My First Weed Wacker

I just bought my first weed wacker. I don’t know much about manly instruments of fixing and building and maintaining things, but I have read a lot of Freud, so I went for the longest, thickest weed wacker I could find. Woe unto ye, overgrown weeds!

On Black Women

Someone I know made a joke about me being into black girls today, and it got under my skin. It took me a minute to figure out why. I think it’s because the implication was that black women were a kind of fetish for me. This is not the case. I am attracted to powerful, fully actualized women. It just so happens that the most powerful, fully actualized women I have ever met happen to be black women. I don’t know exactly why this is the case, but apparently there is a correlation between the experience of black women and power, wisdom, and self actualization. I’m not apologizing for my attraction. I like to be close to the fire.

I Think I’m Over Nerds

I just saw a headline at Inverse Magazine discussing the possibility that Gwynyth Paltrow spoiled the next Avengers movie by stating that Pepper and Tony have a child together. In the opening paragraph, the writer mentions that Tony and Pepper discuss having children in the movie.

This spoiler alert sums up nerds to me perfectly. I haven’t seen this movie, but every spoiler review has been, ‘oh, I can’t believe they killed so and so’, or ‘this is how so and so messed up trying to stop Thanos’, or, ‘maybe Thanos had a point’, or ‘where is this or that character’, ‘That’s not canon!’...blah blah blah. Only now does some magazine mention the human development of a character, presumably because all of the rest of the nerd hypothesizing and spoiling has been done. This is some classic escapist, miss the forest for the trees, failure to appreciate meaningful character development, nerd bullshit. Nerds have become cool, and along with a popular embrace of nerd-centric culture, the antisocial and non-productive elements of nerdiness have also been embraced. 

There are cool things about science fiction and fantasy, and being a fan of whatever, but there’s some fucked up shit in nerdworld too. Part of the reason nerds got into the things they did was that they were escaping from social isolation. Some capitalist realized that all of that pent up social neglect and fantasizing about a world where they might matter was marketable, and started hiring these sad fucks to write movies and books, and over time made themselves the heroes of the stories, and normalized their social deficiencies, made them charming, and wrote themselves into all of their stories as the unlikely hero and loveable underdog in the popular zeitgeist.

And overall, that’s fine. It’s good for people to have a voice and to feel included. But please don’t forget that the triumph of the nerd also gave us ‘nice guys’, ‘Incels’, gross libertarian atheists in fedoras, ‘social justice warriors’ with cartoonishly over the top abilities to be offended, the alt-right, animal-kin, furries, hentai, etc. the embrace of nerd culture also smuggled in some anti-social and counter-productive, degenerate shit.

So, Iron Man is going to have a baby. At least I guess, in the movie, he talked about it. No one mentioned this in their reviews because nerds don’t think about basic human shit like this. They’re more worried about whether or not the tailpipe on the Millennium Falcon is loyal to the original design George Lucas scrawled drunkenly on the back of a cocktail napkin, or whether or not the ghostbusters are allowed to be girls.

As someone who has dipped heavily into nerdy things, who has even identified as a ‘nerd’ in the past, let me say this: fuck nerds. 

Art is wonderful. Culture is essential. Being a fan of things can be transcendent. But if art gets boiled down to a basic comic strip, if culture becomes a dehumanized, collective escapist fantasy, if being a ‘fan’ means reducing any creative endeavor to whether or not something matches the source material, whether or not it validates our personal prejudices, insecurities. And ineptitudes, or just a set of stupid memes and hashtags, then those things don’t mean anything anymore. Just more capitalist fast food. The mainstreaming of nerd culture has eased up the stigma of being different and really (really) liking offbeat things, but it has also elevated nerdiness to almost a virtue. Yeah, it’s cool that you are able to publicly embrace whatever you like, whether you like it as a stand in for real human and life connections or just because you like it, but if you can’t even see the beating heart behind the thing you love so much, I would suggest that maybe you suck. Also, the government doesn’t owe you a girlfriend, Ron Paul is an idiot, you should really learn how to change a tire, prepare a meal without a microwave, get some exercise, and spend time in the actual company of other people. Tumblr doesn’t count. Also, why are nerds always the ones worrying about the zombie apocalypse when we all know that no nerd would survive the event?

In summary, if you’re more worried about what hue of purple Thanos’s skin is than the moral and human arc of Tony Stark, you’re a shitty fan. Plus, the Ghostbusters ARE girls.

Andy Rooney approves of this message.

Old Men in Lawn Chairs

“You’re walking like you’re going somewhere”. - old men in hats who sit in lawn chairs on the sidewalk have the best lines.

Making Amends

Facebook posts are primarily good for catharsis: celebrating, bragging, and venting about the actions, beliefs, and lifestyles of people who don’t share the immense levels of enlightenment you perceive yourself to possess.

Allow me to indulge in a different kind of post.

When I was 16 or so, I worked at a fast food restaurant for about a year. It was my second job, but my first experience of no-bullshit hard work. I was self absorbed, insecure, and had an undercurrent or anger I didn’t fully understand. There was an older woman (maybe in her 30’s) who worked there. She was generally good natured, and I realize now she probably had some kind of cognitive issue. One night her, a friend of mine, and myself were working drive thru, and we all had our headsets on. My friend and I were saying vulgar jokes to each other. Suddenly, I heard the gruff voice of the general manager come over the headset: ‘Spencer! Get your ass to my office!’

When I got back to his office, he was holding the woman’s headset. She had told on my friend and I. The general manager chewed me out (rightly) for being an asshole, and closed with ‘That woman shouldn’t have to listen to that kind of filth from a young pup like you!’ And sent me back to work. I was embarrassed, but I was also mad at the woman for snitching on me. I kind of remember her trying to smooth things over afterwards, but I was cold, and made some kind of comment about snitching.

A few months later I had quit the job, and was walking through the mall with a different friend. The woman was there with two small children who I assumed were hers. She smiled broadly and waved to me from across the floor. She approached me, one tiny hand in each of her own, and I shouted at her, ‘Fuck you, bitch!’

She looked mortified and shrunk away. My friend, who was similarly placed on the idiot spectrum—thankfully I have better friends now—laughed, and we moved on.

This morning I stopped by a gas station and I am ninety percent certain that same woman—older, heavier, worn down looking—was working 3rd shift. I don’t think she recognized me (because I look older, heavier, more worn down probably), and I couldn’t guess if she’d even remember what a tool I was to her back in the day. It occurred to me that I should apologize to her. 

I brought my items up to the checkout, and began going over how to start the apology. I noticed she had a few blotchy looking tattoos around her wrists, and wondered if she had them when she worked at the restaurant. She scanned my items. I began to speak, and then another customer walked up behind me in line. My courage failed me, and I paid for my items and left.

I don’t know why I chickened out when it came to making amends. I’m usually very forthright and quick to correct my errors (or, I am now anyway).

As I drove away I kept thinking I should turn back, but the distance got greater and greater.

I know where she works now, and what shift, so the apology could still happen. As I’m typing this though, I’m wondering if it was best that I didn’t at that moment. Not apologizing forced me to sit with who I have been, and to reflect on who I am and who I still could become.

I am sorry that I added unnecessary pain to that woman’s life. I’ve thought about her more in the last 30 minutes than I ever did in all the preceding years. 

I’m going to apologize, I just want to make sure it is in as thoughtful a way as possible.

Lenin & Trotsky’s Dinner

I love the October Revolution. I love Lenin and Trotsky, both for different reasons.

One of my favorite stories about the October Revolution takes place after Lenin has seized control of the government, and he and Trotsky are sitting in the Czar’s palace dining hall, being waited on the Czar’s servants, who Lenin couldn’t bare to fire because they had devoted their lives to their jobs, and that was all they knew.

Lenin and Trotsky are sitting at a table in the dining hall discussing strategy. The head servant walks up to them and reverently asks them what they’d like for dinner. The revolutionaries say ‘roots and gravy’, which was a common peasant meal. The head servant reminds them they could have anything they want. They are busy, so they stick with ‘roots and gravy’.

Eventually the head servant brings their meal to them on the Czar’s own personal China. The Czar, who had lived in opulent luxury while his people starved, had the best forks and spoons and plates.

Lenin and Trotsky look at their peasant meal of roots and gravy served on this ridiculously decadent dining ware, look at each other, and laugh their balls off.

It’s a beautiful story.

Kanye West

I have loved and defended Kanye West as long as he’s been around. His ‘slavery was a choice’ comment is where we part ways. It’s hard not to imagine Kanye as a slave asking to speak to a manager.

Effective Leadership

So, I created this work flow chart for my job. It had everything that needed to happen broken up into days. It was beautiful and perfect. My team, however, had difficulty getting on board with it. Something about it didn’t work for them. They needed guidance and structure, but not ‘that’ guidance and structure. I hung in with my flow chart longer than I probably should have based simply on the fact that I created it. Today I realized it wasn’t working, brought in other people, and came up with something better.

Now, I could have begun penalizing my team for not flowing with MY flowchart, but I reverted to mission, got over myself, and came up with something better.

This is all just to say I came up behind a truck with a bumper sticker that read ‘Jesus died for sinners’ in traffic today. Now, anyone familiar with effective leadership should see that, in the Jesus situation, God clearly dug in because it was HIS FLOW CHART. Good leaders can’t be precious like that.