I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW    (originally posted April 16, 2013)

An Andrew Ramble

“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”

E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

The person, whom is I, Andrew Goldman, is more or less a mystery to no one.  I wear my heart embroidered with crimson thread on my sleeve; rarely missing an opportunity to cry on any dry shoulder I come across, or just whine to an unsuspecting friend or acquaintance.  In my everyday affairs, my tendency is to never hold my cards close to the vest, but rather to consistently lay them on the table, indicating each Joker and Jack of my persona with a Klieg Light intensity.

It’s no secret, those familiar with me are aware of my complete lack of Stoicism.  For lack of a better term, I am simply an open book.  But wait…there are a few things in my structure that some may not know about this regular, yet mildly, repellant character who over the past four and one half decades has developed into Andrew William Goldman.  So here are some of the things (listed in no particular order) about myself that are ultimately of zero interest to most, but someday might just serve some useful purpose to those who just otherwise think me strange.  Maybe this little ramble will help flesh out some aspect of who I was, to one of my yet unborn descendants.  Whether it matters now, or ends with this blog, I can only offer answers to the yet unasked questions, by offering up this little unsolicited declaration of; I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW!

I can saddle a horse. – My father lived in the semi rural town of Warwick, NY.  Additionally, he was a procurer of broken down Glue Horses.  When I was about ten years old, he obtained a few old mounts, which he kept in the broken down old barn on his property.  I learned to ride, care, and saddle horses on my weekends with him.  Maybe someday when I’m broken down, I’ll procure a broken down horse of my own!

LETS RIDE!!!

I hate to dig. – It’s not the effort involved that makes me hate shovel work, it’s just some unexplainable aspect of my personality that makes me dislike working below grade level.  Furthermore, I hate working in crawl spaces and basements.

Dead mammals make me wretch. – Large or small, decayed or fresh, I can’t even look at them.   A dead deer on the side of the road has almost caused me to drive into oncoming traffic on more than one occasion.

In my youth, I was too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.  – Now I’m fat enough for heavy work and not light by any measure!

I can sail a boat. – Sailing started for me as a wee lad on a small Styrofoam sailboat called a Sunflower.  Eventually, I moved up to a 30 foot fixed keel style boat.  I haven’t been sailing in close to twenty years now.  It’s probably the most relaxing activity every created…if the wind is right.

My good cholesterol is really low and my bad cholesterol is really high. – Nice knowing ya!

YEAH, BUT IS IT GOOD OR BAD CHOLESTEROL?

I don’t really “get” art and poetry but I pretend I do. – What kind of pseudointellectual would I be otherwise?

I choke on food frequently. – This action has led me to near death experiences on more than one occasion, and has the effect of making me a less than desirable dining companion.

Once in a while, I think of building a small greenhouse in my backyard. – I would only grow flowering plants, because vegetables, cacti, and evergreens are a total bore.

I always feel like an outsider around other Jews. – All paranoia aside, I think other Jews think of me as an outsider as well. (Is this a psychological condition?)

I hold my breath for really long durations when I sleep. – This has two effects.  One, it annoys the crap out of my wife.  Two, I’m almost certain this problem is giving me cumulative brain damage.

I am unable to tie all but the most basic of knots. – I don’t even tie a slipknot on my shoes.  I just wind two loops of shoelace together in a square knot and off I go.

I WONDER IF IT'S ON KINDLE?

I have tried to teach myself to play guitar three times. – I have purchased three separate guitars and have failed at this undertaking three times so far.

I am actually very conservative. – I just follow a politically liberal ideology because my heart tells me that this approach makes me a better person.  Then again…maybe I’m just a phony.

I enjoy romantic stories and movies more than I care to admit. – Romance is the only way I can think an author can convey humanity through storytelling.  (But those Lifetime Channel Movies are still crap!)

I feel a great sense of satisfaction when my wife makes a purchase she is happy with. – I only wish I could give her more opportunities to do this, despite the fact that she is the most unmaterialistic person I have ever known.

When I was six years old I dreamed of being the Six Million Dollar Man. – These dreams included scenarios where I would utilize my bionic strength to pull a tree out by the roots and clobber my “duller than dirt” first grade teacher with it.

NOBODY ROCKED THE ORANGE TRACK SUIT LIKE LEE MAJORS

Every time I look in the mirror I feel totally gypped by my looks. – My minds’ eye says I look like Brad Pitt, but the mirror insists I look like Napoleon Dynamite.

I really wish I had one of those “cool” Scottish accents. – They are intense.  Especially when you agree by saying “Aye” or referring to another dude as “brother.”

I had a Charlie’s Angels poster in my room when I was eleven. – It wasn’t even one of those cool Farrah ones.  It was a Charlie’s Angels 2.0, with Cheryl Ladd.  In spite of this décor, I still turned out to be a heterosexual.

My temper can be harsh and violent in nature. -  I just want to give a formal Thank You to the Pfizer Corporation for first making Paxil, and then Effexor.  Without your noble efforts, my wife and children would have surely run for their lives by this time and I would probably be in the “big house” for some offense relating to rage and idiocy.

Most mornings, I am afraid of the world.  – But by the time late-night rolls around, I am reluctant to give up my battle with the day.

I am a praise and attention-craving psychopath! – Why else would I write a blog?

HERE'S LOOKING AT ME.

DYSTOPIA NOW!

DYSTOPIA NOW!  (originally posted January 26, 2013, the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting  was December 14, 2012) 

An Andrew Rambling Tirade

“Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.”

Neil Young – Mr. Soul

Maybe it’s the winter.  It could be age.  It’s certainly the times.  Regardless of what is occurring, overstimulation and our growing resultant indifference is quickly moving to blow the roof off of everything we have ever known, loved or cherished.  The world has changed and for our soft little species with our enormous crinkly light grey brains, there will be no return to the way it was before.  Before, when we listened and cared about what we heard.  Before, when a picture saved our memory.  Before, when we spoke in words face to face. Before, when music was in the foreground and books were physical entities with presence.  Before, when we enjoyed the company of our own kind.

One month ago genocide occurred in a kindergarten class.  In one more month it will all but be forgotten.  Forgetting is a gift.  It’s a gift that is more overused with each smart phone release, every “added” fake friendship and every stock dividend we earn without lifting a finger.  On a daily basis, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we’re just not designed for the world that is unfurling before us.  We’re meant to be a certain way, but certainly not adapted to thrive in this world, which we inadvertently or accidentally created.  The information flow we all experience daily is crushing to most.  The pace is unrelenting and unmaintainable.  We can’t seem to remember anything.  Then again, why should anyone remember in the first place?  The new “Humans” just don’t do that anymore.  Just get it once, click, save or add, and our brains are free to focus on our new species wide addiction.  It’s not drugs; it’s not sex, and it’s not money.  This growing habit which is making us truly different for the first time since we went from being homo erectus to homo sapiens is truly new to the human race.  The little “game changer” for humanity has ultimately turned out to be silicon chips.  Little slices of cooked sand that have given rise to the electronic society, the false reality that now dominate our consciousness, our communication, and our community.

EXACTLY WHEN DID THIS BECOME A PART OF MY BRAIN?

 Not long ago, we were human.  We created in the physical world.  Sometimes a letter written with smeared ink on a sheet of paper conveyed our thought to another or a group.  Sometimes when the conveyance of this thought was complete the letter would be saved as a memento or testament to the thought that went into its creation.  Let’s just ask this question.  Who ever through away a love letter?  Yes, there was once such a thing.  And they were arguably the most beautiful bits of information our species was ever able to convey in any format.

“Click” was the sound of memory.  Twenty-seven chances at most were all you had on each roll of film.  The silver coated filmstrip captured a moment in time.  What that moment was, was and unknown until all the exposures were shot out and sent away for developing.  Many came back to us as blurred rectangles, but most of the time they were kept anyway.  Mementos of a time and a place, even if they were less than perfect representations of our outer selves, were put in an album and cherished by their subjects, while being cheered, jeered and laughed at in later days.  Now only the best is retained.  The imperfect, the unflattering are wholly discarded.  Today’s snapshots have somehow become more valueless representations of what we keep telling ourselves is a more perfect world.

I remember, wait, no I don’t.  I don’t have to.  The HAL 9000 lost his mind when David Bowman removed his memory cards way back in 2001 A Space Odyssey.  We are losing our minds by supplementing our neurons and synapses for SD Cards.   These days, I personally know approximately 20 phone numbers.  I once knew more than a hundred.  “I forgot.”  This has become an acceptable excuse to the Millennial Generation!  This has been taught to me by my 13 and 15 year old sons.  Why I just could not accept the legitimacy of their claim was beyond me.  But now the reality is starting to shine down.  I think they did in fact forget, because it’s becoming true.  They don’t remember.  They don’t have to!

2001: THE GOOD OLD DAYS, WHEN YOU COULD JUST TURN IT OFF.

We talk and talk and talk.  Everyday we have more ways to talk and fewer people to converse with.  In fact most conversation has become less interaction and more regurgitation, recap and reiteration.  People are just so uninteresting, when I can know everything they know just by false fact checking their statements on Wikipedia.  Human beings speaking with one another was once the ultimate interactive experience.  It was informing and stimulating.  We built bonds with speech and resolved conflicts.   We learned from one another and grew together.  The new reality is that speech almost solely conveys information.  Our new habit is to ignore the other participants in a conversation and try to wait for our turn to blurt out some predetermined platform.  Sometimes we do show an interest in what the other participants are saying, but only so long as we find them entertaining or amusing.  Sadly, the noise and the babble is just another addiction that we can’t stand to be without.  When was the last time any of us rode more than 2 miles alone in the car without putting on the radio.  In quieter times, a very wise friend once said this just after switching off the car radio; “You know, ya don’t always have to have it on.”

It’s time to check our heads.  They’re anything but empty, but they are becoming more impacted with crap by the hour.  The term for coveting unnecessary material items was once thought of as worshiping “False Gods.”  We worried and prayed for the things we needed.  What has arisen in our time is the empty reality that everything we need is simply a list of “wants.”  Maybe it was the generation that came before mine that changed want to need.  The two are certainly no longer mutually exclusive.  I’m afraid that objective and speed have suffered the same fate.  The processes of our lives and society’s endeavors have deteriorated into a blend of these two factors.  It no longer matters how a thing gets done, just that it does get completed, and completed quickly at that.  Evidence is everywhere.  Just look up at a building facade the next time you are walking the streets of any city.  The buildings of a century ago were completed by Artisans who put their talents into ornate expression of individuality in every piece of architecture they laid their hands, chisels, and hammers on.  In that world the means certainly justified the ends.  Now, the only beauty on a new structure was prefabricated in China and glued into place by a Beta human, not fit for a skill or existence equal to that of society’s “Makers.”  Even the makers would have to admit that for the most part, they themselves are detached observers of their lives in this new world.

The facts are in….  read ‘em and weep!  We have become our own spoiled brat children, entitled to the point where there is no longer any true desire to want.  There is no need.  All that remains is stagnation.  Maybe that is the roll of the new humans.  Just exist and forget every previous day, even when those days contain a weeping procession of thirty-six inch long caskets.

ALL GONE?

ALL GONE?

 An Andrew Ramble

“If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung....”

Robert Hunter, Ripple

 Death is the universally feared equalizer, but it’s the idea of death that we really detest.  This is to say that we all know death is waiting for us, but for the most human of reasons we have an impossibly hard time accepting this reality.  The biological reality that immediately after anyone draws their final breath, they’re simply All Gone.

So here’s the question; are we really done once each and everyone of us turns in for our eternal sleep?  Personally, I’ve always considered and accepted the finality of “The End”, thinking that it would just be an enormous waste of the Cosmos’s extensive, yet efficient distribution of natural resources, to have me spend eternity sitting naked on some ethereal cloud, strumming a golden harp for eternity.   (Now there's and image!)  The alternative, Heaven forbid (check out my irony) of being boiled alive in a subterranean cauldron by some malevolently laughing demon seems…well it just seems silly.  Still, I encounter many folks who forget their adult reasoning selves and slip into some level of accepting these fairytale concepts as guideposts for their everyday existences.  But yet, the other side of the coin must be addressed.  Just being All Gone is certainly more final and disturbing than my slowing and now firmly middle-aged mind is willing to accept.  Knowing that this ultimate open-ended issue has the potential to drive me ever closer to the nearest in-patient psychiatric center, I decided to turn some of my reflections to the question at hand:  How do we live on beyond death?

IT JUST CAN'T BE THIS EASY!

Installing ceramic, porcelain or stone tile is one of the more permanent material installation tasks I complete on a routine basis.  I undertake this task as part of my  ongoing effort to provide shelter, food and clothing for my beautiful family. (Believe me, tile never seems to go away, think of the wall mosaics they uncovered in those buried Pompeian whore houses from millennia past, or worse yet, think of the aged pink and grey tiles in your grandmother’s bathroom. Permanence indeed!)  Well getting back to the thought at hand; while recently laying down some customer’s ungodly ugly tile selection, a strange notion came to mind.  This was not a thought relating to my job, but rather a small epiphany, that at that exact moment I was creating a small vibration, a vibration that in its own way will resonate long after I am Gone, but probably not forever.

Continuing to spread tile mastic with my three-sixteenth inch notched trowel, I went on considering the reality that each motion I was completing was creating a very small vibration in and across the world.  Simply put, the more motions I make, the more vibrations I was triggering.  (As a point of clarification, I don’t smoke pot at work, so stay with me.)  As I understand the nature of these things, from my Science Channel education, vibrations are waves and many waves have the ability to last long and travel far.  Case and point; light waves from billions of years ago arrive here on earth daily.  Now, I’m all in favor of searching for an afterlife, and maybe making waves or vibrations is a way to achieving some type of afterlife, but billions of years?  That might be more time than even I am willing to bite off. 

Regardless of my personal requirements, let’s continue along this path.  First, lets go to Hell.  As I said, eternal damnation is one of the sillier concepts we humans have ever conceived of, however, Hell in the form of a forgotten abyss surely exists.  It is the hole that portions of the life we waste descend into.  Those days spent sitting in a cubical; the years spent watching our 401K’s performance; the time we spent trying to get a new video game high score; the hours spent cruising around Facebook, and the endless segments of our lives we spend sprawled out on the couch channel surfing.  These are the non impact portions of our existences.  During these “down times” we made no waves, no vibrations and no production.  Surely these parts of our physical time here on Earth will be forgotten.  Those who make a lifetime of this nothingness, experiencing, contributing, sharing, thinking and creating nothing, ultimately leave nothing behind upon their death and truly are All Gone.  Gone into the forgotten void of indifference and ineffectuality.  To Hell for lack of a better explanation, a Hell that ultimately awaits us all in some vast measure of Time’s incredible expanse.

In spite of this dour assessment, the real focus here is afterlife and our pursuit of the Heavens and an eternal presence in the world, as we know it.  Well, in its typical context, Heaven is right up there with eternal damnation on the ridiculous side of the many philosophies we have regarding an afterlife.  What is not silly or ridiculous is making a difference and having an effect on the world around us.  Effects that are hopefully for the good but sometimes for the bad.  This is when making vibrations in our world comes into play.  Put in simple terms, life can be looked at as an oak table and we can consider ourselves tuning forks.  When we live; show compassion or allow it to be shown to us; fall in love; have children; serve humanity; create works of art; develop new philosophies, or even install someone’s ugly tile, we are striking ourselves as that metallic tuning fork against that oak table and sending out vibrations through all of creation.

IS THIS THE KEY TO HEAVEN?

This is why the concept of judgment is so absolutely true and resonant in our existence.  Life is short, fleeting to be more exact.  We all have a portion of eternity before us, but that eternity is proportionate to how willing we are to strike ourselves against that table and let our vibrations ring through the ages.  So take the chances you may not otherwise consider.  Pick the fight you are bound to lose.  Shoot off your mouth when you shouldn’t.  Help those who need it and ignore those who just want it.  Focus on life’s in-between moments and remember that becoming a parent makes you somebody’s ancestor in the distant future.  Most of all, hit as many moments of life with as much effort as you can possibly muster.  Just maybe, this will insure some long-term marker of your existence beyond that of a long forgotten grave.

ANDREW...SEEK HELP!

GODS RADIO

GODS RADIO            (Originally posted December 9, 2012)

An Andrew ramble

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're sayin'.”
― Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb

For a very long time, I’ve wanted to believe in God.  I’ve wished for the comfort of faith through many phases of my life.  To be able to know that there is something beyond my fleeting existence or to know that my presence in the world has some type of meaning still partially stands as the yet unclaimed reward of my pursuit.  Year after year, decade after decade this “knowing” was unobtainable.  I conversed with that “small quiet voice” that resides within us all on innumerable occasions regarding the reality of a higher power and my desire to acquire faith.  However, the Small Quiet Voice always answered my queries regarding my quest the same way.

I would say something like; “I can’t believe that everything came together just right, so that a chance meeting with a girl at a backyard barbeque resulted in me ending up with the perfect wife and three healthy beautiful children.  It must be Gods will.”

Then the Small Quiet Voice” would respond in a high-pitched, somewhat shrill, sing song tone; “It’s all bullshit.”

Every so often I would say; “It would be great to join others in worship and share a common belief with them.”

Other times I would say; “So many people on the planet believe in God.  It’s not possible for everyone to be wrong.”

The Voice would inevitably give its typical three-word answer; “It’s all bullshit.”

In fact, every question regarding a divine being, nature’s beauty or any master plan for the universe, received the “It’s all bullshit” heckle from my Small Quiet Voice.  Then one Sunday night in 2004 I was watching a story on 60 Minutes, about a little boy who lived in New York City and had a rather remarkable, if unexplainable talent.  When the story concluded and the clicking stopwatch flashed on the screen proceeding the commercial break, I took a moment and asked again;  “So what do you think about that, Small Quite Voice?”  No answer came.  I asked again.  Still there was no answer.  Then closing the leg-rest on my recliner, I stood up and testified for all to hear.  “I got you this time, mother fucker!”  I haven’t heard from the Small Quiet Voice since.

A MOZART FOR OUR TIME?

The 60 Minutes story was about a then 12-year-old boy, by the name of Jay Greenberg.  Jay looked like a cross between Harry Potter and every prepubescent nerd I have ever seen.  (Myself included)  Even his self-appointed nickname “Blue Jay” was anything but cool.  However little Jay Greenberg had, and probably still has, a unique gift.  His gift is music.  Entire symphonies, in fact were playing in his head at any given time.  Now here is what sealed the deal for me and finally shut down the never-ending “It’s all bullshit” barrage.  They were all new compositions.  This little boy, who indecently, did not come from a musical family, was composing entire symphonies starting around the age of 6.  He was writing in musical notation from before the age of three.  All without being prompted or taught by his parents or his environment at the outset.  He told Steve Croft that at anytime he could be listening to as many as three separate yet original works in his head.  They played while he walked the streets of Manhattan or played in Central Park.  For him to compose a symphony, he simply had to listen to the music playing in his mind and transcribe it onto paper.  We must keep in mind the magnitude of this ability, being that many composers work a lifetime to complete just a few symphonies.  When this story aired, little Blue Jay was working on his fifth or sixth?  Would it have mattered if it were his first of his tenth?  The report never indicated this, but it was immediately my deduction that God was in the mood to listen to some classical music.  In this particular instance, Little Jay Greenberg was the radio he chose to play it on.

At this point it should be obvious that I love music.  Love is probably an understatement.  Connected to music would be a more accurate description.  This is a connection that for me is deeper than any religious experience or conviction.  All of this, and my love is simply a surface connection.  I don’t play an instrument, I don’t read music and I can’t even comprehend music’s, often-intricate structures.  I simply listen and I am connected.  It speaks to me in a way that no voice, prose or poetry ever has.  Like it does with so many people, it floods my mind with feeling, imagery, memory and desire in a nature that is unobtainable through any other stimuli our bodies can absorb.  As I said, I can only explain it as being God’s direct line into our souls and minds.

I started this entry with a lyric to a song.  I chose this particular stanza because to me, it contains information and imagery that can only be conveyed through music.  It’s power would undoubtedly be a religious experience if anyone was ever to experience it, a house of worship rather than Madison Square Garden.  So the question must be asked.  Is it any less the Lord’s words and work because a musician or a composer was His medium, and we all first heard it played back to us at thirty three and one third revolutions per minute rather than in a dusty old book or cavernous cathedral?

"THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS WERE WRITTEN ON THE SUBWAY WALLS."

The great music’s makers are universal yet unique.  They are often flawed yet they are devout.  They can be sublime while being witless.  In my mind, they are sages and profits in their own right.  The true greats are speakers of the divine.  Think of Eric Clapton and Duane Allman playing “notes that don’t even exist on a guitar” in the closing section of “Layla”.  Consider the likelihood of George, Paul, John and even Ringo coming together to spew out innumerable tunes beyond their years and experience.  Either they were divinely inspired or they were from another planet.  Then there was Louis Armstrong and that trumpet.  The Lord’s best use of man and horn since Joshua brought down the walls of Jericho.  Do we need to talk about Mozart, Brahms or Beethoven?  Their music is essentially imprinted on all of our DNA whether we know it or not.   They were the previous channels on God’s radio and they were definitely all rating’s winners.  Looking back through time and music, the Jay Greenburg’s seem to appear every generation or so.  Unique one-of-a-kind talents, one and all.  But at the level they produce music, we are almost forced to reinterpret the 1960’s era graffiti; “Clapton is God” to “Clapton is playing Gods tune.”

SAINT BRUCE AND A FEW DISCIPLES

Arguably, music matters more to its devotees than it does to its makers.  I have been put into a trance by song on more than one occasion.  I have seen people stop to listen to it’s message and recite along with it’s notes and lyrics more often then I have seen people bow in prayer and recite along with any spiritual leader.  This is simply because music touches us more deeply than any other form of communication.  If there is any logic to faith, then it must be accepted that this deep internal connection is the closest form of divine communication we are able to experience.  But then again, I often think back to the Small Quiet Voice and lay this question before my soul; “Is it all bullshit?”

THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS                     (Originally posted October 27, 2012)

An Andrew Ramble

“God is present in the sweeping gesture, but the devil is in the details.” 

-Unknown

Matchbox or Hot Wheels?  This question kind of says it all, however, nowadays my expanding waistline would probably be more inclined to ask; McDonalds or Burger King?  When I was a 10 year old, I would have considered sticking a knife in your heart if you asked or even compared; Star Wars or Star Trek? (Well, at least I was a passionate Geek.)  These types of comparisons probably have a name or a classification of some type.  Whatever its name may be, it still eludes me.  I simply call it similar yet different.  For the people who have little interest in the aspects of the world, which present us subtle choices and don't appreciate the minuscule differences, this tirade will likely be of no interest.  My experience has taught me that it’s the folks who don’t get bogged down in the minutia; tend to be the ones that focus on their jobs, their families, and the simple enjoyment of everyday life.  Then there is my group of people.  We fixate on all the differences.  We pick apart our world and often end up spending our lives in a self-constructed prison of analysis.  Our crime?  Believing that the Devil is in the details.

Like so many occurrences in my life, the subtle differences in my world first truly became apparent in the form of cookies.  Oreo’s to be exact.  (This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.)  Back when I was a little guy in the mid 1970’s, it was only the cookies my mother baked that went into the cookie jar.  Mom baked a good deal, but the appetites of my brother, my sister, and me kept us ahead of her production, therefore resulting in a usually empty cookie jar.  In an effort to supplement our cookie deficit, packaged cookies were routinely purchased and kept in the weird middle bread drawer that so many kitchens of that time had.  This was the drawer with the metal top that you had to slide back once you opened it, to reveal an odd blended smell of Thomas’s English Muffins, plastic bags, semi-stale bread, and sweet factory baked Oreo’s.  Delights, which were manufactured in nearby Fairlawn, NJ, just a few miles north of my childhood home.  Considering my proximity to the Nabisco factory, I probably was fortunate enough to have access to some of the freshest Oreo’s in the nation.  (Do they ever go stale?  I’ve never kept them around long enough to find out.) 

On a few occasions, my mother demonstrated a form of passive aggressive sadism that has haunted my development to this day, and has turned me into something of a self proclaimed expert on the subtle differences in the similar, but vastly different products, our world has to offer.  Now hold on, this is what she did; my mother bought Hydrox cookies and placed them in the steel topped bread drawer in place of my beloved Oreo’s!  Hydrox for Christ sake!  These things were a horror!  The sweetener used in their production was completely inferior to that of Nabisco’s magic formula, and left a rancid aftertaste.  The cream was a lard infused white petroleum product that would ultimately give rise to biodiesel fuels, and the cookie portion was hard for about two minutes after the package was opened, then it quickly degraded into a substance which was still hard to the touch, but utterly without crunch when compressed by cookie loving teeth.  The thing was, to the causal observer, with the exception of the imprint on the dark cookie, they were almost identical to Oreo’s.  For close to four decades I have carried this rage in my heart.  Hydrox, you are no Oreo!  You’re nothing but a cheap hustler looking to steal a market share by subverting 1970’s housewives with lower prices and an inferior product.  Shame on you Hydrox!  You were the ruination of innumerable “cookies and milk” times during my after school viewings of Gilligan’s Island.

MOTHER...HOW COULD YOU?

Becoming a child, or rather a child becoming a person is the recognition of these subtleties.  It’s how our personality comes to be formed and depending on which side of the “detail divide” we all landed on, was an indicator of the people we all became.  So let’s step back to the subject of tiny metal cars for a moment.  These things really said a great deal about me, even before I was able to say it for myself.  I have been a licensed driver in the state of New Jersey since January of 1985.  If my math is right, that’s about twenty-eight years.  Now, how many moving violations have I received during these nearly three decades?  ZERO!  Looking back this makes perfect sense.  The reason being is that I was a Matchbox kid.  We were a totally different breed than those Hot Wheels Cretans.  To prefer a Matchbox Car meant you had an appreciation for detail, accuracy, and performance.  With Matchbox, a fire truck was simply a fire truck.  Their 1968 Camaro could have been photographed against almost any backdrop and it would have been essentially indistinguishable from its Detroit daddy.

They were “collectables.”  They were played with, but it was play born out of a simulation and reverence for reality.  On the other hand, Hot Wheels cars were dropped on us from an alternate reality.  The cars, even when they were representations of real world models, were totally tricked out. They had names to fit their odd look, Mini HaHa and the Baja Breaker to name a couple.  They were for the kids that played hard and lived fast.  The Hot Wheels kids grew into the adults that bought Buick Grand Nationals, Dodge Ram 4x4 pickups, and Mustang GT’s.  They got the high insurance rates and the points on their licenses.  We Matchbox types bought Saturn’s, Jeeps, and Chevy Impalas.  We appreciated and accepted the reality, but with those orange tracks clamped to every bookshelf in their homes, the Hot Wheels kids owned the road.

These days, as I walk past one of the several televisions that are perpetually left on in my home, I take little notice of what is actually playing.  (Maybe some mindless cartoon, like the Fairly Odd Parents.  Ugh!)  But there was a time when it mattered if Bugs Bunny was on, and if it was a Bugs of the pre Chuck Jones vintage that made it even better.  Evening viewing was better when The Fonz was just a poor greaser with an inflated ego, rather than a pseudo superhero, who demonstrated omnipotence with a snap of his fingers.  He even used this super power against an extraterrestrial invader of Arnolds.  Take that Mork from Orc!  Even then, I knew the shiny sets and shot on video appearance was nothing like the Rock Around the Clock filmed richness of the first few season’s of the true Happy Days.

ARCHENEMIES IN HAPPIER DAYS

It wasn’t a jumble.  There were and are delineations all over childhood, and they never seem to go away.  Sometimes we should all slow down and really ask ourselves why we prefer soft ice cream to hard, or examine why Google is really better than Yahoo.   Maybe we should stop and listen to our children, because just like us, they are plugged into these details in their own ways and they have their reasons for liking PS3 more than Xbox 360.  Maybe one day one of them will even let me know exactly what it is about Minecraft that is so enticing.  The details on that one aren’t exactly present to me, but despite its exceedingly poor graphic representation, there must be something that makes it special to today’s ten year olds.

Now arriving at middle age, the subtleties of life have mostly shifted from playthings to people.  Politics is as good a place as any to start, but that is a tired topic for another day.  For now, let me suffice to say that all politicians are full of crap in their own intricate, if completely non-unique ways.  These days, I don’t hate one item over the other as much as I once did.  Makers Mark is great on the rocks but sometimes Jim Beam works just as well to soften the rough edges of life.  Style is a good area for a man of my age to focus on, but after receiving a 12 month subscription of Esquire, I have realized that there is such a thing as too much detail for a schlub like me.  Then there are people.  I once either liked or hated my fellow man for any number of reasons.  Now I have arrived at a simple rule.  If you’re nice to me, I like you for the most part.  If you’re a creep to me for any reason, then you can kiss my ass.  So I guess it’s safe to say that I have become what I beheld at the start of this tirade; that being a person where the details of my loves, likes, and wants have been distilled into a mediocre goop of wholesale acceptance.  However, should you ever approach me and even remotely intone that Star Trek is as good as Star Wars, I’ll still stab you in the heart!

"DON'T EVEN START THAT CAPTAIN KIRK IS BETTER THAN HAN SOLO SHIT AGAIN!"

STUPIDITY EVOLVED

STUPIDITY EVOLVED   (Originally posted 9/26/12)

An Andrew Tirade

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

-Albert Einstein

My fourteen-year-old son started high school a few weeks back.  As we all remember to a greater or lesser extent, high school is the true proving ground for Evolutionary Science.  It proves that diversity doesn’t always benefit development.  It also proves that adaptation tends to flounder more than it fails or succeeds.  Most of all, this time we spend in transformation from childhood to maturity reveals a certain undeniable truth; Natural Selection favors physicality, not brains.   In fact, personal experience has lead me to conclude that any intellect developed by the human race to this point, is nothing but a divergent accident of the evolutionary process.  The reality is that Natural Selection, favors survivability, and as any Saturday afternoon trip to Walmart will assure, smarts has nothing to do with our reproductive survival.  It is my position that this evolutionary spike in learning and intelligence that has occurred over the past 7,000 or so years, is nothing more than a temporary anomaly.  Without question, the next few millennia will bring us back to our natural state.  This is the one where we pissed in our drinking water and ate tree bark for a few hundred thousand years.  This is not really as bad a thing as it is natural and in keeping with Evolutionary Science, because as I have always believed, adaptation and natural selection favor stupidity much more than intellect.

I THINK YOU KILLED IT PAL

This was the conversation that I had with my son, Jake during his second week of high school:

“Hey Buddy, how was school today?”

“Uh, okay I guess.”

“Why?  Have you been having a problem with anybody?”

“No, not really a problem.”

“Well was there an incident then?”

“I kinda guess it was.  My friend Noah started yelling at me when I sat down at his table for lunch.”

“Why would he yell at you?  I thought you guys are friends?”

“Well when I sat down, Noah and four of his friends arguing with another two guys at the table about how evolution isn’t real.”

“So what did you do?”

“Just sat there and ate my lunch for about five minutes, then Noah asked me what I think.  So I told him I believe in evolution.”

“How did that go over?”

“They gave me really angry looks and then Noah told me ‘that’s really stupid!’ So then I asked him ‘why do you think that’s stupid?’ So then he got really mad and told me ‘Because it’s proven that evolution is false in the Bible!’”

“Sounds like a pretty heavy lunch.”

“Yeah, so then I asked him ‘Is there any physical evidence in the bible which proves evolution is false?’ So he answered back ‘No, but there is no proof for evolution either.’ So I told him ‘Yes there is, haven’t you ever been to the Museum of Natural History?’”

“Good for you buddy!  What did he say to that?”

“He told me how stupid I am again.  Then I decided that it was pointless to argue and I walked away.”

Jake went on to tell me that he no longer associates with those kids because they bring up the “evolution thing” every time he sees them.  As a person of Universal Faith and the firmest belief in Science and the Scientific Method, I tried to explain to my son what I believe to be a fundamental truth; “You can’t argue faith with science and you can’t prove science with faith.”  I think Jake got it, when he said; “It’s kinda like the circle thing right dad?”  Recalling a recent conversation we had about what was around before the Universe, before the Big Bang.  “That’s right buddy, it’s like trying to find the corner of a circle.  You just can’t.”  Now Jake just avoids the lunchroom revival meetings.  I’m proud of him, however, I reminded him that to avoid them is good, but to ignore them is bad because before you know it, one of them could turn into a Pogrom!

Here is the nickel version of Evolution, as I understand it.  You have any group of animals.  Then every so often, they accidentally produce a random mutation.  Lets say brown bunnies have snow white babies.  Well, those mutations aren’t very good, because the white bunnies are highly visible to predators, which makes them more likely to have shorter lives and less likely to pass along their whiteness to the next generation of baby bunnies.  Pray for snowy winters bunnies!  On the other side of this evolutionary coin, every once in a while these same brown bunnies have baby bunnies with dark brown spots mixed in with their medium brown pelts.  These spots work to naturally camouflage the bunnies, making them less visible to predators.  So these babies live longer and pass along their spots to their babies who in turn do the same.  Being that the regular brown bunnies are at a disadvantage compared to the spotted bunnies with regard to survivability, competition for food resources and making new bunnies they eventually are replaced by the new “super” spotted bunnies.

Obviously spread over long expanses of time, this Natural Selection leads to big changes on an “as needed” basis.  Now exactly why is this against religion again?  We all play at this little game when we go to see somebody’s new baby and comment; “Oh how precious, she has her fathers Toucan like nose!” or“Would you look at that.  He has his mother’s disproportionately short limbs and elongated cranium.  Isn’t that just darling?”  Like I said, most of the random mutations and passed along traits are whopping failures.  We all can’t be spotted bunnies; some of us just have to settle for working the drive thru at White Castle.

Hence we arrive at the big question.  Does this controversial evolution thing favor intelligence?  It should, but as we all know from Real Housewives of New Jersey, human success, at least in the monetary and material sense of the word would seem to indicate otherwise.  Maybe brains helped a little back in our hunter/gatherer days, but I think smarts has run its course and we are all now slowly and steadily boarding the train for Dumb Dumb Town!  Think about it, we’re a really young species as the fossil record indicates.  In a short time, with our freaky accidental smarts we have figured out how to make fire, domesticate animals, communicate across vast distances, and invent the Shake Weight.  Great!  Or maybe not great, according to Mr. Darwin’s findings.

PEOPLE ACTUALLY BOUGHT THIS!  NEED I SAY MORE?

The last time I checked, horses didn’t invent calculus, elephants didn’t build the Great Pyramids, and my dogs are still having a really tough time reading Shakespeare.  This isn’t because they don’t want to do these things, however from the inception of the evolution of smarts, they didn’t have to!  For hundreds upon millions of years, they didn’t need developed intelligence, and for most of humanity’s extended history, we didn’t either.  Maybe without truly knowing it, this is what Jake’s new archenemies were getting at.  Yes, there is a fossil record.  That is indisputable.  (If you would like to dispute it, I will bring you on an all expenses paid tour of the Museum of Natural History in New York.  If you continue to disagree during the visit, I will throttle you somewhere between the T-Rex skeleton and the giant Easter Island head in the Margret Mead wing. )  However, what is disputable is at what point did man’s intelligence enable him to leave the world of nature and construct a world of his own.

This would be the time when God, or whatever you chose to accept as a higher power, lifted us out of the world of beasts and taught us how to finally wipe our asses.  One of the older calendars on the planet puts us in the year 5773.  That’s puts us back to the very beginning of our recorded history.  Not the beginning, but close to the beginning of the world, as we know it.  These were the days when our race really started to control our environment in earnest.  This was the era when our evolution stopped modifying us and we started modifying the world to suit our needs.   So I see the lunch table fundamentalists point, although I see it on my terms.  Terms, which I am sure that any 14-year-old zealot would consider “stupid.”

Maybe a higher power did trigger the event that raised us up out of the evolutionary process.  And it’s likely that evolution plays a major role in the creation of intelligence, albeit not a wholly necessary part.  A very wise ignoramus once said; “If ya ain’t goin forward, you’re a goin backward.”  This being said, evolution is possibly still working in a subtle way upon humanity.  And we are willingly immersing ourselves into the process with loving abandon.  This affair of the mind is what leads us back to the real question.

Are we getting stupider?  Damn right we are!  I say this with a high degree of uneducated bloviating confidence.   Just watch animal planet on a Saturday night(for something other than documentary footage of rhino’s “doing it”, although that is as entertaining as hell) and one can immediately observe that in majority of the animal kingdom, females are not inclined to accept their mates based on any display of intelligence.  In fact, color, strength, and aggression are way ahead of smarts when it comes to reproductive success.  In fact the archetype of the “simple handsome lug” of a man wins the day ninety nine percent of the time.  Now guys, don’t start getting all high and mighty about why David Beckham gets more chicks than you.  Trust me, men are more responsible for bottom feeding for intelligence in their mates than their female counterparts.  In fact, I would bet my last cent that if I asked 20 men what kind of woman they find attractive, brainy wouldn’t be anywhere near their top five desirable attributes.

Should we blame ourselves for our devolution into dumb-dumbs?  No not really, it’s just the way we were made from the beginning.  Our smarts are obviously one of natures more pronounced accidents in Mother Nature’s otherwise spotless 4 billion year track record.   She always seems to clean up her mistakes in the end, but for now, I wonder what she looks like naked?

ALL THOSE BOOKS

ALL THOSE BOOKS

An Andrew Ramble

A few years ago I started asking myself a simple question.  This was it; “Why do I keep almost every book I read?”  It was getting out of hand.  I had stacks of books on shelves, in boxes, and even under my bed.  Now let me go back and preface this by saying that I am a reader, but I’m not what I would consider an avid reader.  This is to say that I probably knock off about a dozen books a year, give or take.  It’s amazing how even at this modest pace, just how quickly they accumulate.

The problem was amplified by the fact that people like to share books, especially if they know you enjoy reading.  They start telling me you MUST READ this or that, and being that I understand the personal and often intimate connection that grows between a reader and the page, I am hesitant to wave off these “shared books” or “gift books.”  It’s just bad form to do that, besides I would hate to hurt a fellow readers feelings that deeply.  So I ended up with a bunch of books from a bunch of writers that don’t interest me much, such as Robin Cook, James Patterson, and Tom Clancy.  I also ended up with a bunch of books from writers such as Michael Chabon or David Foster Wallace.  Writers I respect and would like to read, but I just can’t seem to follow.  I would like to think that my comprehension is unlimited, but a few sessions trying to cut through works like Wallace’s, Infinite Jest or Faulkners, The Sound and the Fury, quickly dispelled any illusions I previously had about my unlimited potential with regard to reading comprehension.

So, I did what I think many of us do with furnishings, trinkets, and toys that we tire of.  I got rid of them.  Some went to friends, some went to the public library, but most just went in the ole garbage can.  When I look at what is left I am struck by a realization.  The books that remain are not my favorite stories or my greatest reading accomplishments.   They are the books that I always grab off the shelf, shuffle through, and look for certain memorable passages, or as I like to think of them, brilliant flashes.  Passages that have stuck with me over the years and have saved the lives of these paperback masterpieces from being packed away for a garage sale or given away to people like myself who don’t really want them.  Most of the time these passages contain what I consider to be great writing.  Other times I have made some personal connection with what the author was saying and I continue to draw inspiration from their writing.  This is all very high minded, but the main thing that draws me into a passage it this; If I read it aloud, and it sounds really cool, then I’m hooked.

Every once in a while I reach over to my bedside bookshelf that now contains the few remnants of a once vast, often unread personal library, and I pull out one of these books.  Sitting on the edge of the bed, I sit and read the dog-eared page or the long ago underlined passage, and I continue to be amazed.  Maybe one or two of these writings has before, or will now, amaze you as well.  Or you just might be like me and only be occasionally interested in the literary likes of another.  Either way, please enjoy or ignore.

MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville

The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men fell eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung.  That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it.  All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.  He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, by Kurt Vonnegut

I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction.  The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

So it goes.

Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known.  The world was better off without them.

And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been.  But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned to a pillar of salt.  So it goes.

ON THE ROAD, by Jack Kerouac

The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, it the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death.  But who wants to die?

LORD JIM, by Joseph Conrad

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from under stare which made you think of a charging bull.  His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it.  It seemed a necessity, and it was directed apparently as much at himself as at anybody else.

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, by Norman Maclean

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t.  Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence faces to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the worlds great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

~