Tag: culture

just another sucka on da vine

This wants to be my myspace friend:

Konnected Inc was established in January 2004, based out of Irvine California. The company’s main objective is to plan, promote and operate specific events for businesses looking to increase traffic, build awareness, create a steady flow of sales, promote an image and deliver a message.

Konnected Inc specializes in promoting, but not limited to, nightly entertainment, focusing mainly on dance/night clubs in Orange County and surrounding areas.

. Okay, DJ company, typical. I browse around looking at their leadership.

I find Steve. Steve lists his location on myspace as “Da Vine, OC”. Has anyone else here ever seen the city of Irvine referred to as “Da Vine”? I am familiar with “Da Bronx”, and “The LBC”, and “The Downs” and “The Gardens” in Watts. I’ll even accept “The OC” because we all called it that as a joke long before the TV show.

“Da Vine” just has to fucking go, though, Steve. I was going to post a picture of Steve, but all pictures of 20-something suburban kids throwing gang signs or the “shocker” are the same, whether they are with augmented party babes or not. I will point out that one of his pictures is at a suburban baby shower, though, and it looks genuine and kind of sweet.

How, then, shall we live?

Lately I am often proved wrong.

Intellectually I like being proved wrong, because I like learning. Although it’s more important than it should be for me to be right, when I manage to tamp down the ego and accept a different viewpoint it’s a very good thing.

And when one of my depressive or pessimistic beliefs is sunk it’s cheering. Not frequent, but I hang on to those.

The last year or so has been full of “evidence to the contrary” and most of it has been unpleasant. Whether it’s been an educational or destructive experience remains to be seen.

I’ve always thought I could trust people implicitly if we got along, and someone showed me that wasn’t true. I’d been screwed before, but not by someone I respected like that, and it’s still shocking when I think of it. The aftermath was in some ways worse, because the ambiguous reactions of other friends made me question the quality of my friendships and the validity of all those feel-good assumptions I had. The statement “I can trust my friends without worry, and they will stand up for me when I have clearly been wronged” was invalid. Still not over it.

Similarly, I’d also had the habit of believing what others said if there wasn’t evidence to the contrary, and assuming they were mistaken rather than dishonest if such evidence existed. That one was blown up and sunk also. It’s been hard to me to see that there’s a continuum from the pathological liar who is ill to the sociopathic liar who uses truth and untruth as weapons, and that a lot of people are in between those two bad extremes. It’s been another huge trust failure. The people who lie because they want something to be true, or because they know what they are expected to say, or because they think someone else will feel better, arrived in force this time.

The hardest grade I got, though, was on my world view. Events, people, and various therapies have conspired to show me that I’ve had it wrong the whole time. Something about my whole relation to the world — particularly socially — is just cracked. Social relations are clearly more brutal than I had seen before, and the gulf between what others say are their values and how they live is far bigger than I’d been able to grasp. I’d always seen relations among friends and families as community. This was the year I saw them as an economy, where people exchange tokens for desired things, and where the money is only visible when you’re poor. As much as I might have faux-cynically said “People do what they want!” a million times before, now I lived it.

So I managed to remain socially innocent until I was 40, and by 41 I’d learned for real the things others seemed to learn in their teens. It doesn’t feel like a good kind of “proved wrong”, though.

I never wanted to believe people who said cynical crap. You know, people would say to me that you get what you take in life, or that you need to be pushy and dishonest and maybe a little threatening to get the girl, or that trust is a mistake, and I’d write them off. “I don’t know anyone who behaves that way and gets anywhere,” I said, “and the people I like and spend time with don’t.” Wrong, and wrong.

Before, I saw basically good people trying and often failing to do the right thing. Now, I see the apes stealing each others’ fruit, abandoning the injured one to the tigers, and raping each other. And they’re doing way better than I am; I’ve been proved wrong.

Damn it’s cold out here.

Have a safe dysfunctional obligation activity

This year I am once again grateful for my family’s behavior at holiday times. I grew up agnostic, so there was never any religious pressure. Christmas was a gift exchange and a couple of nice meals, and it still is. The most frequent verb I see this week is “survive”, as in “surviving the holidays” or “survived my family again”. There’s tremendous stress about food, gifts, the presence of difficult relatives, and every kind of parent/child conflict. People don’t eat the food their parents eat any more, or the gifts are too much or not enough money, or the gifts have been a form of warfare for 20 years, or Uncle Ted is a racist, or Dad always asks the boyfriend if he’s going to be anybody ever, or or or.

And more seriously some people I know go into a major PTSD mode during the “holidays” because their childhoods were so gothically horrible that memories of family togetherness are a symptom rather than a pleasant reverie.

It’s a big joke in our culture that holidays are a stressful mess and that everyone is miserable and drunk, etc. “Surviving the holidays” in every way is the goal. It’s linked in my mind with the “Safe” thing, e.g. “Have a safe holiday!”. It’s sort of assumed that you’ll hate the whole thing, drink like a fish and pop pills, and die in a 7-car pileup on some snowy turnpike, thereby causing what the newspapers inaccurately call a “tragedy”.

My family’s troubles are constant, ongoing, and subtle. We don’t have screaming matches or drunken rampages, no one hits anyone, and we don’t say nuclear weapon phrases like “I don’t love you”. We may undermine for years at a time, or be unreasonably irritable, or fail to connect in some dispiriting way. There are conflicts and painful situations that aren’t allowed to be mentioned or discussed.

But we don’t have “holiday” stress. Despite all my complaints about my psyche and my issues, I’m very grateful for my family 99% of the time. My heart goes out to everyone who has to Survive instead of relaxing around now.

Excerpt from a BBS

Forwarded from a friend, an Air Force transport pilot responds to a kid who wants to know how to become a fighter pilot.

I really enjoy this kind of grumpy, cynical military humor. Not sure why.

Obviously, through no fault of your own, your young, impressionable brain has been poisoned by the superfluous, hyped-up, “Top Gun” media portrayal of fighter pilots.

Unfortunately, this portrayal could not be further from the truth. In my experience, I’ve found most fighter pilots pompous, back-stabbing, momma’s boys with inferiority complexes, as well as being extremely over-rated aeronautically. However, rather than dash your budding dreams of becoming a USAF pilot, I offer the following alternative:

What you REALLY want to aspire to is the exciting, challenging, and rewarding world of TACTICAL AIRLIFT. And this, young DJ, means one thing….the venerable, workhorse, THE C-130!

I can guarantee no fighter pilot can brag that he has led a 12-ship formation down a valley at 300 ft above the ground, while trying to interpret a 9-line to a new DZ, avoiding pop-up threats, and coordinating with AWACS, all while eating a box lunch, with the engineer in the back taking a piss and the navigator puking in his trash can! I tell you, DJ, TAC Airlift is where it’s at!

Where else is it legal to throw tanks, HMVees, and other crap out the back of an airplane, and not even worry about it when the chute doesn’t open and it torpedoes the General’s staff car! No where else can you land on a 3000′ dirt strip, kick a bunch of ammo and stuff off the ramp without even stopping, then take off again before range control can call to tell you you’ve landed on the wrong LZ!

The rest cut because unfunny and lame.

The American Fuck Yeah Association

Driving down Westcliff Avenue last night I was obstructed by a big RV that was drifting in and out of lanes. The damned thing was so wide it could barely fit in one lane and was bumbling about dangerously. I passed the monster with a wide berth, tapping my horn and thinking “probably some drunk who lives in his RV.” Then I noticed it was painted all over with ads, logos, and signs. Racing team? Soft drink promotion? What the…

tale gators

Yes, there is such a thing as the American Tailgate Association.

The American Tailgaters Association (ATA) was founded for several reasons. The “sport” of tailgating has become a national phenomenon as a recreational activity, yet there has never been a venue for tailgaters to come together in a single place.until now!

The ATA will allow tailgaters all across our great nation to meet in forums, discuss the best tailgating places, talk about their favorite teams or sports, find discount merchandise, post pictures, and generally be the one stop tailgaters “community”.

[…]

Our desire is to promote ATA membership and our corporate partners and we believe by offering an entertaining, interactive, cost-effective and ever-expanding experience, our membership will in turn promote organizational allegiance, brand loyalty and name recognition for our corporate partners and ourselves.

An outstanding characteristic of my country is our inability to have fun without creating an association with bylaws, getting corporate sponsors, copyrighting and trademarking it, having an annual competition, and finally and inevitably adopting a mission and vision statement. See: Little League, car stereo enthusiasts, etc.

Cultural notes from all over

Observations from tonight:

People going to an office Christmas party are well-dressed (but not flashy), carry one present each, and look incredibly nervous. I saw about 30 of them tonight. They were being jovial at each other with dead empty dread in their eyes.

The satellite-provided music at the brewpub tonight was eerily perfect for someone of my age and background. It was the greatest hits of college radio from 1984 to 1987. What kind of radio station plays Prefab Sprout’s “Appetite” and Shriekback’s “Everything that Rises must Converge” in the same set in 2005?

At the chain bookstore, where I did not buy a thing, they of course had the whole front of the place devoted to Christmas books. One chunk of bookshelf was entirely given over to… wait for it… Christmas Mysteries. What the FUCK? I’m not sure how things are in your family, but around here if someone got murdered Christmas week we’d call the whole thing off, even if a sharp-eyed local Christian ladies’ sewing club solved the whole thing by the morning of the 24th. Take the tinsel down so we can just stare blankly into space, shaking. We’ll make it up to the kids somehow.

One of the clerks was hugely overweight, so much so that he puffed a bit and walked with the gait of a man whose knees are badly damaged. He had to help a young couple who looked like Vanguard-bots and who were very upset that they couldn’t find some Christian book about the essence of love.

I was gazing at the sad array of self-help books, most of which have titles in the form Stop ________! or _______ no more!, where the blank can be filled in with your unwanted behavior or emotion of choice: Smoking, Loving Too Much, Checking Things Over And Over, Leaving The House Without Pants, Putting Beans In Your Nose, etc. They were arranged in sections: General Self-Help, Addiction & Recovery, Dating. Then I saw a section labeled “Oversize”. Hmm. Odd euphemism for fat people. Oh, maybe it was for people who were “Big ‘n’ Tall” and included the towering as well as the obese? Oh, DOH! It was just the oversize books. Time to go home, substitute. Brain no work good.

Annals of Childhood: My Swinging 70s

I’ve previously written about the Decade of Brown as a cultural phenomenon, and more recently about the Big Kids and their heavy metal lives. The parents are their own story.

My own parents were the identified weirdos in the community. Our family was politically left, pacifist, intellectual, and artistic. And we all had big noses. One friendly neighbor said to my mother over a cup of coffee “Ann, you’re really nice people. But you’re not like the others.” Even in the corduroy 1970s, our corner of Orange County was lily-white, right-wing, know-nothing, and kinda stupid. As registered democrats who didn’t go to church and drove a Volvo, my parents were clearly alien.

The 70s were also the decade of divorce, though. More than half of my friends had split families in elementary school. They’d talk about their weekends with Dad, or how Dad and Mom were fighting about the house or the dog. A lot of them got pretty badly stressed by it. I particularly remember a couple of boys who, after their father left, became very combative and tried to ascend to alpha dog by shoving the other boys and challenging us to fights.

Going to their houses was odd too. You weren’t supposed to mention the dad when the mom was around, and a few of the houses had dad’s den preserved as he’d left it because either removing it or using it was too painful. When the mom said “your father…” to the kid there was ice hanging in the air. Being with a friend at the dad’s house was even weirder. Dad usually lived in a smaller place or in an unconventional kind of housing like the Balboa Bay Club or a boat or some condo tower. He’d be in full weekend dad mode trying to provide entertainment for junior and his friends, which was cool, but there was clearly some panic going on there.

And then there was the sex problem. This was the disco era, and the divorced moms and dads were dating like crazy. I’d be over at someone’s house and realize that the mustachioed, nervous Tom Selleck looking guy this week was different from the last one, and that he wasn’t addressed as a dad but as “Tim” or “mom’s friend”. Tim and mom would stand 5 feet apart when the kids were around, and Tim also had a habit of bringing gifts or candy and smiling in a terrified way at us.

The dads’ girlfriends were disco hoochie mamas mostly, and terrified of children. They’d totter around in heels and short skirts grinning at us and making inane small talk for the minimum possible time before vanishing. They were all very tan and wore lots of jewelry. Sometimes girlfriend and dad would go in a room and close the door and have really loud arguments.

The weirdest part of the divorced households was that the adults would just disappear. Mom or Dad and their life mate du jour would flit off for a precious weekend afternoon together leaving us kids to our own devices. I’m surprised that we didn’t manage to burn down any houses or kill any pets. We did break at least one major appliance that I remember.

Finally, drugs. My own parents were of the pre rock ‘n’ roll generation, and having seen a friend melt his head in very early LSD experimentation, they were anti-drug. Anything more than a glass of wine with dinner was a bad idea in our house. But it was pretty clear that Disco Dad and Saturday Night Mom didn’t live that way. I was fascinated by the sight of “responsible adults” being clearly high, or clumsily trying to hide paraphernalia or pills from us.

I think a lot of my cynicism comes from the huge contrast between the reactionary moral and political attitudes of the adults around me and their own behavior. My parents, the distrusted lefty secular humanist eggheads, had a stable and nurturing family and worked out their problems. And they were sober and didn’t go out on Saturday night and leave me at home with a TV dinner. Meanwhile, the local Elmer Gantrys and Dimmesdales were popping disco biscuits, partner-swapping, and shaking their butts to Peaches & Herb while Junior at home was finding their weed stash.

The Ice Storm was like a documentary about my friends’ families growing up.

Of course, now these conflicted right-wing hedonists are running the country. It explains a lot.

It’s all about the sneetches

  1. jactitation returned from Japan with some great pictures of MONKEYS IN THE MIST!
  2. Defensetech reports that Honeywell is building a Star Wars Droid, no joke. (PDF file at last link.) Also that Drudge totally got the story wrong, surprise.
  3. AdJab reports that one of those dumb promo “throw the ball in this difficult way and win $1 million” things was won, and by a no-doubt impoverished combat veteran who now won’t have to live in a box. I cannot stop saying the name of the thing he won: “Bi-Lo Healthy Choice Pigskin Challenge”.
  4. NASA has an amazing gallery of photos-of-the-day from the MODIS satellite imaging system.
  5. Again from AdJab, the Seattle Times has an article about eating in cars that shows that the whole country is turning into Southern California as usual. Best quote:

    “The Crunchy Taco is the No. 1 seller. But we hear from consumers that it is difficult to eat in the car because it’s open on three sides,” says Laurie Schalow, Taco Bell spokeswoman in Irvine, Calif., who says the goal is to make drive-through service “faster and friendlier” without encouraging unsafe driving.

  6. Milk: it does a body good, but could it be madcowing your brain?
  7. Bookslut reports that the hellbound founder of BzzAgent, the company that gives you free stuff in exchange for you lying to your friends about how cool it is, deployed his army of zombie consumer whores to pimp out his own book on Amazon. People, if you’re going to sell out, at least take the trouble to get paid properly for it. This is sad.
  8. Apropos of nothing, because I was just talking to hydrozoa about this: I want to have a talk show where people who have written whiny books about how their particular upper middle class suburban childhood was worse than yours and how their particular neurosis is special and perfect are invited on TV to talk about their books. And just as they get into the self-important whining, the security guards, who are like the ones on Jerry Springer, come on stage and beat the shit out of them while the audience cheers. It will be called “SHUT UP, AMERICA!” Folks, that kind of talk is for livejournal and not for 250 pages hardback published by Alfred A. Knopf and dumped in a pyramid at the entrance to the Barnes & Noble. Oprah delenda est.
  9. Microsoft Korea has a song for you to sing! Thanks to the exploding aardvark. Developers developers developers developers…
  10. The Federal Government wants their Blackberry so much they’re intervening in a patent lawsuit to keep it from going away. What wouldn’t I give to have access to Karl Rove’s Crackberry…