squidbag

SquidWordle

So a bunch of kids got the same assignment from their teacher today, and they all came into the library to make these using a couple of different sites. Since I had to help them install Java and help them print and so on, I ended up being exposed to this stuff over & over again. The site I used is called Wordle, and assuming Wordle can be used as a verb, I simply had it Wordle this page, the front page of the Squidbag. Go, look - Wordle your own stuff.

Always Words

It remains to be seen whether we, the human race, are capable of labeling without backloading a lot of assumed or misappropriated content.

"Calling a spade a spade" is one of those manly calls for simplicity and honesty which has its origin in the classical Greek (Plutarch) but that we avoid for the most part because of the history of racism that we can choose - or not - to backload into it. Even this exhortation for honest and brief naming of a thing sidesteps a deeper reflex of many people, which is to assume judgment attached to the naming of something. That is, people attach judgment to the very act of saying, because our words carry the baggage of history.

Indeed, simple labeling is actually a form of judgment, taxonomy is a classification, separation, distinguishing this thing from that. It is a mistake, however, to treat the words and phrases we use in everyday discourse, our everyday speech, with this kind of knife's edge precision, because while scientific classification is meant to be bloodless and free from passion, the things we talk about with each other most certainly are filled with emotion and perspective and personal experience. They have to be, or they wouldn't exist in the first place - or at bare minimum, they'd certainly be skull-bendingly boring.

When someone commits suicide, it creates a ripple of havoc that extends out into the world. In the case of Robin Williams, that ripple is huge, due to the impact of his life on this world of people. Part of the wave of havoc is the emotional reaction of the survivors, whose reactions are complicated. It'd be great, by comparison, if people were just "sad." That would be so much easier to deal with. But that's not how people work. Packed into the hole in your guts created by the tragic news of loss is a bunch of anger, confusion, guilt, and a desire to learn from the experience coupled with a sense of futility that as much as you'd like for no one to ever do this thing again, people are going to keep doing it.

So, then - taking a douche newsanchor to task for calling Robin a coward? He's a newsguy and should know better, but is suicide a cowardly act? To say that it isn't - ever - infers that choosing to live isn't braver than not choosing that, and I'd like to think that choosing living takes a hell of a lot more guts than choosing not to. By contrast, then, and in this context, suicide is a cowardly act. Labeling someone a coward over one act does not make sense, but calling the act what it is, again, in this context, is not inappropriate. We're angry with Robin for removing himself from our lives - people say dumb stuff when they're angry - it's just possible that the CNN guy needs to be cut some slack.

Neither is labeling the act "selfish" a completely wrong thing to do - suicide is, I believe, an inherently selfish act. Loading judgment into that word is the problem. Why do we have a problem calling the act of suicide selfish when it is entirely concerned with the self? Whether a person is capable or not of thinking of others at that moment does not enter into it; it is a self-centered act. Labeling the whole person selfish, or even the baseline connotative assumption that selfishness is always bad - these are what get us into trouble. Taking time for myself is selfish - taking too much time or all of the time would make me a selfish person. The rule of excess is important to remember. There's nothing wrong with sex or cheesecake - it's too much of either that lead to problems.

We invariably cast blame, and it is easy to blame the depressed person who killed themselves without acknowledging (as such knowledge was once thrust upon me) that depression changes brain chemistry and thus perception, and so the person who killed themselves may not have been looking at things in a way that non-depressed person - or perhaps even, any other person - can fully comprehend. You can't get inside someone's head, and you probably wouldn't want to. This is the thrust of the world filling up with "depression is a monster"-type articles. We need reminding.

It's also easy to blame others, but at the end of the day, if someone wants to kill themselves, they will, unless you rob them of their freedom, and even then, people find ways. The blame here is pointless. The best that we can do as the group left behind is engage in the previously mentioned exercise in futility - knowing that it will happen again, always, but trying your best to not have it happen once in a while. Those are called victories, because those individual people keep going, and that is a success.

To end, then: Robin Williams was an important part of my late-Middle and early High School existence. While my first memories of him are as Mork, obviously, he was in and out of my awareness until I got my hands on a VHS copy of A Night at the Met. I was amazed when I got it because Robin went from being goofy to being wise and livewire comedy genius in one hour. I must have played that tape hundreds of times, putting in my VCR and turn my TV's black levels up and falling asleep to just the soundtrack. Like a lot of people, I loved Good Morning, Vietnam, the Fisher King, One Hour Photo, his Genie & Fender the robot, and a bunch of other stuff, but A Night at the Met will always be Robin Williams for me.

Godwin's Lunch

I can't decide if my bread is openly racist, or just makes poor font choices.

Maybe it's just me (it isn't), but there's something Teutonic about the word "Whitewheat" as displayed here on this bread. This is not a font choice with which to hit a man who has to make sandwiches at 6 o'clock in the morning. The mind wanders. Maybe it's the pairing of the word "white" with this particular font, but there's something happening here that makes me think my bread was probably stomping around the kitchen in squared-off boots listening to crappy metal and shouting slogans before I came downstairs this morning. It probably heard me on the steps and concealed itself among the other products in the breadbasket like a viper, like a lit bomb, like a cancer.

My bread is planning something. My bread thinks that it is better than other breads, and will gather like-minded breads to the cause, demanding tests of toasting and crustily declaring itself the "final solution to hunger." Like yeast, it is active and rising. Look at how it proclaims its purity, free from the artificial preservatives, colors, flavors and corn syrups of what it likely thinks of as "mongrel breads." Peep the pairing of "healthy" and "white" across the bold red and black - an accident? Can it be a coincidence that this brand comes from "Nature's Own?" Everything else is "unnatural?" Happenstance? The hell you say!

I've got my eye on you, Whitewheat.

Firework Honesty

I think I should be allowed to work with fireworks companies on warning language and names for products:

"Warning: Use of this explosive as finale will lead to laughter from neighbors."

"Your Guess is as good as Ours."

"Appears to be dud; isn't."

"Potential Freddy Krueger Face Within."

"Advisory: Fizzles and Pops Unimpressively."

"Drinking+Fireworks=Fun!"

"Scatters Ash over Neighborhood Indiscriminately."

"Best when combined with corn syrup and fertilizer."

"Firework will smoke like a punk for 5 minutes, then explode when no one is looking."

"Fun Increased by Tying Fuses Together."

"Place face DIRECTLY Over Firework when Lighting."

"Explosives are a great segue."

"Remember to light in populated areas at least two days before appropriate holiday."

"Designed to vanish over neighborhood treeline."

"Irrevocably marks paint, skin, hair, siding, concrete, wallets."

"Roman Candles can be held in mouth."

"Warning: Never Goes Out."

"Good luck, sucker."

NAMES:

Loud Global Imperialism

'Splode.

The Unexpected

Dog Frightener

Wakey-Wakey Baby!

Just Pointless Smoke

Just Annoying Sounds

Whoops

The Second Coming

Human Torch

The Flamer

Ouch, #4

SkyScream

From Last Year

Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

James Brown at the Apollo 11

Rain of Voodoo Hellfire

Flak

Flaming Eagle Vomit

OK Corral

Sudden Blindness

Pyromaniac Disappointment

ThunderFist

Bitch Cassidy

Immediate Traumatic Stress Disorder

The Wolf Blitzer

The Sol Rosenberg

The Katy Perry

Scorched Earth

Autism Trigger

Death from Below

Ignored Safety Warning

WHAT?!?

Retinal Damage

Quintet of Similar Bang Sounds

Diminishing Returns

Driveway Scorcher

Neck Cricker

Oh, Shit.

Random BOOMS!

Seizure Inducer

Pull Up G-12

Enough Purple Fucking Sparks

Prolonged Golden Showers

Explodey Fishies

Nub Maker

Drunken Freedom Happening

Hate not Heritage

Cock Rocket Happy

Cheap Chinese Import

Run, You Moron

Goodtime American Fortune Blaster

Is That What It Does?

Send My Friend to Africa

This is Whitney. And Tanzania. We're trying to get them together.

As I sit here eating mango, my good friend, Whitney Flatt, who has helped with my mental health on more than one occasion, and who is, in all likelihood, one of the most giving people you will ever meet, should you be damned lucky enough to actually meet her, is trying to scratch together enough - well, scratch, to finance a trip to Tanzania, where she will speak Swahili, help those in need, and escape elephants. This is what I have pictured, anyway.

How can you contribute money and not read the rest of this entry? Well, you can click your happy ass on over to her project website at 2Seeds, throw in, and move on. But you'd miss your chance to read her answers to your collective theoretical questions about her journey:

Hey, Whitney - where the heck are you going?

I will live in a small village in the Usambara Mountains just outside the city of Korogwe, Tanzania. I will be a part of what is called The Bungu Project, a project that works in most host village and adjacent villages to diversify crop output and improve market access.

Who are you working for? Who's putting this thing together?

The 2Seeds Network, and despite the number "2" in their actual name, the artist currently known as Prince is not affiliated with their work. Wish he was, though - that guy's got deep pockets.

Okay, so what are you up to over there?

My official title is “Project Coordinator,” and for the last five years, Project Coordinators from 2Seeds have been partnering with 8 different villages around Korogwe. Our goal is to undertake agricultural and market initiatives that will foster human capital development. All that fancy lingo aside, our goal is to help people live the best lives they can possibly live, ascending from the confines of poverty.

As a Project Coordinator, I will not only plant and harvest crops with these partners, but I will also provide micro-loans for projects as well as help teach basic management skills, helping my partners run their own profit and loss sheets for agricultural/market initiatives. A lot of times in development work, the old adage of “teach a man to fish” versus “giving a man a fish” has been tossed around to describe how development should work. But 2Seeds doesn’t believe that our partners are inept or that they are incapable of knowing how to properly farm their own land. They simply don’t have the capital to invest in their land and/or take risks. So my role isn’t to teach a man how to fish; my role is to be there when he desires to buy the line, the hook, and the bait and to help him consume/market his catch in such a way that helps him move from subsistence farmer to one that makes a profit and removes himself from the cycle of poverty.

So, what; there's no actual fish involved?

No.

Okay, how much dough do you need?

$8,000. This includes everything from my living expenses to agricultural initiatives we’ll undertake in my village. Any amount that anyone can throw into the hat would be great, though - even if I get a whole crowd of people at just a few dollars each, there's some matching funds to be had, so in this case, every little bit does really, truly help.

How long are you going to be gone? 12 months, August 11, 2014 to approximately July 15, 2015.

Do you really have to learn Swahili before you go?

Yes.

Really?

Yes. There’s minimal English spoken in my rural village.

Last but not least, why should anyone give you money?

You get to become a partner in something amazing and help people live up to their fullest economic potential. Plus, people always complain that they never know how their money is being used when they give to charitable organizations. But when you donate to my project, you literally become a partner in my village. I am accountable to each of my partners and will give you updates every 6 months on how your funds are being utilized.

Convinced yet? It's so easy to donate to this project at this link, that you could have done it while you were thinking about doing it. Here again, too - ANY amount. Chuck a buck in the bucket, and if she racks up a bunch of folks, it's a good thing. And you know, if you've got more than a buck, she'd like to see that, too. Ask for more details. Ask for emails in Swahili. Tell your friends, family, foodie acquaintances, and your rich uncle. She's a little less than a quarter of the way to eight grand, and I think we should show her what anonymous strangers who claim to care about other groups of anonymous strangers can do while sitting on their asses at computers.

Don't you?

Abby is Eight

On the 24th, my daughter Abby turned eight.

To celebrate, she requested a "luau." Her internal definition of this was quite loose and involved fish, leis, pineapple, grass skirts, torches and music. The genesis of this was the end of the school year LAST year, when the class had a luau of sorts to send off the year. Apparently, she needed to make it her own badly enough that she hung onto it for a year.

I hung netting and bought pineapple, made mix disks and invited a bunch of girls over to bash the hell out of a Tiki head pinata in my front yard, infuriating the ill-behaved nextdoor neighbor girl who was pointedly not invited. There was playing in water, dancing, numerous ad hoc congaesque line dance-marching, making torches out of construction and tissue paper, and many Abby-chosen party foods like black olives, wasabi peas, beef jerky and multi-colored Goldfish. The girls crashed in the living room after midnight after watching (and singing along with) Frozen, which, I grant you, is perhaps an odd choice for a luau-themed event.

The following day, her actual birthday, she never made it out of PJs. They had a Wake 'n' cake 'n' bacon breakfast, followed by present opening and playing around until folks went home. She requested Chinese take out late in the day and spent relaxing time playing with her new My Little Pony and Lego toys, among others.

At eight, she is mercurial. She wakes up in a good mood and goes to bed grumpy. She loves and is fiercely loyal to her family and friends and quick to stick up for an underdog or smaller person. She likes to race my car to the stop sign in the mornings after I drop her with her walking partners, and thinks it's stupid that she has to ride in the back while still kind of wanting to keep her car seat. She hates when you won't listen. She is easily flustered by choice situations, especially when they are arbitrary. The other day she openly wept at the ZZ Ward song "Last Love Song," which is admittedly sad. She's excited about learning to REALLY ride her bike and her backstroke back this Summer. According to data collected by her mom this morning, she's on track to be about 6'1" when she's finished growing into her feet and legs. She generally has fewer bruises than she used to, but that's because she's getting better at stuff. She still needs to be tucked in every night, and listens to the same mix CD she's had for about a year.

Happy Eighth, Abby.

Poll Position

A week ago today, I worked the polls for Rutherford County's Republican primary. Because I never had. I've been working in politics (kind of, more or less) for about 15 years now, and I got my degree in Poli-Sci; seemed like part of the package to go on in and work the polling place.

I've lurked around them on election days before - doing GOTV stuff (including once nearly assaulting a person) and getting the numbers for reporting. The first time I ever did that part, I was with Mike Basford and one of the machines broke down and we had to wait for a dot matrix printout for an additional hour. Nerve. Wracking. Nothing about these interesting election experiences prepared me for the mind-melting monotony that is a primary one month after city elections that mostly no one cares about.

I was required to be there at 6 in the morning (which is early for a loyalty oath), because I had two responsibilities, "machine operator" and "computer / printer hook-up." This second one was referred to by the registrars as "IT guy," which I found terrifying because I am not one of those. I arrived and set up tables and then took the next 30 minutes or so setting up three laptops, mice and printers and networking them to the dedicated hub that I brought with me. Once everything was active, I helped set up the actual voting booths, which took longer than it should have. The two other machine operators were well past retirement age, and this may have contributed to the delay. By 7:05 we were ready to go, with the one hitch that we hadn't actually ENABLED THE MACHINES TO START VOTE COUNTING when the first guy tried to vote. I got that fixed in about 30 seconds and we were off to the races.

'The races' were thirteen hours with 122 voters participating. I did get a lunch, read two books, and there was one printer failure (toner cartridge which required an "unvote" of one person and took 15 minutes to fix) but otherwise, this was easily the most boring thing ever. And I had jury duty the previous week. I did help a bunch of people, and had to explain more than once what the advantage was of Democrats voting in a GOP primary. The high point of my day was when an olive-skinned man named Khaled Mohammed came to vote and I, observing his name, said, "Khaled Mohammed; that must be tough to deal with here." He appreciated my empathy and told me his story, stating that I had helped reaffirm his faith in the electoral process.  Good times.

I'm glad that I did it, I'll do it again - I'm glad I'm not doing it again today.

Jury Redux

The Estes Kefauver federal building in downtown Nashville was probably a pretty swank edifice in the 1990s. The interiors are all vintage from that period – lots of chromes and heavy wood paneling in light colors displayed in anonymous and cloned windowless corridors. I know this because during my day of jury “service,” I was relentlessly pinballed down them half a dozen times and the overall feeling one has at the end of this is of being harassed. 

I don't inherently resent jury duty, and thought, once again, that it would provide an opportunity to learn a little bit about the system while discharging my duties as a citizen. I don't feel like I did any of that. After a week of thinking about it, it is hard to come away from the process with anything other than a profound feeling of waste; alleged criminals who waste time by allegedly committing alleged criminal deeds, wasted time, wasted money paid out to potential, rejected and serving jurors for wasted effort, attorneys who waste time and breath on ham-handed attempts to manipulate, who ask the same questions, time and again, wasting more and more time and effort and money. 

What is it all for? 

Twelve Angry Men is my favorite movie of all time. I watch it once a year, I own the play and I believe in the speechifying about duty and rights under the Constitution. Nothing about the process for reporting for federal jury selection is designed to maintain a sense of dutifully reporting for sacred honor detail, however. It begins with a letter and an online registration, then there is a series of phone calls every Monday for a month which can only be made after 5pm and tell you where to go the following day, if you are needed at all. This is annoying. Just tell me when to show up and I'll do it, but this “I can't make any plans for Tuesday, or indeed, the rest of the fucking week until after I make a phone call to a robot” bullshit is ridiculous. Of course, they waited until my 5^th phone call to tell me to report. Just when I thought I might miss it and started making plans again. 

Due to traffic on Interstate 24, it took me an hour and 20 minutes to travel approximately 35 miles. The bus down Murfreesboro Road would likely have been quicker. I paid nine dollars (reimbursed) for parking, and then had to take off my jacket, shoes, belt & keys and put them in a bucket while I ran the gauntlet of security. (The security guys were actually pretty nice, just not terribly helpful.) I then shared an elevator for eight floors with a non-uniformed Metro cop, two ladies who smelled like a perfume counter, and a nervous man sweating aluminum. I checked in at the desk and was asked how much I paid for parking (I would imagine some people lie and pad this number) and issued my all-important button. 

Sitting in a large room (big long Brain Candy conference tables, proliferate magazines, great view of Union Station, half-comfortable chairs) we were then subjected to daytime television from 8ish until about 9:30. The programming, if anything, fell off at this point while we stared at a DVD with various Justices and former jurors instilling us with importance and creating unrealistic expectations about what we were to endure. There was a lot of talk about solemnity and emotion and and the small deliberations room, and how “scary” things might become for us. Perhaps not the most effective rah-rah speech ever. Sometime after 10 we were escorted to actual court, a room so tall you'd get a nosebleed climbing it. This was filled with pews and pictures of old white men in black dresses. On the way there, a bailiff reminded me “You can't read in court,” and pointed at the book under my arm, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. He scowled when I took it in with me anyway.

Over the next seven hours, the same questions were asked of us in a variety of ways, and I was once again disqualified as a juror, I believe because of one or all of these three responses:

Do you have strong opinions about guns and gun control? Yes, I believe that handguns, rifles, assault weapons and extended magazines should have more restrictions on their proliferation and that licensing should be more restrictive, with more oversight.

Do you feel strongly that some drugs which are currently illegal should be legal? Yes, I think that marijuana's illegality is an anachronism and Colorado and Washington are good experiments to be watched closely.

Would it affect your assessment of witness testimony if you knew that the witness would be getting something in return for their testimony? That depends upon what they're getting and who they are. (This one actually turned into a three-minute back and forth between me and one of the defense attorneys, during which he scribbled something on paper.)

Shortly thereafter, I was released (actually what it is called) and went home, feeling as though the system was slightly broken. Everything is done to mechanize our "duty," attorneys manipulate juries until they get the most boring, homogenized group you can imagine, and endless time and money are spent trying to punish people for what they've allegedly gotten up to.

Bah.

My Wife's Head

For those of you not paying the strictest attention, it was two weeks ago today that my wife shaved her head. I am intensely proud of her for being brave enough to do it, and so I shall give you the whys and wherefores and thoughts behind it now.

Her school decided to do an event with the St. Baldrick's people, those who go around shaving heads to raise money for cancer funding everywhere. Initially, it was just a bunch of guys, and my wife, being who she is, questioned this: "Why can't the female teachers do this?" When she was given a sort of "Well, I guess they can..." kind of answer, her students responded enthusiastically. She responded to this with "There's no way I'd shave my head for less than a thousand bucks." 

They raised $435 that first day, and she came home telling me that she might have underestimated them and would likely be bald by Friday.

By Thursday, they, together with the student council, had poined up the rest, and we talked about her getting it done, since she was pretty much on the hook for it by that point. She asked me if I would come and watch it done at what was essentially a pep rally, and I had two objections: one is the carnival/exploitation atmosphere that frequently accompanies such events, and the other was the underlying current of disease tourism that I feel can accompany such things. How does a person who must shave their head feel about someone who simply chooses to do so? Apply that logic to a wheelchair or a blindfold, for instance.

Ultimately, I decided to go. At the rally, the student energy was overwhelmingly positive, and there were only three people who said objectively annoying things to me (Objectively annoying = I get someone else's quick opinion about whether the thing that pissed me off was legit or just me. Think about how often I must have to do this.) and the mood was really high and sweaty and excited, and kids went and broke out band equipment, and Christie's head got totally shaved. She was solely responsible for more than a third of what the school raised, and there were like, 12 guys who did this thing that same time she did. Heh.

[This will be the part when, should you ask her about it, she has some media imagery / social context stuff that went through her head while it was happening that she'll share with you.]

And it looks great. She has a head for this, clearly. And the tourism thing? Well, when the little girl with cancer wants to give my wife a big hug and pose for pictures and some of the high school kids are moved to tears and want pix with my newly bald wife - that argument kind of sails out the window.

So, it was for a good cause, raised a bunch of money, made kids happy, and she checks off a bucket list item just before Spring and Summer when she wouldn't want to deal with a bunch of frickin' hair anyway. Nothing but upsides. Also, it looks great. Did I mention that?

I Am A Kite

I am a kite.

I am a kite and fuck you, I spend most of my time up in this tree, the tall elm just off the backyard.

Apparently, you think that leaving me on the wall of the garage for nine months of the year only to come out at Springtime is okay with me. It's not. I am a kite - being on the wall is not the same thing as soaring high above the grass and trees, touching the sky as sun illuminates my panels, briefly turning me into a piece of stained glass art against the backdrop of a temperate, windy day. I'm a kite, you prick, and you think you can just park me on the wall like a shovel and expect me to cooperate when YOU decide it's time for a little kite flying?!? Do I look like a shovel? Bitch.

I am a kite. I am a delicate construction of fabric and string arranged upon a light framework and held together not only with stitching and pockets and fasteners, but also with love and light and altitude and wind beneath the canopy of my bright colors, struggling to break free, holding me aloft against the firmament of the sky. I am a kite, trailing colors and laughter and fun. Ideally. I am not a simple toy to be dashed across the dirt and rocks because your legs and understanding of basic wind physics aren't up to the challenge. I am a miracle of lightweight aerodynamics, you dumb sonofabitch, and I will not be told what to do by you, or any grubby-pawed little simpleton with an itch - I obey the wind and whimsy, and I might decide to spend the whole Spring up in this fucking elm, or on the roof, precariously niched against the gutter's edge, my sun-bleached panels a silent rebuke, reminding you that if I'm not cooperating, it might just be because you stuck me in a darkened room until winds brought blossoms and barbecue smells to your nose and you thought, "Ooh. Kite weather."

Maybe I decide when to fly, and maybe it's the wind, but you're not the boss of me. I am a kite, motherfuckers, a majestic wing on the air, a symbol of hope and freedom, and an object of joy. When I want to be.

I am a kite.