Spin Doctors

What I want to do right now is scream.  I want to destroy something beautiful.  I want to laugh like a homicidal maniac while driving a C4-and-French-Bread-loaded moped into the Eiffel Tower.  I want to rent a dozen tree mulchers and shove frozen pigs through them as fast as possible.

Alright – that last one’s just for fun.

I’m mad at myself.  Over a month later, and I’m still doing some of the same old things to myself.  I emotionally personalize everything.  The animosity in someone’s voice when talking about someone else feels like a venomous assault.  Frustrations over the house feel like a personal shortcoming I should apologize for.  Disdain for a service provider feels like a personal sleight. 

I don’t know why my brain personalizes these emotional responses.  I do know that they make me feel very uncomfortable – almost claustrophobic; as if I’m having a mild panic attack.  This is why I can’t watch movies or sitcoms that leave the audience feeling embarrassed for a character (“Arrested Development,” is a great example): I personalize the experience to such a degree that it becomes physically unbearable.  It makes my skin hurt, when these moments happen.  I feel this crawling itch from the back of my head, crawling out along my body, until it just feels like my skin is literally white hot, and tearing at the seams.

I don’t think I’ve even been able to explain it quite so well before.  Now, if I could apply that same simplicity to quantum thermodynamics, we’d be in business.

I’ve had this reaction since I was a kid.  While I was at a babysitter’s watching “Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers,” I used to react to the show.  The other kids made fun of me for it; I never thought much beyond that it wasn’t socially acceptable behavior.  When I read a book, I find myself expressing with my face whatever the character I’m reading would be emoting.  So, I learned this little trick to make it all hide away: I would just “shut down.”  When I have those moments, I approach them with a cold, sterile precision – much like whenever I reach a point with extreme emotional reactions.

For example, I don’t know how to respond to situations that I don’t agree with.  Well, politely anyway.  I always feel very strongly that I’m right, and I know when I’m wrong I’m not nearly as apologetic as I should be.  So, I stop talking, because anything I have to add to a conversation is just gilding the lily.  Usually, the issue doesn’t necessitate an argument; it’s simply one side asserting their point of view.  I had a conversation via text the other day where I just wanted to get up, jumping up and down, while screaming someone was wrong.

Along with the Mask of Shutting Down (-60 personality, +22 intelligence), I also have the Hat of Extremely Extroverted Personality (+38 personailty, -7 intelligence).  I’m not really that outgoing, it’s just easier for people to interact with me when I’m overtly conversational and good natured.  If you’ve ever met me, and thought a month or so later – after hanging out a couple of times – that I wasn’t quite the same, crazy guy, it’s not you: that’s just me relaxing around you.

Back to point, the problem is, I couldn’t figure out why I was mad at myself.  Sure, it’s well and good if I feel that way, but how do I substantiate that claim?  The guy going around like he’s got it all figured out doesn’t; he’s just got an idea of how it all works out.  I haven’t got it hammered out how, but I’m going to try and unspool this issue and see where it goes.  I was hoping by writing about it, like the others, it would just unravel enough, but this one’s in there pretty good.

Hell, it may even be a legitimate social anxiety issue that they can medicate away.  I’m sure that’s nice for some, but I’ve never met a normal person made better by cocaine, thus defeating the “better living by chemicals” mantra.  I don’t want medications to help “regulate” the nuances of my personality.  Besides, if I don’t know what’s causing it, how I can I expect to fix it?

Eating Elephants

Elephant consumption is not a practice I would recommend.  On principle, it just sounds chewy and dry.  I can only imagine the amount of junk in the trunk.  There are other issues, though – killing the beast, carving it up, explaining to its wife and kids that you ate their daddy.  All very, very morbid stuff.

As a turn of phrase, it provides an interesting reference, though.  See, elephants are, well, elephantine in proportion – so big, that they defined P.T. Barnum’s realization of a circus.  Similarly, life can sometimes feel like it has swollen to these gigantic proportions- complete with three ring circus.

So how do you attack this magnitude of merciless misery meted among the men as mange?  Eat the Elephant one bite at a time.  There you go folks: the great mystery of life.  You put your pants on one leg at a time, tie your shoes one foot at a time, and you can do all this while keeping your socks right-side out: I think you can handle this concept.

If you are familiar with the phrase, then realize this concept goes beyond conquering lofty goals.  I like lofty goals; they provide a good overhead ideal.  But if you can’t conceptually wrap your head around that lofty goal and what’s required to achieve it, you only end up frustrated, burning the candle in an bonfire – ruining candle, the wick, and the heat you used to light it. 

Three years ago, I went to basic training.  It was a glorious time; a rugged time; a manly time. This was also the time I overshot the moon and twisted my feet so badly I ended up useless by the end of training.  I had devised this brilliant concept, and felt this was the means to an end, but never thought the plan through to the end.

I watched this really awesome animé by the name of “Dennou Coil.”  The concept is simple: an entire generation of children reared with augmented reality; kids that had the same mindset about this technology, as we did about the internet.  It was an animated take on “Hackers,” but without the desire to use marketed buzzwords and to impress upon the viewer that it’s “cool”.  I soon realized and devised a system that could implement this technology onto existing tech – allowing for massive market saturation due to low-cost implementation.  I felt the Army would have helped paid for the education I needed to learn how to build it.  So, I enrolled at Temple University, joined the Red Diamond Brigade, and went ROTC. 

That was as far as I had planned.  I didn’t see the elephant; I didn’t even think about the magnitude of what I was undertaking.  I had used pure optimism to push myself towards a goal, but I’d never thoroughly thought out the goal. 

This is where the mantra came to play in my life.  I was away from my wife for a very long stretch of time.  Being the oldest person at training didn’t help my odds of making friends.  Having a strong sense of self didn’t help either.  These kids needed this to define their lives; I’m really happy for them – they’ve found the culture they’re looking for.  I was not a part of it, I was aware of that, and I didn’t have the ability to assimilate.  When you can look in the mirror and question the training – if it’s country first, but I made a vow to keep my wife first, so which is right? – Then you question what you’re doing there. 

Aside from age difference, and political preference, there was a maturity gap.  When the SFC leading your squad through MOUT is younger than you are, even they start to wonder what the hell you’re doing there.  At one point, they even asked as much.  The indoctrinated answer is, “Defending my country;” my answer was, “Acquiring the funding necessary to create a tight-band augmented reality system.”  I was then smoked for being rather verbose.

You should break the elephant down into smaller pieces.  This didn’t affect just me - anyone I came in contact with during this time was affected by it.  I didn’t walk away thinking about things the same way after all was said and done.  When I realized what I thought was a mole hill, turned out to be a mountain, I simply stopped.  I lost my ambition, optimism, my drive.  I put on a sun-shiny smile, but inside, I was defeated.

Conquering the elephant requires a thorough assessment of the situation before undertaking it.  Always leverage your options.  Be aware of your resources, and know how to use them.  Don’t be afraid to have an ounce of blind optimism, and take the risks where you can.  And above all else: cutlery.  Because why bother starting, if you can’t even dig into the beast?

Pepper Spray

About three years ago, I had this amazing idea of making stuffed poblanos for dinner.  I love poblano peppers – they’re the Swiss Army Knife of peppers: a little heat, a lot of flavor, goes with damn near any savory dish.  Add a little blush wine, you kill the heat and add the flavor; add some rice vinegar, you tone down the flavor and kick up the heat. 

I was big into Food network around this time.  “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” to be exact.  The week prior to this, I watched an episode involving a stuffed flank steak, and impressed the hell out of my wife by replicating the look of it.  The taste was far superior to licking the drool off of my television screen.

For the current endeavor, I purchased about two pound’s worth of the peppers – four or five large ones in all - in an effort to make poblano rellenos.  I slathered them in oil, and set about roasting the skins off.  All the while I’m prepping the meat, rice, onions – all that crazy stuff.  In true Galloping Gourmet fashion, I’ve got my cabernet on the counter keeping me company.  It was a glorious orchestration, punctuated with the percussive swipes of my chef’s knife to the rhythm of whatever band I was favoring at the moment.  I love blasting music while I cook.  Singing and drumming along is just the cathartic icing on the cake.

I popped the peppers out of the oven, and wrapped them in little foil pouches.  The steam helps sweat the skins off.  While they settled up, I grabbed a few jalapenos and began feverishly mincing them.  Blending them with the beef I now had in the skillet.  I added a touch of onion, sofrito, and then the rice.  It was a cacophony of sanguine sounds and smells.

I slid the peppers out of the pouches and onto the cutting board, skins still clinging to the foil pouches.  I made small incisions to allow for filling and ventilation.  I crammed the rice and beef mixture in, tamping cheese into the largest open cavity, and a small pinch of cilantro on top of that.  Popping the peppers into the oven, and having no other food to prepare, I headed to the loo.

I conducted my standing business as per the norm, washing thoroughly before heading back into the kitchen.  There are two very, very important things to note here.  One is that until after this night, I’d never worn gloves when handling hot peppers.  Two, is that the common sense dictum of washing one’s hands after handling hot peppers before handling their, uhm, dictum, was not in full effect.  Within three minutes of entering the kitchen, I was well aware of this.

My realization of the mistake peaked early.  My admitting it took another five minutes, and a – literal – screaming run to the bathroom.  I had not closed the door fully, and my wife had heard the running, so her initial shock at seeing me pants down at the sink, cold water running over my groin, was reasonable enough.  Compound this with my penchant to accidentally cut or maim myself with sharp knives, and you could understand her concerns over my tender care with tender regions.  A very reasonable fear, as anyone who’s been around me long enough will tell you: I'm prone to the weirdest injuries.  Ripley’s Believe It Or Not weirdness.

The cold water was not helping.  I was freaking out.  After I explained what happened, she was doing her best to keep from laughing.  She brought me milk, and recommended I stand in the shower while applying it liberally.  The recollection of me pouring milk all over my naked body makes me think of an awkward porn shoot - where you're using the sound guy as the stand in to frame the shot.  Either way, the milk helped for a bit, but wore off.  She brought a beer in.

“If we don’t need a hospital trip for this one, is it okay if I laugh my ass off later,” she asked, cheeks red, and barely holding the barrage of laughter that was no longer stuck in her throat, but bit back by her teeth.

“Fine,” I snorted, “Give me the beer.”  The problem was that I, too, was finding this hilarious.  Painful – oh, hell yeah – but the circumstances were avoidable, and, only I would go headlong through those warning signs. 

As I poured the beer, her self-restraint broke.  I found myself laughing, too, although at the time, it wasn’t the happiest of sounds.  The beer did not work, along with several, repeated washings; nearly an hour later the burning subsided of its own accord.  She’d taken my instruction to turn the oven low, so dinner was still warm and ready to be eaten.

I’d lost my appetite for the peppers by this point.  But, the only alternative was a pack of hot dogs.  Given the choice between eating the wieners, or that which inflicted pain upon mine, I went with the latter.  It was the closest I’d get to revenge.

Today’s lesson:  Always wash your hands of one job before moving to the next.  I’m not just referencing kitchen safety tips – I’m speaking of life here.  There comes a point where you just have to realize the roads you’re travelling are not the ones you want to be on - the ones you need to be on at this point.  There is a moment where you look back and see the way your life has been, finding it’s not the way you want it to be.  It is a point where the negativity and stress of the world is all around,  and the easiest path from it, is simply a step away.   If you make a mistake, have the grace to realize it – laugh about it.  Learn from that moment, and don’t repeat it.  Me? - I bought disposable gloves for the kitchen the next day, and I always clean my hands before I even leave the kitchen. 

“Making a clean break” is the most applicable metaphor to this lesson: if you don’t wash yourself of everything you were doing, it’s just going to come back and burn you in the tallywhacker.

End of Time

We all love the thought of our era being the definitive experience.  Thinking that the hipsters and high tops roaming these roads will be the pinnacle of civilization; it can never be better than this.  Times and tastes will change, though.  They’re among the only things guaranteed in life – aside from death, taxes, and the absolute nature of human stupidity.  This death mongering – the insistence that the world has to end in our life time – isn’t drawn from facts.  It’s barely drawn from a fear of death.  This is all drawn from fear.

When it comes down to it, it’s easier to say the world is ending soon.  We’re free from future accountability that way.  We don’t have to worry about the next great thing.  We can take delight in mediocrity.  People want to say the world is ending soon because it’s easier than thinking about how it’s not.

There are a ton of things that just aren’t going to change.   Don’t get me wrong: there are old standards that will be classified the same for millennia.  Politicians will always be slippery.  Lawyers will inherently be despised.  Prostitution will always be called the oldest profession.  Although, it seems the oldest profession to have a lasting impression on modern man was art:  how many hookers have you ever seen in a cave painting?

As environments change, so, too, do the people.  In our time, the biggest change to people has been the rapid pacing of technology, and the pursuit of “the next great thing.”  I’m not talking plastic trees and recycling your own pee - although, I understand it’s quite sterile, and eggs boiled in it are quite the delicacy in Asian territories.  No, I’m talking more of the technology boom in the past century.  From cars; to synthetic fibers; to massive computers for binary input being miniaturized all the way down into a cellphone that can do more than ENIAC, which once filled an entire floor of a Philadelphian business complex. 

In the past century we have been obsessed with information.  The birth of this country was founded on horse riding couriers, and sail boats crossing the Atlantic.  This reached a point where information could be shared within a month, all the way down to instantaneously.  We are spoiled by our exposure, and we want more.  We have developed ourselves to keep in pace with technology that allows us to do this more efficiently – virtually “embedding” these sources into our bodies.  This saturation is further wasted with the information disseminated at break neck speeds – which is rarely every happy, positive reports.

I’m certainly afraid of how much faster this transmission of information is going to become.  I’m afraid that the reminiscence of my childhood will never be understood by future generations.  How the simplicity of that life will be lost on them – both in its splendor and bane.  I am not afraid (quite upset, really) that we still don’t have any damn teleporters.  I’m looking at you, science – get cracking.

The most frightening part of the world not ending is how, someday, it’s going to keep on going without us in it.  It’s easy to say the world is ending if it takes out everyone.  Half of everyone’s just too unfair.  If everyone goes, then there really can be nothing better in life than the life I’ve lived, right?

What is my legacy, then?  What are we leaving to our children, and their children, if we keep fear as part of our lives like this?  The circle will flow, unbroken, for millennia more, but right now, we are inhibiting their ability to see past the curve.  Why should they have to strive for more when those before them keep saying an end is coming?  What’s the point?

The example needs to be set.  Years ago, I used to have an expression, “I don’t live every day like it’s my last: I live like it’s my first.”  When I sleep at night, I want to know that I’m getting a new chance the next day – not that the world is going to end in the middle of an amazing dream about flying on the back of a pegasus.  I haven’t held that mantra in ages – so long, that I could tell you when I stopped using it (September 2002).  I think it’s time we bring back the childlike splendor - that unspoiled ambition - and show the world how to think outside sepia tones and death tolls.  Show them that a natural disaster isn’t a celebrity candlelight vigil – this has happened to people who are now scared, and want to be reminded what it’s like to be alive: show them what it’s like.  Help them; give a stranger your love and compassion.

I think what we all need is to look at the world with what we know now, and appreciate that it’s still here.  Look at the details every now and then.  The color, smell, and texture of a blade of grass.  The way a wisp of cloud makes us think of an elephant or a rollerblade.  That it’s okay to be afraid of thunder, but amazed at the light preceding it.  Don’t be afraid to laugh out loud in public.  Hold hands, kiss in church, don’t shy away from lewd humor, and don’t be smug about smart jokes.  Let go of the conventions that remind you of how we’re all dying, and just enjoy that you can live every day like it’s your first.

First Memories

The first memories you have will define your life.  Or, at least, that’s how I’ve heard it said before.  I think this was from people who would like everyone to buy their worldview, available now in hardcover and paperback.  If their opinions were correct, then my life will obviously be that of a care-free four year old forever.

At least I won’t be in diapers.

I remember it surprisingly well, my first memory.  I was running up and down the length of my grandfather’s house.  At one end, the kitchen.  There was a low-slung lamp with a long, thick, beige cloth chord running from the lamp, along the ceiling, and into the wall.  There was an even lower wooden table beneath, with benches to match.  My father and grandfather were playing rummy; I know it was rummy, because that’s what my grandfather played with other people at that time.  He was always playing that, or solitaire.

Running to the far end of the house, there were two bedrooms.  One was dark brown with two windows, on the right end of the hall.  This room contained an old green rocking chair and a foam chair, which flipped into a bed.  There was a rectangular box on a wheeled stand, made of faux wood and wires running out the back and into the wall.  The front was half a fishbowl, and was what I would watch my Saturday morning cartoons on – Reading Rainbow, if it was a weekday.  The other room was just as dark, but brighter from window treatments and the sun bearing down on that half of the house.  There was a nurse going around a bed, and in the bed, my grandmother Nani.  I don’t recall the funeral, but I’ve discussed this with my father nearly a decade ago, and he feels that was the day she died.

I have another memory that may have preceded that one.  I say “may”, as I remember the whole event in a third person perspective.  Almost as if when I was poking at my brain years ago, I shuffled outside of normal brain-time and saw everything objectively.  I would say it was from a camera, but the technology was not there in 1985 to so crisply record the event.  I was sitting on Nani’s lap in their backyard.  There was a tall, aluminum shed, white as they day it was bought, with an old wooden bench leaning against it.  The benches were still red then; once the paint faded, my Grandfather didn’t paint it again.  She was on the bench, holding me, and the sun was bright.

The sun in upstate New York is different.  It’s such a harsh white, it feels like fluorescent lights.  The white snow is made even whiter.  The yellow snow is nearly iridescent.  I like the sunlight in Florida – gives everything this healthy, warm, yellow glow.  Pennsylvania’s okay, but I feel the sunlight still leaves some color saturation to be desired.

The yard had four or five other children playing it, as the sun beat down on my head.  I was young – so young.  Maybe two or three.  The sunlight was blasting my white scalp into a whole new light spectrum. Nani slid her white fishing cap off, popped it on my head, and cinched up the cord around my chin.  I had that hat for years.  This memory came to life when I was about sixteen, and trying to remember whatever happened to that hat.

Needless to say, it was lost.  The side effects of moving a lot as a kid, is that not everything moved with us.  Now in a normal, rational move from one home to another, all of your effects move with you.  As we were usually moving with little notice, boxes and bags would get carried to a storage facility, or just left behind.  Several of those storage centers were never paid off, and I’m pretty sure were featured on Storage Wars since then. 

My original notes from grade school were in one of those, regarding the use of “gravity spheres” as a gravitational lens.  Because when you spend a summer locked in your room with Stephen Hawking books, this happens.  This theory was later graduated to the manipulation of the spheres as a singularity.  Either way, lucky buggers to whoever found those books.

After a move of similar circumstances, our house was broken into.  I realize now that they were after nothing of mine (they were actually after one, specific stash of …items…), but I was still deathly afraid that someone had taken my new notebooks with doodles and theories.

In all my life, I’ve never found a memory to be a true measure of what a person is.  Memories, like genetics, can only provide a rough outline on someone’s life.  While occurring, these moments never take into account future development or environment.  The moments don’t take stock on personal morale or accountability. 

When something happens in our life, we have a chance to make it a proactive or a reactive moment.  Have you ever thought someone was making you angry?  Or that they were making you want to smack them upside the head?  We think, “So and so made me hit them,” or, “Such and such made me angry,” but don’t think that there is no other person in your head telling you to get angry.  No one is holding your strings for that marionette punch.   The same could be said for taking adequate stock of words like “always” and “never”.  Saying I never take out the trash, but I just did eighteen months ago, would make you a liar – not a good way to win an argument.  Now, “rarely” or “barely ever?”  – fine; I’ll let it slide. 

Think about the moments that lead you here.  Have you been reactive to them, or proactive?  Have you been fully accountable for your own actions?  Through the day, think of a situation where you would use words like ‘always’ and ‘never’, and think how it sounds before saying it.

Don’t think about how your life was supposed to be based on a single occurrence years ago. That’s a discredit to the amazing person you can choose to be now.

Voices in Your Head, Sweetie?

Another day; another night I don’t feel like writing.  As you can tell, that’s obviously holding me back.  Maybe I just want an excuse to blow my own horn.  I had set out to do eighty thousand words in eighty days.  As of last night’s thirtieth entry, I have over forty thousand. 

Maybe I just need to vent some steam.  It’s incredible; the amount of their personal accountability people will drop on your shoulders.  They will do jobs halfway, consulting the tarot cards to realize that you know exactly what you’re supposed to do for the other half.  Even better, you’ve told them how to do their jobs, but they still don’t listen to a word you say.

I know I’m guilty of not listening about how to do various things, but largely for asinine things like brushing my teeth in the wrong direction.  Which, by the way, I’m of the ‘direction doesn’t matter’ camp, when it comes to tooth brushing.  I’ve seen some very serious debates in my time over circular versus upper-lower gone on for hours.  These debates may or may not have been drug fueled (or addled).

 Human nature is as human nature does, I suppose.  Just because I wish everyone would take charge of their nature and redirect their lives, doesn’t mean they will.  Maddening – or saddening – as that may be, I need to just let go of it.

A decade of working sales leaves you unconsciously doing several things when talking to people.  First of all, I do not mentally undress them.  That lasted as far as the woman toting a KFC family pack bucket of fried chicken, and she was the only one eating it.  I do try to get around inside their heads so that I can see how they think; how I can drive the conversation.  I don’t try to get in the way of any personal issues.  At the end of the day, their problems are not my problems, and my problems keep me pretty busy as it is.

Years ago, I had this guy walked into a store I was working at.  He heard my exhasperated sigh as a customer left, silently cursing me in some foreign tongue (proper English, maybe).

“You can’t get inside everyone’s head,” he said, back to me as he played the Playstation interactive.  “If you tried to get inside everyone’s head, they’d have to leave a little bit of their mind in yours, and you know what that’s called, don’t you?  Schizophrenia.”

Crazy dude had a point.  It’s not on my agenda to go insane for your sake: I’m doing that well enough on my own.  That’s a thought for today – how often do we try to not just be in the position of someone else, but to also assume responsibility from them?  Do we really need to?  Can’t we trust that everyone will, to some varying degree of success, manage to live their respective lives within the means for which they’ve been allocated? 

These people that scream and claw, they just need to get it out.  The issue is rarely what they’re telling you it is: they just need to let it all out.  So my challenge to you for the day? – Let them.  Go on: let them get it all out.  Don’t be snarky or a smartass.  Kill their direction with a smile and an understanding attentiveness. 

They’ll realize on their own how silly they look.