Cynicism

Via Kay, at Balloon-Juice, I see this:

When I was reporting out my New Yorker piece, I spoke with Akhil Reid Amar, a leading constitutional scholar at Yale, who thinks that a 5-4 party-line vote against the [Affordable Care Act’s] mandate would be shattering to the court’s reputation for being above politics.  “I’ve only mispredicted one big Supreme Court decision in the last 20 years,” he told me.  “That was Bush v. Gore.  And I was able to internalize that by saying they only had a few minutes to think about it and they leapt to the wrong conclusion.  If they decide this by 5-4, then, yes, it’s disheartening to me, because my life was a fraud.  Here I was, in my silly little office, thinking law mattered, and it really didn’t.  What mattered was politics, money, party, and party loyalty.”

(empasis added).

Uhhmmm . . . yeah.  It’s sad that Professor Amar is having to go through this, but it is only what I went through years ago.  If you devote yourself to a profession like the law for any reason other than money, then you are a fool and a naif and real people should kick you in the ribs and laugh at you.

Cannibalizing from School (cont'd)

This second essay is what they are calling a "classification essay" -- essentially, we are asked to differentiate and explain the differences between various things.  That sounded boring, and so I decided to go a bit meta and write instead about what storytelling is really like.

I am not a particular fan of this essay, because there is so much yet left to say.  But we have a 4-page limit, and to meet that I have hacked and chopped away a lot of otherwise promising stuff.

Essay below the fold.

Cannibalizing from School

I regret not posting for so very long.  I did not realize - back when I didn't have a job and wasn't going to school -- just how labor-intensive maintaining a website can be.  In my mind, I was just tossing off a coupla ideas whenever they struck me.  But in Reality, it really was a lot of work to try to spit-shine and polish my mental meanderings until they were something I wanted to share.

In any event, one of the classes the school is making me take is an introductory English, designed to teach me how to write.  Since I'm writing this stuff anyway, I figured there wasn't any real difficulty in sharing it.  

What follows is the first of the 4 or 5 essays we have to write.  It is a "process essay," in that it is intended to teach us how to explain to others how to do something.

The Festival de San Fermίn: How to Run With the Bulls

            I spent the summer of 1991 studying abroad in Spain, and I knew even before my plane left the States that while there I would run with the bulls in Pamplona during the Festival de San Fermίn. Every year thousands of drunken Spaniards and addled tourists take part in this lunacy and, every year, one or more bull runners are gored, trampled or even killed. But Hemingway long ago made the running of the bulls iconic, and I couldn’t see how in all good conscience I could let an opportunity to run with the bulls pass me by. In the event, I discovered that running with the bulls is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that anybody can do safely, provided one knows what to expect and plans accordingly.

            Of course, the first thing you need to do is make sure you are in Pamplona at the right time and that you have assembled the correct uniform. The running of the bulls takes place from the 7^th to the 14^th of July, so you have only one week to participate in this madness. The uniform is nothing more than a pair of white pants and a white shirt set off by a red sash wrapped around your waist and a red kerchief tied about your neck. The sashes and kerchiefs are for sale all over Pamplona, but you will need to provide the pants and shirt yourself. You should also make sure you have a newspaper, about which more later.

            Some additional necessary preparations are blindingly obvious. For example, it is probably best to run the bulls sober. However, you may find this slightly difficult to pull off. You see, the run (the encierro) takes place in the morning and so you will have to be in Pamplona the night before, and during the Festival de San Fermίn the entire city is a non-stop party. Literally hundreds of social organizations and political groups set up booths selling beer or wine, there is dancing and music on every street corner, and unless you lock yourself in a hotel room it is difficult not to join in the fun. If – like me – you find you simply cannot restrain yourself, then I recommend making the conscious decision to stop drinking no later than 2:00 am. This will give you six hours to sober back up.

            Of course, you might as well use those six hours productively, so that is a good time to locate the encierro and walk the course. In fact, walk it several times. In just a few hours you’ll be barreling down it at top speed, a thousand pounds of thundering hoofed death hot on your heels, and you’ll want to be familiar with its layout. How embarrassing to be trampled to death (not even gored!) because you were so careless as to trip over an unexpected sidewalk.

            You’ll also want to make sure you are in the encierro no later than 7:00 am, one hour before the run actually starts.  The Festival de San Fermίn is Spain’s most heavily attended fiesta and there may be more than a thousand idiot thrill-seekers just like you who want to run the bulls that day. You will need to find a place that isn’t too crowded. You won’t want to have to push past too many bodies in order to reach top speed.       

            When the 8:00 starting rocket goes off and the encierro begins, do not – I repeat, do not – wait around. Unless you decided to start at the very beginning of the course, the bulls are being released some place a block or more away from you. Do not wait until you actually see them to start running. First, nobody else is going to be waiting. (If you thought it would be embarrassing to be trampled by a bull, just imagine how much more humiliating to be knocked down and trampled by a thousand other runners who were smart enough to start without you.) Second, bulls at speed can move surprisingly fast; if you don’t start running immediately, by the time you glimpse the bulls it may already be too late. Just put your head down, grip your rolled-up newspaper tightly, and go.

            When you reach the arena you will pass through a short, high-ceilinged tunnel and then into the stadium proper. The entire mass of runners will then split in two, one half peeling off to the right and the other peeling off to the left. You should be prepared for your reception. The arena itself will already be packed with spectators who will rise as one and cheer you as you enter, and the noise is deafening. I remember thinking when I experienced it: This must be what it feels like to run into the Superbowl.   

            Of course, the bulls will be following right behind you, but that is precisely why the runners split off to the sides. For some reason, after they enter the arena the bulls seem to lose all interest in the runners on either side of them and simply run directly across the stadium field. On the far side of the stadium a gate opens up and the bulls trot right through. None of those bulls will be seen again until they are brought out later in the afternoon to be slaughtered by that day’s matador.

            But this doesn’t mean the bull running is over. After the bulls that have just chased them through the streets disappear behind the far gate, the runners assemble on the ground directly in front of that gate and start chanting, slapping their rolled-up newspapers in their free hands to keep time. When I ran the bulls I unquestioningly sat down in front of the gate too, and tried to translate what my fellow runners were chanting. I had just worked out that they were asking for the bulls to be released again when suddenly the gate opened up and one came charging into the arena, trampling a few people sitting directly in front. Thankfully, it was not one of the monster bulls that had chased us through the streets but a much younger, smaller bull whose horns had been padded to prevent anyone from actually being gored. 

            And that was how I discovered that after running with the bulls in the streets, a new game is played in the arena. Three or four young bulls are released into the stadium and the runners take turns rushing up behind them, swatting them with rolled-up newspapers and then running away. The bulls will chase the person who swatted them until somebody else comes up and swats them again; the bulls then instantly give up on whomever they were just chasing and turn to pursue this new affront. The easily distracted nature of bulls, coupled with the fact you can jump/clamber over the stadium wall if necessary to get away, makes this part of the bull running more fun than it is dangerous.

            Once I had worked out the nature of the “swat bulls and run away game” I played until – on my third trip over the wall – I landed poorly and broke one of my toes. Well, that’s that I thought to myself. I decided that I had accomplished what I had set out to do, that I had acquitted myself adequately, and that running the bulls in Pamplona was something I now could cross off of my bucket list. So I rejoined my friends, tossed aside whatever scraps of good sense I still had left, and availed myself of all the festivity San Fermίn had to offer.

            Done correctly – with foreknowledge, planning and relative sobriety – running the bulls in Pamplona can be a reasonably safe and yet still iconic, once-in-a-lifetime experience. In fact, the kind of experience that should be once-in-a-lifetime. Because having run the bulls once, you can spend the rest of your life secure in the knowledge that there is no need to ever, ever do something so crazy stupid again.

Of Comic Books and Conservatives

Straight up confession, here.  I am a 43 year old man, and I still read comic books.

Of course, that’s not too big of a confession these days.  Take a look at the box office receipts and you will see that the ranks of fanboys have taken over a good chunk of popular culture.  Like most of America, my ass was in a movie seat for the Avengers within 3 days of its release, despite the fact that (for various reasons) when I saw it I was working on less than 4 hours sleep in the past 36 hours.

(Speaking of which . . . did I miss something while zoning out in the darkened theater?  That entire second act, when Loki was in the SHIELD helicarrier . . . was there a point to any of that?  I think that was just there to fulfill storytelling requirements, but why did he plan to get locked up in the first place?  Was that ever explained?)

But I come by my fanboy biases honestly.  When I was only about 4 years old my grandfather, who owned a bookstore, gifted me a trade paperback that reprinted the origin stories of Marvel’s greatest heroes:  Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Dr. Strange . . . .  And I pestered my grandmother to re-read those stories to me so much that in exasperation she decided it would be easier to teach me to read for myself.  So I went from comic books to Dick And Jane stories and then back to comic books again.

I really treasure what comic books have given to me.  Not only the gift of learning to read, but also a love for mythology.  My introduction to the Norse and Greek pantheons was made via comic books.  And they expanded my vocabulary.  To this day I remember getting bullied because when I was seven I called another boy “incorrigible.”  It wasn’t the insult that got me bullied, it was the fact that I was using polysyllables.  I had picked up the word from a Green Arrow story.

And let’s be clear . . . when I was a teenager, growing up in the 1980’s, that was a golden age for comic books.  My grandfather had expanded his bookstore into VHS tape rentals, magazines, and comics and I worked there during High School.  We ended up starting a lucrative business buying and selling old comics, and because I was the only one in the family who knew anything about this stuff I got to be in charge of it.  The 1980’s saw Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s The Watchmen.  I remember reading that stuff when it came out, and waiting breathlessly for the next issue.  That was some heady, heady stuff.  It paved the way for Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which easily clears the bar of high grade literature.

But what I remember being  most impressed with was not the stories – not exactly – but with being confronted by the use of the medium to tell those stories.  There was an issue of Swamp Thing written – of course – by Alan Moore that epitomized this for me.  In a single 22-page issue, Moore told two parallel but contrasting stories, each of which were separated by a single page.  That is, when you were holding the book in your hands, the page on the left told one story and the page on the right told a different story.  But the two were connected, and you could literally see the construction being made . . . a construction that was greater than the sum of its parts.

And the meta-story ended exactly the way all conflicted stories should:  with the narrator puzzled by what it all means.  It was a beautiful, beautiful piece of fiction writing, and something that could not have been conveyed in any other medium.

* * *

But, of course, these tales are an ode to the best of what the medium can produce, not a description of what the medium is mostly about.  What it mostly is about is brain candy, Right and Wrong in great, four-color format.  Morality tales dressed up in tights; Truth, Justice and the American Way easily digestible and easily absorbed.

Not that there is much wrong with that.  It’s nice to feast on pablum, every once in a while.  And there is a reason we refer to things that are bad for us as “comfort food.”  One can only have so much vegetables.  Occasionally, we all need some cookie dough.

And so I keep that injunction in mind while I read my comics, skimming through what passes for entertainment and looking for that truly emotive moment that I know these things can still provide.  I understand that most of what I am reading is not literature, is not morality, is nothing more than brain candy, a rush of sugar – like a pixie stick – to be downed before rushing back to the adult world.

But y’know what?  I worry about conservatives.  I worry that they haven’t figured out that this kind of brain candy, infantilized storytelling doesn’t really reflect the Real World.  

Part of the problem I have with your standard comics story is that I don’t understand the motivations of the Bad Guy.  Picture Doctor Doom or the Red Skull:   I Will Rule the World!

Seriously?  These guys want to “rule the world”?  They’re supposed to be geniuses, and yet this is their goal?  I think ruling the world would suck.  Don’t get me wrong . . . I understand wanting to be free to do whatever you want to do.  But that just means that you are rich.  Ruling the World actually means a lot of work, and being responsible for, well, everything.

And that leads me to my next point:  after you’ve got enough money to do whatever you want, what kind of person believes their lives will be better if they just have a little bit more?  Seriously, how does that make any sense at all?

And yet, we are treated to stories like this, in which Mitt Romney – aspirant to the highest job in the nation – talks about moving to Florida because it doesn’t have a state income tax.  Mitt Romney, already richer than any of us common folk can fathom, wants to live in a state because that means he’ll have just a little bit more. 

I can’t be the only person who looks at people like this and sees a cartoon, comic-book villain, can I?

Random Thought For the Day

I came across the word "portmanteau" today. I'm familiar with the word -- have been for years -- and understand that it is a mash-up of two different words to describe a new concept. And I've understood that for years as well.

And yet, it is not a common term and so - as always when I run across it - I have to take a moment to remind myself what the word means. And, as always, I am once again struck by the fact that the term "portmanteau" doesn't refer to a piece of furniture.

"Portmanteau" . . . it just sounds like the name of a piece of furniture.

Napoleon, R.I.P.

About five months ago I wrote about a recent scare I had had with my dog, Napoleon.  

(That's him, there, toward the right . . . the avatar I use.)

I knew he was growing old and was increasingly in bad health, and something happened back in December that scared me and more than half persuaded me at the time that his checking out of my life was imminent.  But then it all turned out to have been a false alarm, something easily fixed, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Still . . . I titled the post "Part I" because I knew that there was no long-term solution to the real problem that my poor dog was growing old and that I was going to eventually lose him.

I lost him this past Saturday.

Nursing and Surfing

So I was walking my dog Sunday evening; I was trying to adjust my sleep schedule so that I can be awake in the mornings again.  I slept away most of Sunday afternoon and hoped to get some more sleep later before I had to show up for my eight o’clock Monday morning class.

These days I spend Friday night/Saturday mornings and Saturday night/Sunday mornings at the local hospital, where I work as a Certified Nurse Aide.  I became a CNA I about a month ago, and am still in school for the CNA II.  But my school does clinical work at the local hospital, and apparently I made enough of an impression that they wanted to hire me before I finished my program.  And so for the past two weekends I’ve been working at the hospital whilst I finish learning all the stuff I need to help the patients for whom I am caring.

It has been an interesting experience, this actually doing the job for which I am still being trained.  It is exhilarating, for one thing, that sense of flying by the seat of your pants when you know that you don’t really understand yet what you are doing but have to pretend that you do anyway.