Category: the rest of us

what do you hear?

“The faculty of embarrassment was located in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex by neurologists who made brain-damaged subjects sing along to “My Girl” and then listen to their own singing played back without musical accompaniment.”

From Harper’s Findings June 2011

Forget “brain-damaged”, most people are at first uncomfortable with their own voice when they hear it played back on another device – even embarrassed. Somehow the resonance of our voice in our heads often sounds quite different from how we sound to the rest of the world, and that sudden realization can be startling. Why is that? Is it just the surprise that we sound different? Personally, I was shocked at just how nasally I sounded playing back my voice on our little cassette recorder as a kid. I remember asking, “Is that how I sound?” And my sister giving me the bad news.

Makes me wonder, too, whether people hear other people’s voices differently from one another, possibly related to the size, shape and location of the ear and ear drum. Could it be that my daughter’s enjoyment of the singing of her pubescent Disney stars is related to just how differently her ear is to mine? Why is it that bagpipes make me want to tear my ears off while others find them beautiful?

I’ve often wondered if other people see colors differently as well. Is my blue your green? Why should they be the same exactly? To me it actually makes more sense that we all see them somewhat differently, if not completely. My brown is your gray. Without any prodding as far as I can tell, my daughter fell in love with pink as a color – as so many young girls do, but I’m certain (no, hopeful) that “my girl” will soon learn to love other colors as vividly. Something oddly creepy about an older woman purposely surrounding herself in too much pink.

To each his or her own, I suppose, and for good reason maybe.

The Grover BORGquist

The Grover BORGquist: resistance, apparently, is futile

The Grover BORGquist descended upon the Publicant’s and entered the party through the bottom, taking the easy path past the least of them; then veered right again and captured most of the rest of them. They signed themselves over, pledging themselves to assimilation with the BORGquist, They gave in and gave up on independent thought and action. (‘Rolled over and took it up the sick bay,’ might say.)

Cantinacrats

Meanwhile at the Democantina, all hell was breaking loose again. The party was on, everyone was represented – locals, freaks, foreigners – and everybody was demanding to be heard, like barkers at some whacked out baazar and there was no order because there were too many people and too many opinions; factions; ‘factionistas’ one man opined. Cantinacrats. But the music was good.

learn after you leap

“Scientists concluded that … frogs learned to leap before they learned how to land,” which is obvious at one level, I suppose, but also inspiring at another. Not only for many of us who experience a certain amount of trepidation when up against that moment that separates the leapers from the losers, but for frogs, as well, who’ve been relegated to croaking, slow-moving blobs by much of popular culture.

It’s hard to learn how to land without leaping first, but having the fortitude to leap first is where the excitement begins. Suddenly, I wish I were more like a frog.

bipartisan sleazery

“An analysis of 20 years of politicians’ sex scandals reveals that Republicans have slightly more of them – 34 since 1990, compared with 27 for Democrats. Republicans have had more scandals that involved prostitutes, politicians claiming to stand for ‘family values,’ and underage boys; Democrats’ scandals are more likely to involve female staffers, sexual harassment, and underage girls.”

It seems Republicans are kinkier, gayer and more hypocritical and Democrats are, quite frankly, less interesting in their extra-marital screwing-abouts.

generations and freedoms

“Every generation brings more freedoms.
Every freedom brings generations of problems.
That’s what makes life interesting.”

A truer truth has never been uttered. Okay, maybe it has, but this is pretty damn true. And where does it all end? Certainly we temper ourselves over time; the orgies of the sixties didn’t take long to look rather self-indulgent, so let’s follow that sex bit a bit.

As a kid growing up in the 1970s a naked woman was something to be mostly wondered about and occasionally glimpsed in National Geographic magazine or, in utterly sublime moments, a father’s Playboy. But it really was a glimpse, personally cut short by our sense of propriety (20 percent) and fear of being caught (80 percent). But it was the limited exposure that gave it its magic. Had I been put in a room with a twelve foot high stack of Playboys, Penthouses and Oui magazines back when I was 10 or 12 without a chance of being caught, I’m not sure how I would have handled it, but I do know that whatever magic I glimpsed in the former scenario, this full-on, uncensored immersion in it all would have been certainly unsettling and quite frankly, magic-killing.

That’s what it must be like for kids today growing up in the age of the Internet. They’re always just a couple of clicks away from the most unseemly copulation by a still shocking number of people who are willing to film themselves having sex, thinking about sex, fondling themselves or simply looking naked and stupid. It’s one thing to have a population of exhibitionists* among us and quite another to give them this border crossing, ever-present, technicolor stage to exhibit.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of relatively open sexuality.** To this day I’m shocked at how much our particular country is willing to put up with a constant fire hose of violence, murder, shots, cuts, rapes, beheadings, molestations and so on on television, but if a woman’s breast slips from her blouse, we cry bloody murder. It seems most European countries have a much better balance on that particular front.

Hopefully this new-found instant access to smut won’t have a huge affect on young people and it appears that it hasn’t, at least to date. These strange and explicit freedoms seem to have been mostly welcomed with a big yawn. The kids aren’t all crazed sexophiles. Instead, teenage pregnancy has gone down. I suppose they are like I was and not particularly impressed by sex en mass, but instead recognize that there is sex and sexuality and then there’s this parody of it all we find on the web (in magazines, television and other media).

One need only replace sex with chocolate (some would gladly, by the way) and you get the idea.

* I dub thee the copulation population…just have to.

**To wit, this relatively innocent and earnest college paper written as a mythology of Prince.

the sunnyside upside to death

Writing and posting that about the sunnyside up show brought to mind this article reprinted in part in The Week magazine, which reminds us that our online life – emails to tweets, posts to updates to comments – will be with the rest of the world long after we’re dead. And anyone looking in to you for any reason (curious relatives or anyone else if you’re somehow famous) will find that and only that. You, will not be present there, but this pile of information stuff will be. And they’ll draw conclusions on whatever portion they read, listen to or view. That’s it. That’s you.

I’ve heard it said that being remembered in a positive way is heaven, afterlife and . You continue then to affect life in a positive manner. You can do good long after you’re long gone.

But the post is so quickly drawn, obtuse and mostly stupid. What would anyone draw from that in a hundred years? Jeez.

Unless of course there actually is a right wing conspiracy on the set and among the Sunnyside Up Show cast replete with subliminal messages and imprisoned hosts, and then i’ll be lauded a hero and who would believe me at that point that it was all a coincidence? That’s when things will get complicated. It’s a good thing I’ll be dead.

Reflections on the Wisconsin Dells One: Dellfishness

The hissing ladies were just to the right of where this pic ends

Any time this sheer number of regular folks descend upon an attraction-filled destination like the Wisconsin Dells one gets a good glimpse of the true selfishness of our fellow man and woman. Exhibit A: The lazy river is a river-like pool that begins and ends in the same place – so it’s a loop, not unlike a racetrack with curves and turns and so on. In the middle are generally places for people to sit and sun themselves or fake scenery – often mountains, cliffs and rocks where tiny waterfalls drop into the chlorine current. And there is a current – water pushes people lounging on one and two seater tubes (you may remember when they used to be actual auto, truck and tractor tire inner tubes and the havoc that wreaked upon your skin over a nice hot day in the sun – there were no two-seaters back then) in an endless and lazy loop around and around. Of course, there are a limited number of tubes to be had and here on the sunniest of sunny Fourth of July weekends, the ratio between tube lovers and tubes had inched up quite a bit.

One of those beautiful days, I had the experience to witness two middle to late-middle aged women (both saggy, tan and bird-like), who had nabbed two of the most coveted double tubes (those with one hole closed – a perfect safe spot for very little kids and anyone who wants to stay that much more out of the water), and set those two super tubes up to block the sun – to create a little shady spot just for them! Unsuspecting and water-logged folks would walk up and grab one of the tubes, one assumes to use it in its intended manner, only to be verbally accosted (better yet, stabbed, shot, bitten) by the two women who would quite literally hiss in unison, “We’re using those!” That in such a manner that the hopeful tuber would quickly drop the tube and slink away. Brutal, that.

There’s a lot of negativity in places that try so hard to make us happy. Theme parks, water parks, carnivals and fairs all harbor lots of very negative energy, mostly because we being forced and then trying too hard ourselves to HAVE A GOOD TIME! I never went here as a childless person and I think I know why. These places are for families for the most part because very few adults can be entertained by an acre or two of pools, water slides, fountains, lazy rivers and so on beyond a very limited amount of time – no matter how much liquor or other mind-alt you put in to the mix. Kids, however, generally could be left there indefinitely until they became emaciated, shriveled and the water froze. So the general mood of most families is a mix of crazed, impatient kids and exhausted and ultimately pissed off parents. Fun!

I can’t tell you how many times I met eyes with another spent dad and in that split second we exchanged this:

“This is fucking crazy.”

“Totally fucking crazy.”

“I want to kill my kids.”

“Kill mine while you’re at it.”

“We should get drunk.”

“Seriously.”

“See ya.”

“Okay, bye.”

And we’d each shuffle off toward the next attraction. “Attraction” – that’s good. Like files attracted to feces or moths to open flames.