Author: Aaron Weber

Money, Words, Body Obsession

Money: Continuing my recent fascination with money and the things it does in the world, Prof. DeLong links to an IT/money blog called The Bottom Line..

Words: I am debating the purchase of the new Schiller book on risk and risk management, given that I bought “Irrational Exuberance” and never read it. I bought a book on irrationality today, about UFOs and so forth, which might be more interesting. Also got a couple novels (Joseph Conrad and Tim O’Brien). I should link to Invisible Shoebox, which is all about literary writing.

Bodies: Today my leg was sore so I went to the gym figuring, hey, I’ll just do upper body. So I did all the upper-body stuff, and focused on shoulders and back mostly, and while I was waiting for the rear-delt flye machine I figured, hey, I’ll do calves too. And then the next thing you know I’m pressing like 240lb. with the leg extension. The flye machine was still occupied so I did standing row and went home. Now I’m scarfing pizza and soy nuts and wondering if I have enough protein within reach. I’m kinda worried that it’s this close to becoming seriously unhealthy. But on the other hand, even the unhealthy obsession aspects become so appealing.

One of the truisms about heroin addiction, which seems to be the same about exercise, is that it gives you a schedule you have to live by, a master you can follow, and you know exactly where you’ll be all the time. It’s all-encompassing and when you roll up a sleeve you’ve said everything you need to say.

Flamewar

For some reason yesterday I had a headache and sent a rather rude mail to fifty or sixty people after one of them suggested that Jackson Square might not be the safest part of Boston. I’m annoyed by people’s fear of particular neighborhoods, because fear leads to flight and flight leads to decay and decay leads to more fear. Because I think that for a lot of people the fear of particular neighborhoods is an irrational and repressed fear of the residents and all too often of the color of their skin. Also, I wanted to vent about something, and urban decay and stratification was as good a topic as any. I said, more or less:

College kids are getting gentrified out of Mission Hill right now and you think JP is “sketchy?” You Bostonians have no idea what a rough neighborhood is.

Jackson Square, Dudley Square– I’ve been to them and wandered around and gotten lost and never felt uncomfortable. Some people think that a little graffiti or loitering teenagers make a neighborhood rough. Let me tell you about rough neighborhoods. A rough neighborhood is the one where daytime gunfire is a regular occurrence, where more than 20% of the buildings are abandoned or burned-out shells, where the police are afraid to venture after dark, and where driving down the same street twice in the same day without making a drug buy is likely to get you shot.

Now, I know I’m a guy and I can throw my shoulders back and look tough, and I’ve never been mugged either so I’m probably naieve and prone to romanticize the down-at-the-heels parts of town. I know it’s not the same for everyone– a friend of a friend of mine told me she moved out of Eastie because she just got tired of hearing the word “mamacita” a half-dozen times on the way to the train every morning. That’s legitimate– but a piropo is not the same thing as dangerous. It sucks and it’s degrading, but it’s not dangerous.

Common sense, people: if a street has people out and about, you’re probably fine. They may not be people you know, they may not walk or talk or act like you, but they are human beings and they are probably not going to hurt you. Avoid walking alone, avoid dark alleys and huddles of young men on doorsteps. If you avoid entire neighborhoods because you’re a little afraid or a little nervous, you’ll miss the whole city.

Jackson Square, Jamaica Plain, Dudley Square, South or East Boston, the Washington St. Corridor– they’re working-class areas, places where students and artists and immigrants and young families live. If you fear that, you risk giving in to suburban sprawl and isolation, structural classism and subtle racism. That’s not a sketchy neighborhood you’re missing. That’s a portrait of everything that makes our nation great.

Boom boom boom

Tonight leaving work I ran into two women with a gigantic boombox playing an old R&B song from the early 80s. Rock steady, steady rockin all night long… It made me quite happy. Passing motorists seemed to agree.

I needed a passport-sized picture of myself in my responsible-adult disguise today, so I took one. It’s surprisingly hard. Every time my expression just seemed to cry out “I’m not wearing any pants!”

Assorted Craptitude

OK, I need to organize my bookmarks again. Unfiled items that have clogged up my main bookmarks menu:

One and two from the Guardian on science, plus the paper on depression I never got around to reading, something about core national values and their betrayal plus the war in context and newsbites about Clinton insulting Bush from afar.
Most of the stuff I have is war and politics and God but some of it is more esoteric spiritually and there’s a thing on speculative ethics that’s been floating around for awhile. Some of it is funny, like the rules for drinking too much.
Most recent in the huge pile are the MS PowerPoint template for delivering bad news and the the bad news that does not get delivered. And of course Orwell and dogs in hats.

Flamebait

A complete victory, you have to acknowledge, is impossible. You’ve got two options: compromise, or keep fighting. Keep fighting until … until everyone loses. Nobody is going to win. Winning would mean flattening every building and killing or displacing every single person, and you know as well as I do that’s not victory.

There’s going to be an irredentist movement no matter what, on both sides. But irredentism is suicide, it’s a desire for the impossible victory that will turn to blood-stained dust in your hands. Reasonable, calm voices need to find a way to convince and cajole and co-opt the extremists, siphon them off and take their leadership into positions of power in moderate structures. If you do not, we will all suffer.

Subject: Palestine
Example: Northern Ireland

Friday Nights

By seven on a Friday night, the commuters have left the gym, exercising while waiting for traffic to clear, finishing their three days a week at five fifteen workouts. Weekday nights it’s still crowded at this hour, but not Fridays. The weekday crowd, I’m guessing, doesn’t regard exercise as a suitable prelude to weekend entertainment. Me, I’m waiting for my friends to get out of the X-Men movie before we head over to TC’s for PBR and bad selections on the jukebox.

The music on the Sports Club Network Radio tonight is dance and disco instead of the usual top-forty and alt-rock, and the treadmills and stairmasters are populated by breastless anorexic women and heavyset fortysomething guys. They seem to be punishing themselves for not having anything better to do. The weights, though, seem to be draped with overmuscled, underclothed men who gawk and stare and flirt. For a lot of them, it seems that the gym is the entertainment.