Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope every one of you enjoys your Thanksgiving holiday, and remembers the bottom line of what the holiday is about. Being thankful. Im writing this as much for myself as I am for you, but, in spite of whatever tribulations we are all experiencing at this moment, we are alive right now. Most people who have ever lived are dead now, so the spotlight is on us, and we—at least—have some rights in regard to whatever narrative we are spinning with our personal stories. We are still in the driver’s seat. Here’s what I am grateful for:

1. I participated in creating and raising—still raising—3 amazing human beings who are endlessly interesting and full of potential.

2. I am doing a job that I love and gives me a deep sense of meaning. 

3. I have family and friends that love me and understand me, and show up for me when I need it.

4. Ideas. Books. Songs. Movies. Stories. I am so grateful for art, and what it can do to (and for) the human soul.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cincinnati

FYI, I was just on the phone with customer service and I couldn’t hear the representative clearly while they were talking. I said, ‘Sorry?’ and she adjusted something and sounded much clearer, and then said, ‘is this better?’ and I said, ‘Yes, that’s better’. Then she said, ‘Are you from Cincinnati?’ I paused and realized that I had said ‘sorry?’ and answered, ‘Yes’. She said, ‘You good?’ and I responded, ‘Yeah, I’m good’. and we both laughed and went on with the call.

Store Brand

I am honestly surprised that it took as long as it did for store-brand to catch on to the profitability of ‘Hawaiian’ bread. Since when has any American company ever lost money adding sugar to a basic commodity? I’m legit waiting for the Kroger brand of ‘Hawaiian’ roll toilet paper.

The Truth Kanye Told

You know what truth was told in Kanye West’s weird monologue in the White House? It was a truth that only someone speaking from the root of their own mental illness and trauma could tell. He talked about how Donald Trump’s public persona acted as a salve to his own wounded masculinity. That is some deep truth. Trump is officially the candidate for the men—and the wives of those men—who embraced the generic masculinity ascribed by our popular culture, and have taken every hole poked in that flimsy mythology as a hole poked in their own soul. I guarantee you that no man who voted for Trump had a healthy father, and by extension didn’t/doesn’t have a healthy relationship with their father. And, as is required by the power of the myth they had consumed, found a mate who had their own problems with their wounded and wounding fathers, and found a partner for themselves that was infected by the same disease their own fathers had. This is the truth Kanye told, and he was only free to tell it as someone more enthralled to his own disease than he was to the requirements of our wider culture.

Opinions In Cars

What’s the deal with middle aged men recording YouTube rants in their cars? Why is this a thing? I’m interested in the cultural/psychological/sociological roots of this phenomenon. Why is it middle aged men? Why in the car? Why do you still have your seatbelt on? People are fascinating.

Playlist for 5 Year Old Me

I decided today to make a playlist for 5 year old me. It will contain all of the earliest songs I can remember liking.

Here’s the track list:

1. On Top of the World - Van Halen
2. Panama - Van Halen
3. Jump - Van Halen
4. Down on the Corner - CCR
5. Bad Leroy Brown - Jim Croce
6. You Don’t Mess Around With Jim - Jim Croce
7. Mr. Blue Sky -Electric Light Orchestra
8. Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison
9. You Got It - Roy Orbison
10. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot
11. I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon - Ernie, from Sesame Street

This is actually a pretty sweet playlist.

Voice Messages

I love reading voice message transcriptions on my phone because no matter how careful a person is to consider every word and present professionally, the transcription captures every ‘um’ and ‘like’ in text. Things that humanize people are beautiful.

Advice

there is a hustle to every business.

At the Drop of a Hat

“At the drop of a hat”. Intended to mean a super-reactionary response, before all of the evidence is in. What is it about the sound of a hat hitting the floor that makes certain people do rash things? Is there a unique sound? Does it trigger a primitive response? Does it matter what kind of hat? I need to know.

Free Speech

Do you ever suspect that people who say things like ‘I’m entitled to my opinion’ and reference their right to free speech in debate believe that these things somehow validate whatever stupid argument they’re making?

You Have to Love Yourself First

When I get around to purging toxic relationships from my life, my alarm clock will be first to go.

9/11

9/11 was traumatic for all of us, yet I feel hesitant to even mention it publicly for fear of enabling demagogues, fascists, and nationalists. 9/11 was a great crime against humanity, but it’s also a crime that has been turned into social currency by bad people in order to rationalize bad and dangerous international behavior by our government.

That being said, this was my 9/11: 

I was working on a loading dock. My first son (Eliot) was born in July of 2000. I was married in 1999. I was 18, and fresh out of high school. We were listening to NPR as we unloaded a delivery truck when we heard the first plane hit. We all rushed to the break room to watch the live coverage. There was lots of speculation and wonderment. We were watching live as the second plane hit. Then the pentagon. You know how it went.

All of my kids grew up in a post 9/11 world, and we all currently live in a post 9/11 world. Bad people cashed in on our collective national fear and horror. They cashed in on our experience of having our bubble of privilege burst by retribution from outsiders for generations of America’s commodification of countries primarily inhabited by folks of a darker skin tone, with foreign sounding names, customs, and religions. Bad people were quick to reframe the attack as an expression of foreign hostility towards our ‘freedoms’. They also capitalized on our new outlook of resolve and unity.

To understate the significance of today completely, 9/11 changed everything for everyone, for all time, all over the world. There is only a before and after.

Valet Parking

If you delete your Facebook account because of ‘all of the negative political posts/comments’ or some variation of that, I can make one guess about who you are with 100% accuracy: you are white. I can make a second guess at about 75% probability of being correct: you are either lower middle class or higher.

Catching feelings about political statements is a function of privilege. I don’t care if that hurts your feelings. Cry into your pumpkin spice latte. It’s only when you have to fight for even a view of the table (not even a seat) where decisions are made that you realize EVERYTHING is political.

My Apologies

The phrase 'my apologies', sounds weird to me. I know it means, 'I am offering you my apologies' (without actually saying sorry), but the phrase itself, and the austere tone people tend to take when employing it, creates a different picture in my mind. First of all, 'my apologies' is almost always sarcastic. Second of all, the statement itself evokes the image of a man standing in front of a big curtain in formal wear, announcing to the crowd, 'Ladies and Gentlemen! I present to you...my apologies!' And then he pulls on a rope, the curtain drops, and there they are--all of his apologies--swimming around in, like, a big aquarium or something.

Or, I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

Realistic Expectations

As an overweight fellow myself, I instinctually know that when another overweight fellow says, ‘Give me 5 minutes, I’ve got to run to the bathroom’, it will be many more than 5 minutes, and there will be no running involved.

Make a Move!

“Each moment, each day, each choice, is a test” -Barack Obama, from his eulogy of John McCain. 

That is exactly how we should understand each unpromised breath we are lucky enough to breathe.

When I worked at Fifth Third Bank’s processing center, I had this bulldog of a manager that always stressed a ‘sense of urgency’. It was an annoyance to me at the time, working in a job I was just working to pay the bills, but I internalized that message. Partially because of the level of passion my manager stressed it to me, but also, primarily, because it deeply matched my own orientation towards this brief and powerful flicker of a candle that is our life.

No moment is more important than this one, and the only way to honor that truth is to make a move that disregards whatever our fears may be.

On Love

Allowing yourself to experience love in any form is the ultimate vulnerability, but the only thing that makes life worth living. It’s a conundrum: the ability to love is the reason we seek to protect ourselves, but in order to experience it, we have to leave ourselves unprotected in a sense.

Ted Cruz is the Worst

The thing that makes Ted Cruz the worst is that he instinctually understood that supporting fascism was bad, and he took a few moral stands against it before fully capitulating. The fact that he obviously knows right from wrong, but still chose wrong, makes him infinity times worse than your average opportunist. Vote Beto!

Don’t get in your own way

For some reason the failures that sting me the most are the ones where I get in my or someone else’s way. So I always try to be hyper conscious of my own intent and motivation. Plus, I’ve learned when I don’t make things about myself, they turn out better. 

Or, as David Byrne said, ‘Life is long if you give it away’.

Empathy

Serious question: what is it about the conservative mind that makes it only allow nuance and ‘gray areas’ when they themselves have personally had an interaction with the idea on hand?