Category Archives: tragedy

On dodge ball

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I think I hated this game. I could never decide if it was an actual skill to throw a large red ball at other people or if it was sadistic exercise in pain and humiliation. The tough guys always grouped up together so they could throw at the skinny wimpy nerds like me. I weighed about forty-five pounds dripping wet in the fourth grade, and a well-thrown ball could pretty much knock me off of my feet. I think I received a neck injury once when I got hit in the back of the head. My only talent in dodge ball, if you could call it that, was my ability to catch one of these cannon shots, especially if thrown at my mid-section. I was horrible at actually throwing the ball, having wiry, but spaghetti-style arms with no muscles of which to speak. Dodge ball accentuated my weakling status to such an extent that I didn’t mind being eliminated early and often. The game is based on chaos and sadism, and there are just about no rules: you get hit, you’re out, you catch a ball on the fly, the thrower is out. All other rules are superfluous, which is good because most of the brutes playing the game couldn’t understand complicated rules anyway. If inflated properly, the red balls were as hard as concrete, and I witnessed more than one bloody nose from dodge ball. Good dodge ball players hung around the back, avoiding direct confrontations up front where you could take a real beaning if you weren’t careful. I got the air knocked out of me once when I took an unexpected shot to the stomach: that was both a strategy and a danger–throw at an unsuspecting soul who isn’t looking because they won’t catch your ball. My glasses got smashed out of shape on several occasions. More than one child left the floor crying after a particularly close encounter with a well-thrown dodge ball. I know we were getting exercise, and that our adrenaline was really pumping, but we moved out of abject fear, running for our very lives. I cannot say that I ever enjoyed the game, if it was a game at all. The bullies clearly enjoyed it too much, but ironically they were usually very bad at the game. You never won by simply employing brute force. You won by being wily and using every bit of misdirection and guile your body could muster. The brutes often took themselves out by getting hit or not understanding that no matter how hard you threw that ball, it lost almost all of its energy after traveling thirty feet and was eminently catchable. Taking one off of the old noggin was always the worst, especially if you weren’t looking. I’m sure the physical education teacher must have thought we were animals, and he would have been correct–we were. The only possible benefit was that we were so worn out from physical activity and completely drained of emotional reserves that we were like lambs when we finally went back to class–little smelly, sweaty, bruised, lambs. Those that view their dodge ball years with nostalgia as a golden epoch of high achievement and fun times probably got hit in the head one too many times because that was not fun. We played dodge ball, some of us got hurt, but we all learned some valuable lessons about which hill is worth dying over, and which hill can be abandoned. Dodge ball was the most intranscendent and useless activity of my entire childhood.

On dodge ball

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I think I hated this game. I could never decide if it was an actual skill to throw a large red ball at other people or if it was sadistic exercise in pain and humiliation. The tough guys always grouped up together so they could throw at the skinny wimpy nerds like me. I weighed about forty-five pounds dripping wet in the fourth grade, and a well-thrown ball could pretty much knock me off of my feet. I think I received a neck injury once when I got hit in the back of the head. My only talent in dodge ball, if you could call it that, was my ability to catch one of these cannon shots, especially if thrown at my mid-section. I was horrible at actually throwing the ball, having wiry, but spaghetti-style arms with no muscles of which to speak. Dodge ball accentuated my weakling status to such an extent that I didn’t mind being eliminated early and often. The game is based on chaos and sadism, and there are just about no rules: you get hit, you’re out, you catch a ball on the fly, the thrower is out. All other rules are superfluous, which is good because most of the brutes playing the game couldn’t understand complicated rules anyway. If inflated properly, the red balls were as hard as concrete, and I witnessed more than one bloody nose from dodge ball. Good dodge ball players hung around the back, avoiding direct confrontations up front where you could take a real beaning if you weren’t careful. I got the air knocked out of me once when I took an unexpected shot to the stomach: that was both a strategy and a danger–throw at an unsuspecting soul who isn’t looking because they won’t catch your ball. My glasses got smashed out of shape on several occasions. More than one child left the floor crying after a particularly close encounter with a well-thrown dodge ball. I know we were getting exercise, and that our adrenaline was really pumping, but we moved out of abject fear, running for our very lives. I cannot say that I ever enjoyed the game, if it was a game at all. The bullies clearly enjoyed it too much, but ironically they were usually very bad at the game. You never won by simply employing brute force. You won by being wily and using every bit of misdirection and guile your body could muster. The brutes often took themselves out by getting hit or not understanding that no matter how hard you threw that ball, it lost almost all of its energy after traveling thirty feet and was eminently catchable. Taking one off of the old noggin was always the worst, especially if you weren’t looking. I’m sure the physical education teacher must have thought we were animals, and he would have been correct–we were. The only possible benefit was that we were so worn out from physical activity and completely drained of emotional reserves that we were like lambs when we finally went back to class–little smelly, sweaty, bruised, lambs. Those that view their dodge ball years with nostalgia as a golden epoch of high achievement and fun times probably got hit in the head one too many times because that was not fun. We played dodge ball, some of us got hurt, but we all learned some valuable lessons about which hill is worth dying over, and which hill can be abandoned. Dodge ball was the most intranscendent and useless activity of my entire childhood.

On fat

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Do we all carry around a few extra pounds because we love to eat, don’t do as much exercise as we should, and watch too much television? We all eat too much fat, and since we don’t have to hunt down, kill, and slaughter our own food, we don’t exercise enough to burn up all the calories that we consume. Our own genetic makeup of hunter/gatherers now betrays us because of an overabundance of food, an overabundance of time, an overabundance of leisure, and an overabundance of opportunities for eating. So our sedentary lives are not the lives we were designed for, and we get fat. But it doesn’t all happen at once. First, your clothes don’t fit right. You’ve been eating a bit of barbecue, a super-size order of fries, a large shake, two hamburgers instead of one, a large soda with both sugar and caffeine, an extra snack before bed, an extra-helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, chocolate cake, cookies, extra whipped cream on your double-sugar café mocha, candy, and the rest of the food you eat you don’t even want to talk about. You know it’s bad for you, but you can’t help yourself, so you settle for buying bigger clothes, baggier shirts, and your waist-line continues to grow, and you have less and less energy, and you do less and less exercise. As you gain weight you are more willing to settle for more food and less activity. Yet we still buy more potato chips, more dessert cakes with cream filling, more sugary cookies, more prepared foods, and less fruit and vegetable, less protein, more sugar. The problem is simple: we are designed for lots of activity in combination with eating a lot because active eaters were assured of passing on their genes. Ten thousand years ago, those who did not eat all they could, died of hunger, and never passed on their genes. Now, those who have survived to spread their genes are still with us, but those same inclinations to eat as much as possible are now the same inclinations that will lead to obesity and death, diabetes, kidney failure and the like. Our bodies are meant to be lean and mean, and body mass index may be an indicator of continued good health and a long and happy life. But we keep the sugar producers in business by buying and eating food that is loaded with sugar. What could be more unhealthy than a meal at a local fast food chain that includes soda, fries and burgers. The protein in the burger is probably okay, but the rest you can chuck. Historically, sugar came into our diets when the colonies began to grow cane in the Indies. Up to that point, sugary foods were uncommon and prohibitively expensive, so over-weight people were uncommon, not rare, just uncommon. Going back to a simpler, more varied diet with a good dose of protein might be an answer as long as it is consumed in moderation. Perhaps moderation is the secret to most things in life. It goes without saying, though, that it is our lack of self-control and zero moderation which causes our collective waistlines to grow.

On fat

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Do we all carry around a few extra pounds because we love to eat, don’t do as much exercise as we should, and watch too much television? We all eat too much fat, and since we don’t have to hunt down, kill, and slaughter our own food, we don’t exercise enough to burn up all the calories that we consume. Our own genetic makeup of hunter/gatherers now betrays us because of an overabundance of food, an overabundance of time, an overabundance of leisure, and an overabundance of opportunities for eating. So our sedentary lives are not the lives we were designed for, and we get fat. But it doesn’t all happen at once. First, your clothes don’t fit right. You’ve been eating a bit of barbecue, a super-size order of fries, a large shake, two hamburgers instead of one, a large soda with both sugar and caffeine, an extra snack before bed, an extra-helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, chocolate cake, cookies, extra whipped cream on your double-sugar café mocha, candy, and the rest of the food you eat you don’t even want to talk about. You know it’s bad for you, but you can’t help yourself, so you settle for buying bigger clothes, baggier shirts, and your waist-line continues to grow, and you have less and less energy, and you do less and less exercise. As you gain weight you are more willing to settle for more food and less activity. Yet we still buy more potato chips, more dessert cakes with cream filling, more sugary cookies, more prepared foods, and less fruit and vegetable, less protein, more sugar. The problem is simple: we are designed for lots of activity in combination with eating a lot because active eaters were assured of passing on their genes. Ten thousand years ago, those who did not eat all they could, died of hunger, and never passed on their genes. Now, those who have survived to spread their genes are still with us, but those same inclinations to eat as much as possible are now the same inclinations that will lead to obesity and death, diabetes, kidney failure and the like. Our bodies are meant to be lean and mean, and body mass index may be an indicator of continued good health and a long and happy life. But we keep the sugar producers in business by buying and eating food that is loaded with sugar. What could be more unhealthy than a meal at a local fast food chain that includes soda, fries and burgers. The protein in the burger is probably okay, but the rest you can chuck. Historically, sugar came into our diets when the colonies began to grow cane in the Indies. Up to that point, sugary foods were uncommon and prohibitively expensive, so over-weight people were uncommon, not rare, just uncommon. Going back to a simpler, more varied diet with a good dose of protein might be an answer as long as it is consumed in moderation. Perhaps moderation is the secret to most things in life. It goes without saying, though, that it is our lack of self-control and zero moderation which causes our collective waistlines to grow.

On zippers

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I’ve never liked them and never will. I buy jeans with buttons. My dislike of zippers is almost visceral, and certainly irrational. As a child I had a strange fear of catching a finger in my jacket zipper, and I had an even stronger fear that the zipper would jam, and that while trying to fix it, the zipper just came apart with the zipper thingy engaged about half way up, impossible to move either up or down. This is a recurring nightmare I had as a child. In this nightmare a small bit of cloth would get stuck in the zipper and jam the entire works to the point where only a knife or scissors were the only solutions. How many times have you gone out and left your fly open, your zipper unzipped? This is every man’s fashion nightmare dysfunction–to walk around for hours, perhaps the entire day, and have your wife say, “Your zipper is open. You walk around all day like that? Zippers are everywhere: pants, tents, coats, sleeping bags, backpacks, suitcases, windbreakers, shoes, jackets, boots, bags,wet suits, and purses. The whole secret to using a zipper is getting the two sides to interlock before pulling up the zipper, which can be sexy, but if you are little klutzy, it’s a real disaster. For most people this is an unconscious action which they do every day without even thinking about it. Without even thinking about it, that is, until something goes wrong: the material rips, something gets stuck, the zipper zips without connecting properly to the other side. What is terribly annoying are the people who see you have a disaster, and they offer help: “Oh, heavens, I can help with that!” But they can’t. They try everything, including force, to get the zipper unstuck, to bring it back to normal, to restore symmetry, but the only thing that they succeed at is making it worse. You pull the mess up over your head to relieve yourself of a jacket that won’t zip. Perhaps if you can take a look, you might solve the problem. If the zipper in your pants breaks, you are sincerely up the proverbial creek without paddle because trying to unstick a jammed zipper in the groin area is not only strange and weird, but it must be done in private. You can’t walk around the mall with a jammed zipper on your pants and try to work it out. A jacket with a broken zipper is no longer a jacket, and a backpack with a jammed zipper is both useless and a doorstop. The mechanical device that we know as the zipper is not even a hundred years old, dating in its various forms from the beginning of the twentieth century, so it’s not like this imperfect invention has threatened humanity for that long. The hypothesis for its use is good: close and hold together to pieces of fabric or rubber or canvas for a variable amount of time. In reality, if it fails, breaks, or jams, swearing ensues in which the victim challenges the parentage of the inventor. A stuck zipper can instantly take the passion out of an amorous encounter. I like my buttons, whether they be on my shirt or pants, the probability that I have a button failure or jam is almost nil. Zippers may be fast, but they certainly are neither cool nor hip.

On zippers

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I’ve never liked them and never will. I buy jeans with buttons. My dislike of zippers is almost visceral, and certainly irrational. As a child I had a strange fear of catching a finger in my jacket zipper, and I had an even stronger fear that the zipper would jam, and that while trying to fix it, the zipper just came apart with the zipper thingy engaged about half way up, impossible to move either up or down. This is a recurring nightmare I had as a child. In this nightmare a small bit of cloth would get stuck in the zipper and jam the entire works to the point where only a knife or scissors were the only solutions. How many times have you gone out and left your fly open, your zipper unzipped? This is every man’s fashion nightmare dysfunction–to walk around for hours, perhaps the entire day, and have your wife say, “Your zipper is open. You walk around all day like that? Zippers are everywhere: pants, tents, coats, sleeping bags, backpacks, suitcases, windbreakers, shoes, jackets, boots, bags,wet suits, and purses. The whole secret to using a zipper is getting the two sides to interlock before pulling up the zipper, which can be sexy, but if you are little klutzy, it’s a real disaster. For most people this is an unconscious action which they do every day without even thinking about it. Without even thinking about it, that is, until something goes wrong: the material rips, something gets stuck, the zipper zips without connecting properly to the other side. What is terribly annoying are the people who see you have a disaster, and they offer help: “Oh, heavens, I can help with that!” But they can’t. They try everything, including force, to get the zipper unstuck, to bring it back to normal, to restore symmetry, but the only thing that they succeed at is making it worse. You pull the mess up over your head to relieve yourself of a jacket that won’t zip. Perhaps if you can take a look, you might solve the problem. If the zipper in your pants breaks, you are sincerely up the proverbial creek without paddle because trying to unstick a jammed zipper in the groin area is not only strange and weird, but it must be done in private. You can’t walk around the mall with a jammed zipper on your pants and try to work it out. A jacket with a broken zipper is no longer a jacket, and a backpack with a jammed zipper is both useless and a doorstop. The mechanical device that we know as the zipper is not even a hundred years old, dating in its various forms from the beginning of the twentieth century, so it’s not like this imperfect invention has threatened humanity for that long. The hypothesis for its use is good: close and hold together to pieces of fabric or rubber or canvas for a variable amount of time. In reality, if it fails, breaks, or jams, swearing ensues in which the victim challenges the parentage of the inventor. A stuck zipper can instantly take the passion out of an amorous encounter. I like my buttons, whether they be on my shirt or pants, the probability that I have a button failure or jam is almost nil. Zippers may be fast, but they certainly are neither cool nor hip.

On the "check engine" light

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So my “check engine” light came on last week. I hate the “check engine” light. I hate it because it doesn’t really tell you what’s wrong, just that something is wrong. It wasn’t blinking, which is worse because then the engine is telling you that you are in imminent danger of blowing the hell up if you don’t pull over and stop. This was just the steady amber that indicates that something is wrong. It nags you into taking the car into the shop because it is a mystery. That little yellow light tells you nothing, and is an enigma wrapped in a mystery enclosed in a conundrum. You, average driver and normal person, do not understand the mystery of the amber “check engine” light because you have not been inducted into the secret society of auto mechanics that check engines. On a few occasions I have noticed that if you don’t put the gas cap on correctly, this will act as if there were a leak in the fuel system and the “check engine” light will come on. I checked my gas cap, and it seemed to be acting funny, but the light did not go off. I went to the garage yesterday and they kept the vehicle for over five hours. Finally, they called and said, “You gas cap is broken and won’t seal properly.” But they didn’t have a new gas cap and had to overnight one from someplace. I went back to the garage and picked my car up–I had errands to run. All of this is very mysterious. Where was the new gas cap coming from? How could they get one “overnight”? They removed the “check engine” light. Today they called, “Come in at one and we’ll fix it.” So I did. Now my “check engine” light is off, my life is back to normal, and all is right with the world. Actually, none of that is true except that the “check engine” light is off. On all other accounts, my life is just as chaotic as ever. Does life have a “check engine” light? I know life has no gas cap, or anything that is even the least bit metaphorically a gas cap. Maybe I don’t even want to think about that. Here’s hoping that your “check engine” light does not come on, not now, not ever.

On the "check engine" light

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So my “check engine” light came on last week. I hate the “check engine” light. I hate it because it doesn’t really tell you what’s wrong, just that something is wrong. It wasn’t blinking, which is worse because then the engine is telling you that you are in imminent danger of blowing the hell up if you don’t pull over and stop. This was just the steady amber that indicates that something is wrong. It nags you into taking the car into the shop because it is a mystery. That little yellow light tells you nothing, and is an enigma wrapped in a mystery enclosed in a conundrum. You, average driver and normal person, do not understand the mystery of the amber “check engine” light because you have not been inducted into the secret society of auto mechanics that check engines. On a few occasions I have noticed that if you don’t put the gas cap on correctly, this will act as if there were a leak in the fuel system and the “check engine” light will come on. I checked my gas cap, and it seemed to be acting funny, but the light did not go off. I went to the garage yesterday and they kept the vehicle for over five hours. Finally, they called and said, “You gas cap is broken and won’t seal properly.” But they didn’t have a new gas cap and had to overnight one from someplace. I went back to the garage and picked my car up–I had errands to run. All of this is very mysterious. Where was the new gas cap coming from? How could they get one “overnight”? They removed the “check engine” light. Today they called, “Come in at one and we’ll fix it.” So I did. Now my “check engine” light is off, my life is back to normal, and all is right with the world. Actually, none of that is true except that the “check engine” light is off. On all other accounts, my life is just as chaotic as ever. Does life have a “check engine” light? I know life has no gas cap, or anything that is even the least bit metaphorically a gas cap. Maybe I don’t even want to think about that. Here’s hoping that your “check engine” light does not come on, not now, not ever.

On "Shattered Dreams"

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“Shattered Dreams” is a real-time simulacrum of a drunk-driving accident that is staged by local law enforcement and fire authorities to raise awareness in teens about the dangers of drunk driving. The simulacrum is staged with real props and real people over a two-day period in Hewitt at Midway High School (near Waco, Texas). One young person dies every fifteen minutes in the United States because of drunk driving. The simulacrum is supposed to awake strong feelings of trauma, loss, and tragedy in the “surviving” students. Actual students play the dead, the injured, and the drunk perpetrator. The entire thing is filmed, and the actual parents of the students playing the different roles are filmed at the hospital, at the morgue, at the jail. The parents of the “dead” must write an obituary for their child before the simulacrum begins. As the day progresses students are spirited away by the “grim reaper” at the rate of four an hour, reflecting the current statistics of teen deaths in America. This can be a brutal experience for those involved even though no one really dies, goes to the hospital or goes to jail. The emotions are real, the tears are real, and the difference between reality and fantasy blur. The entire process was topped off today with a memorial service for the dead, who do not attend their own service, adding a strange note of verisimilitude to the entire process. The police are real, the fire/rescue squad is real, the district attorney is real, the handcuffs are real, only the blood is ersatz. I believe this is necessary because our teens are already too jaded about violence, have been raised with easy access to entertainment and gaming that take violence and death for granted. I believe it is almost impossible to shock children unless you make them the focus of the violence and death, but the question of how to do that without really hurting them is complex and paradoxical: how do you raise consciousness in a population that is jaded by Hollywood fakery and special effects? So yesterday students disappeared, some went to the hospital with horrible injuries, others to the morgue, others to jail. This is one situation where the simulacrum makes the experience real for both the participants and the spectators. A smoldering wrecked vehicle, injured and dead students lying in the middle of the wreck, real ambulances, real firefighters all add to experience that looks, smells, and seems actual and real. In the end, everyone knows that this is not real, but the emotions are very real and give real food for thought. Drink, drive, wreck. One thing is to be told that this is bad. It is, however, a different ballgame to experience it first hand, especially when your friends are involved. More information on the program may be found here.

On creativity

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Now I’m stumped. I have no idea where creativity comes from, much less what it is. This has to be one of the advantages of having a big, complex brain. Birds have tiny brains and are hard-wired for certain behaviors–nest building, food gathering, reproduction, defense–but they aren’t very creative. Creativity suggests coming up with new ideas, new forms, new plans, thinking outside the box, and not just doing things the same old way because that’s the way you learned them in the first place. Creativity also suggests innovation and novelty, thinking up new ways to do old things. Yet, creativity also means coming up with completely new and iconoclastic ways of seeing the world, being a rebel, not accepting things the way they are, promoting anarchy and fueling revolution. If it were not for creativity, for example, we would still be writing on stone tablets and sleeping under bear rugs. Creativity is linked intimately with progress. Often creativity is met with a certain amount of push-back because humans often become complacent and comfortable doing a thing just one way. We are inherently disorderly creatures, however, and are almost always open to doing things differently if it makes our lives better. All of that said, I still don’t know why we are creative. Perhaps creativity is a behavior which made our species more adaptable to changing conditions, giving us a greater chance of surviving into the next generation. All those people who were not creative, died out long ago, so being creative is a pro-survival characteristic that is hard-wired into our genetic structure: big creative brains equal species success. I’m sure that my analysis would not hold up in a neuroscience conference, but I am probably not too far from the truth. Creative people are great problem solvers, can readily recognize abstract patterns, and are fueled by more and greater sensorial inputs. The more that goes into the brain, more comes out. I suspect that all humans are very creative if we just let ourselves be creative. Yet, turning off the internal auditors and censors is just impossible for many people who fear making a fool of themselves or who fear they have nothing to share. I suspect that if encouraged, all people can be creative. All cultures, whether they are prehistoric rupestre cave cultures or contemporary urban graffiti taggers, fight to express the creativity that hums in the frontal lobe of the brain. Writers write, painters paint, inventors invent, sculptors sculpt, thinkers think and so on to the next generation that starts all over again with the crayons and finger paints. Tragically, somewhere along the line, someone tells the child that they cannot draw, or paint, or sing, or write poetry, and a nasty sword chops the head off of creativity. Conform, says the world, conform. Well, I guess I stopped listening to that voice a long time ago.