One day I'm going to paste another sign in the same colors and font underneath that sign that reads, "Or something catastrophically WRONG."
Friday, March 27, 2009
Alternatively...
In the locker room at the Ballston Gold's Gym, there is a sign on the floor that says, "Know that if it hurts to tie your shoes, you're doing something right."
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Pornography for Women
Was slightly intrigued by the responses I got back from several comments I made about the "Twilight" movie (which sucked), so I decided to further investigate the phenomenon. That's when I found an enlightening article on it by Laura Miller at Salon.com:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/07/30/Twilight/index.html
What is it, exactly, about this fairytale of bloodsucking fiends that makes girls want to throw their menstrual pads at Robert Pattison in salacious desire? Miller eloquently explains in 2,800 words what I will patronizingly summarize in three: Chicks love attention. Twilight is a four-part epic of a modest, unremarkable, awkward girl who fulfills every girl's three greatest fantasies:
First, I have to admit that I rarely ever read fiction, and when I do, it's not likely to slant toward the childrens/young adult section of the library where the Harry Potter fanatics and strangers with candy dwell. However, I am always fascinated by social trends, and I have been impressed by the followings of both the Potter series and Twilight. Yet Miller is quick to caution against the zealous dilettantes trying to draw too many parallels between the two.
No wonder the media has heralded Twilight as the next Harry Potter and [BYU-enthusiast and super-conservative Mormon author Stephanie] Meyer as the second coming of J.K. [Rowling] The similarities, however, are largely commercial. It's hard to see how Twilight could ever approach Harry Potter as a cultural phenomenon for one simple reason: the series' fan base is almost exclusively female.
- Rescued and adored by Prince Charming, the most handsome and unattainable member of the highest aristocracy in the land.
- Converted the Bad Boy into the most conservative of conservative, chivalrous, self-restrained, well-mannered, no-sex-before-marriage slave...er...gentleman.
- And everybody sees.
Such are the tortured internal contradictions of romance, as nonsensical as its masculine counterpart, pornography, and every bit as habit forming. Search a little deeper on the Internet and you can find women readers both objecting to the antifeminist aspects of Twilight and admitting that they found the books irresistible.
Touché, Laura Miller. You speak my language after all. Okay, I'll admit that not all academically struggling schoolgirls end up blowing their professors for A's (only most do) if you're willing to admit that the only real men who are cultured, stunningly attractive, and respectful to women are gay.
But that doesn't mean we can't dream, baby.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Still sitting on the runway.
A few months ago, my bro Mark was feeling particularly downtrodden about his life. Like many of us do from time to time, he went into his office and vented his frustrations with his colleagues.
"Do you ever feel like the joy has just been sucked out of your life?" he asked them. "What am I doing here?" he brooded.
Of course, Mark's office is an after school day care center for middle school children, and his colleagues are 10-12 year olds.
An autistic girl laughed at him. That was all the insight they could provide him.
There was a line that I wanted to write here, but I removed for fear of distastefulness and loss of employment. I think "for fear of distastefulness and loss of employment" has destroyed any atrophied writing ability I had left.
The line was: "Well fuck you, too."
At this point, I'm all out of distractions. I go on Facebook and look at old friends, classmates, and colleagues and where they're going in their lives. Their grad schools, their new jobs, their new cities, their -- God help me -- marriages. At once I am filled with both condescension for the banal paths they have chosen as well as envy for the direction they have found and progress they have made.
And yet here I live, in their world. What am I doing here? Where am I going? And why, five years out of college, am I still asking the same questions?
Since childhood, I have been marked with the curse of potential. When you're young, you're tall, and you speak coherently, people tend to expect things out of you. My first job out of high school was for this sales firm selling Cutco knives, still the best cutlery I've ever used and a luxury that I wouldn't waste money on if I were 1991 MC Hammer-rich. We interviewed as a group, and I was in the first pair selected and hired. After my first all-hands meeting at the company, they tapped me to be part of the key employees group to lead and mentor other employees. It's fair to say they had some expectations for me.
A few years later, I found out my friend Gerald from college also sold these knives for a summer, made thousands of dollars, and, with proceeds from his other jobs that summer, bought his first BMW. Let me tell you how my only two sales went. First I gave my entire long presentation to a friend's mom. She wasn't interested. Her husband came home around then, took a look at the knives, and bought two without listening to a thing I said. The second and last sale I made was the fire sale I had trying to get rid of my stock about 10 days after I started. I worked at Old Navy the rest of the summer.
Here's what I learned from that experience. If you think it's stupid for someone to pay $760 for a fucking box of knives, Cutco's standard set at the time, you're probably not going to convince anybody to do so. Whatever I've been trying to sell myself about my career and my future for the last five years of my life, I've been doing it with the same disbelief that I had trying to convince middle-class Ohio housewives they needed $760 knives. I'm not buying it.
At a certain point in life, all the potential everyone had once seen in you becomes overshadowed by the reality of your production. I am well passed that point, and my list of accomplishments is noticeably empty, even if my resume appears filled with experience.
That will change. Soon.
"Do you ever feel like the joy has just been sucked out of your life?" he asked them. "What am I doing here?" he brooded.
Of course, Mark's office is an after school day care center for middle school children, and his colleagues are 10-12 year olds.
An autistic girl laughed at him. That was all the insight they could provide him.
There was a line that I wanted to write here, but I removed for fear of distastefulness and loss of employment. I think "for fear of distastefulness and loss of employment" has destroyed any atrophied writing ability I had left.
The line was: "Well fuck you, too."
At this point, I'm all out of distractions. I go on Facebook and look at old friends, classmates, and colleagues and where they're going in their lives. Their grad schools, their new jobs, their new cities, their -- God help me -- marriages. At once I am filled with both condescension for the banal paths they have chosen as well as envy for the direction they have found and progress they have made.
And yet here I live, in their world. What am I doing here? Where am I going? And why, five years out of college, am I still asking the same questions?
Since childhood, I have been marked with the curse of potential. When you're young, you're tall, and you speak coherently, people tend to expect things out of you. My first job out of high school was for this sales firm selling Cutco knives, still the best cutlery I've ever used and a luxury that I wouldn't waste money on if I were 1991 MC Hammer-rich. We interviewed as a group, and I was in the first pair selected and hired. After my first all-hands meeting at the company, they tapped me to be part of the key employees group to lead and mentor other employees. It's fair to say they had some expectations for me.
A few years later, I found out my friend Gerald from college also sold these knives for a summer, made thousands of dollars, and, with proceeds from his other jobs that summer, bought his first BMW. Let me tell you how my only two sales went. First I gave my entire long presentation to a friend's mom. She wasn't interested. Her husband came home around then, took a look at the knives, and bought two without listening to a thing I said. The second and last sale I made was the fire sale I had trying to get rid of my stock about 10 days after I started. I worked at Old Navy the rest of the summer.
Here's what I learned from that experience. If you think it's stupid for someone to pay $760 for a fucking box of knives, Cutco's standard set at the time, you're probably not going to convince anybody to do so. Whatever I've been trying to sell myself about my career and my future for the last five years of my life, I've been doing it with the same disbelief that I had trying to convince middle-class Ohio housewives they needed $760 knives. I'm not buying it.
At a certain point in life, all the potential everyone had once seen in you becomes overshadowed by the reality of your production. I am well passed that point, and my list of accomplishments is noticeably empty, even if my resume appears filled with experience.
That will change. Soon.
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