My Last Weekend as a Blonde

Changes have been running through my life at a rapid pace, and I've been rolling with the punches.  One thing I'm not skeptical about, (surprised, aren't you?) is change. Change has always been something I eagerly embrace, and so in these crazy days of change after change, I feel like finally I understand where I stand on most issues, most of my desires, and many of my flaws.  Change has recently brought on a huge appreciation of freedom...not "freedom" in terms of a relationship/no relationship, but "freedom" in the sense of making my own decisions, and sort of just opening up the throttle. 

This weekend, in Austin TX, I spent my time with a treasured, amazing friend...running the Texas roads in a 412 hp Mustang GT we named "Melba".  While I taught her how to impress guys by saying stuff like, "That's a good note for stock exhaust" and shooting a .357, I was subconsciously learning a few things behind the scenes about myself.

I prefer to be the supporter.  I loved teaching her to shoot and seeing the target get shredded just left of center as she learned to breathe properly, I loved hearing her nail the rolling joke about the Mustang's exhaust every time I put my foot down.  I kept hoping there would come a moment, somewhere in an Austin parking lot, when she'd get to publicly use it.  No dice this time, but we'll keep trying.

So as the changes keep coming, I'm resorting to a tried and true of method of getting through them as gracefully as I can...by being myself. Out with the blonde! Out with the insecurities!  Bring on the Led Zeppelin Tee Shirt, the Converse, the Brunette!

And in with the loyal, faithful, and fun Bigskeptic I used to be. 

Lastly, I learned that when in doubt of self, a long stretch of highway in a fast car can cure the blues most quickly...

What's that Mary?  It's got a good note for stock exhaust??  It sure does.

Skeptically Yours.

Melba.

View from a Classic Car

Everything looks different when it's painted in hues of classic Americana, with the visceral feel of a 4 speed shifter in your hand, simple but adequate brakes, and the type of suspension that allows you to both feel the road and float a little at high speeds. Even the people inside are cast in a different light. 

I spend a lot of my time in a very new, very nice car as my daily driver. It's equipped with 11 airbags, navigation, back up camera, Sirius XM Radio, etc...etc...and it's fabulous in almost every way. New cars have their place in our world, to be sure, and I can't say that I don't understand people with kids wanting the newest and safest car to keep those children safe.

But...

I'm skeptical about the real necessity of more technology in cars, really, because it's making us worse drivers.  We're use to our electronannies keeping us on course, but sometimes even the smartest cars can't correct the whopping mistakes we make as drivers.  I see it every day...people jump in cars as if it's as easy to pilot as a tricycle, and they expect to navigate the highways and traffic-congested roads without killing themselves or others.

But folks, it's not that easy.  Driving a car, depth perception, and multitasking are way harder than the average person actually believes it to be.  The car does so much of the work for us that we're virtually lulled into a auto-pilot mode where muscle memory of dealing with emergencies is virtually catatonic, and therefore makes it harder for humans to snap to a quick and accurate reaction when shit does hit the fan.

Tom Vanderbilt has done exhausting work on traffic and the human experience behind the wheel of the automobile, which he filed neatly into a little book called "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way we Do (And What it Says About Us).  He contends, as I do, that while electronannies may sometimes save our hides, that they are creating a new breed of brainless driver.  He says in an interview, "We’re definitely already in the era of "driver-assist" automobiles, with blind-spot warnings and adaptive cruise control and the like. As people who study automation have noted, these "semiautomated" processes come with very particular challenges — drivers may relax their vigilance, thinking everything is fine thanks to the car’s technology, but something might happen that actually confounds the car’s systems, and suddenly the driver is 'out of the loop'."

Beyond the idea of reusing a material or product until there's virtually nothing left (an idea I am married to...see my sweaters for reference, filled with holes and faded but beloved until they no longer function) I believe that people need more hard training in real automobiles before we're allowed loose on the city streets.  If we choose to drive these vehicles with so many gizmos to protect us, that's fine, but we should first know how to protect ourselves out there.  Relying too heavily on technology to save us means eventually we'll morph into the fat-can-barely-walk-virtual-addicts from the WALL-E movie...floating along in our isolation, content to be lazy and useless while machines do our thinking.  Where is the stimulation in that? Where's the joy?

For me, I abide by the reuse principal, and I abide the fact that when I'm out on the road, I am mostly in charge of my safety by knowing my car, knowing the laws, and knowing how to create a defensive bubble around myself.  Accidents happen, sure...I'm just convinced that 90% of the accidents happening right now aren't "accidents" at all but the product of over-estimating ones driving prowess, distractions, and just not understanding physics of the road and that an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

When I drive a classic, everything is up to me...how hard I press a set of manual brakes, my input to the steering wheel, the force of my right foot on the pedal.  I appreciate the simplicity of the classic car, the cues it gives you as feedback in the exhaust note, the vibrations, even the smells. It talks to you, works with you, it becomes your partner in this adventure on the road instead of your new-car babysitter, smacking your hand with VSC, TRAC, VDIM, EBD, etc, when you screw up.

The world is framed for us in all kinds of ways...through the helmet on the motorcycle, through the window at the office, through the windshield of your car.  I think these frames shape your perception, your reaction to and with the world though the frame.  The frame of the windshield on a 50's, 60's (some) 70's car says, "put the windows down and listen to me, listen to my cues, and your view will be larger than the frame."

And it's true. My frame of reference expands every time I let my heart experience the thrill of really driving, really driving a real car, really doing it all by myself.

Old video of the Nova on an outing, taken by a patient passenger.

Skeptically Yours.

Home.

From the "shit going on in Bigskeptic's Life" files....


In this era of foreclosures, squatters, etc, the very notion of home has been questioned, compromised, and forced into having been redefined.  People with families now regularly live out of their cars rather than the traditional 3 bedroom/2 bathroom set up that generations of people came to view as "home."  I think my own definition has always been fluid, because based on my past, home was a travel trailer in a storage yard, a double wide trailer, a traditional house, a monolithic antique semi-mansion, tiny apartments, relatives couches, a best friend's floor, the road, among other things. I didn't understand people's attachment with "home" as a location. Still don't. Never will.

The right to your home has also been attacked, and it's come down to a judgement call by the bank or corporation invoking Eminent Domain in most cases, minus one I can think of where the police officers asked to remove a woman from her home simply couldn't abide because she was 103 years old and on her deathbed. She skirted eviction because the law enforcers saw a glaring indecency and decided against acting on their orders. You can read the story here: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/103-year-old-woman-1245741.html 

So home is an very personal thing, obviously, and carries with it a multitude of meanings. Right now, "home" to me is a point of contention, because I find that in most of my heartaches there came some sort of discrepancy between the matter of a home, what makes a home, or where "home" is located. The amount of leavings that I have endured in my life adds up to watching a lot of taillights disappear in the distance, disappear away from my current definition of home, away from me.  I always understood the necessity of every leaving, despite the sadness of watching as someone you love leaves, because I feel the same draw to the road, to whatever's next, to making your way in your renewed life elsewhere. 

It's very American to set out on one's own in discovery of self, which is why American Literature is teeming with tales about heading West, heading to college, and essentially to steal from Thomas Wolfe...to never be able to go home again.  There's truth in that, because once you leave that definition of "home" from your childhood, you have moved past a very basic illusion we humans have developed...and that's the notion that "home" is a place.

As we're collectively fighting the banks, watching Friends and family losing their houses, we seem to be fighting for more than a place to live, but the idea that home is how we define it, and by taking away our homes there is a much larger infraction occurring. It's personal with us, because so few of us stay in proximity to our birthplaces anymore.  It's not just the loss of a house, but the loss of that self discovery that said, "I found this place. I made it my home."

As I sadly prepare to once again watch figuratively as taillights disappear into the distance, I have to question why my own feet have been planted for so long. Am I living up to my gypsy roots? Maybe having stayed in one place for so long has made sedentary the quest for constant self-discovery.  Maybe the next set of taillights to disappear over the horizon should be my own...

Skeptically Yours.

Beware The Rock Polisher

In 1988, I was eight years old. The political events shaping the world were still outside of my reality, my favorite band was Def Leppard, favorite movie was  "The Lost Boys" and the love of my life was Dan Cortez from MTV Sports.  Things were very, very different back then, as I still had a few shreds of innocence and was still in all technical facets a child. You'd think that I would have changed quite a bit since then, and as much as I now realize that Def Leppard was pop hair metal without substance, you'll catch me listening to them every now and again, and let's just say the season of "What I Like About You" starring Dan Cortez has a permanent place on my DVR. My favorite show? No. Do I look at Lo Mein and recite the lines, "Worms....you're eating worms, Michael" every single time? Yes, yes I do.

I feel like I've been one of the few left out of the smoothing process, left out of our societal coming of age ritual of rubbing off the sharp edges and creating this "well-rounded individual" that is supposed to fit in better with our norms and customs.  I feel, therefore, lucky. See, the sharp edges that  make us who we are...stubbornness, introverted-ness, super competitiveness, super sensitivity, those are rubbed down to more acceptable levels and society attempts to fill the percentage of change from your rough edges that have been filed down with more socially acceptable things.

Back to 1988, when I was 8.  I had this strange epiphany whilst in my friend's room as we played with a rock tumbler that was meant to take plain looking, average rocks from your back yard and turn them into pretty, polished little rocks that you could collect.  I realized that as these little pebbles and rocks tumbled around in there, they emerged looking prettier, being more sought after perhaps, but that it didn't change the core of the rock or what the rock actually was.  Even at eight, I started seeing some relevance, some comparison between what we do to each other and what that rock tumbler was doing to the stones we had gathered.

My friend was Emmett.  I'm not going to string this out or try to go all Politically Correct about Emmett....he was defined as a nerd in strict 1988, third grade terms. He wore super thick glasses and just never really fit in with the other kids, who were all, at that time, already joining the cliques and small subcultures of third grade life. It happens earlier now, I'm sure, people segregating into neatly defined units of class of popularity...

But Emmett was my friend because he was awesome, and as it turned out, most of my friends through the years would be judged on the criteria of whether or not they were awesome people and not to which clique they belonged.  It probably explains why my illustrious group of besties includes a whopping 4 or 5 people. Emmett is still counted among my friends, as well as some other fabulous people that stood out from the crowd. 

I look back now, and I revisit some of the sort-friends I acquired in high school and college and realize that the relationships didn't last because they bought into the well-rounded individual bullshit and submitted themselves to the societal rock polisher. They allowed school and church and parents to alter them in ways to make them more presentable, more acceptable in society. These highly pliable people learned how to fit in, to blend.

I never quite learned that lesson, maybe because people inherently saw that I would break the tumbler, or that I would come out broken into bits, or whatever. The point is that I missed the tumbler altogether and I am thankful. I am thankful that I still think in pre-polished terms, and that being part of the social clique of those that were polished is outside of my desires.

We go to school, go to church, do group activities and we're told on a consistent pattern what good and bad behavior is, what to think, what to do...and yes, I understand that people need leadership and guidance, but when you really look at what we're telling our kids, teaching our kids, feeding our kids....it's shaking them around together in the polisher, not always teaching them to think for themselves or to be skeptical, critical, of the "wisdom" they receive.

I'm not remotely comparing myself to the high-brow, damned-smart individuals that also missed the reshaping and smoothing out...but there's a long list of them. Many of the people that are really good at one thing and make that one thing their life's work change the world, but what would have happened to the invention of the light bulb, the invention of the battery, the discovery of antibiotics, etc, etc infinity, if the people behind these world-changing items were more interested in fitting in being "well rounded," and spent more time trying to sheer off the rough edges that made them work without fatigue? That made them study, or practice, or read until they mastered that area? We wouldn't have masters of craft like Roddenberry, Hawking, Kaku, Newman, Kubrick...these were people that never quite "fit in" because that very superficial goal didn't matter to them. And those that missed the polisher that aren't necessarily changing the world are at least making their own path-off-the-beaten-path and living with passion.

When I think back to who I was at 8, I see more similarities than differences. I was not easily attached to people, they had to earn my trust. Once they did that, I put them in my heart forever. I was not interested in bullshitting with people, and I didn't give in to laughing at jokes to be polite. I made decisions impetuously. I loved music, and movies, I was quick to judge, stubborn as hell, and I loved animals. I analyzed content carefully, I had a great memory, and above all things, I wanted to be a writer. I am very much still that person, in all of those ways, the good and bad. It's why I have been remotely successful in a very self-made manner. I have matured, learned, grown up...sure...but the nature and content of my character is intact.

The societal rock polisher of instilling a pre-packed mentality yields a lot of the mob-mentality that I defame in a previous post. Group-think culture is one that is bound to rush headlong together into self-destruction.

I will be left behind from that cultural careening into devastation, as I have been left behind from many of the group-decisions in the past. I'm okay with that, because the others left behind are those that I am actually interested in having around.

Skeptically Yours.

Everysinglefrickingday.

That's how often I am astounded by the dichotomy of human nature. I see amazing things, and I see startling things that make me want to install a turret on my roof.  More than anything else on this Skeptic's list of things I hate about people is sheer ignorance. When I say "sheer ignorance" it's the blank, uneducated, doesn't want to know, uninterested, blanket ignorance. There are an astounding amount of people that fall into this category, and one such reminder for me everyday is the deluge of nonsensical laws surrounding breed ban legislation, as well as breeders and the general flippancy of society to love one moment a breed and villainize it the next.

I do some rescue work, and the one creature on earth that I fully trust with my unconditional love is the canine. Any canine.

I find it, then, horrifying, that as a society we have created/over bred/loved/maligned specific breeds.  Any guess where I'm going with this?

My heart breaks at the mass slaughter of dogs in our shelters.  Over 7 million/year in California are killed, and it's largely because people are too idiotic to fully grasp the overpopulation concept for both themselves and their pets, and while we play God with the domestication of these animals, only to abandon them later, the state holds a large bill and a large karmic footprint in these deaths.  If breeders didn't over breed them in the first place, and if people adopted rather than bought, we'd decrease this situation infinitely.  But that's another day...

Today, I'm thinking about Pit Bulls. If you aren't among the above ignorant bastards, you probably know that "pit bull" means American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and a million mixes of medium sized but strong dogs that look like these breeds.  They were heroes early in the century, posing in posters with children and fighting alongside our soldiers. Stubby, a pit mix, is the most decorated war dog ever.  Ever...

Stubby. Decorated War Hero. Pit Bull.

And yet, in the last few decades the only images you see of pit bulls are in the news, having bitten someone, having been used for fighting, etc, etc.  After Michael Vick's disgusting criminality with these dogs, I thought more research and more understanding may surface.  If you take a little time learning about the breed, particularly in the tear-jerker account Lost Dogs, you'll find that most of the dogs confiscated from the Vick compound were actually rehabbed, and adopted into homes. There were a few that just had it too rough, and they weren't savable, but upwards of 90% made it. That's HUGE. You couldn't rescue people from a situation like that and expect them to be anything but batshit crazy, and yet these dogs were saveable and still trusted human beings after a remarkably short time. Unbelievable!

So in that case, why are certain counties in the US banning them altogether? Why are they the #1 dog on the euthanasia list at virtually every single animal shelter in the US?  Where are the people standing up for them?

Well, among the ridiculous uses of Facebook for posturing and the "look at my fabulous life" pictures there are some amazing, charitable and aware uses, like advocating for animals and networking against the backwards bureaucracies imposing Breed Bans. That helps, but it isn't enough.

These dogs need someone in Public Relations. We need a way to spin it back to the times that they were considered the Nanny Dogs of North America.  How did we go from that to now, with the pit bull the international symbol of crack houses everywhere?




How did we get to this point from here, the Nanny Dog?



     

It came from their popularity, partially.  Over breeding is the start, that first domino down.  Lots of people breed these dogs, and lots of people buy them.  With overbreeding comes an onslaught of health problems and the other issue of just too many damn dogs.  Then you have people buying them for fighting, for protection in drug houses, et al, and suddenly the reputation is marred forever by really, really, bad owners.

Rotties got the same reputation years ago, though I hear less about it now.  I do know that renting with these dogs is damned near impossible, and that prevents a lot of potential adopters from pulling them out of the shelters and saving their lives.  I lived with the problem of breed restricted housing with my Rottweiler. My solution? I died her brown bits black with all natural hair dye and said she was a lab mix.  I lied.  It worked.

Its harder with the short, compact and muscular pit bulls.  They can't be disguised as pomeranians, so we're at a point where we can't lie. We just have to fight for them, because they deserve it. 

And that means educating the lazy, ignorant assholes that clamor into the mob with their pitchforks at the ready, no matter what the mob is going after.  This idiot Mob Mentality is so incredibly pervasive that it's infiltrated even the loftiest groups (like Congress). Defy it by arming yourself with information, and defy it by throwing down your pitchfork and researching the matter.  I'm skeptical about the amount of people that will, actually, research something before drinking the Koolaid, but hell...it's worth a try to at least ask. 

And I ask because I hope that as we become more informed, I'll open Facebook and there will be less dogs to save, less dogs killed in the shelters, less Pit Bulls in pictures staring at me soulfully, hopefully, only wanting to have someone rescue them from their terrifying jail cell, still trusting and loving despite all of the betrayal committed against them.

Everysinglelfrickingday.  That's how often I watch the mob gather, hunting down some other Frankenstein that the mob blames for some current evil. It's disturbing, particularly when it's so evidently and irrefutably misinformed, as in this case.  I am providing some links for basic research into this...because when you drop out of the mob, you'll feel really silly, and you'll want to know the truth.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Stubby
http://www.pbrc.net/faq.html

And then buy this:
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Dogs-Michael-Rescue-Redemption/dp/159240667X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325888718&sr=8-1


Skeptically Yours.

Breaking Contracts: soooo American....

Based on the fact that people of the laziest generations yet have agreed to rise up in semi-unison against the big-bank-big-wealth-all-for-me-none-for-you is a great stepping stone on which to feel like things have to be getting better, right? I mean, the slackers have mobilized into a political force, standing up in their Converse and swinging signs angrily at the inhospitable police force threatening to pepper spray their corneas into submission.

It's a rocky start to what may be the biggest "fuck you" to the wealthy hosted in the last 100 years.  What felt like infinite depression starting with the Reagan years may be sloughing off, under which lays a fresh new crop of kids willing to chain themselves, at least figuratively, to an ideal.  That's all good.  I remember standing at the protests against the war in Iraq being photographed by police officers, presumably to catalog us heathens in a some giant super-directory of undesirables.  I felt betrayed at that time, wondering when "submit and be quiet" became the American Way...because the America I felt like I belonged to, and in, was a place where the average American voice carried at least a little weight. It was very Thomas Paine of me, I recognize, to blindly think that "for the people, by the people" was still at least remotely relevant.

Fast forward through some political turmoil, some war(s), the changing of the Presidential Guard, and an economic upheaval that left us all saying, "What the fuck just happened??"  and we're here.  We've watched in horror as families lost their homes, lost their jobs, and  watched ourselves on television bombing the shit out of Middle Eastern countries, in turn causing vast civilian loss of jobs, homes, and lives.  Damn...I've just brought myself back down.

(Intermission for self-medication.)

And we're back.

Now I'm dealing with my own drama with the bank, and I have to say that it feels like goddamned fiction.  The complete and total 180 from just two and half years ago is startling. I'm not speaking badly about the bank, in fact, Wells Fargo handed me a dizzying array of options, and none of them were particularly bad.

A personal note: this Skeptic (sort of) recently went from Facebook status "engaged" to "blank." That means that there were a lot of changes of my own to deal with in the last months 2011, particularly the logistics of going from a party of 2 to a party of 1.  The house...well, you can imagine that it's the single biggest part of the deal.  In my quest to figure this out, I talked to my bank.

They offered the Short Sale option, which used to be a bad thing on your credit and the bank could sue you for whatever loss you took against the mortgage.  Not so now...they forgive you the debt, and while your credit does take a pretty large hit, they will allow you to BUY another house ASAP.

So let me get this straight....

I get to sell my house at a loss and be forgiven?

And then...I can buy another house right away?  Can I buy my own house? Can I buy my own house for it's lesser value? Yes??  Okay...so why doesn't everyone short sell, buy their own place for what it's ACTUALLY worth, and just forget about the $20k or $30k they are short??

Where's the logic in this?  I know I'm putting a $20,000 hole in my own foot here, but what happened to being responsible for your debts? I know, I know, shit happens and sometimes its not fair. I get that. In this case though, I'm going through a separation, not a significant loss of ability, income, or health. Why should I get the super easy road (well...sort of super easy road, aside from my credit tanking)?

Well, I'm not taking it. I'm going the harder way, to assume the loan as my own and pay it off through the years in full, because when we bought the little house in the first place, we agreed to pay THAT amount...not "maybe that amount, maybe $20,000 less."

I actually believe in honoring contracts, honoring your debt, honoring your promises.  Is that weird? Is that what the kids at the occupy protests would do? What if everybody believed in paying their debts and not trying to short someone else? Would we be in this mess at all, especially if it started way, way, way up top with the people at the big-banks-big-wealth-all-for-me-and-none-for-you? 

I doubt it.  If everyone respected their promises to and for each other, I don't think we'd be anywhere near this point. Here's (skeptically) hoping for 2012 that we get there.

Skeptically Yours.

The Lloyd Dobler Effect

I've had this discussion probably 32 times in the last month, this recurring conversation about a common dillemma that most people, I'm guessing, haven't even considered to be a dilemma.  Yet...I do, and apparently I'm not alone.  I'm talking again about apathy, because it seems to be everywhere, all around me, draped 'round my shoulders like a worn-out hoodie.

It's a women and men thing...and it's really come together for me recently.  Some background information first: I have never trusted men.  See, most men in my life were complete douchebags, minus my brother, who is and always will be the greatest man ever.  Now that I've said that, I'm realizing partially that a) I can't hate/distrust (almost) every single man out there because of the plethora of douchebaggery to which I've been exposed and that b) we are sort of training our up and coming crop of men to be said douchebags.

Stick with me, I promise I'll be burning gas in a second.

I remember the days when I felt like feminism was a good thing, and I still do but in general I grip the immense polarizing effect it's had on society.  I no longer have a NOW tee shirt, I DO shave my legs, and while I love tinkering on my cars in the garage, I have found that I ALSO enjoy cooking and I now admit to having a maternal instinct.  I used to be more one sided...I WILL work, I WILL be a mechanic, I WILL not be girly because girly is weak.

Weak.  I let feminism mutate in my head to say that if I'm girly, I'm being weak, and therefore open to victimization.  I wouldn't admit to wanting kids.  I wouldn't admit to wanting to actually stay at home and write and not have to be a manic workaholic in a suit. To completely contort Eric Cartman to fit my needs...I have learned that I want to say "Screw you guys...I'm going home."  I have a great job, and I like the independence that the sufragettes before me fought themselves bloody to procure.  And for years I have been among them, albeit still wearing my bra.  Now I find the most useful part of feminism, for me anyway, is to be able to choose.

I choose, if I am able, to not have to work.  I realize that in the eyes of most women now, their value is their career.  I get that.  It's been me for seven years. 

Now, to the hard part of being this newly envisioned feminist, deciding on using my womanhood for it's organic, hardwired components:

Men.

Men are sort of trained, right? As trained as us strong, independent women.  We work equally, we make approximately the same pay, we have moved into the male sectors of traditional employment.  That's great and all, and yay for women, but what effect did this have on the guys?

I notice it sometimes, when I outshoot the men at the range.  When I can talk cars better than the guys at the car show.  When my male friends want to fix their cars...and relunctantly they call me.  And then they stand there, looking a little lost, looking at me as if I'm pissing standing up.  They are confused.

How can they feel needed when I can do this stuff as good as or better than them?  How can they feel like they are protecting me, which seems like a real male need, if I can grab the .357 and protect myself?  How can they strut around, feathers raised, and attract me if I can outdrive them, outshoot them, outthink them?

In short, my female desires at this point are sort of outweighed by the fact that the TYPE of man I want is sort of heading towards extinction.  I want a man that CAN impress me with his smarts, make me laugh with better timing than mine, protect me and make me feel secure, make amazing decisions that I can follow without wondering "what the hell am I doing?"  I don't want him to feel insecure around me because of my stengths, I want him to feel secure in his OWN strengths, and therefore be able to appreciate mine. I'm tired of being a leader. I want someone to feel comfortable taking that position.

So...where do I find this rare creature? Does it still exist? Am I subconsciously looking for Lloyd Dobler, only to come up short and finding the asexual creatures that are popular these days...the skinny, weak intellectuals that seem apathetic about the whole thing ala Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds?  Lloyd Dobler seems to be a popular name with my generation, and there's a reason we've all stuck with him.  You don't see it often enough, these character traits.  Lloyd Dobler was indeed flawed, but he was flawed in some amazing ways. 

In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman blames his inability to satisfy women on John Cusack, explaining that Lloyd Dobler has set an example impossible to follow. He writes:

     It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John  

    Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn’t the number one box-office star in America, because every straight

    girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker … But here’s the thing that

    these … women don’t seem to realize. They don’t love John Cusack. They love Lloyd Dobler. When they

    see Mr. Cusack, they are still seeing the optimistic, charmingly loquacious teenager he played in Say

   Anything.

I think there's something to this.  Women from my generation have been trained to want it all, to want the Lloyd Dobler, to want a career, to want kids, to want to provide but also be provided for...but it's all too much.  I don't want a career AND kids....so what's it all mean?
 
Lloyd Dobler adored Diane Court. He fought for her. He checked up on her and made sure she was okay, he steered her around obstacles, he wouldn't let her slip away, he held her with passion.  However, she was the powerhouse in the relationship, smarter, more organized, more educated, more eloquent.  He was the passion, the emotion, the follower. She was pragmatic and practical. In this instance, they end up together and he raises the kids while she chases a career in international law....
 
So altogether, I think Lloyd Dobler is a bigger problem than previously imagined.  Do I want my husband raising my kids as I slave away in a corporate graind?  No. Flip it around. Lloyd Dobler made us recognize something we wanted, but it wasn't transparent enough to realize that HE was going to take the traditional wife role in this instance and Diane was going to support him forever. Maybe she wanted that. Maybe some women do, but I am going to start being a voice of semi-opposition.
 
Confused men are becoming apathetic, because their roles have been diminished and become enigmatic. Men are more likely, these days, to posture instead of practice (See below post, and note that Facebook was created by one of the "world's biggest posers"-direct quote from someone smarter than me.)  I know more apathetic men than women, I know more apathetic teen males than I ever imagined existed.  Those that do not feel needed are more likely to be apathetic, right? So it completely makes sense. If men are inconsequential in this society, apathy takes over and more and more men will actually be the dreaded d-bags, without a path, without a PURPOSE, misguided, confused. We all need a purpose. Damn...having a bigger purpose, a bigger voice, and better choices were what feminism was all about. Now the pendulum has perhaps swung too far.
   
Skeptically Yours.

The New Generation of Posturing

He's 22ish, and from the seat before me I can smell the apathy dripping off of him. I'm not old (yet) but there seems to be a disconnect through the decade of age between us. He's trying to be subversive, casual cool...but in his eyes I can see something I don't like.

He's interviewing for a job, and he doesn't give a damn if he gets it or not...so why waste my time? Why waste his own time? Are we at a crux where people no longer care about the value of time?

Sort of...

Because in his eyes I see that his interactions are regulated to 180 characters or less, simple frozen moments of status updates and tweets...pictures that were taken to show exactly how much fun he was having 32 seconds ago, even if he wasn't enjoying himself at all. It's the Facebook Generation. They scan your conversations and interactions for that zinger to post in a minute. I don't think they know they're doing it, but they are subconsciously diciphering what to share.

I remember in high school the subtle shows people put on...the posturing they did to appear tougher, cooler, et al. I knew them then as posers...and this new generation of Facebook Posturing seems to be allowing this show even more so, because there isn't the day-to-day reality of proving oneself. I fully believe in self invention, of making yourself something better...but really, there's a huge difference between actually reinventing yourself as something better andposting pictures of yourself and your "terrific life" while hiding behind the computer.

The problem with posturing on facebook is that if you're never responsible for who you claim to be, you never actually live. You can post all day long...and update status of every benign, uninteresting facet of your life...but until you have to be responsible for the person you're claiming to be, you never actually live up to the potential.

We're digital, I get that...it's the trajectory we're on and it's not going away. There's a lot to be said about the digital life, a lot of great things, one of which is the ability to connect with you, to connect with my family members spread far and wide. But if all I am living is the digital life, I am just a poser, just like the obnoxious guy in High School that couldn't fight if his life depended on it, but struts around and hopes no one challenges him.

As for Mr. Apathetic, he's not getting the job. He won't care...and later he'll probably post on FB that some corporate bitch (me) isn't open minded enough to see his brilliance. 29 people will comment below him re: the 1%, corporate culture sucks, how bourgeois the workplace is anyhow, etc, etc. He will forget about it as soon as the status is too far down the page to care about it...which is, what, like...an hour?

The generation that naturally reaches for their smart phones to update facebook don't yet realize that they have no privacy, that nothing is sacred. Maybe they don't yet care...but they will eventually. And if they say they don't care...they're lying. It's part of being a poser.

Skeptically yours.

Social Media Immigration

I learned something today---which above all things is a goal of mine that often enough doesn't materialize. I like to learn things, even when they are small and trifling. Or better yet---when they seem small and trifling but aren't.

Social media isn't new, or really even that groundbreaking. It's an old concept of creating a circle and sticking to it, expanding when evolution says it's cool or wise to do so, keeping it closed when things should stay status quo. This can be exemplified by almost all species...gorillas mate when it's time to do so, and they keep to their little pack (or whatever it's called in gorilla-circles, I'm not a zoologist.) However, if there is a new guy on the block, he can challenge those other gorillas in the circle for dominance and win "entrance" to their society, i.e: the right to breed with that society's female.

It applies to almost every group. Humans have just invented some buttons on our social media sites to take the place of a grueling battle with giant horns or hooves or teeth. So less blood, but the idea...well that's more or less similar.

There are two types of social media folks: immigrants and natives. So...you are either "entering" this already established world or you were born into it. It's an expansion of the evolutionary idea of societies and how they're shaped. I am an immigrant for the first time in my life. Unlike my 5 and 3 year old neices, I was born into a world where email wasn't my "go to" communication. I was 6 before I touched a computer...and does Oregon Trail really count as "computer use"? I was in highschool before my family got our first computer all equipped with AOL and "ready" for the internet via dial up.

These days, the Social Media natives are born with this stuff pre-programmed. Dial up is hysterical to them. HTML is completely out of date. In other words---this is their sphere. They already speak the language and all of us outsiders are learning about it, speaking it---but it isn't fluent. It's forced. It feels like...being in Spain and knowing how to say "Donde esta el Bano?" and then searching while the person giving you directions in Spanish speeds ahead. A la Derecho? Wait, is that right, or left?

Just like I don't understand why Justin Bieber matters, I don't understand how these folks can spend all day and all night adjusting their twitter feeds. But...it's cultural. I am not "from" this country of Social Media. I vacation there. I almost fit in.

But not quite---because I am an immigrant. I've tried this whole melting pot thing and you know what...it's never going to be quite for me. It's outside of my sphere of influence, my sphere of comfort. We all have our monkey spheres (see http://www.cracked.com/ and read it) and this...well...my people are on there but our level of use and integration isn't quite there because we're all immigrants sitting in on a "social media as a second language" course.

To me, its a semi useful tool and it has its value, but it's not my life. Natives completely disagree.

But of course, they are out of my monkey sphere.

Skeptically Yours.

MSG, MSG, Everywhere

There's an idyllic image of pastoral America, a rainbow of vegetables growing just beneath the dirt. These vegetables are the last bits of healthful food in a world overtaken by prepackaged madness, microwavable everything, irradiated beef, and food so highly preserved that our insides are as pickled as the pepperoncinis floating around in a jar of sulfites on the grocer's shelves. Yep, at least we have vegetables.



What's that? What about the vegetables?



Oh yeah, there's fertilizers and pesticides. And now with the advent of a not-so-lovely fertilizer called Auxigrow, there's MSG in the vegetables. There's no washing that off, guys. Ever had a headache just after one of those nasty Gyros from the Greek joint in the mall? How about after Chinese food?



That's because most of us have MSG sensitivities. And for the unlucky few of us, it is a seriously bad sensitivity that causes vomiting, intense headaches, dizziness, and heart palpitations. But since it's not an "allergy" it's not something that has to be labelled appropriately, and the use of it as a fertilizer is mostly unknown.

Auxigrow has been approved for use on almost everything, sending a lot of folks sensitive to MSG into a personal hell of symptoms that they may not even understand. After all, they are innocently consuming the last of the the "safe" foodstuffs, or so they thought.

Farming has morphed into this unrecognizable industry in the last few decades, beyond what anyone has predicted back when Muley sat in remorse on the changing landscape in the Grapes of Wrath. Mechinization, for better or worse, surely transformed the way our produce is brought to the table, but did anyone expect that after that, a virtual chemical warfare would be waged upon the food we eat? It's insane that there is now barely a single edible item in the grocery store that isn't a potential health risk.

Skeptic or not, the further from 100% natural, the more risk we take putting something into our bodies. Hoping that the chemical compounds we ingest won't kill us a little later down the road isn't a bet we should have to make. Why is it so hard to ask for crops grown without more science than dirt, manure, water, sun?

Does anyone else think there is something to the fact that the very same company that makes fertilizer and pesticides also made Agent Orange, which obliterated so much of a nation that it continues to infest the groundwater supply and crops with poison four decades later?

Those chemical compounds really have no business near our bodies. Venturing just a guess, they probably do more harm than good. As for MSG, it's not nearly as devastating as some of the other nasty chemicals, but this skeptic has been bedridden one too many times because of monosodium glutamate.

Vegetables are better when they're just vegetables, damnit.


Skeptically Yours.

To live and die simply, thou shalt not sue me

My father was born in depression era Ohio, essentially handed two pairs of clothes and told to survive. By the time he was about six, he was shooting animals we mostly associate with rabies and roadkill in order to help feed a booming family of ten. His first car was actually a jalopy, and not the kind romanticized by laureate Beats, but the actual kind badly needing the parts he bargained and traded for out junk yards. This jalopy? A Model T. The price? $50. My Dad? 13.

Those were different days. When my father wasn't yet a father and just Herb, just a boy in the late 1940's, he went to jail for speeding and wreckless driving, he ran around without shoes on in junk yards chock full of rusted metal, he handled guns at the ripe old age of six without shooting anyone else or his own eye out, he cut tobacco with giant machetes for 25 cents a week, he ate food better left untouched, he used and reused everything possible, and he lived. And he had a decent job and family, and all of us lived, too.

So what the hell happened in modern times, that people can't get on as well as folks did back then with practically nothing?

What's going on out there? Now, we can't help a mom install a baby seat in her car because if she wrecks, and the infant is hurt, she can sue the company, the individual, and probably the employee that walked by and smiled as the installation was occurring. Why? 'Cause we can't have any forgiveness or moreoever, any culpability. Everyone points fngers and wants a safety net.

Guess what? We don't have a safety net guys, and my dad has some scars, and he made some mistakes, but his photo books are thick, his memory is great, his stories are long and hysterical, he knows everyone in town and moreover, he's 77 and he's never sued anyone. He's had an engine dropped on his back, a machete through a vein, and a host of other accidents. But there's the rub, eh? Accidents. They were accidents.

The point? He learned to live LIFE. No lawsuits, no stupid grudges and no time for wasting time. He still had fun, he was still wreckless and wild, but he chose to just live, and live simply.

The birth of the Large Hadron Collider should have everyone considering a lot of the big questions about life. Read about it? It's an amazing piece of work, and sounds more Star Trek than reality. It's either the machine that will propel us to the next level of scientific research, or destroy the world, depending on who you listen to. The experiments to discover what makes up mass, and searching for the answers about the Universe right after the Big Bang are useful and exciting. On the other hand, it could begin creating blackholes or worm holes and destroy us all (complete drivel, this philosophy).

In moments like these, it's wise to consider what really matters---lawsuits, money, pitiful and and pathetic squabbling that reduce us to the common and base elements of our most vile nature? Or the simple things, those things that taught my father about surviving, laughing, family and frugality? Thinking about the end of the world should make us want to forget about all of the vindictiveness, the time ill spent with creating dividers and boundaries. As science explores the tiniest frontiers of matter, and these miniscule protons smashing into each other, shouldn't we spend time on our own human frontier trying to explore our own relationships or interactivity?

The disappearing facets of what we are, who we are----those are the things that we would miss the most should we be without them. No one would ever say, "I should have sued him when I had the chance" if they had only 4 seconds left. Leaving the legacy of human beings for another society of beings should be something we think about, just in case.

I hope that should the LHC destroy us, but somehow leave a legacy behind, it forgets the lawsuits, the pettiness, the destruction and the waste. I hope that it remembers the souls like Herb. Resourceful, simple, able to subsist from the Earth and with the Earth, beside his fellow man, working with his fellow man, and finding joy in the smallest things.

The world is in a collossal shit lagoon. People are awful to each other, committing treachery just because. This is not the state in which the world should end. If it ends, it should be in a massive hoorah, take no prisoners, party like it's 1999 type of way. Even if the LHC isn't sending us into a stream of strange matter, remember this: life is short, doomsday machine or none. When you find yourself wasting time with petty vindictiveness, pondering a lawsuit, or whittling your time away by doing something soul-crushing, picture the LHC. Even if it's harmlessly sending little protons around in a giant circle beneath the Franco-Swiss border, it's enough to make you want to live life without the bullshit.

Skeptically Yours.

Bigskeptic's Driving School, or How to Not be a Dick

Common sense is rapidly dissolving on the jam-packed streets of LA, and though the newly imposed no-cell-phone law is a start, it's just not enough. Sure, everyone makes a boneheaded move occasionally, but driving at any hour on any freeway in this city is practically a life or death proposition.

Part of the problem is that technology has turned the average driver into a blubbering idiot. Why maneuver when VSC, VDIM, TRAC, ETC, VGRS, and all of the other can't-actually-drive-but-my-car-will-do-it-for-me-acronym-heavy systems will keep the car rolling in the right direction while the poor schmuck you cut off takes a header for the ditch? Why actually pay attention to the road when your Lexus has the active safety systems to help you avoid accidents?

The problem is here: let's compare braking in feet from 60 MPH to 0 MPH.
Lexus IS350-119 feet
Honda Civic-126 feet
Ford Edge-158 feet

A Lexus IS350 with amazing safety features and an oblivious driver that cuts off a Ford Edge has a great chance of causing an accident because of the braking comparisons.

Pair this with the oblivious driver that cuts off a semi and you have a real catastrophe.

Now, to the don't be a dick part.

If you have ever:
1. Cut someone off and then slowed down...
2. Driven less than the speed limit in the fast lane (that's the left lane, to any of you that wonder)...
3. Darted in front of a big truck...
4. Darted in front of a classic car...
5. Driven in the right lane and refused to let someone enter the freeway...
6. Hit someone's car and ran...
7. Waited until the last second when you know a lane is ending to jump in the other lane...
You are a dick.

Have some respect for classic cars. What's more, many of them have drum brakes. Don't know what that means?? It means they can't stop as fast as you, and when you cut them off, the massive amount of steel used in their rigid construction will mutilate your puny little unibody wonder. And probably you too. So when you see an old car cruising along, resist the temptation to jump in front of it and slam your brakes. It's bad for your health.

This goes doubly for big, big trucks. Countless accidents show that people don't understand physics or velocity, but the proof is the pudding that semi trucks make of pedestrian vehicles. This goes for pick up trucks too. They will maul you, though not the extent of the overworked and underpaid trucker making a delivery who will barely feel the thu-thump of your Honda under his axle.

This pretty much comes down to looking out for someone other than Number 1. Remember that often times you get home alive because someone else out there decided to let you in that lane, even though you were too close to their car. That someone may have been Bigskeptic.

Taking care of each other is something that has to happen everywhere, even on the road. Especially on the road.

Skeptically Yours.

You want a suburb WHERE??

On approach to LAX it becomes nauseatingly clear that Los Angeles is a city of suburban/urban sprawl, which stretches its homogeneous breadth from Orange county all the way to the desert. It's ugly, even from the air. Looking down from that height, it's clear exactly how much land space was wasted for concrete and streets and houses that celebrate commonality.

Somehow, someway, the suburban mindset travels like an air born disease, which also affects people's sense of how to be neighborly. In the countryside, where generation after generation of farmers live and plow, big business landed and surveyed.

The landscape was beautiful and serene, and so they started buying up farmland. Farmers these days have a tough road, because industrialization has put a big fat feather pillow on the face of American food production and suffocated the first line of defense. Driving down prices to inflate their own bottom line, our mega-corporations like Tyson Foods, et all, have made living as a farmer practically a service to charity.

So when these companies come and offer money for land, the farmers see a profitable way out and sell and run, and Jeffersonian America's perfect independent citizen is one step closer to extinction. And now---welcome suburbanites to the country.

But there are farmers who stay and do what they do, which is, believe it or not, actually farm. The newly transplanted suburbanites hoping for countryside tranquility get a taste of sharing the road with tractors, smelling hogs and cows, breathing dust when the hay is bailed. And that's country life.

But that's not suburban life, and there is an inherent clash. There is a clash when a stray calf makes his way into the neighboring suburb. There is a clash when the farmer has a 1978 Chevy truck that doesn't match his suburban neighbor's idea of "transportation." There are grounds for lots of clashes.

But here's the question: why would you want to move to the country and build on a pint sized lot near hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields, and then complain about the thousand acre hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields that have been there for many, many more years than your suburb?

What's the point of leaving of Suburban-Where-You-Already-Are, USA? And if you do get that call-to-nature, and go, why complain about the lifestyle you are inherently joining by moving "to the country"? And why buy a house that probably looks like the one you are leaving?

Bitching about farmers in farmland makes as much sense as moving to Puerto Rico and bitching about the Puerto Ricans. Why move there if you aren't ready for the culture change? If you're closed minded, don't go. Do the locals a favor, por favor.

Farmers have it hard enough without a bunch of bored suburbanites knocking on their doors to tell them that their horses smell.

But know what? Horses and farmers built this damn country. Go pick up some literature by a man named Thomas Jefferson. And land developers: ignore a part of the country called Brown County, OH. It's really beautiful and we have a lot of farmers, and I like it just how it is. It smells like horses, cows, and pigs. It's dusty when it's hay season, there are tractors on the road, and at times, steam engines. Suburbanites, you would hate it.

*To read a discussion on the suburban encroachment topic on The H.A.M.B., click on this link: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=284286&highlight=farmer Be warned, though, that this is a forum of traditional hot rodders. If it's not your type of thing, they will immediately sense this and out you. Also, if you're a dick, they will punish you, and you will have deserved their flagellation. Enjoy!

Skeptically Yours.

My V8 vs. Your Hybrid

Ooooohh---I bet I bet that makes your skin tingle, right?? The hybrid is the righteous little guy with the synergy drive, single handedly saving us from the oil crisis. The V8 is a boisterous and gas guzzling waste-mongrel, mangling the diminutive supply of petrol remaining. My gripe isn't actually the hybrid. It's the hybrid drivers, most of them. They look over at me, nose in the air, scoffing at my rumbly little Underdog Nova.

I laugh every time I pass a Steakhouse with Hybrid mobiles choking the Valet lot. I chuckle when I peak inside and see a well-equipped Hybrid bathed with leather interior. I emit nothing short of a chortle when the Hybrid lovin' nation totes home their succulent goods flown in from half way around the world.

My point? I have several. Let me expound.

Firstly, some of the most disgusting and air-f0uling emissions out there comes from my friend, the cow. I do not eat the cow. I do not believe we should mass produce the cow like this poor creature is living simply to be your steak, your boot, your belt. It's feces ends up in what we lovingly call a "lagoon." Sounds nice, right? It ain't. It's a festering, steamy pond of cow shit that actually eats away our ozone at levels way above what comes out of the Nova's exhaust pipe. Surprised? That's right. The Nova's dual exhaust is way less harmful than a herd of cows' asses.

Pack the Hybrid with leather, and you have this complete wash of anything that the little righteous-mobile was actually campaigning towards. So the car was halfway there, and then---yep, missed it! Now, these cows, manufactured by a completely industrialized and heartless system, die for your car. And their lagoon? It will exist for a very very long time.

My point further??

The goods from around the world. That's pretty self explanatory. Buy local, people. Local. I will talk plenty more on here about farmers. But planes = emissions.

What's more, hybrid drivers, you hate me, I know. I'm cool with that. Have you ever asked the driver of a classic car how much they drive it? What kind of mileage it actually gets? Here's some news...Mine? 18 MPG. Better than a lot of new cars. And not that much, i.e. to shows, on pretty days, and for testing out new parts. And when I am stuck in traffic next to a Hybrid, I always look over and make sure to smile at the driver.

The reaction? Almost always a smirk.

Skeptically Yours.


*For those of you out there that drive a Hybrid, can explain Hybrid Synergy Drive, forgo leather, and understand the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle, I applaud you. Don't smirk at me.