Friday, March 05, 2004

Squeezing Blood Well, the news on job creation in the month of February is out, and it's not good for the Bush Administration.  Only 21,000 jobs were created, somewhat less than the 200,000 per month that Treasury Secretary John Snow predicted last fall.  Of course, the Bush Administration is probably producing a TV spot right now with images of the Trade Center and the graphic "21,000 Jobs Created!" in front of a red, white and blue background on the bottom of the screen. Look, I'm not an economist, but I don't get all the confusion when these analysts marvel at the fact that the economy seems to be growing while also not producing jobs.  Seems pretty simple to me: Companys take profits.  They've cut their payrolls and have instituted efficiencies to drive profit and compete.  If they've shown they can meet demand with, say, 8,000 people on the payroll, they aren't going to move payroll up to 10,000 just to be nice.  They'll simply ask the 8,000 to do more work.  Bank on it. . 2:08:45 PM    Say what?[]

Dave Chappelle I don't know if the guy who wrote this very complimentary Slate review of Dave Chappelle's show is white or not, but it sure reads like a White Guy Review of a Black Comedy Show, which is funny, especially if you read the review. I've only seen Chappelle's Show once, and I laughed my ass off pretty much non-stop.  It's hard to describe a lot of what goes on there (though the review above gives a bit of a glimpse), but it's worth catching if you have the Comedy Channel. The only sketch I can really recall, due to chemical factors beyond my control, was a sketch about a total 50's whitebread family with the last name "Niggar".  It was all done in a Leave It To Beaver style.  There's a scene where a family down the street from the Niggars is having breakfast, and the daughter pipes up that she's going to prom with that Niggar boy.  The dad cries out, "Oh, no!", but the daughter assures him it's OK.  "Daddy, that's just his name: Timmy Niggar!"  They all laugh and smile and finish their breakfast.  Chappelle plays the family's milkman, who just drops in all the time saying stuff like, "How's my favorite Niggars doin' today?".  When the dad offers to give the milkman a tip, Chappelle counters, "Niggar, please!"  Anyway.  It doesn't translate as well in print, to be sure, but you'll have to trust me that it's funny.  The point of the review is that only black comedians can get away with that kind of stuff today, which is a shame because there is so much fertile ground for comedy in our racial divide. But seriously, try to read that guy's over-intellectualization of Racial Political Comedy.  If I didn't know better, I might think Dave Chappelle wrote it himself. 1:01:44 PM    Say what?[]

Broken Glasses Ever have one of those experiences where you'll hear somebody say something completely out of the blue, and it will instantly transport you through time to a circumstance that you haven't thought about for decades?  I had one of those experiences this morning as I was standing in a convenience store withdrawing money from a cash machine for my poker tournament tonight.  I turned to walk about of the store, and these two kids came in, a boy and a girl.  They were probably 8 years old or so. I barely would have noticed them, until the girl said this: "Oh no!  I broke my glasses!" BAM!  The room started to spin.  I went through some weird time/space vortex tunnel right out of the movie Contact, and I ended up smack dab in the middle of the Carl Lundgren Elementary School playground in Topeka, KS, circa 1979.  Or 1980.  Or 1981. Any of those time periods would suffice. Because, you see, I wore glasses.  And I broke glasses.  I broke glasses like nobody's business.  I broke them any way they can be broken.  I sat on them.  I ran into other kids.  I stepped on them.  Mind you, it was never intentional.  I was an active kid, and I just had a chronic ability to break my glasses.  Never the lenses; always the frame, and usually the arm.  My parents tried to remedy this by getting those spring-action arms, but it didn't matter.  Those things only stretch so far.  I bet I probably went through a dozen pairs of glasses between the time I was in fourth grade and high school.  Given that, you'd think there would be decent odds that I might end up with a cool-looking pair at some point, but you would be very wrong.  I was Mr. Big Plastic Frame, the sort of glasses I see the guys wear in the labs now for safety glasses.  For a time, I was also Mr. Partial Tint.  If there had been a pair that I could pre-order with masking tape on the bridge, that would have been my pair for sure. Now, in fairness to me, my mother needs to shoulder some of the blame for my succession of uncool glasses.  I put this a close second to her role in persuading me to get my hair permed twice.  I needed somebody to step up and tell me that these were not cool glasses, and she failed me.  And yet, in fairness to my mother, I couldn't reasonably expect to get anything more than the most basic pair of glasses when she knew good and well that we would be back ordering another pair in two months.  Glasses aren't cheap, you know.  If she had allowed me to come out there with wire frames, we wouldn't even have made it out to the car before we'd have been back in ordering a new pair. I continued to break glasses routinely through Middle School and High School.  It was such an awful feeling, looking down on the ground and seeing yet another mangled pair at my feet.  I would try anything I could to tape them or put them back together, but even if that was possible it was only a matter of time until the next mishap would destroy them for good.  The worst was trudging home without my glasses on, or even worse, just wearing them with one arm resting on my ear, the other arm in my hand.  My parents would take one look at me and sigh.  After awhile, they stopped asking me how they got broke.  Sometimes, I wasn't even sure anyway.  But eventually, some time in college or late high school, I suppose, I grew out of it.  I don't know how I stopped breaking glasses, specifically.  I attribute it to a general decline in my previously high levels of dumbassery. And before I knew it, it had been years since I had broken a pair.  The last four pairs of glasses I had purchased were strictly because I wanted new glasses.  I had forgotten all about my former ways. That is, until last June.  Linus and I were going to Grand Old Day, a huge street celebration a couple miles from our house.  I had my prescription sunglasses on, and for reasons I don't understand (dumbassery, sad to say) I had tucked my regular glasses into the top of my t-shirt.  Linus was on his big wheel trike, but he couldn't pedal up the hill, so I grabbed the handlebars, put my right foot on the rear platform, and began to push him up with my left foot. And as I was looking down , my glasses fell out of my shirt...in slow motion...onto the ground...right in front of his rear wheel.  CRUNCH! I couldn't believe it.  I had run over my glasses and smashed them all up.  It all came flooding back to me, the feelings of frustration over my dumbassery, the feeling of shame that I had to trudge back home and tell someone what I had done, all of it.  Then I lost my composure a bit and yelled, "Fuck!"  Fortunately, Linus didn't repeat that. When I got back home, I switched back to my old pair (which was a first, me having an old pair of glasses!), and that was that.  I forgot all about my Odyssey of the Broken Glasses. And then the lights started getting all fuzzy, and there was a big "WHOOOSH!" sound, and there I was again in that convenience store, watching that little girl holding her glasses.  Looked to me like a screw had just come out of the frame.  I got news for you, kid.  Those glasses ain't broke.  You can fix that.  Take it from someone who knows what broken glasses look like. 12:18:13 PM    Say what?[]

Search for Beauty Aw, heck.  I had snapped some photos of my backyard this morning, but forgot to bring my USB cable to work.  It snowed a lot last night.  A very wet, heavy snow, the kind that lands on tree branches and power lines and sticks immediately.  The volume and weight of the snow gently suppresses everything it lands on, so the trees droop in unnatural ways.  The snow is so wet you can make a snowball simply by scooping some up in your hand. It's beautiful, the kind of beauty that stops you in your tracks the when you first pass a window in the morning.  You've seen it before, but it takes your breath every time and all you can say is, "Damn."  Linus came in to our bed last night at about 3:00 AM.  We stayed up for a moment just looking out the window at the heavy snow falling, just two silent figures watching while the rest of our street slept through the night. We need beautiful moments in our lives.  They don't have to be "See My Daughter Born" or "Aurora Borealis In Alaska" beautiful, though it's good to have a few of those, too.  We need to see the smaller things in our daily lives that are beautiful, to keep our reservoirs filled.  We need to see them and remember them. We need them because there are a lot of things that happen in this world that aren't beautiful.  We need to balance the ledger in some way, or if possible, store up enough beauty that we can still come out ahead of the ugliness. When I talk about ugliness, I'm not really talking about politics, though that can certainly qualify on most days.  I'm talking about people.  I'm talking about our Bad Selves, and the unfortunate reality that some people's Bad Selves are horrific. I read this story on Real Live Preacher yesterday, and it hit me hard.  It's about an event that happened to him when he was a boy, and though it certainly could have turned out much worse, it's still gives a glimpse into the kind of pain and havoc that certain people's Bad Selves can inflict on others. Preacher and I had a dialogue about the story via email yesterday.  We talked about the language of God, how the search for God sometimes represents such a deep yearning for people to find a counterweight to all the Bad Selves they encounter.  God is other things, certainly.  And it may not always be about Capital "G" God for some people, which is the case with me.  But when you see the darkness that can reside in people, darkness that can destroys lives in an instant or over a lifetime, it takes something pretty powerful to help people look past it. Powerful, and beautiful.  That's why I try not to take beauty for granted.  My faith isn't in Heaven above, so much as it is in people, in the idea that there is natural and personal beauty all around us. One day about 10 years ago, I was driving home to my apartment in St. Paul after a day shift of delivering pizzas.  And as I slowly drove down a neighborhood street, I noticed a girl, probably about 8 or 9 years old, walking down the sidewalk.  Then she did the most amazing thing.  She ran up to a little tree by the street, and she kissed it.  She kissed the tree!  And then she ran away, giggling.  I have no idea why she did it.  Maybe they had a lecture about trees that day in her science class.  Who knows?  But seeing her do that, then run away with a huge smile on her face as I drove by, couldn't help but bring a smile to my own face. Every once in awhile, I still think about that girl kissing the tree.  For some reason, that little moment has always stuck with me as a moment of small beauty. All over the world, people's Bad Selves are hurting people right now.  People are being scarred for life. But somewhere, at this very moment, someone is also giving up a kidney so that someone they never met can live a new life. Somewhere, two people are watching a sunset and thinking that maybe they might be able to fall in love after all. In Florida and Arizona, little kids are hearing the crack of the ball against a bat as they watch big leaguers up close with wide-eyed amazement. Babies are being born and parents are crying and big brothers and sisters are waiting to hear the news. Strange kids are kissing trees for no reason whatsoever. Beautiful things are happening somewhere, right now. 11:38:14 AM    Say what?[]

Death of a Soldier I don't know why, exactly, but I have a hard time when I read stories about people who find out the details of the death of a loved one many years after the fact.  In many cases, it will be a war-related death.  This is a story about two parents, now in their 80s, who thought their son died alone and scared in a jungle in Vietnam shortly after his 21st birthday.  Then one day a few weeks ago, a man showed up in their small Minnesota town to tell them that he was the medic who tried to save their son.  He died about four minutes after he was shot, his head cradled in the medic's arms. It took the medic 34 years to get to a point where he could talk to the kid's parents.  Reading about those last moments in the jungle, and how much hearing the medic's story meant to the kid's parents and his high school sweetheart wife, even 34 years after his death, brought tears to my eyes. 10:08:40 AM    Say what?[]

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