Do you know what it means? Watching Treme, the Final Season

Just finished watching the final season of Treme. Man, that show gets so much right. The power of the entire thing kinda snuck up on me during these last five episodes, and I was literally in tears during the last episode over the tragic beauty of it all. (Ok maybe I'd also had too much wine during Episode 5.)

It's that tension between having an authentic culture, and having that culture also be a tourist attraction, and needing that culture to be who you are and for your livelihood. That tension between wanting to live your life in a city, and having happy moments torn open by random violence at a parade. Between trying to do good work in a place infested with corruption; being a part of a culture that is simultaneously enveloping and familial, yet dismissed as niche and quaint from a national perspective.

David Simon may be a commercial failure in terms of his ability to attract viewership, but IMO he is a fucking genius. The Wire is a work of art, and Treme is amazing for many of the same reasons. He has this ability to see the nuances at play when these kinds of tensions are acting upon us, infecting our culture, our cities, our families, our identities. Maybe Treme is more relate-able for me because I spent my formative years in New Orleans; maybe the references are too 'in', the struggles too specific, the music too loose for the show to have mass appeal. But therein lies the genius of Treme. David Simon was never going to create a show about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina that was going to be popular, y'all.

I was going to post a video but it came in upside down, so I'll end with a direct quote from DJ Davis:

"Do you know how sometimes you hear a song that you've heard a million times before, and maybe you're even tired of hearing it, but this time, maybe because of something you've been through, or maybe because of something you now understand, you hear that song again. Maybe it's a new version; maybe not. But you realize there's a fresh world in there to be heard? Yeah, me too."

Thank you, David Simon, for the love letter you wrote for New Orleans, that city I used to love to hate, and now I hate to love.

Is Cinderella going to eat my daughter? If so, when?

I've been reading the book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, off and on during my work travels. My daughter recently turned 2.5, and at the moment, she seems very far away from identifying with the girlie/pink/princess phenomenon that seems to claim everyone's daughters (more or less) by the time they turn three. In fact, she's inordinately obsessed with PURPLE. So, I await the coming transformation with trepidation. I am eternally grateful that this book exists, because like the author (Peggy Orenstein), I wasn't raised on Pretty Pink Princess bullshit because it didn't exist until the 1990s. My sister, who is nearly 10 years my junior, came into being during the height of the PPP bullshit, however, so I feel like I lived through it, even if it wasn't my childhood. I remember watching The Little Mermaid with her until we both had the lines memorized; ditto Beauty and the Beast. But even back then, you didn't walk into a store and have all of the 'girl' stuff so readily segregated by color.

I reject and resent the pink fascism that pervades today, but because I don't want my daughter to become obsessed with it because of my rejection, I try to be neutral about the whole thing. At the local yogurt shop, they have a choice--green or pink spoons--and our little girl has picked the GREEN SPOON countless times, which I am secretly proud of. She even carries it around with her like some sort of totemic object, and rejects the pink spoons out of hand. GREEN SPOON is in the fist on the way to daycare, with her all day long, and then in the bath and bed with her at night. The pink spoons? They live a largely cloistered life inside of her PINK kitchen set (a gift from my PPP mother).

Do little girls really prefer pink or is it now stuffed down their throats? I'm afraid all evidence points to the latter, my friends. Pink as a color was originally more identified with infant boys because of its close link to red, a dominant color. However even in our modern, open-minded times, the color-coded messages and behaviors associated to your gender are ever-restrictive in the aisles of Target: blue is for boys, pink is for girls. End of discussion.

By accident of birth and circumstance, my angelic daughter has found herself the only girl in her daycare classroom. I read in the book that girls and boys self-segregate around this time, and even when they would play together, teachers don't recognize/promote this behavior, and so it doesn't really develop. But my daughter is the only girl in a class of 4 boys; does this phase her? No. She immediately starts racing cars with the boys in the morning, or running races back and forth across the classroom; or instructing them on how to use the potty ("Up?" she said as a fellow playmate stepped up to the potty, referring to the lid).

Will being the only girl in a class of boys stave off the PPP phenomenon for a time? Probably. I think a lot of that shit is actually started by girls' parents, who want their daughters to participate in it. And then other girls pick it up from their PPP classmates...and the cycle continues. I'm not saying my daughter is immune to the PPP, and it may even be good for her to go through a girly phase...but if and when that does occur, it's going to be hard for me to stomach. I just want her to explore whatever she likes, and I don't want her imagination to be quashed by being submitted to too many pre-determined playbooks via stories, movies, etc. I want her to invent her own!

The bigger thing to fear in this day and age, perhaps, is the INTERNET and the social media within and around it. I've been a member of Facebook for many years now, but I was raised and came to adulthood in an environment before Facebook existed. I worry that the artificial construct of the psyche that Facebook creates in all of us is going to be the downfall of polite society, period. Or, if handled properly, maybe the future will be full of savvy internet types who are able to communicate their hopes and dreams more eloquently than mine ever could...maybe. Here is one quote that stood out for me from the aforementioned book:

"The self...becomes a brand, something to be marketed to others rather than developed from within. Instead of intimates with whom you interact for the sake of the exchange, friends become your consumers, an audience for whom you perform."

Yeah, that shit's scary, and it's happening now, to all of us. Just imagine how it will affect our babies and toddlers in the coming years.

Busyness, or how my job is giving me ADD

Since I got promoted last year, I am very, very, very busy. Busier than I've ever been before at work. So busy in fact that I don't know how I stay afloat half the time. This is a typical day:

8:45-9:00: arrive at work (after wrangling a toddler in to daycare)
9-12: deal with emails that accumulated overnight/meetings/drop-bys
12-1: lunch outside the office (if no one has scheduled a meeting over it)
1-4: more emails/meetings
4-5: get some actual work done
8-10: more email management (2-3 times/week)

You know there's a problem when you find you have to make fake meetings with yourself just so you can have a block of time to get something important done. (OMG! I have a 2-hour block of time tomorrow--I'd better block it or someone will take it!). And when your director calls to see if time you've blocked out is vacation time or work travel--because if it's the latter, you're expected to be on that webex/conference call, motherfucker! Work travel does NOT excuse you from conference calls! No one cares that you're boarding a plane!

I liken this busyness to what I imagine standing chest-deep in the middle of a rapid river would feel like, foamy water just gushing over you, filling your mouth, your nose, making your eyes close. You can't move, can barely breathe; you just have to deal with the constant onslaught of water in your face. Day after day.

All I can think about is what it might be like to not be so busy. I remember the days when I had the time to surf the internet a little, read articles, etc--it seems like a distant memory now. I daydream too about what it might be like for me if my coworkers could own their own work and I didn't have to micromanage them, and if everyone didn't seem to come to me for every little thing and could help themselves and look something up once in a while. But that will never happen. The buck starts and stops with me now, the more helpful you are the more you're called on to help. Man does that suck for my stress levels.

I am not the kind of person who generally takes stress to bed with them. At least until this week I wasn't. This week I woke up at 4:30 am two nights in a row, thinking about work! I often will wake up before my alarm these days, and my brain will immediately start sorting through some problem at work. Sometimes, it's shit I didn't even know was bothering me. Often, it's productive, and I realize a solution that I might not have otherwise; but mostly it's bothersome and steals sleep from me AND I NEED MY SEVEN HOURS. I don't dream, I problem solve: the saddest bumper sticker ever.

I will admit that a part of me likes this busyness, it makes me feel integral to the organization, important, yadda yadda. I like making decisions, having knowledge, finding solutions to problems, helping people if I can. But I'm doing the work of at least two people (and not making as much as either one of them did), and in general the people I am dependent on to get my products done (but don't have direct management of) continue to underwhelm and disappoint. Occasionally when I step back and get a look at what I manage to accomplish despite the constant onslaught of shit, I'm amazed, and concerned for the future, because surely no one can be expected to maintain this insane pace against such odds for a sustained period of time? I see myself burning out in two years, tops.

Work to live or live to work? I used to resist the idea of work controlling my life, but I think I've not so much given in as given up on the idea of having a separate life from work. Who has time for a separate life when you can be expected to take a phone call even on vacation, or when the payback for taking a vacation is almost not worth the vacation? Who I am is what I do, what I do is who I am. The snake eats itself, the end.

50%

Lately I've been traveling a lot more than usual for work. A colleague of mine recently vacated her position, and the description they posted of her job now reads '50% travel during high sales season.' What the fuck does that mean? Every season is high sales season. Due to the random class starts at career schools, it's always adoption decision time somewhere. 

I have 6 trips in 6 weeks. Some are a couple of days, others are three plus. It seems a tad excessive for someone who's job is to develop products, not sell them.

And yet this is now what my job has become. It's fine for now, but I do not see myself doing this next year. I'm a mother, but that's meaningless in the corporate world. You're not allowed to complain, you have to pretend you have no attachments, no one who cares if you're home or not. If I mention that I'd like to travel less, I'll get invisibly, insidiously black-balled. We are all busy, no one cares.

That is, no one cares but me. It is up to me to start saying no, and come up with reasons that sound valid, you know, other than, 'I feel like I'm missing out on large chunks of my daughter's development.' I have 8 trips a year for conferences alone, before any additional sales travel. I need to somehow emphasize that my time spent working in products is just as valid as traveling to sell those products. Either that, or become an actual sales rep and make some real money.

Plastic is Bad, m'kay?

Plastic creeps me out. The more I think about plastic, the more it bothers me, and the more helpless I feel in the face of it. Our modern world pretty much depends on plastic, and on the petroleum it is made from. There's a documentary on Netflix called Plastic Planet, which just confirms what I already knew:  plastic is convenient and handy, in some forms, durable and dutiful; but it's also disposable and deadly. Microscopic bits of it are in the ocean. Fish eat it, we eat it, and who can say what it's doing to us at a cellular level.

Take a moment to take stock of the things around you that contain some form of plastic. I'll start: laptop, iPhone, iPhone case, speakers, water bottle (BPA-free of course), the dress and shoes I'm wearing, planner, calculator, lampshade, office chair, fake succulents, textbooks, walls, picture frames, carpet, purse, raincoat, nail file, stapler, pens, scissors, medicine bottle, lotion bottle...

You get the point. Plastic is literally everywhere. I'm not denying that it is an ingenious invention, without which our modern lives would not be possible (thank you, Science). What I bemoan is the sheer waste of plastic that happens at the most basic levels of life, everyday, by everyone. Our keen desire for plastic goods is unquenchable, and so is our ineluctable disdain of it.

Plastic bags--we know they're bad. Bringing reusable bags to the store makes you feel like you're making a difference, but for every one of us who brings reusable bags when they shop, there are countless others getting a plastic bag for that single quart of milk at Walmart. Recycling--we do it mindlessly, but does it help if not everyone has to participate? It's not the law in some states--my mother chooses not to recycle in Louisiana (and it kills and exhilarates me to just throw stuff away when I visit her). And what's the big picture here--does recycling help at all really anyway? And what's up with all of the plastic stuff that isn't recyclable? Like all the stupidly useless blister packaging that you get when you buy batteries, a toy, or an electronics item? Thinking about this stuff makes me crazy!

Toys are the worst. They are all made of plastic, all of them have a 'do not throw away' (trashcan with a line through it) symbol on the back--but they're not recyclable, so what can you do? The only thing you can really do to stem the tide is to have garage sales and donate items once you're done with them. My abhorrence of plastic goes hand-in-hand with my belief that you shouldn't pay full-price for all kid toys, especially when you KNOW that perfectly good used ones are out there at consignment stores or through Craigslist. Why would I willingly pay top-dollar and generate more plastic in the world, when there is plenty of used plastic already in the world that I can partake of cheaply? I just don't get it people.

But as a parent to a toddler, I'm becoming increasingly aware of how not just much plastic shit people buy for their kids, but how much shit they buy for their kids, period. Playhouses and other yard toys, toy kitchens, pools, water tables, sandboxes, plastic dinner sets, plastic food, plastic vehicles, plastic blocks, etc etc. I get wanting to provide your kid with toys, and hey, it's not your fault that everything's made of plastic! What I don't understand is why everyone has to have their own versions of everything in the universe. We take our girl to a public park to enjoy swings, slides, and whatnot. We have two nice parks about 5-10 minutes from our house by car. I see no need to get my own swing, or slide, or jungle gym. We have a small yard, so acquiring lots of yard toys is not in our immediate future. But even if I had an enormous yard, filling it with plastic lawn toys would most certainly not be in my plan.

Utilizing shared public resources used to be more of an ideal than it seems to be today--maybe it is the whole city versus suburbs thing--but it seems to me that sharing of resources is a good idea, but suburbia generally has a different mindset. Instead of creating public parks that many people can utilize, we must all shoulder the burden of individually acquiring exactly everything. Nevermind that your neighbor has a swimming pool and has given you an open invitation to come swim anytime--you too must spend 70K to acquire your own pool! No one wants to share or be forced to interact with others on any level for any reason. Need I point out that this is not sustainable behavior for the human race?

My daughter likes to swing, so my sister-in-law thinks that we need a swing, like yesterday. She's currently trying to foist off her old rusty backyard swing on us so that we can use it as some sort of frame for the Jerry-rigged baby swing that she thinks we need to build so our child isn't deprived of swinging for one minute. My SIL is of the mindset that if your kid loves it, you absolutely MUST have one of your own. First of all, I don't think we need to buy or reverse-engineer a swing just because our daughter enjoys swinging. I never had a swingset as a child and I never felt deprived! However we have seen my SIL's theory in practice as her own kids have grown up. They once had a giant blow-up bouncy castle that filled an entire room, and now, they have a giant blow-up outdoor water slide with its own electric air blower (cost: $400). She keeps saying that it will be ours next year because her kids will have reached the weight limits on it. How do you tell someone that you don't WANT their giant yard toy/monstrosity?? It would easily take up half my yard. I do kind of need to live in my own house, thank you very much. I already know that our refusal of this 'gift' will end with, 'but you can store it deflated in your already-filled garage until such time as you move and have a yard big enough.' Or, my translation: Just take our shit and shut up!

Kid toys really exemplify what I believe is the fundamental oxymoronic point I want to make about plastic products: they are something that people are willing to pay top-dollar for when new, but since plastic goods quickly become devalued, there is potentially a ton of plastic kid crap lurking around in landfills. But instead of stemming the tide of plastic waste through our own power as consumers, our consumer culture is so screwed up that it thinks, why would you get that used plastic playhouse when you could buy your kid a brand-new one for $150? Plus, don't your kids deserve a new one, as if used things are automatically worthless because they can't convey value the way brand-new items can. Everything in our consumer culture is all about the honorifics of being able to pay for something, no matter how senseless it is, and the ostensible guilt that comes from not being able to afford lots of new things. I call bullshit. I want my kid to have toys, I want to save money, AND be cognizant of the plastic I bring into the world. We got a playhouse for $15, and a kitchen set for $10. Both are in fantastic condition. When it comes time to dispose of these items years from now, we will donate them. So there.

As a culture, we simultaneously desire and abhor cheap goods. People like to save money; I would argue that we also need to be aware of expending less plastic into the world. But it's much easier/efficient/satisfying to shop for new things in a store than it is to hit garage sales or consignment sales, even though you can get the same items for a fraction of the cost if you put in a little effort. It is precisely because all plastic becomes devalued at some point (either at point of sale because the item is 'cheap' or later on because an item is worn out) that we should be more mindful about what we purchase; the more new stuff we buy, the more we corroborate the creation of wasteful plastic. Parents should know that there is a large pile of perfectly nice, used kid toys out there; I just hope they're partaking of them when they can.

The Daily 'Dislike'

Things that happen in real life often piss me off, and I am not one to mince words--but often I feel constrained--by my job, politeness, relatedness, what have you--from expressing my true thoughts about these things, so I create rants in my head that (to me) sound like the rants of a stand-up comic (or a crazy person--fine line there). So I'm going to start recording them here. For my own sanity. Here goes.

Facebook

1.

You know I am continually amazed at the ridiculously personal shit that women of all ages share with the internet, unbidden. I scheduled a Facebook invite for my birthday that included one 20-year old from my Zumba class. At the last minute she couldn’t go, but instead of just changing her response to ‘no’ and telling me a reason later, she posts, ‘Hey, I have a mouth infection so I won’t be able to make it tonight.’ Really? You needed to reveal THAT to 20 people you don’t know who are also on my invite? Plus, despite what you think, I really didn’t need to know that. Where is the shame??


2.
How about when people post something clever/humorous on Facebook, and everyone is all, ‘oh I’m going to steal THAT,’ and they lick the screen because they can't like it enough. And then they re-post it and people compliment them like they wrote the fucking thing. I posted an article on FB this week and one of my work ‘friends’ asked me in person if he could re-post it on LinkedIn. My response? ‘Uh yeah, sure, dude, I didn’t write it.’ I just want to scream at these people, ‘just because you post something on Facebook doesn’t mean you own it or are in some way due compliments for its content! You know that 'some e-card' you posted last week about drinking wine out of a purse? Yeah you found that shit online, in fact you’re like the 10th person who posted it this week in my feed. So original. Unless you wrote a hilarious status update, you don’t get credit for re-posting something that someone else created. Get over yourself.

3.

Have you noticed that women of a certain mindset loooove posting self-righteous quotations? You know the type--they typically contain some generic feel-good sentiment that falls into one of three major categories: 1. the lobotomized religious quote that reassures the paranoid delusionals that Jesus is everywhere; 2. some passive-aggressive bs about relationships that obviously reveals they've been burned in some way; or 3. being unafraid to be the strong woman you already are but can't be because you're hemmed in by society/yourhusband/yourkids/yourdog.

I say ‘women of a certain mindset’ now instead of 'a certain age' because just when I was formulating my theory that all women over 45 think the point of Facebook is to post asinine shit, I friended someone from my exercise class who just turned 30, and SHE PUTS THEM ALL TO SHAME. These women post the HELL outta that shit, with no apologies. IMO, they are ABUSING the internet and should be blocked from Facebook. Forever. Posting a gagillion quotations is usually a one-way ticket to 'I WILL HIDE YOU'-ville, but lately I've started unhiding these people because I wanted to start analyzing this shit. You know, for educational purposes.

Take a look at a handful of posts from yesterday's feeds:

The editor in me sneers at this one because it could have benefited from a little restraint. The text runs into the people, for chrissakes, and the word 'class' is used twice. I don't think half the people who re-post these someecard gems realize that ANYONE can create their own some-e-card. Thank god.

These hastily-handwritten ones are making the rounds lately. I imagine the author was so inspired that he/she just didn't have time to properly fashion their quote using one of the many sites on the Internet, they only had time to take pen to paper and take a picture with their phone. Such was the nature of their inspiration.

I like how this one is actually credited to someone, to lend it an air of credibility. Here, we have a narrator who is clearly the subject of her own novel, because she thinks by declaring something should be so, it makes it so. And way to foster the stereotype that all women in leadership positions should start as annoying little bitches.

Really?! I am?? Well I'm glad someone noticed, even if it's just me, posting this and then reading it back to myself on Facebook. If this is true, why don't more people choose to be single?

No, the smile on your face means you've either been lobotomized or you're a smug son-of-a-bitch. I'll go with the latter.

Oh I'm not afraid of being myself. What I'm afraid of is this woman getting splinters from humping a broom.

The best for last. One of the commenters on this one actually sums it up the best:

In case you can't read it: "Sociopaths believe and act on these impulses not rational people." A-MEN! So there are some rational people still out there. Good to know.

And if you can read the first few comments above, apparently women fall down and intentionally cut themselves on posts like this so they can share with TOTAL STRANGERS how something bad happened to them once. Well thank GOD you overshared that with me otherwise I would have never known that I hurt your feelings with my random comment, total stranger!

Full circle.

Rant of the Day: Papal Rage

You know what I'm sick of? People saying shit all over Facebook for the past week about how this new pope might be better, sounds good/promising, whatever blah blah FUCKIN' blah. You know what I desperately want to comment on their shit to shut them up?? 

Hey there, he's STILL ANTI-GAY, ANTI-ABORTION, ANTI-BIRTH CONTROL muthafuckas, because he's a CATHOLIC POPE for fuck's sake!! What do you expect?? It's a vestigial religion that needs to DIE. It is no longer relevant, even to its current practitioners.

You know when I'll have hope? When they decide to do away with POPES, that's when.

Ok, I'm done.