Yearly Archives: 2012

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody

It goes without saying, but I’ll start off with it anyway: Thanksgiving is great. Besides Flag Day, it has to be the best holiday of the year. I’m not really comfortable writing these themed blog posts, because all I naturally want to do is just state the obvious, the turkey, the booze, the no work, etc. So I’ll try to attack Thanksgiving from a couple different perspectives.

One reason why I love Thanksgiving so much more than any other American holiday is because it’s the one time of the year where we get to celebrate without having to express our celebration via the giving and receiving of gifts. Christmas is too stressful, and way too commercial. I’ve never, ever had that perfect balance of giving a great gift and receiving a great gift. They’ve both happened at various Christmases in my life, but never at the same time, and never of equal quality. And the buying, buying, shopping, buying of Christmas, to me, sucks a majority of the festivity out of the holiday, out of the whole season.

But this is supposed to be about how much I love Thanksgiving, not about how much I hate Christmas. And I don’t really hate Christmas. Not really. But Thanksgiving. It definitely gets better and better as you get older. It’s nice to see everyone in the same place at the same time, something that doesn’t happen as often as we’d all like now that everyone’s out of the house, living on our own. And being an adult, even if I don’t exactly feel like an adult, it really lets me appreciate going home, not having to work, and being able to stuff my face all day.

When my wife and I were in the Peace Corps, we spent two Thanksgivings away from home. The first one was tough, because we had only been in Ecuador for about five months. Our Spanish wasn’t yet where we wanted it to be, and we were still going through the roughest parts of the culture shock. The Peace Corps office in Quito offered all the volunteers a trip to the capital to have a real Thanksgiving dinner with various embassy staff and their families. My wife and I wound up getting assigned to dine at the Ambassador’s mansion.

It was a formal Thanksgiving, like ties and dress shirts. There were waiters passing out drinks and assigned seats at the table. All of the cutlery and plates were engraved with the seal of the United States Department of State. It was a good time, but it didn’t really feel like Thanksgiving. That feeling intensified when we took turns calling our families back home, listening to everyone having fun in the background, Thanksgiving as usual.

The next year a group of volunteers met up at our site for Thanksgiving. In preparation, my wife and I bought a live turkey to raise a couple months before the big day. The whole process was quite the ordeal, seeing as how the two of us had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We lived in the mountains in a very rural town, and we took a ride in the back of a pickup truck to buy the turkey in slightly larger town about an hour away.

When we finally found somebody with a turkey for sale, they just kind of pointed to it, this animal, “there you go, it’s yours.” I was like, “uh, so, how do I take it? How do I get it back to our house?” And the people who sold it just held their hands up in the air. “I don’t know. Just don’t get too close, because it’ll peck your eyes out.”

After standing there, totally clueless for a little while, someone finally gave us a big sack and helped us put the turkey inside. Then it was back in the pickup truck. When we got back to site, we set up some chicken wire in the backyard and put out some dried corn for it to eat. I didn’t want to get attached to the animal, but to condense the two months that we raised this animal into somewhat of a short story, we wound up naming him Tony, building him a little turkey house in the backyard, and cooking him all sorts of different foods because we felt bad that he might not be too enthusiastic about eating dried corn everyday.

Tony became kind of a second pet for us. Our first dog Gladys had just died and Tony became an unlikely replacement to fill that void. And maybe it was all in my head, I mean, I never thought poultry would be able to reciprocate these types of feelings, but I really do think Tony felt some sort of attachment towards us. Whenever I went out to the back yard, he would come running over to me, his giant wings extended as if he wanted to give me a big turkey hug. When I went inside, he would jump up on top of his little turkey house and cry out. I’d imagine him saying, “Rob! Stay outside with me! I love you!”

But then turkey day arrived and I had to shove any sentimentalities out of my head to get ready for the big day. I invested a solid fifteen minutes of Internet research on the most humane way to go about doing the deed. Martha Stewart told me to get Tony drunk first. Different hunting web sites talked about which guns I should use, or even maybe finding a good bow and arrow. Finally I went with a neighbor’s advice: shoving Tony into a rice sack, cutting a hole in the corner of the sack so only his head would pop out, and then (warning: it’s going to get graphic) slicing his neck open and holding him upside down to bleed out into a trough.

I maintain that the plan was decent and humane, but you know how it is the first time you try anything. There’s always a learning curve. So yeah, Tony probably suffered a little more than I’d have liked. I should have used a bigger knife. I probably should have gotten him a little drunk. After the last signs of life flickered from his beady little eyes, we had to dip the carcass in boiling water to get the feathers off. And then we had to gut him. Somewhere after cutting his neck open but before cleaning out his insides my brain automatically stopped referring to him as Tony.

Hey, I told you it was graphic. But that Thanksgiving was amazing. We were the only Americans celebrating Thanksgiving in a completely foreign environment. We had great friends, great food. We bought a Chinese satellite dish that somehow broadcast a pirated stream of American football. Among my memories of Thanksgiving, 2010 definitely stands out among the rest.

But it’s a great holiday every year. That’s what I’m getting at here. It’s Thanksgiving so I had to put up a Thanksgiving blog post. I hope everybody is making great memories, eating great food, and taking it real easy, just enjoying the time off and spending it with great people. I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m really thankful for everything in my life. I think about the majority of humans who have lived or are currently living on this planet, and I feel grateful for every single second that I get to be alive, living here, part of this experience, part of people’s lives.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Election 2012: The Recap

The election is over. I spent that night watching TV, and the results came in so fast that I almost missed the announcement. I had read all of these articles the day before saying how that, under certain circumstances, we might not have had a clear victor until mid December. So when all of the networks started calling it before 11pm, it was kind of surprising.

I wonder what it must have felt like for Mitt Romney, a guy who has been campaigning for President since 2006 really. Even the day of the election, he’s out there, holding rallies, firing up supporters. So was Obama. Up until the very end, everyone said it was anybody’s game, and so I guess each side had a legitimate hope that they could win. But as Pennsylvania went for the President and then all of the other swing states followed suit, and then NBC starts calling it and eventually Fox News does the same, I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like for Romney, for his team.

To get so close, only to be denied right at the very end. I can’t see how these guys can go out in front of their crowds and make concession speeches. How do you hold your head up like that? I’d want to just crawl away somewhere and disappear. And you have to get on the phone and call up your opponent, the guy who you’ve been trading barbs with for the past year, lobbing insults across the airways.

And then what’s the next day like? To all of the sudden have a campaign go from running at full capacity to the very next day just shutting down? It’s not just like losing your job. It’s like being the head of a business that overnight just goes belly up, dead in its tracks.

I can’t stand the gloating on Facebook, which is super hypocritical, because I’m right on the frontlines of it. I’m like a lieutenant, a Facebook amateur political commentary lieutenant. But I hate it. I hate it when I see comments from the other side, the opposing political viewpoint. A part of me just says, OK Rob, just take a deep breath and let it go. Just ignore it. Don’t feel like you have to post something of your own. It’s going to be a very fleeting sense of satisfaction at best.

Sometimes I’ll listen to my own advice. Other times I can’t help myself. I’ll throw something out there, something partisan, something divisive. Whatever, I already said it was stupid. But it was all of these small little comments, these occasional back-and-forths that, over time, they built up into something that made me feel like I had a personally vested interest in who won the campaign. And this was all very outside of the issues, outside of politics. A bigger part of it came down to, I didn’t want to have to go on to Facebook and see all the gloating from the other side if Romney won. It would have eaten at me from inside.

I kind of know how it felt. During the 2004 election, the first one that I could vote for, I was positive leading up to voting day that John Kerry was going to destroy George W. Bush. But what I felt as I watched that night unfold on TV, as the results came in a way that I hadn’t anticipated, that sinking feeling, staring at the screen, hoping for some “Breaking News” update that would tell me it was all a big joke. And then afterwards I would watch these political commentators and these smug right wing guys in suits would say stuff like, “Well, it’s evident that America is a fairly conservative country.” And I just sat there, boiling with impotent rage, unable to even properly let out the frustration that was building up inside. But why? Why was I angry? Was my life going to be that fundamentally different than it was before?

During this whole election season I had the same fear that it might happen again. And when it didn’t, I experienced a very hollow but palpable sense of elation. It’s over. I didn’t have to face a reality that I had not properly thought out. But the first thing I did was log onto Facebook and write “Four! More! Years!” a big middle finger to all of my online friends who happen to have a different way of looking at things. I felt great for like ten minutes, but then I felt terrible, realizing that I’m no better than everything I hate. I tried writing something sincere afterwards, talking about moving forward, of not letting ourselves get carried away by national politics, but it was too late. I could imagine a Republican doing the exact same thing and all I would feel would be a strong bitterness for some cheesy, magnanimous sore-winning.

And it’s all going to come back someday. Democrats can’t be in charge forever. That sense of loss, of being let down, of feeling politically marginalized, it’s all waiting for me four, eight, twelve years from now. It’s important, politics, but it’s all so silly. I get so fired up over people I’ve never met, will never talk to, about a system that I’m only very marginally a part of, policies and legislation that depend very little on my opinion or point of view. And I use it all as ammunition to make people that I’m close to feel inferior, not as smart as me, why can’t you see things like I see them? So yeah, I’m glad it’s all over. And I hope the next round of elections might just be a little farther away than the ones we just had.

Just another one of those days where I can’t think of anything interesting to say

I bought this book of writing exercises. Whenever I get to the point where I can’t think of anything to write about, like past the point where I start writing stuff about not having anything to write about, you know, after I’ve already written multiple pieces about not being able to think of something, anything, I’ll whip out this book and do a writing exercise. So I already did one, because I was struggling for something, anything to write about. And I felt, OK, I did it, I got the juices flowing, let’s get to work here. And nothing. I’m at the end of this paragraph and nothing. Jesus.

I really wish I knew how to turn it on, because sometimes it’s just on. I don’t even know how it happens. I’ll just sit down and it’s as if somebody else is writing through me. But then there are days like this where I’ve literally just been staring at the screen, hoping for something to talk about, anything, come on, please. In the book of writing exercises that I bought, the whole idea is to just keep going, even when you don’t have anything, and through constant movement of the fingers or whatever it’ll eventually click. Something has to click.

My jaw has been clicking lately. It was like all of the sudden I couldn’t close my jaw anymore without really forcing it shut, and there would always be a lot of jaw clicking. So I went to the dentist and he assured me that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep. And I assured him that it’s not while I’m sleeping, but that I’m doing it while I’m awake. I just always do. I clench my jaw, tight, especially while I’m sitting at the computer, hoping that I’ll make use of my free time, really just desperate to get some of these blog posts done, because I’ve set up this routine, this daily thing, that I can’t miss one day, and so if I don’t keep up with the writing I’ll be in a bad spot. And yeah, my jaw right now is really tight.

My dentist equated all of that jaw clenching with a body builder who worked out too much. He claimed that my jaw muscles were overbuilt. He suggested Botox to paralyze the muscles. Don’t worry, he told me, it’ll only cost one thousand dollars. Gee, that’s it? “Thanks a lot doc, let me think about it for a while,” I told him. “OK, think about it,” he said, “but do you want me to schedule you in for an appointment just in case you decide to go for it?” I see what you’re doing there doc. Stroking my ego, comparing my jaw to a bodybuilder’s jaw, penciling me in for an appointment that I clearly didn’t express too much interest it.

I clench my jaw when I sit there not being able to come up with anything to write about. I also tap my legs violently. I think tap isn’t really a good word, because it’s not violent enough. It’s not stomping. Whatever, I guess tapping is OK. But it’s so fast, like the table moves. And it doesn’t really help me write. You know what it’s like, it’s this staring at the screen, trying to fish for an idea. And when nothing comes up, after a while the only thing my brain is thinking about is the lack of ideas, and it eventually turns into a physical sensation, a discomfort, and the best way to relieve it, some of it anyway, is to start tapping and clenching. And you know what else I do? I’ll shift positions in my chair over and over again until my back hurts.

If I can’t think of anything to write about, pretty soon the dentist is going to be the least of my concerns. My back’s just going to get worse, I’ll have to go see a chiropractor. He’ll be like, “Wow, you are so strong and well-built.” And I’ll be like, “Really? Go on …” And he’ll start in on the pitch, telling me how awesome I am, but to a fault, so that I’ll need to start coming in regularly for whatever it is chiropractors do.

I don’t know how chiropractors exist. Everything I’ve heard about them tells me to stay away. One time I was in the hospital waiting for somebody and I overheard the guy next to me telling the doctor about what his chiropractor told him and the doctor cut him off, “Listen. Chiropractors are not real doctors. Never go to a chiropractor!” And for some reason that really stuck in my head. Plus, I’ve never met a chiropractor. I’ve met doctors. I’m met veterinarians. I’ve met tons of professionals from a lot of different job sectors. But no chiropractors.

Anyway, I didn’t write about anything, but I got a whole blog post out of it. Somebody once told me something about quality vs. quantity, but I don’t think I was paying attention, because I don’t remember what they were trying to tell me about the two, what point they were trying to make.

Look, I don’t want to race you, it’s just … GO!

What is it, that feeling you get when you’re stopped at a red light, and another car pulls up next to you, and you’re both waiting for the light to turn green, and when it turns green that feeling escapes, overcomes your better judgment, and you peel out and try to stay ahead of that other car? Sure, not everybody does that. It’s really not safe. I don’t do it. Well, I don’t try to do it. Every once in a while that feeling comes out of nowhere, it’s overwhelming, and it’s really stupid. What compels us to naturally want to compete with each other, with complete strangers, over something so stupid?

I ride my bike to work everyday. This feeling is much worse on a bike because, unlike in a car, you really don’t have any reason to keep yourself in check. It’s not like you’re going to kill anybody by riding as fast as you can. I know you still could, but it’s way less likely. I’ll be riding over the bridge and I might be coming up on somebody. On a bike it’s not like you’re just going to fly past another rider. If you’re going only slightly faster, you’ll just kind of gradually creep up on and then overtake them.

But the thing is, as soon as the biker up front notices that I’m right behind, he or she will always start pedaling harder. And it’s like, what is this, a race? So I start pedaling harder also. And now it really is a race. Both of us giving as much as we’ve got. But the bridge is only so long, and so even if you win, what do you do when you and your competition both come cruising to the end? You’re eye to eye now, do you say something? If you lose, do you say congratulations to the victor?

It’s all very silly. But when you’re in the moment, it doesn’t matter if you know that it’s silly. All that’s important is getting there first. One time I went running, and I was crossing the same bridge. It’s like a mile across. And I was just kind of zoning out, timing my strides with my breath, when all of the sudden this other runner comes out of nowhere and runs ahead of me. So now I’m thinking, OK, I can either let it go, go back to concentrating on the rhythms of my lungs, and just maintain the pace that I was maintaining all along.

Or, I could up my speed and take back my lead. The only problem with that is, once I make that much of an effort to get back in front, I’m the one officially making it a race. Before, it was just two people running their own separate runs at their own individual paces. But this, no, I’m doing my own pace, seeing his pace, and then deciding to match it. One, I had better be sure that I can keep this new elevated pace for the duration of the bridge. Nothing would be worse than sprinting ahead only to have to slow down thirty seconds later, out of breath, clearly trying too hard to be a big shot, with that other guy effortlessly taking back his number one spot. And two, I also have to realize that, after I move up front, if this guy makes another run to overtake me, I absolutely have to up my speed again, a second time, and keep upping it, until one of us gets to the other side first. So I made that choice and ran ahead. And I didn’t look back. And by the time I got to the other side, out of breath, giving it much more than I thought I had, I turned around, imagining this guy on my heels the entire length of the bridge. But he wasn’t anywhere near me. He must have just maintained his own speed, like it wasn’t a race at all, like it was just me acting crazy and engaging in a competition with nobody.

But that’s not always the case. One time I was in the reverse situation, where I came running up to the bridge and I was in my head, again, concentrating on my pace, and I wasn’t looking around at anybody else, but I started to come up on another runner, and as soon as I passed him, he made it obvious that he wouldn’t take that lying down. So he started sprinting, and I had no time to think, to talk myself out of engaging in another race with another stranger. All I knew what that I would not let this guy get back up front.

This was the uphill part of the bridge, and we wound up, the both of us, sprinting as fast as we could. It was like the four hundred meter dash, but for idiots. When you’re in a footrace, it’s not really running anymore. It’s something else. There’s a primal feeling in the pit of your stomach, a discomfort, a palpable fear that you’re going to lose. It must be some sort of built-in survival instinct. And I had to really dig down for energy, to go a little faster, to stay up front. And I did it. But then I was so far ahead that I kind of just got back in my head again. And I ran all the way until the bridge started going downhill. Everybody knows downhill is a joke, so I was just kind of taking it easy. I had assumed that the race was over once the uphill climb ended. And this guy wasn’t on my heels anymore so it wasn’t a big deal. But then like halfway down, all of the sudden he comes up from behind, flying, sprinting, to the point where even if I tried to match it, he was already way too far ahead, he caught me by surprise, and he got to the end first.

And I was just thinking, who really won? Was it a race to the top or a race to the bottom? Because I totally stopped racing once I got to the top. But only because I thought that I had already won. It’s so stupid. Because we were totally in a race and now he was ahead and it bothered me. Because we were just two random people deciding to engage in a stupid competition. Why does everything have to be a competition? Every once in a while I’ll be riding my bike to work and I’ll get in the same exact type of race. But it’s always lose-lose, because if I lose, well, then I feel weak, like a loser. But if I win, it’s obviously because I was trying way too hard, and I’m on my way to work, so I’m not dressed up in exercise clothes, so when I do finally get there, I’m all sweaty and gross and I have to deal with the discomfort of damp underwear for the entirety of the day.

Rocking the vote

I just rocked the vote. It’s always such a surreal experience. You put so much weight on one little action, and it only happens once in a while, so that when you finally do it, it just comes and goes so fast, leaving you feeling almost a little hollow afterward. That’s kind of dramatic. But wouldn’t you agree that there’s a ton of build up for a two minute procedure that, when you step back from it, never really feels as grand as you thought it would be?

I imagined myself heroically. First of all, I got up much earlier than normal. I guess it really depends on what your definition of early is, but for a guy who normally wakes up closer to ten everyday, I thought seven-thirty was pretty impressive. Yeah, I had set the alarm to seven, and another one for seven-fifteen, but whatever, seven-thirty was, wow, I’m still pinching myself to make sure this isn’t one of those snooze-button induced dreams where you think you’re getting up, going into the shower, making breakfast, going to vote, and then all of the sudden you roll over and it’s nine and you’re still in bed. Does that happen to anybody else? I’m just going to go ahead and assume that, of course it does.

So I get to the polling place and there are lines of people waiting to direct everybody else. I’m pretty sure the poll workers outnumbered the voters by a margin of two to one. And it goes without saying, because everybody always talks about this, but all of the volunteers are senior citizens, and you can just tell how pumped they are to be running the show.

“This is it,” I could imagine themselves getting all motivated for the big day, “Once every four years, we’re back in charge! No computers! No cell phones! Just mountains of paperwork and lots of people to be corralled into long lines! Let’s go out there and show these whippersnappers how to get some work done!”

The system is, whatever, it seems stupid to complain about a process that wasn’t really that bad or that long, one that only happens once in a while anyway. But still, just like the last time I voted, I walked through the door and there were more than a few different lines of people. They asked me for my address and the first letter of my last name. And then they told me to wait in line B. There was only one person in line B, which was great for me. But I looked around, and line D had people snaking outside of the polling place. It didn’t make any sense. But I wasn’t complaining, because I got out very quick.

This was the first time that I voted that there weren’t any giant voting machines. It used to be so cool, you’d switch in all of the levers for the candidates you wanted to vote for, and then you had to pull a giant mechanical arm, so the machine could tally all of your votes. You could feel the whole thing rocking from the inside, this big metal booth, bigger than a soda machine.

This time it was just a scantron. You filled out the bubbles, and then slid it into a little voting scanner machine. I missed that visceral sensation of having voted, having made voting this physical exercise. With the old machines, you really needed to pull, making it feel like you had actually accomplished something. After I slid in my paper, I actually said, “That’s it? I’m done?” and had to be pointed towards the exit, “Yeah, that’s it. Now move it, line D is getting restless.”

A couple of things. Not that it’s anybody’s business, but not like it’s a state secret either, I voted down party lines, not because I’m a loyal partisan, but just because I didn’t really feel like it would be worth it to vote for any third party candidates. Best case scenario, I’d be helping the opposition. Another minor point, there were two judge elections where the Democrats were running unopposed. I filled in the bubble for the first one, but then I immediately wished that I hadn’t. If this guy is going to win anyway, why give him my vote? It’s just a huge joke, really. Why even have an election for that position? I could imagine this guy running for reelection years from now claiming, “The people love me. Look how many votes I got!” when it was really just a matter of default luck.

But voting is a good thing. I always like to vote. I always like feeling like I’m marginally a part of the political process, of America. I wish it were more based on the popular vote, because I hate to think that my presidential vote “doesn’t count.” Because yeah, it was much more satisfying to vote for Senator, to vote for those incompetent clowns that run the show in Albany.

Random: For the 2004 election I was still a college student. I had this one class called American Pluralism, all about America and stuff. Anyway, right before the election, the professor held an informal vote, everybody wrote down who they were voting for and passed it to the prof, who tallied it up, wasting a solid ten minutes of class time. He announced the results, “OK, so we have X for Bush, X for Kerry, and … one vote for MacGyver.” And he said it totally straight-faced, as if he had no idea that he had just been punked. The whole class burst out into laughter and, I have to tell you, it was such a satisfying laugh, like I felt like my insides were being massaged and worked out.

Before I wrap it up here, I do have one suggestion. There should be a voting machine, but it’s like a wall, and there will be spots in the wall painted red or blue or whatever color your party is. And you have to punch through the wall (it’s going to be plywood, nothing too strong,) to retrieve your ballot for that party. And that way, you could really feel like you voted, even more than the old voting machines, like your hand will be really sore for the rest of the day and maybe even a little cut up. “A small price to pay,” you could tell everyone. And that could just be maybe an optional method, you know, only if you wanted to. So, just for the future, that’s something that the board of elections should consider.