when along the downtown mall comes a 13-year-old girl whose pudgy stomach hangs over her tourniquet-tight low -rise jeans?
And then there's the styles coming back from the 80s, some of which are okay -- I've always been a fan of the cutout collars of t-shirts, and the belts around oversized shirt dresses can look great -- but bubble skirts? I just saw in Lucky magazine that they're coming back, as announced by a caption that said something about "sophisticated style." Sophisticated? I don't think so. The model in the photo looked like a poisonous mushroom.
Still, low -rise is worse than the bubble skirt, because while the latter is just ugly, the former is most often uncouth. And it doesn't seem to be going away, though eventually, it will, only to cycle back again, because that's what fashions do.
So by the time I'm 55, it will be me sitting in Target, frustrated that I've had to return my gardening overalls, which are somehow low rise, bubbled, maybe even acid-washed...
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