The United States government has done a fine job of delivering mail. Founded very shortly after the formation of the US government itself, it's been doing the same thing almost without fail for well over 200 years.
Anywhere you want to send a first-class envelope, it goes for 44 cents. That's a bargain to send something across town, but I could send the same envelope to my parents in the DC area, or to my grandmother in Minnesota, or anywhere else in the US. That includes Alaska and, I think, Hawaii. That's a major bargain.
Maybe too much of a bargain. The USPS is in the red and getting redder. First class volume is down, and so is junk mail. Less first class mail goes than junk mail anymore, and where 100 first class envelopes would be a decent revenue stream for a single postal carrier to deliver in an hour, it takes as many as three pieces of junk mail to equal the same revenue - and three times as much weight and volume for that same postal carrier. You can see that the balance is tipping in the wrong direction.
So what's the solution? Part of the problem is that the USPS is hamstrung by a strong union. That doesn't do any favors to an institution whose revenue stream is fading, while it also has to bear up under a Constitutional mandate. Some of the old sacred cows of the USPS will have to be shot and eaten before they can get a complete handle on their expenses.
Here's a weird factoid: the USPS is prohibited by law from closing a post office solely for economic reasons. And yet, the Post Office also receives no tax revenue for its day-to-day operation, instead relying on postage for its income. Well, if you had a store that wasn't doing any business, wouldn't you close it? And post office collection boxes that receive less than 25 pieces of mail per day have been removed from operation in many locations in Florida. It just doesn't make sense to send someone to a box that gets no business.
UPS and FedEx are both in the black. They're mail companies too. How do they do it? Well, for starters, something the size of a flat legal envelope is $16.00 or more to get where you want it. That's making the Post Office look like a bona fide miracle of economy, isn't it? With rates like that, why would anyone ever send anything via UPS or FedEx?
Why indeed.
But the fact is that the USPS simply isn't going to survive in its current form. Postal services around the world have experienced these same kinds of pains, and many in Europe in particular have done a great job of weathering the growing pains successfully. One of the necessities of the change has been for the government to let go of a lot of the reins of the service, and turn it over to private operation.
This will be difficult to do. But we've already survived the dissolution of Bell Telephone into the wide panoply of the differing phone companies and that seemed to work out all right. We can do it again.
There are a few forms it could take. Back in the day, you might find the local Post Office was in fact a corner office in a local general store. How if it came about that the local Post Office was a counter at the grocery store? That would be super convenient, and you can bet any grocery chain that could secure the contract would fight tooth and nail to win and keep it. Anything that brings the customers in brings the customers in. Even if they're the kind of folks who don't normally shop there, they'd be in the door. For example, I almost never - I mean, maybe once a year - shop at Food City, a local brand of the KVAT line of grocery stores. I prefer Kroger, Ingles and, when I'm feeling flush, Earth Fare. But if the PO was in the lobby of a Food City I'd be in there once a week. There are already banks in the grocery stores, and coffee shops. Why not a PO?
The country prides itself on freedom of speech, of expression. It may be that it's a little paradoxical that the baseline form of communication, the written word, the penned missive, has to pass through the government's own hands before it can arrive at its intended destination. Considering that, maybe it's about time the government got out of the business of conveying all that free speech. So as traumatic as it is that the USPS is suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I think it's a good thing, and I look forward to the new iteration of postal service.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Observations on a Humid Morning
It's nearly the last day of May, and already we're getting temperatures in the mid 90s. I know, some of you are living where mid 90s is a cold snap.
It's mid 90s and about 115% humidity. During the night, the temperature might cool to the mid 70s. When there's so much moisture in the air that it just doesn't radiate its heat to outer space like it ought to, the air doesn't cool much. And those of you with mid 100s temperatures, you're also usually blessed with temps overnight down in the 50s. You have a little respite, you can put a fan in the window. Around here, not so much. The fan just stirs the warm, moist air around.
So now the sun is up and the mercury is headed further into the upper half of the thermometer. Chores still have to get done. I have to mow some of the properties, and if I wait it just gets hotter. Not any drier, just hotter. Try to mow too soon and the grass is still damp with dew, and even so it doesn't matter what I do - I'm going to wind up sweating buckets before all's done.
My wife asked me if I wanted to move to a cooler state. Well, no. I mean, I could see doing that but she would be dreadfully uncomfortable. She really comes alive at around 80 degrees and 90% humidity. But let the temperature get much cooler than 65 degrees and she stiffens up, wraps herself with every unoccupied jacket in the house, and curls around a hot cup of cocoa. So as much as I might like being someplace cooler, I couldn't tolerate taking her someplace even colder than here. So that's off the table. We went to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky a few years ago; the weather was very cool but dry at home when we left, but when we arrived in Louisville the temperatures were noticeably cooler and there was snow on the ground. Sweetie shuddered when she first saw the snow. If we moved someplace cooler, she'd be shuddering all the time, and I don't want that.
Humans evolved in hotter climes than this. I can deal. It probably won't kill me.
One useful thing the hot climate does do is this: it forces me to make careful use of my time. You can't just take things as they come when the weather gets like it is, you schedule carefully. Outdoor stuff happens quickly, and the things you can do indoors waits until afternoon, when the temperature outside is just too uncomfortable. So if you have to change oil on a truck or clean out gutters, first thing in the morning out you go to get it done before the sun gets well and truly overhead. Then you shelter indoors and do whatever else is needful. Winter is the opposite, it's extra cold in the morning so stay inside. You get the idea.
Well, that's enough agonizing over minutiae for the moment.
It's mid 90s and about 115% humidity. During the night, the temperature might cool to the mid 70s. When there's so much moisture in the air that it just doesn't radiate its heat to outer space like it ought to, the air doesn't cool much. And those of you with mid 100s temperatures, you're also usually blessed with temps overnight down in the 50s. You have a little respite, you can put a fan in the window. Around here, not so much. The fan just stirs the warm, moist air around.
So now the sun is up and the mercury is headed further into the upper half of the thermometer. Chores still have to get done. I have to mow some of the properties, and if I wait it just gets hotter. Not any drier, just hotter. Try to mow too soon and the grass is still damp with dew, and even so it doesn't matter what I do - I'm going to wind up sweating buckets before all's done.
My wife asked me if I wanted to move to a cooler state. Well, no. I mean, I could see doing that but she would be dreadfully uncomfortable. She really comes alive at around 80 degrees and 90% humidity. But let the temperature get much cooler than 65 degrees and she stiffens up, wraps herself with every unoccupied jacket in the house, and curls around a hot cup of cocoa. So as much as I might like being someplace cooler, I couldn't tolerate taking her someplace even colder than here. So that's off the table. We went to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky a few years ago; the weather was very cool but dry at home when we left, but when we arrived in Louisville the temperatures were noticeably cooler and there was snow on the ground. Sweetie shuddered when she first saw the snow. If we moved someplace cooler, she'd be shuddering all the time, and I don't want that.
Humans evolved in hotter climes than this. I can deal. It probably won't kill me.
One useful thing the hot climate does do is this: it forces me to make careful use of my time. You can't just take things as they come when the weather gets like it is, you schedule carefully. Outdoor stuff happens quickly, and the things you can do indoors waits until afternoon, when the temperature outside is just too uncomfortable. So if you have to change oil on a truck or clean out gutters, first thing in the morning out you go to get it done before the sun gets well and truly overhead. Then you shelter indoors and do whatever else is needful. Winter is the opposite, it's extra cold in the morning so stay inside. You get the idea.
Well, that's enough agonizing over minutiae for the moment.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Clean vs. Dirty and Human Activity
You may be aware of Mike Rowe and his popular Discovery Channel show, Dirty Jobs. I sure hope you are. If you aren't, spend a minute or two reading up, look for a pirated vid clip on YouTube. It's funny and educational.
You might also be aware of TED talks. Again, I hope you are. In the TED venue, some of the most fascinating researchers, educators, innovators and thinkers talk about what really gets their motors going. From cartoonist Jim Toomey talking about how he raises ocean conservation issues with the gentle nudges of enlightening comic strips, to medical researchers building artificial organic and implantation-ready replacement organs, TED talks make you think.
We're used to Mike Rowe making us cringe. Some of what he's gone through is shocking, frightening, repulsive. And while it's all of those things, what he's going through is somebody's job, the kind of stuff those folks do all the time, every day. His show is all about having jobs that aren't beautiful, aren't impressive in the way we've learned to think of impressive jobs. Hopefully, more on that another day. Today though, I want to talk about one tiny snippet of what Mike was talking about in his TED talk.
"Clean and dirty aren't opposites. They're different sides of the same coin." That's it. Twelve little words, one whole new paradigm.
I've said it before, that there is such a thing as being too clean. In certain jobs, you won't finish the day clean. You just won't. And in those jobs, the boss fully expects you to come to work wearing jeans. Thank God for that.
Let's think about "clean." What do we mean by that? Are we talking about general household clean, which means no socks lying in the living room floor, a couple of tasteful books on the coffee table? Or are we talking about kitchen and bathroom clean, with hard surfaces wiped down at least once a week, a higher level of hygiene so you don't mind eating food that's been lying directly on the counter.
In household clean, you pick up the socks and toss them in the hamper. The mess isn't gone - you've moved it to the hamper. If they were dirty socks, the level of not-clean in the living room is somehow more than if they were clean socks that just fell out of the laundry basket. What you will do with the socks after removing them from the floor is beside the point, they were socks out of place. At first glance, dirty socks might be indistinguishable from clean socks. But in your head, you grade the living room down a few more points if you know the socks are dirty.
Your living room will probably never be cleaner than it is right after a round of dusting, lint rolling, and vacuuming. That's about as involved as most people ever get, and it's more than enough. You haven't sanitized any surfaces or heat-treated anything (which in neither case does nothing about "cleaning," but just kills any pathogens), merely removed bits of stuff that contrasts with the surfaces, so the furnishings alone are what is visible.
Let's think about the socks. They were dirty, so to the hamper they go. Eventually they wind up in the washing machine, where application of detergent and water removes "dirt," microscopic shreds of shoe material, household debris from the floor, you, and of course a healthy dose of sweat. Left to percolate in a warm, humid environment, this becomes a pretty ripe biosphere and starts to smell a little...tropical. But when you take all that stuff out of the sock with water and detergent, where does it go?
Nothing goes "away." The Earth is a sphere so we're all downstream and downwind of everyone else, including, eventually, ourselves. Nothing much is flying off into space, since escape velocity is something on the order of 7 miles per second. That's clear across North America in under six minutes, so rest assured, whatever's on the ground right now is more than likely staying there for the foreseeable future. So where does it go?
Eventually to the water treatment plant. Water gets "treated," sludge gets pulled out and "treated" some more, water goes into the streams and further downstream. Sludge gets buried, burned, whatever they do to it. But it's still around. It's been rendered "safe" with heat or chemicals or biological processes and buried so you can't see it. But just like playing peekaboo, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's really gone. It'll be back. The world is round, everything comes back around eventually.
"Cleaning" is the act of removing unwanted or undesireable materials from an area. You can't make it go away, not when there is no such place as "away." "Clean" means the level of unwanted material is below your tolerance threshold. You can live with it, whatever it is.
Cleaning takes energy. You raise the level of energy in the space by moving things that have naturally settled to a lower energy state. Lint falls down, cat hair settles. You add energy by running the vacuum cleaner, rolling the lint roller. But that doesn't prevent more lint from settling. The cat is still wandering around. There will be more lint and cat hair. And of course one day the vacuum cleaner will break irreparably, and will become another item of trash to send to the landfill.
Landfills are the condensed mess and dirt of entire populations, moved to one tightly concentrated, tightly contained area so the mess won't explode back out in a critical mass of grime. Sewage plants are the rich stew of mess that humans make and flush down their drains, thinking that the mess is gone. It's never gone, it only changes form.
Smoke. Poo. Noise. Old Post-Its, skin dander, rusted old appliances. Everything alive makes some degree of mess, everything we do produces a level of waste that we ultimately want to not see in our artificially cleaned living and working spaces. As humans, we make more mess than any other kind of animal, period. It might be fine to think that as higher animals, we are also unique in that we "clean up after ourselves," fooling ourselves that we have somehow changed the average level of clean. All the messes we make are still with us, hidden from view or changing into different messes. We aren't cleaners, we are only instruments of change and movement. Like forces of nature, like wind and water, we move materials out of the ground and into the air, out of the air and into the water. Unfortunately, too often we realize that after we've been doing that for a few decades, we really don't want any of those materials where we've put them, and sometimes undertake to move them back to where we found them.
Better to have left it where it was, to begin with.
You might also be aware of TED talks. Again, I hope you are. In the TED venue, some of the most fascinating researchers, educators, innovators and thinkers talk about what really gets their motors going. From cartoonist Jim Toomey talking about how he raises ocean conservation issues with the gentle nudges of enlightening comic strips, to medical researchers building artificial organic and implantation-ready replacement organs, TED talks make you think.
We're used to Mike Rowe making us cringe. Some of what he's gone through is shocking, frightening, repulsive. And while it's all of those things, what he's going through is somebody's job, the kind of stuff those folks do all the time, every day. His show is all about having jobs that aren't beautiful, aren't impressive in the way we've learned to think of impressive jobs. Hopefully, more on that another day. Today though, I want to talk about one tiny snippet of what Mike was talking about in his TED talk.
"Clean and dirty aren't opposites. They're different sides of the same coin." That's it. Twelve little words, one whole new paradigm.
I've said it before, that there is such a thing as being too clean. In certain jobs, you won't finish the day clean. You just won't. And in those jobs, the boss fully expects you to come to work wearing jeans. Thank God for that.
Let's think about "clean." What do we mean by that? Are we talking about general household clean, which means no socks lying in the living room floor, a couple of tasteful books on the coffee table? Or are we talking about kitchen and bathroom clean, with hard surfaces wiped down at least once a week, a higher level of hygiene so you don't mind eating food that's been lying directly on the counter.
In household clean, you pick up the socks and toss them in the hamper. The mess isn't gone - you've moved it to the hamper. If they were dirty socks, the level of not-clean in the living room is somehow more than if they were clean socks that just fell out of the laundry basket. What you will do with the socks after removing them from the floor is beside the point, they were socks out of place. At first glance, dirty socks might be indistinguishable from clean socks. But in your head, you grade the living room down a few more points if you know the socks are dirty.
Your living room will probably never be cleaner than it is right after a round of dusting, lint rolling, and vacuuming. That's about as involved as most people ever get, and it's more than enough. You haven't sanitized any surfaces or heat-treated anything (which in neither case does nothing about "cleaning," but just kills any pathogens), merely removed bits of stuff that contrasts with the surfaces, so the furnishings alone are what is visible.
Let's think about the socks. They were dirty, so to the hamper they go. Eventually they wind up in the washing machine, where application of detergent and water removes "dirt," microscopic shreds of shoe material, household debris from the floor, you, and of course a healthy dose of sweat. Left to percolate in a warm, humid environment, this becomes a pretty ripe biosphere and starts to smell a little...tropical. But when you take all that stuff out of the sock with water and detergent, where does it go?
Nothing goes "away." The Earth is a sphere so we're all downstream and downwind of everyone else, including, eventually, ourselves. Nothing much is flying off into space, since escape velocity is something on the order of 7 miles per second. That's clear across North America in under six minutes, so rest assured, whatever's on the ground right now is more than likely staying there for the foreseeable future. So where does it go?
Eventually to the water treatment plant. Water gets "treated," sludge gets pulled out and "treated" some more, water goes into the streams and further downstream. Sludge gets buried, burned, whatever they do to it. But it's still around. It's been rendered "safe" with heat or chemicals or biological processes and buried so you can't see it. But just like playing peekaboo, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's really gone. It'll be back. The world is round, everything comes back around eventually.
"Cleaning" is the act of removing unwanted or undesireable materials from an area. You can't make it go away, not when there is no such place as "away." "Clean" means the level of unwanted material is below your tolerance threshold. You can live with it, whatever it is.
Cleaning takes energy. You raise the level of energy in the space by moving things that have naturally settled to a lower energy state. Lint falls down, cat hair settles. You add energy by running the vacuum cleaner, rolling the lint roller. But that doesn't prevent more lint from settling. The cat is still wandering around. There will be more lint and cat hair. And of course one day the vacuum cleaner will break irreparably, and will become another item of trash to send to the landfill.
Landfills are the condensed mess and dirt of entire populations, moved to one tightly concentrated, tightly contained area so the mess won't explode back out in a critical mass of grime. Sewage plants are the rich stew of mess that humans make and flush down their drains, thinking that the mess is gone. It's never gone, it only changes form.
Smoke. Poo. Noise. Old Post-Its, skin dander, rusted old appliances. Everything alive makes some degree of mess, everything we do produces a level of waste that we ultimately want to not see in our artificially cleaned living and working spaces. As humans, we make more mess than any other kind of animal, period. It might be fine to think that as higher animals, we are also unique in that we "clean up after ourselves," fooling ourselves that we have somehow changed the average level of clean. All the messes we make are still with us, hidden from view or changing into different messes. We aren't cleaners, we are only instruments of change and movement. Like forces of nature, like wind and water, we move materials out of the ground and into the air, out of the air and into the water. Unfortunately, too often we realize that after we've been doing that for a few decades, we really don't want any of those materials where we've put them, and sometimes undertake to move them back to where we found them.
Better to have left it where it was, to begin with.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Please Help My Farmall!
I have an old tractor, and when it's running it's a blast. I like to fire it up, drive it around. It isn't fast. It sure isn't pretty - the thing is desperately in need of a bath. It isn't even useful. It has no hitch hardware, and the PTO currently doesn't work. That doesn't stop me enjoying the thing...but I only enjoy it when I can imagine using it for something useful, even though I never have.
When it's in running condition, I like to fire it up by turning on the ignition, giving the starting crank a mighty yank, and off she goes. Check to make sure it's in neutral before doing this; early tractors like this one had no such thing as a safety switch to guarantee no starts in gear. If it's in gear when you start it, well, it might run you over.
But that's assuming it'll start. That seems to have gone by the wayside, so I'm putting out a feeler to the entire Internet and I'm hoping someone will give me the benefit of their wisdom.
I had it running late last year, no problem. I shut it down, then went to start it again. Nothing. In the space of a few minutes, something had failed and that killed it utterly.
Nothing.
Well, that was pretty frustrating. I assumed, and I think I'm right, that it was an electrical problem. The thing with these old Farmalls is that there almost isn't an electrical system. If you don't have a battery, no sweat: the Farmall has a magneto system that generates the running spark. You don't even have to have a generator or alternator on it, the mag does it all.
So here's my thing: I do okay at household electrical, but when it comes to vehicle electricals, it's like I've suddenly lost a lobe of my brain. I need someone to weigh in, to offer some suggestions.
What I've done so far: checked for spark on plug #1: no joy. Inline tester, no glimmer during cranking.
That's about all I can think of to do. I don't know what else I can do, since the magneto is all one piece. I guess the next bit might be to remove the mag and give it a spin, see if the impulse drive (a doohickey that gives the mag an extra kick at very low speeds, makes it easier to start when cranking) is working. But I'm using the starter motor, powered by my truck's battery so there's plenty of twist to get things moving.
Enticingly, frustratingly, it coughed once or twice the other day while I was trying to get it going. Just a little pop, "Rr-Rr-Rr-Rr*phut*Rr-Rr-Rr." Enough to keep me hoping and trying and providing an endless buffet for the damned mosquitoes.
Anybody else want to sound off on this? I freely confess my knowledge is limited.
If nobody wants to offer any thoughts, I'll pull the mag and take it to a shop that did some work on it for me a couple of years ago - the results from that were just stunning. Maybe that's all it is, this time.
When it's in running condition, I like to fire it up by turning on the ignition, giving the starting crank a mighty yank, and off she goes. Check to make sure it's in neutral before doing this; early tractors like this one had no such thing as a safety switch to guarantee no starts in gear. If it's in gear when you start it, well, it might run you over.
But that's assuming it'll start. That seems to have gone by the wayside, so I'm putting out a feeler to the entire Internet and I'm hoping someone will give me the benefit of their wisdom.
I had it running late last year, no problem. I shut it down, then went to start it again. Nothing. In the space of a few minutes, something had failed and that killed it utterly.
Nothing.
Well, that was pretty frustrating. I assumed, and I think I'm right, that it was an electrical problem. The thing with these old Farmalls is that there almost isn't an electrical system. If you don't have a battery, no sweat: the Farmall has a magneto system that generates the running spark. You don't even have to have a generator or alternator on it, the mag does it all.
So here's my thing: I do okay at household electrical, but when it comes to vehicle electricals, it's like I've suddenly lost a lobe of my brain. I need someone to weigh in, to offer some suggestions.
What I've done so far: checked for spark on plug #1: no joy. Inline tester, no glimmer during cranking.
That's about all I can think of to do. I don't know what else I can do, since the magneto is all one piece. I guess the next bit might be to remove the mag and give it a spin, see if the impulse drive (a doohickey that gives the mag an extra kick at very low speeds, makes it easier to start when cranking) is working. But I'm using the starter motor, powered by my truck's battery so there's plenty of twist to get things moving.
Enticingly, frustratingly, it coughed once or twice the other day while I was trying to get it going. Just a little pop, "Rr-Rr-Rr-Rr*phut*Rr-Rr-Rr." Enough to keep me hoping and trying and providing an endless buffet for the damned mosquitoes.
Anybody else want to sound off on this? I freely confess my knowledge is limited.
If nobody wants to offer any thoughts, I'll pull the mag and take it to a shop that did some work on it for me a couple of years ago - the results from that were just stunning. Maybe that's all it is, this time.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Insomnia: My Brain Is Revolting
Can't sleep.
Can't sleep.
Can't sleep.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Purr purr purr
snnooore-peep
snnooore-peep
LEGS LOTS OF LEGS
SOMETHING WITH LOTS OF LEGS
WALKING ALL OVER ME
SLAP SWAT SLAP SQUITCH
she slept through all of that
see what it was in the morning
Can't sleep
Can't sleep
Can't sleep
Tiny houses
little cars
tractors
farm, living on a farm
in a tiny house
with a tractor
the tractor will have its own little house
I could be a farmer
working hard all day
no managers down my neck
no vendors on my email
no cell phone buzzing every few minutes
and maybe I could sleep, not thinking
quite so much about tomorrow
Can't sleep
Can't stop
thinking
thinking
thinking
about tomorrow
and the next day
and next week
and next month
but mostly tomorrow
which is taking forever to
get here because I
Can't sleep
Can't sleep.
Can't sleep.
Darkness.
Darkness.
Purr purr purr
snnooore-peep
snnooore-peep
LEGS LOTS OF LEGS
SOMETHING WITH LOTS OF LEGS
WALKING ALL OVER ME
SLAP SWAT SLAP SQUITCH
she slept through all of that
see what it was in the morning
Can't sleep
Can't sleep
Can't sleep
Tiny houses
little cars
tractors
farm, living on a farm
in a tiny house
with a tractor
the tractor will have its own little house
I could be a farmer
working hard all day
no managers down my neck
no vendors on my email
no cell phone buzzing every few minutes
and maybe I could sleep, not thinking
quite so much about tomorrow
Can't sleep
Can't stop
thinking
thinking
thinking
about tomorrow
and the next day
and next week
and next month
but mostly tomorrow
which is taking forever to
get here because I
Can't sleep
Monday, May 23, 2011
Taylor Swift: A Voice for Nerds and Lonely Hearts
It's hard not to like a pretty girl with a pretty voice. But when she starts to say the things you used to say, to speak the things you only whispered to yourself in your adolescent turmoil, well, the affection becomes a little deeper.
Taylor Swift is probably pretty close to what I daydreamed about when I was a kid: an attractive girl who spent an unfortunate amount of time in a state best described as "frumpy." Of course, a lot of what we see of her is probably Hollywood styling, chances are good that the young lady is not, in fact, frumpy and has never been. But in her music videos the image they show is big glasses, shapeless sweatshirts, and a somewhat frustrated air.
Did you sing in your room, all alone? I sure did. Write endless and ultimately unsent love letters to that One True Love, the one person who just had to be your soulmate? That one I didn't do, but I made mixtapes and left them in her mailbox.
Turns out, I may have been a bit of a stalker in my youth. Moving on!
So now Ms. Swift has a new tune, "Mean." In it, she declares her goals for the future, and in the meantime asks, "why do you have to be so mean?" Speaking to everyone who ever beat anybody down, tripped the class klutz, stole lunch money: why do you have to be so mean?
When I met up with kids like that, what I really wanted to do was to vaporize them. I wanted to be able to crush them flat, to utterly destroy them. Damned lucky thing I never had super powers. But when anyone ever asks why I live where I live, I tell them I like the small town flavor and the mountains, and of course I got married and had kids here. But why did I come here in the first place: why do you have to be so mean. I live here so I could get away from them, to leave them far, far away. I go back once in a while to visit my folks, but do I look anyone up from the "good old days?"
Hell, no. Those days, they weren't that good. The past can have them.
Why do you have to be so mean. A plaintive cry for an explanation - not even begging for the hatefulness to stop, just for the author of all that agony to make it make sense. Maybe if you can justify it, I can take it, if that's what you need out of life. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taylor Swift's got a history of making good by being good. When Kanye West made a complete and utter ass of himself at an awards show, embarrassing himself and frankly startling and confusing Ms. Swift as she prepared to receive her first big industry award, she went on to quietly accept his apology and has since drawn from that experience in her songwriting. Do I think that is reflected in this song, "Mean?" Not really. But maybe there's a shadow of it, somewhere in the margins.
Hmm. "Teardrops on my guitar," a lonely girl pining for a guy who just can't seem to figure out there's a perfectly nice young lady waiting to be noticed. "Fifteen," cautioning other girls not to fall in love too quickly. "You Belong With Me," a lonely girl pining for a guy...wait a...hmm.
Well. Anyway. What can I say, Swift resonates with me. I'm a 40+ year old man, and I like to sing the girl parts. There, I said it. But of course since puberty and a few more decades, I can't hit those high notes anymore. Shoot, I can barely see them from here. But all of that said, the messages of the music still speak to me. And I guess when you're writing a song, that's the whole idea in the first place, isn't it?
I was a nerd. I remember how it felt to want to be noticed. And with a stack of awards under her belt, Ms. Taylor has certainly been noticed.
Taylor Swift is probably pretty close to what I daydreamed about when I was a kid: an attractive girl who spent an unfortunate amount of time in a state best described as "frumpy." Of course, a lot of what we see of her is probably Hollywood styling, chances are good that the young lady is not, in fact, frumpy and has never been. But in her music videos the image they show is big glasses, shapeless sweatshirts, and a somewhat frustrated air.
Did you sing in your room, all alone? I sure did. Write endless and ultimately unsent love letters to that One True Love, the one person who just had to be your soulmate? That one I didn't do, but I made mixtapes and left them in her mailbox.
Turns out, I may have been a bit of a stalker in my youth. Moving on!
So now Ms. Swift has a new tune, "Mean." In it, she declares her goals for the future, and in the meantime asks, "why do you have to be so mean?" Speaking to everyone who ever beat anybody down, tripped the class klutz, stole lunch money: why do you have to be so mean?
When I met up with kids like that, what I really wanted to do was to vaporize them. I wanted to be able to crush them flat, to utterly destroy them. Damned lucky thing I never had super powers. But when anyone ever asks why I live where I live, I tell them I like the small town flavor and the mountains, and of course I got married and had kids here. But why did I come here in the first place: why do you have to be so mean. I live here so I could get away from them, to leave them far, far away. I go back once in a while to visit my folks, but do I look anyone up from the "good old days?"
Hell, no. Those days, they weren't that good. The past can have them.
Why do you have to be so mean. A plaintive cry for an explanation - not even begging for the hatefulness to stop, just for the author of all that agony to make it make sense. Maybe if you can justify it, I can take it, if that's what you need out of life. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taylor Swift's got a history of making good by being good. When Kanye West made a complete and utter ass of himself at an awards show, embarrassing himself and frankly startling and confusing Ms. Swift as she prepared to receive her first big industry award, she went on to quietly accept his apology and has since drawn from that experience in her songwriting. Do I think that is reflected in this song, "Mean?" Not really. But maybe there's a shadow of it, somewhere in the margins.
Hmm. "Teardrops on my guitar," a lonely girl pining for a guy who just can't seem to figure out there's a perfectly nice young lady waiting to be noticed. "Fifteen," cautioning other girls not to fall in love too quickly. "You Belong With Me," a lonely girl pining for a guy...wait a...hmm.
Well. Anyway. What can I say, Swift resonates with me. I'm a 40+ year old man, and I like to sing the girl parts. There, I said it. But of course since puberty and a few more decades, I can't hit those high notes anymore. Shoot, I can barely see them from here. But all of that said, the messages of the music still speak to me. And I guess when you're writing a song, that's the whole idea in the first place, isn't it?
I was a nerd. I remember how it felt to want to be noticed. And with a stack of awards under her belt, Ms. Taylor has certainly been noticed.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Get Off Your Ass
Bad things happen to good people. It's a fact of life, and we all accept it. Good things happen to good people and that's great, but that's not the kind of thing that makes the papers. When bad stuff happens, it becomes an emergency, a crisis. Somebody's got to do something to get the crisis under control, to mitigate the damage.
What about when the emergent parts of the problem are over? Things have stopped getting worse, the event is over and now all that's left is aftermath. But while the crisis was going on, bad things happened. People lost their homes, their jobs. Cars got flooded, pets got lost. Now what?
Most people get going. Most people have some kind of support structure in place. If, somehow, my entire life got turned upside-down, I could call on my parents. They'd put me up while I got my life back in order. If my parents' lives somehow went totally haywire, they could come to me. We'd be a little crowded, but we'd be okay. And we'd get ourselves back in order.
And then there are folks who just can't handle it. Their lives have gone completely off the rails and they never had much support to start with. Unfriendly family splits, job loss, one screwup too many and now you have people who just don't have any kind of backup plan. When they fall, they fall hard. That's when you see people living in their cars, staggering in at the rescue mission, dejected and dazed. How did their lives go so wrong so fast? But it happens.
Even so, most of those folks get themselves straightened out fairly quickly and move on. I don't have anything but respect for the people who weather the storm and get back up again. As the saying goes, it isn't how many times you get knocked down that matters, it's how many times you get back up.
But what about the people who just stay down? What about the people who decide staying down is good enough? I see people taking advantage of support services, who aren't really doing that much for themselves. Is it really a rescue mission when the guy has been living there for five years? That's not "rescue." That's just life support, and as lives go it's kind of empty.
Looking around at some of the facilities in the East Tennessee area, I see what appears to be "casually homeless" people. I'm coining this new term, I claim origin of the phrase. To be "casually homeless" is to have access to the conventional support of family and friends, but to choose instead to be homeless, without an address of one's own. Some of these people appear to be completely healthy, psychologically and physically from the standpoint of an informal observer, but otherwise unengaged in the machinations of day-to-day life like the rest of us. Why not? I have no idea. They hang out, smoke, spit on the sidewalk, and that's all they do.
At first writing I titled this post, "Get Off Your Ass." I may have changed that by the time I get around to actually publishing it, but it stands as my theme in any case. Get off your ass. The world owes you nothing. Nothing. My taxes shouldn't be paying so much for your support if you're not going to do much to support yourself. If you choose to do nothing with your life, then you earn nothing. Why should anyone have to take an interest in your well being, if you won't do it for yourself?
I had an uncle, gone twenty-plus years now, who had a full-time job in a bank, despite the fact polio had robbed him of the use of his arms at a young age. He had a real job. Full disability? Maybe he was eligible, I have no idea. What I know is, he had a job. He did something.
There's a guy somewhere around where I live, don't know his name. If he stood up he'd be about three and a half feet tall, except he can't stand. He gets around in a power chair because his legs are maybe a foot long. He's got a regular job at the Wal-Mart. It isn't anything that's going to light the world on fire, but he does something. He literally cannot get off his ass per se, but he's more off his ass than some of these slackers I see, taking up space and using up resources, when they could be doing so much more.
Whoo! My inner conservative got a bit cranky, there. But he's going to continue being cranky as long as I keep seeing anyone of sound mind and body, just hanging around doing nothing.
What about when the emergent parts of the problem are over? Things have stopped getting worse, the event is over and now all that's left is aftermath. But while the crisis was going on, bad things happened. People lost their homes, their jobs. Cars got flooded, pets got lost. Now what?
Most people get going. Most people have some kind of support structure in place. If, somehow, my entire life got turned upside-down, I could call on my parents. They'd put me up while I got my life back in order. If my parents' lives somehow went totally haywire, they could come to me. We'd be a little crowded, but we'd be okay. And we'd get ourselves back in order.
And then there are folks who just can't handle it. Their lives have gone completely off the rails and they never had much support to start with. Unfriendly family splits, job loss, one screwup too many and now you have people who just don't have any kind of backup plan. When they fall, they fall hard. That's when you see people living in their cars, staggering in at the rescue mission, dejected and dazed. How did their lives go so wrong so fast? But it happens.
Even so, most of those folks get themselves straightened out fairly quickly and move on. I don't have anything but respect for the people who weather the storm and get back up again. As the saying goes, it isn't how many times you get knocked down that matters, it's how many times you get back up.
But what about the people who just stay down? What about the people who decide staying down is good enough? I see people taking advantage of support services, who aren't really doing that much for themselves. Is it really a rescue mission when the guy has been living there for five years? That's not "rescue." That's just life support, and as lives go it's kind of empty.
Looking around at some of the facilities in the East Tennessee area, I see what appears to be "casually homeless" people. I'm coining this new term, I claim origin of the phrase. To be "casually homeless" is to have access to the conventional support of family and friends, but to choose instead to be homeless, without an address of one's own. Some of these people appear to be completely healthy, psychologically and physically from the standpoint of an informal observer, but otherwise unengaged in the machinations of day-to-day life like the rest of us. Why not? I have no idea. They hang out, smoke, spit on the sidewalk, and that's all they do.
At first writing I titled this post, "Get Off Your Ass." I may have changed that by the time I get around to actually publishing it, but it stands as my theme in any case. Get off your ass. The world owes you nothing. Nothing. My taxes shouldn't be paying so much for your support if you're not going to do much to support yourself. If you choose to do nothing with your life, then you earn nothing. Why should anyone have to take an interest in your well being, if you won't do it for yourself?
I had an uncle, gone twenty-plus years now, who had a full-time job in a bank, despite the fact polio had robbed him of the use of his arms at a young age. He had a real job. Full disability? Maybe he was eligible, I have no idea. What I know is, he had a job. He did something.
There's a guy somewhere around where I live, don't know his name. If he stood up he'd be about three and a half feet tall, except he can't stand. He gets around in a power chair because his legs are maybe a foot long. He's got a regular job at the Wal-Mart. It isn't anything that's going to light the world on fire, but he does something. He literally cannot get off his ass per se, but he's more off his ass than some of these slackers I see, taking up space and using up resources, when they could be doing so much more.
Whoo! My inner conservative got a bit cranky, there. But he's going to continue being cranky as long as I keep seeing anyone of sound mind and body, just hanging around doing nothing.
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