Category: Thoughts

Who Gave These People An Ad Agency?

I will tolerate furries in a variety of contexts. They may exist on DeviantArt and LiveJournal and on obscure blogs. They may be mentioned and referred to in mainstream magazines as examples of weird but harmless fetishists. They make great sacrifices for their kink, and I respect that.

But goddammit, who the hell put them in charge of an ad agency and gave them the Orangina account? I can no longer drink this beverage! Now that otherwise delicious concoction is forever linked to yiffing, and that totally squicks me out.

The Newspaper Of Record Weighs In On Happiness

Pardon me if I say “well, duh.” The Times says:

Happiness is clearly real, related to objective measures of well-being. Happier people have lower blood pressure and get fewer colds. But using it to guide policy could be tricky. Not least because we don’t quite understand why it behaves the way it does. Men are unhappiest at almost 50, and women at just after 45. Paraplegics are not unhappier than healthy people. People who live with teenagers are the unhappiest of all.

On Mediocrity And Being Good Enough

This one’s for Aaron Flynn, who’s trying to stay pure, and for Joel Brown over at Hub Arts, who seems to have a pretty good handle on balancing filthy lucre and creative drive.

One of the last times I talked to Aaron Flynn in person, before he moved off to the alternate universe where housing is not overpriced (i.e. Texas) he told me he didn’t ever want to be one of those people who got through life saying “it’s good enough.”

I said, that’s funny, because that sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Do something good enough every day until you die. Acceptable life. Aaron looked at me not just with pity, but with irritation in his eyes, as though I’d told a particularly offensive joke at his expense. Well, I have to admit it was hard to tell. We were in a car and it was dark, so I couldn’t see him clearly, and also I had just farted, so he could have been annoyed about that. But I think that it did not make him happy that I had so casually dismissed his life’s goal of constant, uncompromising artistic excellence.

But really – can anyone really hope to live a life free of artistic compromise? Isn’t artistic compromise often a great lesson?

This comes back to me defending mediocrity, which sounds scandalous but isn’t. What I mean is that Good Enough is, by definition, good enough. If I cut my finger chopping vegetables, I’d be thrilled to have absolutely perfect stitching that leaves no scar. But to be honest, as long as my finger doesn’t develop gangrene and fall off, I’m happy. When I say good enough, I mean it meets or exceeds my standards of acceptability. My corner pizza shop is not the best pizza in town, but it’s good enough that I eat there when I want a quick slice and I don’t complain about it. It’s tasty, it’s hot, it’s a buck fifty a slice. Good enough!

I don’t just mean that you have to pick your battles for excellence. I may accept merely adequate pizza for dinner, but should I be satisfied producing merely adequate writing? I think I should, because the alternative to going through saying “it’s good enough” is going through life saying “it’s not good enough.” Constantly striving to do better may lead to excellence, but it also means being dissatisfied at every turn.

I feel guilty and shameful saying that.

I’ve been raised to believe that being satisfied, leaving well enough alone, and doing just OK is a cop-out. I’m surrounded by perfectionists and strivers. But isn’t there something other than greatness to strive for? Happiness and satisfaction? Is that even possible?

Somerville True Crime Stories

On November 1st, I woke up to find about a half-dozen police cars (marked and unmarked) parked on my corner. One in my driveway, one in my neighbor’s driveway, a couple around the street. My girlfriend, who watches cop shows, noted that there were detectives as well as patrol officers on the scene (they dress differently, I guess) and that the detectives had on rubber gloves. Crime Scene tape went up across the driveway of one neighbor. Within a few minutes, though, everything looked pretty normal… I mean, aside from the cops. There wasn’t any tension, they were standing around talking, no ambulances running around, no helicopters or SWAT teams or obvious CSI type stuff.

I felt like it would be rude to go and ask, but the subject did come up on the Davis Square livejournal community. We waited for the Somerville Journal’s weekly police blotter, but that didn’t have anything in it.

Later I heard from a neighbor who did have the guts to go ask the police: It wasn’t a crime, so it didn’t get into the police blotter. What it was was just horribly sad. The people who live at that house have a couple cars they’re fixing up, parked ’round back. A homeless guy broke into one of those cars (were they even locked?), sat down, fell asleep, and didn’t wake up. Cause of death not known.

Magical Thinking From Atlanta Makes Me Look Bad In Boston

It’s ignorant pricks like Georgia governor Sonny Perdue that give the South a reputation for being composed entirely of ignorant pricks. It’s a reputation that ex-southerners like myself fight daily to live down. And so I am particularly indignant when ignorant pricks rise to high political office in places like Georgia, do ignorant shit, and make me look bad to my Boston neighbors.

I’m talking about things like having an official pray-for-rain service. Admittedly, he’s also trying conservation to cope with the drought, but he’s relying on prayer rather than real action to address the underlying problems that make the drought so bad, notably decades of piss-poor urban planning surrounding Atlanta.

He says “The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power.” That’s wrong on two counts. First, the solution would be decent urban planning, sane water use policy, and conservation. A little rain would just stave off the day of reckoning when Atlanta finally does run dry. Second, rain comes from clouds, you ignorant prick.

Clever Bon Mots This Week

The NYT is subtle and almost Colbertian: Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans.

My contribution is an homage to Variety: Ro-Ro A No-Go For MSNBC-Oh. OK, I thought it was funny.

DListed pays tribute to Janis: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy Britney a clue, she’s already got a Mercedes-Benz.”

(On that last note, I have a confession: Of all the stupid shit I’ve seen celebrities do over the past few months, Britney Spears’ new car pisses me off more than anything else. I’ve seen people do horrible things – manslaughter, DUI, racism, general idiocy – and the impulse purchase of a $185,000 Mercedes-Benz SL65 is merely frivolous. Still, she can’t even drive very well! It’s such a bad idea! I know that being more bothered by this than by other things – hell, caring at all about any of these celebrity gaffs – is evidence I’ve got my priorities all wrong, but what can I do? I live in tabloid nation.)

What’s With The Strike?

You ever watch TV? Well, there’s this strike going on. You might have heard about it. You might or might not care. Here’s a video explaining what’s going on:

Basically, writers have been paid 2.5% of profits for reruns on TV, less than 1% for DVDs, and just about nothing for internet viewing. They want 2.5% for everything, because, hell, content is content, right? Disney boss Michael Eisner and the rest of the big studios are saying that there are no profits on internet viewing to share. That’s kind of a lame excuse, though, because if there are no profits, it won’t hurt to promise to share 2.5% of them.

Basically, the conflict boils down to the fact that Michael Eisner and the rest of the studio heads are selfish assholes.

Local Politics: Somerville Ward Six Alderman Race

The Somerville News has endorsed Charles Chisolm over Rebekah Gewirtz for Ward 6 Alderman, in a race that ends at eight tonight. They rail and fulminate against the “PDSers” or “PDs” or something. Not sure what that means, but everyone in the comments thinks they’re terrible people. Progressive Democrats, perhaps. That sounds about right. The change in Somerville over the past few years seems to have been from an old-fashioned Democratic machine based on church and blood ties to a new kind of Democratic machine fueled by yuppies and dog parks.

I voted for Rebekah mostly because Ron at the Davis Square LiveJournal Community thinks she’s good. But also because she lives near me. As I guess one might, running for an office as local as Ward Alderman. But if the Somerville News thinks she’s some kind of kooky liberal, that’s an extra incentive to vote for her.

Rudy Giuliani Is A Goddamn Liar

Let’s just point it out now, shall we? Rudy Giuliani is a liar. His accomplishments as mayor of NYC were limited to harassing the homeless, presiding over police brutality, and being mayor during 9/11. Also he is a liar.

Not as much of a liar as our current president. Not as much of a liar as, oh, Mitt Romney, who keeps lying about all kinds of shit. But a liar nonetheless.