When Having A Great Memory Sucks

I have a great memory.  It’s not perfect, but it is well above average.  It has served me very well in the past, for both important and trivial reasons.  It is like any other anomaly a person may have. Being beautiful, having a great singing voice, having a math brain.  I am no exaggerating that for my entire life, people have been awed by my memory.  Spending some time in college with real smarty-farties and Ivy-league educated professors showed me that I’m hardly top-tier.  But it’s pretty good.

Now, a good memory isn’t the same as being smart.  Smart is a whole different animal, that I will not dissect here.  Intelligence and memory are not part and parcel an inevitability to all smart people. However, with memory you can gain the illusion of intelligence, plus, over the years, you can get a little smarter.

I’m terrible with metaphors but I like to keep trying.  Imagine an ice cream parlor.  A bunch of flavors, cones, sprinkles…all that shit. All of the details of that scene are pieces of information.  This is information I can remember easily. I remember just like anyone.  I read it, I repeat it, I hear it.  Day after day.  With an elevated memory, you start to pick up on patterns you didn’t see on day one.  Little girls never want to add chocolate as the first scoop.  Anyone over 50 asks for a waffle cone.  The teenagers pay in cash.  Moms with babies like a single cone in a bowl.  No one takes enough napkins.  Everyone likes the vanilla better than Cold Stone, but the Oreo is better at Baskin Robbins.  I just remember, and I remembered the last time so I can remember now.  Make any sense?

I’m in my forties. My memory is starting to become a pain in the ass in ways I never thought would matter.  We live in a culture that has been constructed by people with average to shitty memories. We just do.  Imagine if LeBron James was just a guy who owned a car dealership in Ohio, and he didn’t have millions at his disposal.  He’s super tall and he lives in a world made for people about 5’10” and under. A life of slamming his head on doorframes and squeezing into business class seats on a plane.  He has to deal with that shit every day, even with the money and success!

Our entertainment is where I’m reminded of this all the time. It finally occurred to me that the reason I’m so painfully picky about what I find funny is that my memory is still intact.  One out of every 40 comedians or so make me laugh.  Why?  Because the other 39 are combing through bits and set-ups and observations I’ve heard thousands of times over.  No surprise, no laugh.  It has to be something special if a movie catches me off guard, or a TV show takes me somewhere new.  Do you know how often I predict dialogue?  That’s not fun!

Social media is chock full of aphorisms I’ve already heard, photos that have been passed around a dozen times, memes that are carbon copies of other meaningless shit.  Also, we turn over so quickly in this culture from one snippet to the next, how am I supposed to take your sincerity about any one topic seriously?  Outrage over kneeling, the Ice Water Challenge, Snowden, Roy Moore, Koni, the election, Ferguson, the Oscars, Deflategate… Really?  My point is that if these stories truly mattered to us, we wouldn’t drop them so quickly. And, if they are dropped so quickly, why would take the next one that comes along seriously?  I remember, so I know what’s going to happen. I’m forced to ignore your passions and enthusiasm and that kinda sucks. (Although, a dispassionate once-over of the news is a decent idea.)

It can be a pain.  I know what I know, and I remember a lot about what you know. It’s true.  I remember a lot of my conversations, and details that should be long washed away pop right back.  I watched The Simpsons so much that I might not have to re-watch it ever again. I can just cycle through a thousand jokes in my head and laugh out loud.  Which, I do.

I feel sort of normal when I forget shit. All the short-term memory stuff. It’s not annoying to me.  My daughter will get on my case because I repeated a question from a few days before; usually pertaining to a schedule thing.  She’s annoyed, I feel fine.  I make so many stops all over this area for my job, and I often forget where I parked.  It takes an extra few seconds to find the car, and I’m cool with it. A forgotten grocery list, a work call I was supposed to make.  No problem.  My average is still pretty damn good.  I realize this could all come back to bite me in the ass if my mind slips when I get old and crotchety.  It’s tough to imagine though.  I’m sure I’ll remember writing all of this down.

Life Isn't An Adventure

P.S. That's a miniature stone behind him.

You’ve seen these posts on Facebook or Instagram.  Or whatever the new platform may be. A slew of pics and a story about someone’s’ vacation or wedding or a big party where everyone had a great time.  It fills you with joy or sickens you because you missed it.  It’s the inescapable charm and curse of social media. 

I can’t complain about that stuff.  Most of the time, I love seeing all of it.  My issue is (It took me a while to consolidate my thoughts on this) the inevitable post that describes life as one big adventure.  They are off to their next adventure, series of adventures, or that life, itself, is one big adventure.

Come on, man. Life isn’t an adventure.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is an adventure.  And, it’s a good example.  Indiana Jones has a very weird side job where he searches for and steals artifacts for his university.  That’s the adventurous part, for sure, and more adventure than we’d ever experience.  However, his full-time career is a professor of archeology at a stuffy New England school. Not an adventure.  Just driving to and from work, grading papers, wondering when there will be a cure for polio.  (It was the thirties.)

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do we put this pressure on our lives, as if it doesn’t have enough pressure as it is?  We have to work and take care of our families, be there for friends, try to be healthy and a good citizen, fix our cars, clean our toilets, clip our toenails, walk our dogs, eat our vegetables, and not lose our shit when the world feels likes like its upside down and on fire.  On top of all that, now we have to make it an adventure, too? Screw that. 

By all means, have adventures if that’s your thing.  I bet it’s fun.  Adventures take time and money and those are both things I want one day.  But I have to clarify that I’m not saving up for adventures.  I know the stats show that most people prefer experiences to material possessions. I do, too.  But there aren’t really any specifics on what those experiences should be.  I’m interested in peace.  Just peace.  Quiet is fine from time to time, but I want peace in my life.  Conversation, one-on-one time, games, movies, long walks…I can’t wait to be as free from demands and responsibilities as any adult can possibly get.  Nowhere in there is a craving for adventure, and certainly, I would never want my life to be an adventure.

I understand it’s just a frame of mind.  You can look at your life through any prism you choose.  There’s just so much mundanity in our lives that I think it’s a tall order to try to act like you’re on a constant adventure. Life just isn’t that exciting. It’s not.  You know it and I know it.  Why do we take photos when we’re on vacation?  Because its special.  It’s rare.  You don’t take selfies in front of the paper towels at the grocery store or in your garage when you’re looking for that hammer you always lose.  Why?  Because that boring shit fills all of our days.  It’s the fun we want to remember, right?  At most, we want as many tiny adventures as we can grab spread throughout our boring-ass lives. 

It doesn’t have to be exciting to be precious.  It doesn’t have to be a thrill to be sacred.  It doesn’t always have to fit neatly in a movie script and not every moment is worth a photo and a description.

Is it that you think life is an adventure, or do you want me to believe that YOUR life is an adventure?

Here, There Be Morons

I don’t know what to do about the dummies.  I’m afraid of one of the millions with no good ideas.  A definition of what I mean by ‘the dummies’ would fit perfectly right here.  I would explain that I don’t mean these people, but I do mean these people. I’m a pretty nice person and I don’t want to offend someone reading this by making them out to be dummies when they aren’t really dummies. Then again, if you’re not a dummy, then you probably wouldn’t need that explanation, right?

I can only explain myself. I don’t believe that people who aren’t very smart are any better or worse than me.  Not even a little bit.  We’re just human beings trapped in sacks of meat and bone for 70 or 80 years, trying to make the best out of a weird situation.  But I also acknowledge the truth in front of me.  If even the most modest basketball player watched me try to play for two minutes, he would know that I suck.  I also know I suck and assumed I would suck before I touched the ball.  It’s the exact same with intelligence.  I can spot a dummy within seconds.  The problem is, the dummies don’t know.  Why?  Well as I’ve whined about before, we’re just not allowed to call that out. 

All that aside, we still have to do something about these morons.

The problem is, morons are easily frightened and manipulated.  Other morons, or smart people with evil plans, love to use morons to their advantage.  It is the basis of the American political system and the driving force behind capitalism.  It can’t be rectified without dismantling and rebuilding both of those institutions, and that takes a shitload of time.  Besides, I’m getting older and I’d like to enjoy some of my life without the screams and grunts of morons for a few decades.  I’ll let my kids change the world.  Me, I just don’t want dumb shit all up in my face.

So, what can we do?  We all know we can vote, and that has some effectiveness, although that only matters when its an election year.  We can vote with our dollar, but as we all know, morons have money to spend, too and they like to spend it on shiny useless garbage. 

Then where to focus?  Social media?  Maybe.  Maybe we can make a stand there?  At least let it be known that there still are intelligent people who draw breath and give a shit about what happens in the world.

Here’s what I do.  I refuse to even acknowledge the ramblings of people who don’t recognize the world is literally round.  I don’t argue.  I ignore.  I ignore the ridiculous unfounded conspiracy theories that aren’t even well-written fiction.  I ignore people who speak in empty platitudes or sound bites.  The generalized fears of science, money, government, and technology.  If there aren’t specifics, I ignore. If you refuse to recognize verified sources just because they challenge your beliefs or make you feel icky, I ignore.

That seems to be the sticking point in our modern talking point cesspool.  Humans are having a tough time understanding the difference between truth and belief.  I think this may be a problem across the intelligence spectrum.  It affects all of us, like the common cold and global warming (Another thing that morons don’t like to believe in.)  As far as I understand it, belief is one thing and the truth is another. Truths are verifiable in one way or another, with methods that are also verifiable. For instance, the earth is round because it’s round. Belief is something you hold true inside yourself, but you can’t necessarily prove it.  Here’s the biggest distinction: Belief does not require proof.  Belief is where religion, love, friendship, hope, art…all of those intangible and beautiful things live.  They make life worth living.  But they don’t need proof.  And because of that, we can’t get them mixed up with truth. 

You can believe the world should be one way or another, that doesn’t mean that it is.  Or will be.  Or can be.  The world is the world and your belief is your belief.  Math and science can prove so much, and a lot of that might not jibe with your belief.  That’s your problem.  But remember, in the end, belief doesn’t need proof.  Congressional budgets should require proof.  Corporate quarterly reports.  Textbooks.  Medical journals.  And…well…the news, too. If they say it's true and they don’t have proof, I ignore.

It may sound like a passive resistance…possibly because it is.  It also isn’t easy to do.  I’d love to argue and force them to listen to reason, too.  But it doesn’t work.  Ignoring someone is the sure-fire way to get them to shut up.  For this plan to work, everyone would have to ignore them.  But I can only control myself.  I value my time and attention that bullshit isn’t worth either one.

Remember that scene in 12 Angry Men where the last remaining holdout juror loses his shit?  He’s going on a racist tirade, and the other jurors, knowing he’s just full of his own hate and bile, literally turn their backs on him?  That’s what I’m getting at.  We may not be able to change the minds of dipshits or shame them into action or shutting the hell up.  But, in that act of rejecting their ludicrous words, the rest of us have a chance to become a little closer.  By ignoring them, we may bond over the experience and make it more difficult for the next wave of dumbassery to consume us.

I Don't Understand Why You Can't Cook

(Amy and Emeril.)  You don't have to cook like these guys...just cook!

You know that trope we’ve heard our entire lives about how we aren’t taught basic life skills in high school?  We’re learning about the Teapot Dome Scandal and mitochondria, but we don’t know how to do our taxes, etc.?  I’m on board for a lot of that. (Although the notion that we don’t know how to ‘balance a checkbook’ is antiquated and simply isn’t true.  Balancing a checkbook takes all the math skills you learned by fifth grade. We just suck at it.)

             Why do so many of us not know how to cook?  I feel like it is something we should learn just after tying our shoes and just before geometric proofs.  It’s eating!  It’s the thing we all have to do every day to stay alive.  We breathe without conscious effort.  Check.  The biological urge to drink water seems to take care of itself.  Check.  But food preparation, the one that takes effort, escapes so many of us.  I don’t get it.

             First of all, let’s get this out of the way.  Cooking isn’t hard.  It isn’t.  Most of the time it doesn’t take a long time, and it can be done when you are doing other things.  Nutritionists will tell you that the simple fact you are cooking for yourself means you will end up eating healthier than if you ate your meals in restaurants or ate from the microwave every day. Now, I just made up that fact about nutritionists, but damn that seems plausible to me.   It’s minimal effort.  With actual food ingredients, fresh or not, you will eat better.  You’ll stretch your dollar further, too.

             One of the reasons we don’t cook for ourselves is that in this insane culture, cooking has a feminine connotation.  It’s something that moms do. Some men don’t want to associate themselves with feminine things, so they don’t cook.  Some women don’t want to associate themselves with domestic things, so they don’t cook.  Both of these views are categorically stupid. Why?  Because the notion that cooking is inherently male or female is ludicrous.  We all eat.  All of us.  My wife is a chef, and the restaurant business is still predominantly run by men.  How does that fit into all this? Women should cook for free and men should get paid for it?  What the hell does that mean? 

             Also, what you are saying to the rest of society when you don’t cook is this: “I have a basic need to eat every day and I expect all of you to take care of that for me.”  Fuck you, dude. If you can’t find the time and effort to lift up a spatula now and then to flip an egg, then maybe you shouldn’t be breathing, either.  What, are you too good for your own biological necessities?  I think that somewhere in the ideological divide we have in this country is self-reliance versus state support.  The balance is always shifting, and all our arguments seem to fall on one side or another.  I believe there is a giant pile of daily bullshit that the state can take care of that I don’t want to deal with in my life.  It creates jobs, keeps bridges from collapsing, keeps kids in school, etc.  But, if I had to make a conceit to satisfy the bootstrap pullers on the other side, I say that everyone learns to cook for themselves.  It’s a strong lesson in self-reliance and you understand a lot about finances, health, and how to participate in society along the way. Yes…can you imagine…not only cooking for yourself but making enough for others, too?  Whoa…

             It shouldn’t be a source of pride to not cook.  It shouldn’t be cute to admit you can’t boil water or that you eat Twizzlers for dinner.  Maybe it was at one time, but times are changing.  If you want to respect the environment, what’s a more personal way than what’s in your kitchen or what you feed your kids? You can show pride in your country with a dozen flags and a bunch of stickers on your truck, or maybe you can raise kids that know how to feed themselves? 

             It’s food!  You are going to eat some today!  Why don’t you want any part in that?

Demand Nuance

(This is not a post about Game of Thrones.  I promise.)

I’ve had nuance on my mind lately.

It started months ago when I was wondering what the hell is wrong with us, (us being Americans) and our current political situation.  But my ideas crystalized when the last season of Game of Thrones began.  It revealed a little something about nuance I may have missed.  That’s right, I missed some nuance about nuance.

Fans of GOT, which is a show watched around the world, are split on the last season or two.  The details aren’t necessary here, but essentially dozens of characters and storylines are ending and the pace toward the end has sped up.  In previous seasons, the characters traveled at a snail’s pace across their world or were locked in the middle of family squabbles or political issues.  The characters were becoming more nuanced.  Both good and evil, both predictable and unpredictable.  At the end of the story, that work is done and now the life and death decisions have to be made. As a fan/nerd, it is your prerogative to agree or disagree, but in the end, choices are made by the creators of the show and you have to just deal with it.

However, even though I’m fine with what has happened, the last two seasons lacked nuance.  Whether out of necessity or not, those character-driven moments are now replaced by ones that further the plot, and viewers apparently miss those moments. Nuance is everything.  It is the collection of details that tells the true story, whether a fictional world of dragons or the real world of greedy assholes.

Remember Jon Stewart’s last show?  (I do.  I still miss him.) After all the tearful goodbyes, he talked briefly about the importance of calling out bullshit.  At the time, I thought it was a strange note to end on.  I get it now.  Bullshit is the enemy of nuance.  Bullshit keeps voters home or elects a ridiculous human being to the presidency.  Bullshit keeps people fighting with each other.  Bullshit is the sum total of lies, cover stories, and rebranding designed to hide the truth from you.  It buries nuance, so all that is left are two choices.  You’d be a fool to not choose A!  Only communists choose B!

There is a backlash against the media in general. (I think this argument is also missing nuance, but I can’t talk about everything.) There is a lot of evidence to support the notion that the media is dividing us and blinding us from what matters most.  However, if we as a culture sought out the nuance we obviously crave in our TV shows, the flashy graphics and sensational stories the media pukes out there wouldn’t work. The news would change if we refused to watch. How many stories that are covered on any cable news network are covered for more the 4 or 5- minute snippets? Not many.  Or none. Nuance takes time, nuance reveals the complexity of life, nuance inherently understands there are more than two sides to a story.  With nuance, you get scope and scale.  It can quickly tell you that this thing you are concerned about isn’t anything at all.  The thing that needs your attention may be boring, but you need to know about it.

It is our duty to sort through what we are fed like our parents sifted through Halloween candy in the eighties looking for razorblades in our Tootsie Rolls.  One of the biggest lies I see on social media pops up every now and then.  During a political squabble, some wannabe life coach says: “Life is simple.” It could be a hard-edged country boy from a red state or a burned-out hippie from downtown Portland. They are both wrong.  Nothing about life is simple.  With every passing year of our lives, it gets more complicated.  Our brains need to sort it out and put labels on things so we don’t walk around drooling and babbling all day.  We need to organize everything somehow. That still doesn’t mean that life is simple.  It is incredibly nuanced.  We are doing our best to simplify what we can.

If you don’t believe me, I’ll attempt a metaphor.  Look out your window.  Your home, work, your dentist office.  Even with artistic skill, could you accurately recreate what you see with the standard eight crayons in the box they give you in kindergarten?  (Do that even have black in there?)  How about the sixteen-box?  The sixty-four?  How many would it take to get all the colors just right?  The more crayons, the better chance you have. The more details, the closer you are to an accurate picture.

Also, nuance, and I’m stretching here, isn’t mathematical.  It rarely can be summed up as A = B.  Math is neat and clean because it can be proven.  Life really isn’t that way.  The circumstances change.  The rules, the law, the values, the environment…they are all variables.  There aren’t a lot of constants. Nuance means things are messy.  What is true today may not have been true twenty years ago or twenty years from now.  I can see how black and white thinkers would be frustrated.  But, tough shit.

My eye doctors have always told me to spend significant time away from screens to refresh my eyesight.  This also helps with perspective.  All of us could do this.  Go on a media hiatus every once in a while.  The world will still be crazy when you get back, but you may gain insight that you didn’t have before.  That tiny sliver of knowledge is the building block of nuance.

How The Oscars Are Like Cheez-It's

Man, I used to love the Oscars.  I watched it every year, no matter what was nominated.  It wasn’t the glitz and the glamour (What exactly is glitz, and how does it differ from glamour?). I think what interested me was that it was an entire event devoted to the arts and weirdos and made-up shit.  I think actors are wonderful nutjobs that live in a candy-cane gumdrop world and they get to do fun stuff for a living. Alongside the producers, directors, writers, and the slew of other people, they take what they do very seriously.  (Although, probably a little too much.)

 It was a break from the real world.  I watched that and other award shows and I would bet on the winners with my wife, even though we barely knew any of the nominations. But suddenly, just after the 2016 broadcast when Birdman won, I stopped caring.  And, for some reason, when that happens, I always go back to Cheez-It’s.

When I was really little, I would visit my grandmother and she would always have Cheez-It’s on hand.  They are the salty cheesy crackers that come with a case of dusty fingers and apocalyptically hideous breath. She would pour them into a little Dixie cup and that would be my snack.  I ate them all the time.  I never questioned them.  Then one day, maybe I was thirteen or so, I stopped.  Suddenly, they tasted and smelled like fried barf.  I haven’t eaten one in thirty years.  I don’t remember buying them in my adult life.  I’m not sure if my kids have ever eaten a Cheez-It.

That’s what happened with the Oscars and award shows, in general.  It's not a big loss, although I liked the guessing games Amy and I would play.  Just something about that year, that particular crop of Oscar hopefuls just turned me off from the whole affair.  I think its related to the second theory of mine:  We care too much about the Academy Awards. You might not watch the shows either, but I bet you’ve chimed in once or twice about them.  Usually, someone complains: “How is that an Oscar-worthy film?” “Who has even heard of that?” “I don’t know a human being who has seen that movie.”

That’s the problem.  We apparently have our own personal high bar when it comes to what’s the best movie out there and who did the best job putting it together. We wouldn’t bitch about it if we didn’t disapprove.  Birdman was a fine, but forgettable movie.  Like so many other award winners, we will one day wonder why anyone gave a shit. 

If the Oscars were going to truly mean something, if it were a quest to define a true artistic achievement that defined a specific area, it wouldn’t happen every year.  It would happen every 3 or 5 years.  They would strive to uncover what worked, what stuck around, what is now part of our cultural conversation.  But it’s not that at all.  It’s a yearly special that makes a ton of money and advertises stars and upcoming projects.  It finds the best inoffensive film that had the best PR campaign.

I think what we can take away from this is that movies matter to us.  We’re a young culture and we put out way more movies than any other country out there.  They mean more than just an escape for two hours.  If so, then maybe a different way to acknowledge needs to come along.  The Oscars don’t really cut it.

Or we could just pick up a book once in a while.

My Anxiety Files - The Internet Tricked Me Again

One of my favorite, but most misunderstood essay-dealies was about no one giving a shit about you. I purposely used salty language to make a point, but the truth was I didn’t have a better way to articulate my idea. There are people who give a shit about you in this world.  Thank goodness.  I’m not a heartless monster who believes in a gloomy hellscape existence where all notions of empathy are questioned and that there is no one you can find that doesn’t have an ulterior motive for every move they make.

I save that type of thinking for Republicans. (Zing!)

No, what I meant was that no one really cares about what you think and what you are up to.  The static we have in our head that insists that ‘people’ are going to say this or that about our decisions and our lives is imaginary. It is wholly manufactured by our dumb brains.  People are too busy to care about the details about others.  That’s not a bad thing.  It’s a freeing thought.  It is wisdom.  However, it doesn’t keep me from having to learn that lesson over and over again.

I wrote a post about black history and my admiration of black Americans.  I wrote that piece a few years ago.  I never let anything sit that long.  If I do, I delete because it sucks, or I’m no longer interested in it.  But that one, I wanted to get right.  I didn’t want to come off as insensitive or dumb, or lame, or racist, or an asshole.  I also wanted to avoid being vague. I wanted to be true to my feelings and try to keep it entertaining or at least interesting to read.  So, I finally rewrote it for the fourth time and posted it a few weeks ago.

You know what happened?  Nothing. Almost no one noticed at all.  More people read the one where I reminisced about Luke Skywalker. Why? Because nobody gives a shit. I’m not whining about a lack of readership, I’m talking about the world, here.

I worked on that piece for me.  Me.  That’s it.  That is the reality.  I wanted it to be good so it would be something I would be proud of.  Now, in my head, there were daydreams of reposts and comments and a host of congratulatory delusions. But those weren’t real.  It was just me, and what I decided to write.

The internet tricked me.  Again.

The internet does that to us all.  The truth is, I do create books that I want the world to read. The internet is one way to get them out there.  But most of the time, my presence on the web is like yours.  Photos, social media, opinions, emojis, clicking the ‘like’ button. We tend to think these posts matter.  We tend to think that dropping opinions on a long political thread will mean anything to anyone.  But they won’t.  They never will.  Why?  Come on, you know this…

I made such a big deal about that black history post and the truth is that in all the important ways it was a success.  I finished it and got it out there.  Your opinion truly doesn’t matter to me.  Just like if you support this ridiculous president, or the New England Patriots, or you like mint chocolate chip ice cream. What I strive to keep reminding myself is that almost none of these opinions are real, and they reflect only a tiny fraction about the person who uploads them to the internet.  They are just ideas and they are frequently worded poorly.

I feel this post wavering, so I’ll try to reel it in.

We all hit a wall with social media because we feel it has become a wave of noise that will crest twenty feet above our heads and crush us under its weight.  But just like that bloated metaphor, those things don’t exist.  Those opinions, as hateful and fundamental stupid as they are, remain in the ether.  Your thoughts and opinions are in the ether, too.  They are ideas that can’t hurt you on their own and shouldn’t prevent you from living your life. That sounds simplistic and it probably is, but it is important to remember.

I almost let the imagined opinions of people who don’t really give a shit impede me from writing practice. How dumb does that sound?