Monthly Archives: March 2013

Crisis Time

I don’t believe in the crisis, in the economy, in whatever it is that’s supposed to be so bad about today, about right now, the age in which we’re living. The market tanked in 2008, everything got really bad, and we’re still trying to get out of it. That’s the narrative, right? I don’t buy it.

I think it’s all made up, a bunch of nonsense. Sure, something definitely happened. There was a housing bubble. Governments let banks do a bunch of stuff that they weren’t supposed to be doing. Lots of people lost lots of money. I’m not trying to trivialize stuff like people losing their homes of being out of work.

But crisis? Still? It’s 2013. There’s no crisis. Take two seconds out of your life and look up the Great Depression on the Internet. And then think about our “Great” recession. There weren’t any bread lines. The government didn’t have to start directly hiring its own citizens (although it should have.)

I’m just saying, this is supposedly the worst time in our nation’s history since the Great Depression. But everybody has an iPhone. Everybody’s still paying a ridiculously high monthly contract to use that iPhone. Everybody has access to the Internet. How is the crisis at all making our lives different?

Since 2008 I’ve gone to Ecuador with the Peace Corps. I came back to the US and had no trouble getting two different restaurant jobs. Things are supposed to be so bad, but there hasn’t been any decrease in the number of tourists travelling to New York to spend twenty dollars on a cheeseburger. Maybe it’s just because I live in New York, but all I see are people throwing money around, on cabs, on food, on cell phones and clothing.

By this point the crisis has to be totally manufactured. It’s good for politics. Each side came blame the other side as the reason for why things aren’t getting better. But things aren’t getting worse. I’d argue that there’s no real progress. If both sides got together and really charted a course for the future, history has shown us that there are great leaps we can take forward as a society.

And there are plenty of real problems. If we could stop fighting about how to pool our resources, we could eliminate poverty, we could commission new public works, provide higher education for everybody, even basic education. But there’s no time for that? Why? Because five years later we’re still just coming out of a recession. Right. We’re still in crisis mode. There’s no time think about anything except the immediate present.

Crisis is good for big business. Banks, conglomerates, they’re all making record profits. All while the rest of us are just kind of doing the same as we’ve always been doing. They can justify not hiring because, just like I said above, they can say, hey, things are still shaky. We’re too soon out of this mess.

I’m not going anywhere with this. I don’t like sounding preachy. I just think that the crisis is a bunch of baloney. As a species, we have the means to feed everybody on the planet, but we don’t. We have the means to help everybody get out of poverty, but we aren’t doing that. It’s too easy for us to point the finger at some imaginary mess, to say to those that aren’t doing so great, listen, you should be able to help yourself out buddy.

I’d love to see redistribution on a large scale. I’d love to see the government come in and mandate ridiculously high taxes for those hoarding all of their wealth. Because the people who have a lot, the people who have power, they aren’t using that power to make anything better for society at large. They’re stalling. They’re in the way. They cry crisis at every attempt to actually do something. Because they don’t want anything done. They have no reason to. Crisis has been good for business, great for their own bottom lines. Why change anything?

I love playing sports

I wasn’t good at sports until I was like twenty-five years old. It’s like, once I got past high-school, out of college, on my own for a few years, once I was at the point where I’d really never find myself in a setting to play sports, I got good at them. And when I say good, I’m speaking relatively. I’m sure if you talked to my friends or family members, they’d say I still suck at sports. But I’m much better than I was when I was younger.

From an early age, I always sucked at sports. Like most little kids in suburbia, my parents signed me up for everything, t-ball, baseball, soccer, basketball. I was terrible at everything. I remember specifically this one baseball game – I must have been pretty little still because it was the type of baseball where somebody’s dad did all of the pitching – and my dad was like, “Robbie, if you get a hit today I’ll take you to the comic book store.”

Jesus Christ I wanted to go to the comic book store. Superman had just died and, not being in a socioeconomic position to go out and buy these books every week by myself, I kind of just had to rely on listening to other people talk about it. And there was no Internet and allo of my friends were in the same boat, so nobody knew what they were talking, everybody making up lies about Superman. Please just get a hit. All I have to do it just touch the bat to the ball and it’s comic book time.

I remember not hitting the ball. Maybe there was a foul, but it didn’t count. And I remember my dad taking me anyway, even though I didn’t really come through on my end of the deal. Baseball was tough. Not only because I sucked at sports, but because baseball is so long. Like I like watching baseball, on TV, because there’s plenty of room for snack breaks and video game breaks.

But playing a whole game of baseball? Nine innings? And they always stuck me way in the outfield. So it’s just me, standing there. The chances of another little kid actually hitting a baseball hard enough to make it to where I was standing were infinitesimal. But laying down on the grass yelled at. “Stand up! Pay attention to what’s going on!”

I actually didn’t have that much time to lie down. There were always like one or two dragonflies way out there in the outfield. I mean, yeah, dragonflies don’t do anything, but they’re big, and noisy, and they go about their lives as if human beings don’t exist. Like they don’t make any conscious effort to avoid you. They might come buzzing an inch from your face. That’s pretty nerve wracking. My palms are actually getting sweaty just thinking about it. So yeah, outfield was really this whole stretch of time just trying to avoid these stupid bugs.

And then soccer. I only played one season. It was pretty uncharacteristic of my parents to let me abandon something after only one season, but I sucked at soccer so bad that they had to make an exception to their sports policies. My coach’s name was Ben Dash. His son’s name was Ben Dash. What is it about parents having to coach their own kids? Isn’t there an inherent conflict of interest? Yeah, but I guess it’s a little weirder if you recruit adults with no connection to the kids at all. Still.

One game stands out in my head especially. After being allotted the bare minimum of playing time all season, Coach Dash screams out during one of our games, “G___, in!” I couldn’t believe it. Showtime. I run out onto the field and immediately intercept the ball. Holy shit, I couldn’t believe this was finally happening for me. I hear screaming. Everything’s getting blurry. All of the blood is rushing to my head in excitement. No time to sit down and tremble, I have to keep moving.

Other kids coming at me. I’m dodging them. I’m doing it. There’s the net. Shoot! Blocked, right into the goalie’s hands. “G___, out!” What the hell? I just shot on net. Wait a second, why is everybody laughing? It turned out that I shot on my own goal. All of those kids I dodged? They were my teammates. Even my parents were laughing.

I played the rest of the season, but I swear, and maybe this is some sort of built-in defense mechanism, but that is the only memory that I have of that whole season. That, and some teammate named Arturo, and his dad, who’d stand at the sidelines of every single game and scream, “Pass it to Arturo! Pass it to Arturo!” over and over again, like the only reason any of our parents signed us up for soccer was that somebody we might have the opportunity to pass it to Arturo.

Anyway, I still love playing sports. I love running around. I’m in good shape. I wish I were better when I was younger. I wish I could have had some cool sports memories, maybe like something where I’m a troubled youngster, and I wind up joining some pee-wee hockey league, but the coach isn’t into it, he’s only there because a judge told him he had to do it. But throughout the course of the season we’d all develop really strong bonds, and eventually we’d overcome insurmountable odds to win the championship. That would have been awesome.

What would I do if society collapsed?

I’ve somehow managed to carve out an existence for myself. I’m alive. I’m living in a major American city. I have cash in my pocket. That’s fine. Everything’s fine. Two years ago I was waiting tables at a restaurant. One day I got bored and walked into another restaurant and now I’m waiting tables over there. Terrific. I’m in pretty good shape. I try to eat right, you know, in between binging at McDonald’s or White Castle. I run a lot. Fantastic.

But what if society were to collapse tomorrow? Let’s say zombie apocalypse. Or let’s not, because that’s kind of overdone. But imagine the same post-zombie apocalypse, just minus the zombies. Imagine no cities, no big populations of people, no societal rules, no infrastructure, no Internet. Just roving bands of human beings scavenging from site to site, occasionally coming upon another group of human beings, struggling for scarce resources, fighting for power.

All I want to do right now is to have as much of a life of leisure as possible. What would my role be in this new world? I think about this because if you look back at history, compared to the majority of homo sapiens that have walked this surface of this planet, I’m living a life of incredible luxury. Not only that, but I’m not really doing anything for it. I was born into this reality of highways and refined petroleum and microprocessors. My government sent people to the moon like twenty years before I was even born.

Here I am traipsing around, serving hamburgers to businessmen for lunch, riding my bicycle home and writing a bunch of nonsense on the Internet. If I’m hungry I go into my fridge. If I’m too lazy to put something together, I can walk down the block and buy a hot meal from like eighty-five different restaurants. If I’m even lazier I can call up any one of those eighty-five restaurants and pay somebody there to get on his bicycle and ride that food over to my place.

Boom. Nuclear war. Giant asteroid. Some sort of weird global pandemic that kills everybody shorter than six foot three. All of the sudden I’m back to my roots, back to my caveman roots. I’ll only be able to stand around in the burnt out shell of my apartment, mourning my losses, sifting through endless piles of rubble for so long before I start to get hungry. And then I’ll get really hungry. And I’ll walk through the streets and maybe I’ll run into some other people. And we’re all really hungry. And thirsty. And where do I go to the bathroom? And what do I use to clean myself off? And now I’d like to brush my teeth.

I’m not trying to make any point, except to remind myself that this humdrum life I’m living is a very pampered one. Three hundred years ago I might have been … what? What would I have been? At twenty-eight years old, I’d probably have grandkids by now. Would we all be toiling away in the fields? Constantly preparing for drought, for famine, any way to stave off the all but inevitable hunger?

Or would I even be alive? When I was a kid I had strep throat like three times. I had the chicken pox. Pink eye. In the eighth grade I had meningitis. Jesus. What about my cavities? Maybe I wouldn’t be alive. Maybe I’m not cut out for real nature, like raw pre-industrial society pre-Purell nature.

Whenever I start thinking about this, I always wind up going back even further, way back. There was definitely a time before human beings. Now there are human beings. What was the first generation of humans like? How far removed were they from the rest of the animal kingdom? What must it have been like to live as a human, as a group of human, before speech, before language was invented, before anybody had the chance to sit around and think about what’s right and what’s wrong.

No, nobody had time for reflection, because all anybody was thinking about was food, about not being hungry, about satisfying primitive needs. Was there any pleasure at all in life? What gets me crazy is that our ancestors actually had to live through that. That those experiences are all part of us, somewhere, deep down. And that if catastrophe were to strike, were somehow to erase everything that we’ve built up since then, we’d be back to some sort of a square one, a shared experience revolving around a base means of trying to stay alive.

And then I snap out of my daydream and I’m sitting here at this computer, frustrated because I can’t think of anything to write about, can’t get comfortable because the heat is too strong because it’s too cold outside. And I’m too full because I ate too big of a lunch.

St. Patrick’s Day: The Real Story

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody. It’s such a great holiday. Everything’s green. Just like Ireland. Just like St. Patrick. Legend has it that good old St. Pat had sort of a green tint to him, to his complexion. Those interested in hagiography know that Patrick had to board a ship to travel to Ireland. It was there that he developed a really bad case of seasickness. “Looking a little green around the gills, aren’t ye Patty?” the sailors used to tease and taunt him.

And it was true. From the minute St. Patrick boarded his first vessel, he couldn’t stop feeling the rocking, the back and forth, the never-ending motion of the boat crashing against the waves. When he wasn’t throwing up, he was in between throw-ups. It was pretty constant. He was originally supposed to be a slave on one of these ships, but after a while the captain realized that Patrick was all but useless on a boat.

They tried beating it out of him, they tried withholding food and water. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and so Patrick kept puking and puking. Finally the crew conceded that he was probably a lost cause, and so they made him walk the plank.

Even when he was thrown overboard, alone, adrift in the sea, he couldn’t stop throwing up. But it was all for the best, because his wrenching and heaving served to propel him forward through the water, until he miraculously landed on the Emerald Isle.

Once on dry land, his nausea diminished somewhat, but he was never really able to get his sea legs to start acting like land legs again. For the rest of his life, wherever he went, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop feeling those waves, the incessant rocking back and forth. He’d lay awake in his bed for hours, unable to stop the maddening sensation of being stuck on that boat, staring at the ceiling and trying to will his brain to adjust to his new surroundings.

But it was all for naught, and he had to contend to living a life slightly off balance. Interestingly, this is how the Irish people came up with one of their most famous dances, the jig. After Patrick did all of his miracles, expelled the frogs and the snakes, defeated the druid priests in miracle competitions, he became very famous. Everybody in Ireland knew of him and talked about his exploits. He was beloved enough that when people saw him walking all wobbly because of the whole permanent seasickness thing, they emulated him. They all started walking like they were stuck on a boat. And so generation after generation, this became a way to commemorate Patrick, it became embedded in the Irish culture, in the jig.

Unfortunately, to an outsider’s perspective, this whole walking around like you can’t get a hold of anything, it looks an awful lot like inebriation. And so the Irish developed an unwarranted reputation for being a group of heavy drinkers. Still, St. Patrick’s life was noble and honorable enough to overcome this slanderous legacy, kind of.

Today Irish and non-Irish around the world celebrate the life and deeds of St. Patrick, Ireland’s most famous non-Irish person. Some of his more unsophisticated followers use his feast day as an excuse to head to the city for the day, to get really drunk. They drink lots of beer and have to go to the bathroom really badly, but everybody else is doing the same exact thing. So they head down to the alley to see if they can’t get away with peeing outside, but the cops, they’re everywhere, they’re just counting on busting kids from the suburbs for public urination. And that’s a pretty hefty fine.

True devotees commemorate St. Patrick by, yes, by drinking, but they use green food coloring to make their beer look green. And it’s not just beer. You can get green bagels on St. Patrick’s Day. You can get a Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s. There’s lots of green stuff available, just like in Ireland.

So get out there and celebrate. Do a little jig. If you see a frog or a snake, kill it. And make sure that everything you eat and drink is green. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everybody!

What your choice of jelly says about you, as a person, as an individual

Whenever I go over someone’s house, I take a look in the fridge. The flavor of jelly that I find often tells me a great deal about where I’m at, about just what kind of person I’m hanging out with. Some people say this is nonsense, that it’s impossible to deduce a personality type based solely on a flavor of jam. But I say that those people are crazy. Not only crazy, but in denial. Because jelly tells all.

Strawberry:

Regular. Strawberry jelly walks into a deli and says, “I’ll take a baloney sandwich on white bread please, just a little mayo, a glass of milk to drink, and maybe some chopped up carrot sticks for dessert.” This is definitely the most boring jelly. It’s the default option. Whenever you go to a diner and your omelet comes with toast, the waitress always puts down that little bowl full of individually packed portions of butter and jelly. It’s always strawberry jelly. And you have to flag her down, but she’s really busy and you can’t get her attention, and so finally a bus boy notices you. He comes over, “Yes?” and you’re like, “Is there any other type of jelly? Something other than strawberry?” and the bus boy’s intentions are good, but he’s just not that comfortable with the language, and so he comes back a minute later with another jelly tray, even more strawberry jelly, and he’s like, “Here you go sir. More jelly.” “Thanks,” you tell him, realizing that now you have to eat all of this jelly, these two bowls of boring plain strawberry jelly, and you only have two slices of toast.

Grape:

The alternative jelly. Still pretty regular, but just different enough to make you feel like you’re doing something different. Sometimes you’ll find grape jelly packets at the diner. Not always, actually, not ever, but once in a while somebody will tell me they came across some grape. I never believe it, but that’s probably speaking more about me and my inability to trust anybody, anything, like it’s this character deficiency that I’m burdened with, and I’m trying to make up for it by giving these people the benefit of the doubt, including their crazy grape jelly sightings in this grape jelly paragraph. But who am I kidding, really? Grape jelly is just as regular as strawberry, one of the big two. It’s just grosser. Because in what way does grape jelly remind you anything at all of grapes? It’s purple, sure, but weirdly so, like not purple like a grape is purple, but like a purple crayon is purple. And does it really taste like a grape? Or is it just what other fake grape-flavored products taste like? Like grape soda, like grape Big League Chew, like Dimetapp.

Apricot:

Man, there aren’t really a lot of options when it comes to jellies are there? Every once in a while I’ll be at the grocery store and I’ll make a motion to pick up a bottle of apricot jelly, but then my hand will get close to the bottle and I’ll notice that the label doesn’t say “apricot jelly” at all, but “apricot marmalade.” Marmalade? Why is this stuff in the jelly aisle? And notice how I’m not starting one of those fake “jelly vs. jam” debates. Marmalade is a whole different beast here. I’ll recoil my hand, unable to imagine what this marmalade tastes like, whether or not is has the same mouth feel as jelly. Do I have to mix it up upon opening? Might there be some separation that occurs between marmalade solids and marmalade liquids? I can’t.

Jam Tree:

One year for Christmas my mom got me this jam tree gift set. It was three little bottles of artisanal jam and it came in this Christmas tree shaped box. Inside were three flavors: Maine blueberry, raspberry peach, and Champagne. Delicious. I felt like such a big shot, me, an adult, living in my own house with my own kitchen. And look, three different types of craft jellies. For a while I was too afraid to even open any of them up, not wanting to disturb their placement, the decorative elegance they graced upon my kitchen. But one day I found myself super hung over, like hurting so bad that I couldn’t even imagine myself putting on clothes, let alone leaving the house to forage for supplies. But hungrier and hungrier I grew, until I toasted up some stale bread and popped open the jar of Champagne jelly. Wow, it was so delicious. Or so I thought. After a few bites I remembered, wait a second, isn’t Champagne just a fancy French word for grape? I looked into the jar. Sure enough, grape jelly. And I don’t think this stuff was bubbly on purpose; I think it was because somebody at the artisanal jam factory didn’t properly seal everything shut. The rest of the jam tree went straight in the trash.

So yeah, I guess that even though I try to make all of these relevant jelly-based judgments, I think I’m really just typecasting almost everybody I know as either a strawberry or a grape. There was always apricot marmalade at my grandparents’ house, so maybe it’s a generational thing. As for the niche jellies, I tried. I really wanted to like them, to be a part of something different, a genuine jelly subculture. I guess I’ll just stick with my jar of half jelly, half peanut butter. It’s regular, sure, but at least it looks cool, all swirly and stripy. My mom never let us get that stuff when we were kids, but guess what, I’m an adult now. I can buy whatever I want.