People who need a whack in the head

Ok, so I play World of Warcraft. Not as much as I used to, but a couple times a week for a few hours. It's an entertaining diversion. Anyhow, I belong to a guild which is made of a bunch of players I "met" ingame via connections with real life friends. So, I've played with some of them for about 4 years. We actually do know each other in many important ways. Actually got together a couple months ago in Portland for a real world face to face dinner and drinking. Much fun.

So, the guild has a website to talk about game stuff, strategies for big encounters in game and stuff like that. People also talk about real issues some times too. Imagine what's been the topic of late?

Healthcare reform... to sum up 5 pages of wild commentary: Republicans think universal healthcare will outright DOOM us all... DOOOOOOOOM! Democrats seem to think that may not be the case. Libertarians think its just all bad.

So, the rhetoric has been mostly of the "people should just suck it up" and "Capitalism would be the right way to approach this." Even though when I note that capitalism nearly killed Wall Street and the auto industry they quickly blame the government for the bailouts instead of letting Darwinian economics that place... wait. That's not Capitalism. That's Free Market... yeah, we don't do that here in the US. Free markets are scary to them what's got money and power.

One guild member who has made it excruciatingly clear that he is a staunch conservative finally tipped me over the edge. He said "I don't need them [the government] to tell me what oppurtunites [sic] I need to succeed, I can do it myself, and that is what nearly every American has been doing since the formation of this country."

What the fuck is he talking about? What follows is my response. And pretty much what I want to cram down the throat of every fucking "compassionate conservative" dickweed out there:

That's only true if you were white and male until the 1920's. And until the advent of mass communications of the electronic age, very very few people voted. And then voter fraud was particularly rampant in the post Civil War era South and pretty much all of 19th, much of 20th century Northeastern cities as well.

So, a government for and by the people... not so much. By the corporations and their pet politicians maybe. So, the theoretical mess has been foisted upon us not by us, but by backroom shenanigans of power brokers and monied robber barons.

So, please don't tell me that people don't need help. Yeah, actually I see it every day. People need help. So as much as the 'up-by-your-boot-strappers" would like to divest themselves of any notion of a social contract (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract,_Or_Principles_of_Political_Right) so they can appease their aching consciences while they do as they please and blame the ills of society on the dregs who weight us down... remember, this country was founded by the dregs of every society in the world (except those sent to Australia) on the premise of "Give me you poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to be free..."

If that's no longer the case... if you can rely on no one but yourself... if you can expect no help to maintain even a modicum of tolerable housing, health, food, education... then shutter the windows and sell it all because the American Dream is dead...

No ONE ever made it in this country on their own. Save for a very few exceptions. And it is those exceptions that people keep touting as the example for the rest of us. What a load of crap. We live in community. We live in constant contact with others. No one makes it alone.

If you do, you're a Family Guy episode, so throw up a fence, secede and name yourself King Peter. See if it goes any better for you.

Semantics are important

There are a few things I'd be quite happy never ever ever to hear ever again in my life. (Yes, Michele, that song is one of them.) One of them has peaked my pique today. Not sure why, but where there is grist, mill it. (millet?)

Right: If I were you, I'd (fill in the sage words of advice).

The existentialist in me rails against this phrase for the following reason: if you were me, you/me would have my experiences and thought processes all of which would inevitably lead you/me to the same conclusion at which I/me have found myself the result of which would then be me asking you for input. At which point it all becomes a recursive logic loop upon the likes of which seasons of Star Trek (the Various Incarnations) were founded. A worm hole suddenly appears and I find myself face to face with my Van Dyke'd (not goteed as popular nomenclature would have you believe... Google it, g'wan, I'll wait) evil twin who is crazy good with a rapier.

So, don't say dumb things like "if I were you". Words are important. How we say what we say carries far more weight than the stunningly wrong children's rhyme would have us believe. "Sticks and stones" and all that... yeah, well, chuck a rock at me and I at least know how to respond. As a kid, if you hear things from your parents that aren't so helpful, how do you respond? I have a case load of kids who would vehemently disagree that "names will never hurt me." Not that the parents in question came right out and said dummy, idiot, or whatever.

Oh no no no. That'd be far too easy to address. This is the best type of insidious parenting, "Yes (insert example of child's exemplary behavior, praise, what-have-you), BUT (insert qualifier that completely emasculates the self esteem of said child)." Loads of fun to correct in parents who are NEVER the cause of their child's "problems"...

Really? All this just spontaneously occurred? You, model parent, modeled parenting immaculately? You are the exemplar of humanity you expect your child to become? Huzzah! Huzzah! Huh-freakin-ZAH! And yet, this child with some genetic predispositions toward behavioral patterns and some penchant for environmental imprinting has managed to avoid all of those powerful influences, the nearly nigh omnipresent presence that is you in all your glory to become this wretch of a human? A mockery of all that you bring to their world? This child who deigns to shun that which you would bestow upon them...

Say it ain't so.

The toughest day of my life was when I realized two things: A) I needed to be the person I wanted my kids to become and B) I was going to fail at that horrifically. I am far from perfect. As my kids remind me. But they appreciate the effort and the honesty.

Semantics are important. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can scar so deeply.

Chemicals askew...

One expects certain behaviors from professional peers. Mistakenly apparently, but I thought I had reasonable expectations. I don't know what I was thinking. I make no secret of having ADD. It's a fact. It is part and parcel of who I am. It goes a long way to informing others as to why I think in the slightly askew manner I do. Which often times catches me off guard that other do not indeed think the way I do. Mostly I notice this when some one else and I say the same thing the same way at the same time followed immediately by a look of stunned horror slamming across their countenance only to be peeled away as they attempt to find humor in this.

Or so it seems to me. I may be interpreting the event a bit askew.

In regard to my ADD and a less than ideally structured work environment and how I struggle to manage all the paperwork details, minutia about which what goes where when and for whom... none of which was ever adequately explained (anyone ever heard of an Employee Handbook? I hear they're all the rage ever since these guys came up with the concept of desktop publishing)So, me and ADD, anyhow, I had a coworker say to me "I know just how you feel."

Uh huh... reeeeaally?

Those words are forbidden in my profession. See, I do NOT emphatically DO not KNOW how you, or anyone else for that matter, feel about anything... eh-nee-thing. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

I know how I might feel in similar circumstances, but it is all conjecture and supposition. It is the difference between sympathy and empathy. A person may be going through a difficult time. A difficulty of their own design and thus are merely getting their come-uppance. Do I sympathize? Nope. However, they are having a difficulty. I have had difficulties. I can empathize with how that sucks, is demoralizing... etc etc etc [insert counselor blather here].

My coworker does not have ADD. She does not know what it is like for me in my head when the day's demands have dragged the last vestiges of a coherent train of thought out into the parking lot and kicked the living daylights out of it and handed me back as spinning, foggy, dazed pre-frontal cortex that wants nothing more than to become blissfully unconscious for 15 to 20 minutes. My brain just wants to reboot.

It would be like me saying I know just what my mother, sister, wife and daughter went/go through with their period merely because I've been around them my entire life. Not friggin likely. All I know is I want some of them to take The Pill so they are not homicidal and I want another to stay away from it for the exact same reason.

Point... I know I had one. If this daffy bint is going to say to another professional something patently wrong wrong wrongitty WRONG... what is she saying to her clients? I shudder to think.

Language... it's all about language. I listen to the words people utter about their loved ones... about themselves... about hateful things done to or by them... about humanity in its chaotic manifestations... I listen to words said by a mother to a daughter that cuts deeper than anything she has done to herself... memories of fathers years missing... of wondering why what was done was done... words uttered in attempts to make sense of acts insensible.

I do not know what it is to feel these things they feel. But I know what it is to hurt. I can listen and witness. I have seen it make enough of a difference to know it is not wasted.

Does it play a role in my own struggle against depression? I'm sure to some degree. At times, it also helps. It provides perspective. Helps me remember it is just chemicals in my head... chemicals that are slightly askew. Only in this case, not in a good way. And there's the difficulty; finding the edge where one bleeds into the other and stepping back... I find I have wandered far beyond the edge and into a landscape I had left behind years ago. Familiar and desolate... comfortable and discomfiting...

Chemicals askew... "Oh bother," said Pooh as he worked to hide Piglet's mangled corpse.

Inquisitive do-gooders

I am not as mysterious and opaque as I imagine I am. Well, maybe mysterious. But my coworkers quizzed me today about my mood. They'd noted a distinct lack of "me" lately. Which I take to mean my sardonic, cogent and insightful banter has been less couched in witticisms and bon mots of late.

Yeah, well there's nothing like a good case of anhedonia to bring a mood down.

It's hard enough to feign caring with clients who need some clinical help (versus those who are merely using up oxygen and hastening the Universe's headlong dash into it's ultimate entropic state... which since nothing changes at that point, can it truly be called an end?) let alone muster my dwindling resources to get all rallied up for the manufactured crisis looming just across the horizon; moving offices and divvying resources.

Ye gods... we are professionals. Let's not cry over which figurines get put in which play therapy room. Really. I kid you not. I couldn't give a shit and if your clients can't cope with that sort of change, there's some serious shit that needs to be addressed. And I for one do not have the energy to friggin help you manage your fragile, sad, nervous, whiny pathology.

So when they ask me what's up? I shrug, roll my eyes and try to decide how real to be with these people.

I have little reason to be depressed. I have a job... it's an ok-ish job. It has the plus of being a job anyhow. Bills are being met, more or less on time. Some money is being saved to replace the rapidly disintegrating couches. I can put fuel in my bike... yeah, and yet, there it is; depression.

And not the fun kind of melancholia either. Navel gazing and sophomoric philosophizing Byronic moodiness this is not. This be full on righteous despairing of purpose against the corrosive weight of time... mmmm, tasty.

I wonder at times which came first; my existentialist angst or depression. Is the ADD genius confined by the realities of the interstitial existence and the inherent limitations of biology (hence the ADD) and that feeds the depression? Or does depression arise from some ineffable quality that is itself then expressed ADD-ishly thus creating a wicked feedback loop of frustrations vs accomplishments?

I see my daughter struggle with school. Not with learning, with the crap of school, of conforming to that regimen and how she does not fit. Lord knows they will not do shit to help it fit her... Sorry, teachers, public schools are not the place for the odd kids. Not your fault. You've got to help the middle of the bell curve. Get a standard deviation away and there's gunna be trouble. On the low side, there's tons of help. On the 'gifted' side there's... more stuff to do, but only if you can organize yourself and haven't already been crushed into ennui by the inevitable "Teacher Who Just Doesn't Get It"... we've all run into them.

Mr. Assenheimer... Mr. Maybower... Yeah, I'm talking to you. Failed me in freshman English and totally messed up my chances at having Algebra make sense...

Eat it! I've got 2 Master's degrees... assholes.

I see these things and I despair.

I try not to.

But I do.

I think I hide it well.

But I don't.

And inquisitive do-gooders notice and ask how I'm doing. And I have to decide how real to be with them.

Some days I'm more real.

Some days I shrug and hope my ride home sweeps some of the weight away. For at least a little while.

Oh, lookit! A thought!

So, a friend pointed me to this article http://www.marketingvox.com/kids-online-time-jumps-63-in-5-years-044616/

To which I said so? Big whoop. If I read it correctly they are talking about a jump from 7 hours to 11 hours PER MONTH. I shall wait for the oxygen to refill the room after the collective gasps hoovered it up... Right. And the stat 65%... ok. Um, for a headline it's sensational, but what is it really? Is that a number to really be alarmed about? Or should we be concerned that the average kid spends 1600 minutes a week watching TV vs 3.5 minutes of meaningful interaction with their parents? (I'll cite that as soon as I find the article, it's at work) 3.8 hours a day of TV vs .5 minutes of substantive interaction with parents...

Not Five minutes... POINT 5 minutes otherwise known as 30 seconds. Holy CRAP! I feel like I ought to apologize to my kids for bothering them so freakin much. Ya know, actually asking them how their day went and l i s t e n i n g. Sure, maybe it's because I'm a counselor... or maybe I'm a counselor because of it.

See that's where the whole "Internet use up 65%" alarmism is so damned misleading. It's meaningless! Is it because schools are encouraging kids to do research online? Isn't that a valid and good reason to do something? Maybe it's because they are chatting with their friends and don't have cell phones to txt their little minds into oblivion? Oh, heavens! Not internet chat! Worry worry worry! Good god, maybe the parents ought to be more involved and thereby lessen their childrens' exposure to unknown elements beyond their control. But if the kids aren't chatting/playing games online/being social at a distance, parents better not groan when the kids say A) "I'm bored", B) "There's nothing to do, or C) "Would you drive me to (where ever) or "Can (whoever) come over?"

And besides 7 hours to 11 hours a month. Who's kids are these? Mine must be screwing up the curve something FIERCE. 30 days in a month = 720 hours. So previously kids were on line about 1% of the time. Now... 1.5% of the time. Hmmm, THAT's a statistic that seems meaningful. Why? Not just because I came up with it, but because it has context. There's more than just numbers. There's a sense of how much of a month that ends up being. It's like... 15 minutes a day up to 25 minutes? Or so. My math is sketchy.

Bah. I've spend more time being bemused by this that your average kid ages 2 to 11 spends on the net.

After 4 years and 64k in the hole...

and after the monthly payment on that student loan debt I am making... fucking minimum wage.

Things I Learned from My Dad, Part 2

Ok, because the Big Sis got me thinking and cuz I think he’s due some credit…
Things I Learned from My Dad part 2.
Ok, don’t remember being taught how to shake a hand, but that is what I recall being taught. Moving on and to why this is relevant at all. As if relevance ever played a part in my skull. My bike, my toy of toys, my nemesis, my selfish indulgence, my Honda CBR 1000rr go fast, take your breath away with acceleration even exotic supercars (Lambos, Porsches, Ferraris, Astons et al) except the Ariel Atom (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaWoo82zNUA) cannot hope to match. Naught to “Um, Gee, no, officer, I didn’t realize I was going THAT fast. Yes, I’ll surrender the key” in 3.5 seconds.
Back to Dad. Well, until yesterday (2/4/09) the bike had been mostly disassembled in my garage since… oh September. Why? Because I believe I can do what the grease munkies down at the local shop can do even if I can’t do it quite as efficiently. I believe I can pull nuts and bolts off something that is frankly a brilliantly high end piece of modern engineering, fiddle about with the innards and put it back together in such a way as to A) not have pieces left over, B) have the object de not-working work and C) not only work but have actually FIXED whatever was wrong with it in the process.
I have a habit of leaping before I look. The converse is also true; looking and never leaping. Knowing that bit of the equation, I have a tendency to heave myself from the precipice, notice there’s scant water in the pool and wonder how to change adjust my drag coefficient enough to slow myself down so the mere puddle of liquid will be sufficient to keep me from splatting on the tiling. (“Arch! Arch!... Angels!”)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089126/
This fearlessness, nay recklessness I owe to my Dad. I recall being given carte off-white at an early age to use his tools as long as I didn’t hurt them and they were put back where they came from. Much to the distress of a few mechanical clocks, and other assorted items that were deemed ‘take-apartable’. But the watershed came when I needed to work on the bicycles in high school. My friend, Mark Podojil, was coming from Ohio to Connecticut to join me on a ride out on Cape Cod with my church youth group. In order to make sure the bikes were up to it, the pastor advised doing maintenance on them. With Dad’s ok I tore the bikes apart. Given this was junior year in high school and things were… uh, tense between us often this strikes me as remarkable. I got the bikes put back together and they worked fine.
Next was the Lawnboy. A simple 2-stroke engine, but not to someone who knew nada about internal combustion engines. I mowed the lawn and got tired of the thing dying on me, a lot. I was given the go ahead to pull it apart, clean it and reassemble it. As I recall, it worked better afterwards. Might have simply been the new spark plug, but I still did it.
Since then, I’ve yanked parts out of a Chevy Cavalier (minor cross threading of transmission lines in the process, but still no more expensive than having someone else change the radiator), the Izusu Rodeo, Ford Probe, and Honda Accord. I’ve torn apart and rebuilt a number of bicycles over the years. I’ve pulled windows from one house and successfully replaced them, replaced siding on both houses I’ve lived in as an adult, and lots of little projects along the way. OK, Mom inspired some of the interior fearlessness, but Dad gave me the willingness to use tools much to my left thumb’s detriment.
You gave me the confidence to try things, that I can do things that seem daunting. I repainted the house this summer and had to redo the siding around the chimney (metal insert fireplace/chimney) which led to having to redo some of the internal framing due to dry-rot. While I was teetering a story and a half in the air nailing T1-11 in place (I loathe that junk), the neighbor happened to ask how I knew how to do this stuff. I glibly answered, “Never assume my willingness to do something has anything to do with my knowing how to do that thing.”
That is what my Dad taught me.