Great Frank Zappa quote

"The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it's profitable
to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too
expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull
back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you
will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

Frank Zappa

What's the Matter with Kids Today?

...A deliberately pseudo-condescending, pseudo-crabby, and pseudo-provocative headline. Actually, perhaps the answer is "nothing, really", or "no more than ever". At least, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with kids today than there was when I was a kid.

When I use the word "kid" here, I don't actually mean "kids" per se. Actually, I mean young people from--say--fifteenish to 25-ish. So I use the word kid here pseudo-condescendingly. It's easiest to type just three characters. Please substitute your own preferred word as (if) you read on.

I'm thinking about this because in the past few monts, since I've started paying attention to blogs, I've looked at quite a few, and I've observed some things that startle me. This isn't really news, I know, but "young people" (whatever) and their friends today seem to have a different relationship to public conversation than I had with my friends at the same age. Certainly, the personal issues are mostly similar--love, lost love, betrayal, worries about the future, problems with money, nihilistic attitudes. There are some issues that young people face today that I never had to face (fortunately). One that comes to mind is that 20-year-olds are going off to war, and many 20-year-olds must worry about whether they or their friends are going to be next.

I look at personal blogs and see people (friends, former friends, enemies, strangers) talking about the most personal things--sometimes in really unfriendly and uncivil ways. My immediate reaction is that people are being undignified, shouting all their worst for the whole world to hear (or read, actually)--like going on the Jerry Springer show and getting in a cat fight. I suppose I would have dealt with people on a more 1-on-1 basis--either in person, or in writing (using that old-fashioned technology, pen and paper). Sometimes I might have made the mistake of talking to a third party about it, and that would usually end up making thngs much worse--especially if I was saying bad things about the person in question. So my natural impression is that saying (possibly nasty) things in a public place for everyone to hear would be even worse than that. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should all put everything we have on our minds--even the most personal--out in front of the whole world for everyone else to see. I gues I don't know.

When I write things in a public place like this, I think my intention is to write things that might conceivably be interesting to people who've never met me, and perhaps even useful, in some real way. I might not always succeed at that, but that's my intention. But I don't really want to talk about anyone who wouldn't want to be talked about, and I certainly wouldn't want to bitch about someone. It would make me feel dirty. For the most part, I think I wouldn't want to publicize my angst (of which I have planty) to the whole world. Stangers who might be interested in my angst would be interested mostly for its entertainment value ("ha-ha, wow, what a loser!"). Some of my friends might be interested in my problems sometimes, and sometimes not. Some of my friends aren't interested in my deepest inner dramas, except maybe sometimes, at the right time, in the right setting, over the right number of beers or whatever.

When I was (I think) 22, a couple close friends were really unkind to me--kicked me out the house I shared with them for no good reason, when I had no money and nowhere to go, and I had Michelle arriving from across the country, expecting to have a place to stay for a few days while she looked for an apartment for herself. So we had to look for two apartments (we didn't want to live together), with the threat no real home-base to look from if we didn't find anything right away. I set about solving the problem. I don't remember if I told them off--probably not, since that wasn't my way. I probably told them they sucked, as I left. Maybe I complained to a few people. But I wouldn't have made up fliers and stapled them to every telephone pole in town saying "These guys are f***ing a**holes, and someone should kill them!" or whatever. Eventually (after a few years), we patched it up. They apologized, and meant it. We're friends now, 20 years later.

I've had other, more extreme interpersonal conflicts than this one in my lifetime (not many, and not in a long time, fortunately), and I'm glad I never had the opportunity to spew my anger in front of the world about the problems.

Then again, maybe my friends and ex-friends haven't ever done anything truly evil to me. There is that possibility. I guess if your friends did stuff that was evil but not illegal, or illegal but impossible to prove, your only recourse would be to tell the world about it--if only for personal catharsis.

But maybe my reaction to all this merely reveals my lack of understanding of the personal blog as a medium--I don't know. I didn't come of age in the e-world. I'm mostly comfortable in it, but I came of age when there was no such thing as personal computers, let alone the internet.

I'm not actually directing this (is it criticism?) at a particular person here. Though maybe at a particular person's (former?) friends, and to other strangers, I suppose.

Upset that Special Someone For the Holidays

Crabby left-wing iconoclastic journalist Greg Palast is trying to get people to give him money (well, to give his "research foundation" money) to help fund his effort to smoke out all the whacko right-wing rascals. I don't feel like giving him money, but I wish him good luck in his attempts. I guess I'd rather hold onto my money (what little there is) and just be crabby myself at home, or maybe occasionally have a beer with a friend or go see a band. Mostly I stay home.

No one reads anything I write

The cat always hangs out beside me at night when I'm futzing around.

I want to read another novel by Haruki Murakami. I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a couple months ago, and it was just a great book. Oversimplifying the story more than a bit -- it's about a guy whose cat runs away, and his wife takes off because she thinks he's lazy, and he goes looking for the cat and climbs down a dry well and achieves a weirdly chaotic inner peace. That sounds contradictory, but that's what it is. The book is (as my friend Tom said it -- more or less) something of a supremely cool mindf**k. So I want to read another by him.

But, see, there's the little problem that I have like five bookshelves full of books that are in various stages of being read -- from not at all, to barely started, to almost done, to--yes--finished. And I can't necessarily recall which is which. Well, I suppose I could figure it out. But the point is, Maybe I need to read the 100 books I haven't started reading yet, and I need to finish the 25 books I haven't finished.

Hey, that's better than when I was--oh--twenty or so. Those two numbers would have been reversed. Or maybe it just means that I have had more time to accrue a bigger backlog of unstarted.

I talked to my folks tonight, and filled them in on current news, which they were thrilled about, and about my idea that maybe I have or have had AD(H)D or something of the sort. I might not pass the DSM test for it currently--I don't know (though maybe I should find out)--but after reading a bit about it (I started with this wikipedia page about ADHD, and this wikipedia page about Adult attention deficit disorder (AADD), I ended up reading something like 100 different pages that talk about different aspects of it, and different related syndromes. I can recognize some of these traits on both my mother and my father, I think.

My working theory as to why (if my self-diagnosis is true) I have gotten "better" over the past ten years, is that roughly ten years ago, I started my religious habit of drinking a HUGE cup of espresso coffee every morning without fail, because it tastes great, and because it makes me feel good. That and just a general decision to get my life together and stop lying around (literally and figuratively).

I never tasted coffee until I was 23--I couldn't stand the smell of the stuff. But on my semester abroad in the Soviet Union in 1986, it was best of the awful alternatives for beverages in the grubby Moscow cafeterias I ate in.

I tried to find a good description of the most ubiquitous beverage in Moscow cafeterias, kompot. The recipe is basically water and a load of sugar, with a couple pieces of disgusting rotten fruit lying on the bottom of the glass. Anyway, this was the beverage that drove me to coffee in desperation. You need something to wash your greasy pelmenyi down.

So gradually over the subsequent decade, I began drinking coffee more and more regularly, and then stronger and stronger (but generally only one cup in the morning, and otherwise, occasionally another in the evening hanging out with friends somewhere, if it's not a beer-drinking friend).

This is my theory, for the time being, until I find out more.

While looking for the link above about kompot I found this page about living in Russia as a stupid foreigner in 1993/94. I was there 8 years earlier, and then again in about 1995 (but only for a few days the second time).

So Michelle will probably buy me a Murakami book for Christmas, which I will read and love--two years from now. Or I will read it now, and feel bad about not reading the books I already have. Or I will read another book now and wish I were reading a Murakami book. Or I will read another book and forget about the Murakami book totally for two years, until Tom mentions it, and I will say something like, "Hmmmm, I think I may have a copy of that book...or is it another by him...or is it some other book with a similar title?", and I'll go home and look and discover it and read it and love it. Etcetera.

Maybe I should give away a frozen turkey to a lucky person who reads this. Tickets are free. Both of you have an equal chance of winning. Act before midnight tonight. No purchase required.

Michelle and I got out of the house together to see the new Harry Potter movie, which was really good. I haven't read the book. Michelle noticed some things missing that ought to have been in the film. I have never read further than book #2, even though I really loved book #1. See above re: books sitting on the shelf unread.

Canoeing on the Charles

So quiet and warm the night,
Dame Nature seemed a-dreaming;
Twinkling shone the little stars,
O’er the water gleaming.

Behind the shadowing trees
The kind moon tried to hide,
But the saucy, waving leaves
On purpose blew aside.

Our canoe was anchored near
A stone bridge old and grey
Sweet Songs we could sometimes hear,
Now near—now far away.

June bugs glimmered here and there,
The frogs a-wooing went;
Chinese joss sticks through the air
Their fragrant incense sent.

I’ll ne’er forget the River Charles
Where Tom took me canoeing
I learned it isn’t only FROGS
On summers’ nights go wooing.

--Eliza Creelman Vidler, "Candle Flickers", c. 1898