Round and Round We Go

I'm doing it again: I'm thinking of you. Now, I'm probably the sucker because I didn't see this coming. I likely should have as soon as you told me the news you had. But here we are again. This isn't entirely unexpected; I predicted as much a couple months ago, didn't I? I told you we weren't done, that we were going to come around to each other again¹. You didn't disagree then.

I'm not saying we're doing that now, but... we will, won't we? Any time we are in close proximity to one another, it happens. I expect the same to happen when we're near each other again.

Part of me sighs. Part of me is worried. Part of me is excited and can't wait.

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1 Just like the last couple times.

This Covers It

This sums up my feelings wonderfully. From Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09:

"Corporate news is a dying system. It has helped make itself irrelevant with it insatiable appetite for the inane, a strong reliance on commercialism, and an inability to inform the public on crucial matters of out time. What passes for news on the 24/7 cable broadcasts is more like a gossip rag or screed sheet, a veritable three-ring circus sideshow of spectacle and distraction. Even print media have succumbed to this inevitable purging, exchanging substance for style, fact for opinion, news for propaganda. On the key issues of the past several years, from election fraud and matters of torture to leaving single-payer health care and impeachment off the table of public discourse, corporate media have failed America."

Minus One

My sister is engaged.

This is not breaking news. It happened in December, not long after my parents and I ended our visit to Disney World. Incidentally, it was less than a month after I met her fiance for the first time. I was at my parents' house when the news came in. My mother was thrilled, my father and I less so. Why?

I often joked that Ashley, 3 ½ years my younger, would marry before me. Women tend to marry younger than men, she was in a relationship the lion's share of the time (I have been single for the great majority of my hormonal life), and it was an easy bit of self-deprecating humor. That he proposed was no surprise; we had expected it even if we didn't know exactly when.

Still, knowing it is coming does not prepare you for when it actually happens. He seems like a decent enough guy¹, but that's not really the point. When a female sibling gets married, it's like she's leaving the family². Is that fair? Probably not, but I don't write the scenario. If she reads this, she'll insist that's not the case and she'll mean it. But it won't change anything³.

It's hard for me, and not just because I'm a little afraid people are going to start bothering me about when I get married⁴. Even when I wasn't on speaking terms with my parents, I was still in contact with her. Along the same lines, my relationship with her has never been rocky like it has been with my parents. She's still the one I care about the most from my childhood home by a wide margin. And I feel like she's being taken away from me.

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1 I barely know him. This is what I say when people ask me about him.

2 If you've seen “Father of the Bride,” you have an idea what I'm talking about.

3 If I get married, will it feel like an addition to the family? Good question.

4 Not soon, if ever.

I Write the Words Good

Today marks the first day of play of the MAC Tournament at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. It also marks the beginning of my second year covering the tournament from media row for MAC Report Online. I love it. It's so much fun. I get to watch basketball, I get to communicate with fans in realtime, I'm actually something of an authority on MAC basketball, and I get to see what a lot of the public doesn't. It's a blast, and the people at MRO are great.

It's a fun hobby. I'm glad I do it. But it just reminds me that it's not what my life is meant to be, even if I thought something along those lines at one time. I might do it again next year. We'll see. But I won't make a career of this.

Snark Sharks

More and more recently, I've become aware of the generation gap between mine and those older than me. It seems to be a bit easier to see the differences between me and those younger, but I find the differences between me and those older more striking¹. One thing I find interesting is when differences are pointed out, it usually comes across as criticism. Not necessarily destructive criticism, but criticism nonetheless.

If you were not able to see Conan O'Brien's farewell speech on “The Tonight Show,” take a moment to watch it now, specifically his remarks at the 3:40 mark. I bring this up for a reason. I am a pretty cynical person despite an optimistic and idealist side² that is often fighting to burst through. My Twitter page bio openly uses the word “snarky” to describe myself. One of my favorite shows is “InfoMania,” a show described by a magazine as “'The Daily Show's' smartass younger brother³.” I was visiting my parents one time and watching “InfoMania” and my father watched some of it. After a few minutes, he turned to me and asked, “Don't you ever get tired of being snarky?”

I think my response at the time was along the lines of “no.” I've since thought about it more, and my answer is this: What else do you expect?

For the first time in human history, we have been commodified and marketed to from birth. We exist to consume and spend in the corporate world's eyes. We were raised not on values, but on products, food, and items. When you're constantly being sold something for your entire life, you learn not to trust. We look at the 60s and 70s, and we don't want to violently revolt. We saw what that brought, and we don't want to go there. Besides, when you're constantly being marketed to, you are going to buy things⁴. It's unavoidable. We start making a ruckus, and we might lose some of those nifty gadgets. Who wants that?

Make no mistake: Some (many) people completely buy into this. They are caught at a young age, they like the life, they don't think it's worth it to fight, etc. Others don't accept what is trying to be foisted upon us, but the deck is stacked in their favor. We can't trust the government to help⁵, we see corporations doing whatever they want, we see many good things being sacrificed to the corporate cause (colleges, good domestic jobs, etc.). We get taken advantage of.

What can we do? Not much. There aren't enough of us, really, to change things. We do what we can, but it feels like throwing rice against a brick wall. We know how it's going to turn out⁶. So we turn to cynicism. We turn to cutting sarcasm. It's less an offensive tool than a defense mechanism. It's a way to stay sane. We choose to laugh instead of getting angry. Would getting angry help the cause? Perhaps, but again, we don't want to repeat the ugly events of the past.

In our own way, snark is gallows humor. Remember this when I make cynical riffs on Obama.

So why are we snarky? Frankly, it's a product of the world we were placed into. In other words, you did this to us. Conan doesn't like cynicism? Few people do. I know I don't enjoy it, but it's a trusted ally in a world sorely lacking them. But Conan has had success and riches beyond his wildest dreams. He lives in a fantasy world. We live in the real world, and we see the ugliness of it. He doesn't. It's easy to not be cynical when you have so little to be cynical about⁷.

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1 Then again, how important can the younger crowd yet be?

2 My cynical side might point out it wouldn't exist if not for the idealist, optimistic side.

3 I liken it more as a cross between “Daily,” “The Soup,” and “Tosh.0.”

4 Or you're going to live in a van.

5 Both parties- BOTH- are so obviously on the take it's sickening.

6 Yes, I may have read 1984 one too many times.

7 He could have been cynical about losing his show, perhaps, but he walked into a huge buyout as a result. Not much to quibble with.

Lupine Appetite

Have you ever really, really wanted to kiss someone? So bad it felt like hunger? So bad it was as necessary as oxygen? And when you did get that kiss, it filled a primal need? When you get to that stage with somebody, you really have something.

I've been there once. It was nice.

Staring Into the Eyes of Evil

I was talking to class a couple weeks ago¹ with my usual strategy of looking at the ground. I noticed someone in my peripheral vision about to run into me. Reflexively, I look to see who is about to crash into me and judge whatever defensive maneuvers I need to make. I find myself staring into the eyes of her², six inches away.

Time freezes for a moment. The last person I want to see and at a distance I never wanted to be within. My eyes narrow slightly. Hers widen. I am deathly afraid she is going to say something, and I think she is afraid I might say something.

Then, my brain shouts, “MOVE!” My feet begin moving. I don't look back. No words are exchanged. No real acknowledgment shared. As it must be.
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1 As per Al Gore's demands to fight global warming.

2 If you're unclear who this is, backtrack in the blog or follow the “Misadventures in Romance” label.