Hyphenated Last Names
If you're about to be married and one or both of you lovely people engaged in coupledom is considering merging your last names into one hyphenated monstrosity, I beg you, don't! It's a stupid idea.
Whatever beauty your last name may have had is utterly lost in the union of the two, and this brilliant system you've come up with is woefully short sighted, as it doesn't scale. Are your children going to inherit your hyphenated last name? What if they end up meeting some lovely person who is no more a fan of giving up their last name than you or your spouse was? Then they'll add on yet more hyphenated last names?
Be decisive, be bold. Keep your original last names, pick the better of the last names, or make up a brand new and interesting last name you both will like (that will not harm your children), but whatever you do, don't hyphenate.
^Quinxy
Settling into Self & My Mancrush on Damian Kulash (OK Go)
I was just listening to OK Go, which led to re-watching some of their amazing videos, in particular This Too Shall Pass (Band Version), and This Too Shall Pass (Rube Goldberg Version), Invincible, Do What You Want, Get Over It, and more. I must confess to a big mancrush on their lead singer, Damian Kulash. At this hour of night, seated outside my local writer's haunt, sipping peppermint tea, trying to ignore the stabbing pains in my lower back, from a muscle strained during a week of noble exertions, I am in a curious mood. I will admit to the lesser parts of myself. And to the part of me that wants to be Damian Kulash, wishes my face knew how to contort into his charming smiles, wishes my body knew how to move between the poses of his lusts (and plays at person-ified loves), wishes my brain could reduce life down to his sparer, baser words, wishes my voice could project his cool, wishes others would find in me the gravitational pull others (and I) find in him, and wishes my brain seemed as engineered for this world of busy, busy, busy peopled now. But I am not Damian Kulash. I am me; and that is, and must be, enough. The beauty of life must come from the struggle to be, not the becoming. And I am not bemoaning who I am, I have a sincere affection for me. But I may forever be finding new comforts in old skin; a protracted settling into self.
^Quinxy
The men and women who smoke cigars are…
...assholes. I define an asshole as one who routinely exercises their capacity to be an asshole, not one who is one 24/7. Hitler was an asshole, but he was also nice to his dogs. (Mandatory Godwin.) The reason that cigar smokers are assholes is because they have (generally) selected themselves into that group. They smoke a cigar consciously or unconsciously because of its association with power and privilege. They smoke cigars, and smoke them in public where I am observing them, comfortable in the knowledge that almost everyone (even cigarette smokers) are particularly annoyed by cigar smoke. In my experience only one capable of being an asshole pursues the accoutrement of power and privilege and is so comfortable unnecessarily offending others.
Every rule has exceptions, and I'm sure there are many people I've yet to meet who deviate from this one... but they appear to me a slim minority.
^Q
Did you see her?
I'm sitting outside at the cafe the other day and I strike up a conversation with this normal looking guy next to me. He had a netbook similar to mine, and we got to talking about them. The conversation expanded a bit and he was asking me for advice about jailbreaking an iPhone to do tethering. All of a sudden he stops me and says, "Did you see her?" I reply, "No, who?" "Oh man, you missed out! The woman who just walked by, wow!"
While I am staunchly heterosexual and enjoy a reasonable and quasi-artistic appreciation of the women who might happen by me in any given moment, I can't help but be a little confused by these sort of reactions I see from men. How exactly was that interaction supposed to go?
Was I supposed to say, "Yes, I did see her, thanks for checking to make sure I did. Damn, she sure was beautiful. Would you like to talk about what specifically you liked about her physically?" Or perhaps I was supposed to say, "Oh, thank you, yes, I see her now, phew, let me go ask her out!" Or perhaps, "Oh, yes, I bet she's just your type, would you like me to fetch her and introduce you?" I don't know, it just seems like there's nowhere you can reasonably go with that conversation. How do I benefit from having seen her? How do we benefit by talking about her?
But I also don't understand strip clubs. I don't understand why someone would go somewhere to pay a lot of money to get "all worked up". I mean, it seems more logical to me to either make peace with being a "John" and find yourself a suitably affordable woman, or pursue a disease free evening at home with yourself, your little gentleman and his five friends, and a "bad" movie.
I suppose next time someone says something like this to me I'll just try to roll with it and see where it does go...
High-Heeled Horror Show
I'm not fond of high heels, on women (or men, I suppose). The other day I fell into a deeper analysis of why I dislike them as I saw several women in high heels walk past me at the cafe. While I dislike the design of most, not really being a fan of the fancy or slutty ends of the female fashion spectrum, I realized that most of my dislike comes from what it does to a woman's walk. Walking is usually a beautiful thing, the rhythmic coordination of a hundred muscles and a dozen or two joints shaped over tens of thousands of years of evolution to be the graceful and efficient movement it is today. And then a woman puts on high heels and it's like she has undone 25,000 years of genetic fine tuning, making her articulations a clunky, unsteady mess. Add a little fatigue or alcohol and the performance art piece grows uglier. Some women can work it, no doubt, but few rise to the level of grace required to achieve parity, and I wish they would all just stop!
Quinxy
My Pet Peeves
We all have pet peeves, those people annoying me particularly are those who engage in...
- Chewing food with open mouths. Good lord. I do not want to see the glorious process by which food is turned into slurry! I do not want to have to remember to look away every time you take a bite and begin your mastications. Honestly, were these people raised by wolves?
- Tossing chewed gum on the ground. You may think it will biodegrade, but take a serious look at the concrete around you one day, it's got lots of little oblong dark spots left by people who believe the same nonsense you do.
- Smoking. Smoking and smokers are by my definition: annoying. Most smokers further annoy me by tossing their cigarette butts on the ground under the theory that no one will mind and it will eventually biodegrade or be swept up by someone. Smokers are usually fundamentally selfish people. They believe others should tolerate their smoke, their breath, their butts, their breaks, their coughs, their... Get over yourself.
- Coughing or sneezing without the token hand/elbow stifling. If the event completely surprises you, ok. It happens to the best of us. But some people choose to do nothing, or are completely oblivious to the messages their bodies are sending them about upcoming events. (People who fart indiscreetly under the same premise of surprise also bug the hell out of me. If I can tell it's coming, you can too. Take the necessary steps to do it surreptitiously or not at all !)
- Checking or using their phone when we're dining or getting coffee. If I haven't seen you in a week and you feel the need to respond to every little beep of your phone, we're not going to long be friends. Glance at your phone, sure. Respond to texts, Facebooks, or take calls from strangers, that's very rude and I have no patience for you.
- Talking excessively about their significant other in ways which seem codependent or defensive. I love love. I love that you're in love with your flavor of the month or lifetime. Yay for you! But seriously, sound like the whole and independent human being you are, with a separate life and separate interests.
- Owning little, useless dogs. There are many exceptions to this rule, since there are many excellent little dogs; I am not besmirching all little dog owners. I am talking about the whole purse dog psychology and fashion which is ridiculous bordering on cruel. Dogs are not a fashion accessory, they are noble beasts descended from wolves, meant to tear the throats out of deer.
Anyway, those are a few of my many pet peeves.
Quinxy
Peanuts (the comic): An Analysis of My Hatred
Peanuts (the comic) is the perfect storm of all my core hatreds. I detest things which get grossly disproportionate attention. I detest things which have no characters I can relate to. I detest swishy jazz music (love dixie land, love Satchmo, like Ellington, hate those free form make-it-up-as-we-go stoned-out-of-our-gourd-but-our-audience-won't-notice). Peanuts has wasted god knows how much printed page space for god knows how many years and elicited in its entire run sixteen and one half chuckles, four of those were from drunk people who were reading it upside down. Charles Schultz made millions upon millions. Newspapers paid millions upon millions. And have you seen that "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" play? I was forced to see it twice as a kid. You know what happens in it? Nothing. You know what costumes they are wearing? None! Snoopy is just a dude, wearing a white shirt. No dog mask. No tail. No barking. And Charlie Brown is just a dude with that stupid yellow shirt with the zig zag. Oh my god. Make an effort, people. That's what that sort of jazz does to you, that's who goes to see it! And everyone on Peanuts sucks. I love dogs. But if Snoopy was a real dog I'd euthanize him with extreme prejudice. I hate him worse than Scrappy Doo, and thinking about Scrappy Doo churns bile in my belly. And who else is on that show? Bunch of little shits. You've got smelly guy, piano guy, psychiatrist girl, pull the football bitch. I mean Linus was the only major character I didn't absolutely hate, but he was still pretty god damn smug about his smarts. And all it is is swishy jazz, swishy jazz, swishy jazz. When adults talk, when stuff happens, etc. And what the fuck is with the WWI Snoopy cousin flashbacks with the flying doghouse? Mother of god, get the damn dog some PTSD medication and treatment, he's been suffering for 90 freaking years now. Anyway, that's the gist of why I hate it. I could go on for hours, especially if I got drunk at a Peanuts-themed bar. Ohhh.. And WTF is the name Peanuts for? Name it Snoopy for god sake. The good people of Hanna-Barbara didn't name their show Cashews when it was really about Scooby Doo. What a pretensious asshole Charles Schultz was. He and Hitler are the only good reasons I can think of for not curing mortality. To think of an infinitude of time and space stuck with those two... Ugh.
^Quinxy
Das Nihilist
I'm 84.6% nihilist, but not in the anarchist's co-opted blow-stuff-up sense. Rather, I neither believe nor disbelieve most things I don't directly experience. I used to drive my last ex-girlfriend nuts by doubting her every celebrity sighting claim. Once a week she would say, "I just saw [insert celebrity name here] on 3rd Street." And it just seemed like the frequency was impossible, and that she was mixing in people who just happened to bear resemblances. In fairness, I discovered later I had prosopagnosia, a mild case, and so I really was in no position to deny her claims. I can have difficulty recognizing people I only know (though only those I know slightly). Whatever the excuse, it was slightly obnoxious of me. I meant it in jest, but that doesn't mean it was forever funny.
^Quinxy
A Failure to Grasp Statistics
I just listened to a CNN news piece on a study proving the correlation between having multiple tattoos and having higher number of sexual partners and engaging in illegal drug use. The results should come as no surprise to anyone, I can think of few things less self-evident. And yet, not surprisingly, quite a few tattooed nitwits were writing in and calling in during the piece to say the study was bogus because they had tattoos and they didn't have lots of sex or do lots of drugs. I marvel at some people's inability or unwillingness to step out of themselves and their subjective reality long enough to smell the objective roses. The study isn't saying you can't be a straight-edged virgin covered in tattoos. We've each got free will, cupcake, we can be our own precious variation in the herd, but you're fooling yourself if you refuse to see the correlations that apply to us collectively.
Tiger Woods and the Naive Fans (& Elin)
Okay, I hate to admit to any awareness of popular culture and celebrity crap, but I can't help but feel a little surprised by people's surprise at Tiger Woods adulterous ways.
I think any reasonable person would expect Tiger Woods to cheat on his wife. To expect any different is, I think, naive. John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton's quote, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." applies.
I believe in being faithful. I believe in love. But when money and fame are involved, neither is likely. It happens sometimes, and by god those faithful, loving souls are to be admired and revered, for they are truly rare. Money and power will make a person believe they deserve all sorts of things, make them believe they can get away with all sorts of things, so it's little wonder that they would succumb to baser instincts when approached every hour of every day by very willing females.
And while as a rule I feel great sympathy for any partner who has been cheated upon, my sympathy in this case is limited. I believe Elin's expectations (if they existed) that Tiger would be faithful were unfounded. And while I allow her that naivety, the luxury she has secured by this marriage, however it may turn out, more than compensates for the pain she now suffers. Elin and her kids are set for life, an extremely rich life, where she can pursue every dream and idle curiosity. The rest of the world faces much more uncertain futures, lives of financial struggle and the attendant worries of home buying, their childrens' education, their own retirements, etc. Elin has none of those worries, and I find it difficult, therefore, to feel strong sympathy for her. I certainly would not wish this upon her, but I see this as the cost she acknowledged and accepted when she entered into this marriage, and signed both marriage license and prenup.
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- Glenn Greenwald: Obama's Lawyers Are Worse Than Bush's http://huff.to/kcTuwR via @huffingtonpost 2011-06-21
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