Category Archives: irony

On do-overs

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While visiting childhood haunts this past summer, returning to a town I haven’t lived in for almost thirty years, I was assailed by a series of memories that left me wanting a do-over or two. Nostalgia is a terrible thing. If you don’t remember the do-over, it was a special anti-mulligan that gave you grace after something went wrong in the game you were playing. Perhaps it was a pitch behind you, or an extra at-bat or just a repeat of a situation that went wrong, maybe a fourth strike. How many times since our childhoods have we needed a do-over? I think it is an inherent part of the human condition to do everything wrong: pick the wrong job, eat the wrong food, choose the wrong car, date the wrong person, and all the while it seemed like we were doing the right thing. It’s as if as children we understand the falibility of the human condition, so we make amends by invoking the do-over. Unfortunately, as adults, we cannot invoke the do-over and must live with all of our mistakes. We desperately need the do-over, but all we can do is lament our terrible decision making from hindsight, which cruelly hangs the correct decision in front us as if we were Tantalus staring at those unobtainable apples, that unreachable water. We hunger for a perfect life filled with perfect decisions, but we have to live with what we have, no do-overs allowed.

On do-overs

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While visiting childhood haunts this past summer, returning to a town I haven’t lived in for almost thirty years, I was assailed by a series of memories that left me wanting a do-over or two. Nostalgia is a terrible thing. If you don’t remember the do-over, it was a special anti-mulligan that gave you grace after something went wrong in the game you were playing. Perhaps it was a pitch behind you, or an extra at-bat or just a repeat of a situation that went wrong, maybe a fourth strike. How many times since our childhoods have we needed a do-over? I think it is an inherent part of the human condition to do everything wrong: pick the wrong job, eat the wrong food, choose the wrong car, date the wrong person, and all the while it seemed like we were doing the right thing. It’s as if as children we understand the falibility of the human condition, so we make amends by invoking the do-over. Unfortunately, as adults, we cannot invoke the do-over and must live with all of our mistakes. We desperately need the do-over, but all we can do is lament our terrible decision making from hindsight, which cruelly hangs the correct decision in front us as if we were Tantalus staring at those unobtainable apples, that unreachable water. We hunger for a perfect life filled with perfect decisions, but we have to live with what we have, no do-overs allowed.

On going home

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I have been gone for 86 days–almost three months on the road. People often ask, “How can you stay away for so long?” but I always ask, “How come you never get away?” Home is where you make it. It isn’t a building or a city, it’s not a house that you built or an apartment you rent. Your home is where your heart is, to coin a cliche, so, in a sense, I am always home, whether I am at the cabin in northern Minnesota, or the farm, or in Europe. I have long since ceased being a tourist, even when I’m touring a castle, passing through customs, or checking a map. I ride the subway as if I were a local, brandishing my transport pass as if I had lived there twenty years. In sense, I am always going home–to the farm, in the city, at the university, on the plains of central Texas. One should not obsess one way or another about what “home” means. I find that the journey home is so much easier to make when I am going somewhere that looks, smells, and feels like home. I can wait in airport–which is not home, definitely not home–when I know that the plane I am waiting for is going “home.” Home is more about the people and less about the stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stuff, but stuff will never love you and can always be replaced–not so true about the human element. So if you are going home and will see folks, greet them for me, tell them I am fine, and that I will be there soon.

On randomness

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The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On randomness

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The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On loud commercials

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This is not about weird local commercials for flooring or odd used cars or sewage pumping. This is about how television stations raise the sound level of commercials, a move that should be illegal, but still plagues us all. Imagine, you are watching a favorite television show at a normal level of sound. A commercial for pick-up trucks cut in at the same decible level as an old 747, knocking you off of the sofa, leaving you both startled and deaf. I know that “they”, the advertisers have been doing this for decades, but I still hate it. I end up diving for the remote control, spilling my potato chips and soda, in order to hit the mute button. I get it–they want me to pay attention, but really, the exact opposite happens: I take note of the offending product and vow to never, ever to buy it, no matter what it is. Once I get the screen muted, many commercials are actually rather entertaining, especially when you can’t really tell what is being advertised. Since the sound if off, you can’t hear either the music, the sound track or the voice-over, so many times it’s not easy to tell what is being sold at any given moment, especially if they need to use euphemisms to describe the product. I particularly hate the ads for all sanitary products, diapers, catheters and the like. Food ads late at night are despicable. All truck ads are blatantly loud and obnoxious. Some insurance ads, especially if the character is dressed in white, are creepy and sketchy, which is not exactly the image an insurance company wants to put forward. Honestly, if they didn’t turn up the sound during the ads, I might actually listen and watch. In the meantime, I will turn off the sound, defeating the entire purpose of the commercials, and make up my soundtrack and voice-over, all the while maintaining my list of annoying products that I will never use.

On loud commercials

Posted on by

This is not about weird local commercials for flooring or odd used cars or sewage pumping. This is about how television stations raise the sound level of commercials, a move that should be illegal, but still plagues us all. Imagine, you are watching a favorite television show at a normal level of sound. A commercial for pick-up trucks cut in at the same decible level as an old 747, knocking you off of the sofa, leaving you both startled and deaf. I know that “they”, the advertisers have been doing this for decades, but I still hate it. I end up diving for the remote control, spilling my potato chips and soda, in order to hit the mute button. I get it–they want me to pay attention, but really, the exact opposite happens: I take note of the offending product and vow to never, ever to buy it, no matter what it is. Once I get the screen muted, many commercials are actually rather entertaining, especially when you can’t really tell what is being advertised. Since the sound if off, you can’t hear either the music, the sound track or the voice-over, so many times it’s not easy to tell what is being sold at any given moment, especially if they need to use euphemisms to describe the product. I particularly hate the ads for all sanitary products, diapers, catheters and the like. Food ads late at night are despicable. All truck ads are blatantly loud and obnoxious. Some insurance ads, especially if the character is dressed in white, are creepy and sketchy, which is not exactly the image an insurance company wants to put forward. Honestly, if they didn’t turn up the sound during the ads, I might actually listen and watch. In the meantime, I will turn off the sound, defeating the entire purpose of the commercials, and make up my soundtrack and voice-over, all the while maintaining my list of annoying products that I will never use.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.