why do i love boston?
well, the obvious answer is that a) it's a liberal enclave (no, mommy, i do NOT want to live elsewhere in the country to see how the other side thinks or build character or whatever) and b) it snows! what more could you want?!?
but, really it's...
...because at 1 am on a cold, damp sunday night/monday morning, after a 5.5 hour game, all but a handful of the 39,000+ fans who had been crammed into fenway were still there to witness the sox's heartbreaking loss in game 3 of the alds (the first layer of the postseason).
...because as dustin pedroia, who at one point during the regular season had a series batting average of .1000 (freaking amazing) and was 0-17 (.000) in the postseason (aka in 17 at bats, he had produced no hits...no bueno) stepped up to the plate, he did so to emphatic chants of "MVP". (incidentally, he then crushed the ball off the monster to drive in a run and bring the score to 2-0, sox).
...because any time there's a game on, there's a crowd standing on the sidewalk or sitting in the chairs outside cardullo's in harvard square, watching The Game on the flat screen TV that faces the sidewalk and only comes on for sox games.
...because any time, any where (especially the green line), chants of "yankees suck!" are sure to be returned with enthusiasm.
...because the entire city knows the words (and sings along to) a one-hit wonder's 1966 punk rock song that never charted higher than #11 ("dirty water", by the standells, is the red sox victory anthem, played after every home win).
...because no matter what happens in september (and hopefully october), come april, we're ready to fall in love all over again.
go sox!!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
"it's not money; it's coins!"
in the nature vs. nurture debate, i'd like to cast a very strong vote for neither. you see, two people with the same biological parents, raised in the same household, under the same rules, should, if either of those constructs hold at all, have at least one thing in common. one. something. anything.
as individuals, there will, of course, be some differences but nature and/or nurture would seem to dictate that there would be at least one similarity.
as it turns out, there exists a pair of biologically-related, same house raised, exact opposites.
while one if off chasing down coins to cure cancer, the other is turning her nose up at retrieving the coins from the restaurant floor that landed there when her designer purse got knocked over. while one delights in the maintenance-free life of a honda owner, the other has "bad luck" when it comes to her turbo-charged european sports car staying in one, undamaged piece. while one regularly has dinner with a friend made in kindergarten, the other changes friends more often than she changes her thong underwear.
so while this is only an n of 1, it's a pretty strong freakin' n. and if 2 is a pattern, then surely 1 is more than enough to toss out a construct that has always been problematic and hotly contested, at best. no?
then again, maybe one of the best hospitals in the world just isn't that good at keeping track of which baby belongs to whom...
as individuals, there will, of course, be some differences but nature and/or nurture would seem to dictate that there would be at least one similarity.
as it turns out, there exists a pair of biologically-related, same house raised, exact opposites.
while one if off chasing down coins to cure cancer, the other is turning her nose up at retrieving the coins from the restaurant floor that landed there when her designer purse got knocked over. while one delights in the maintenance-free life of a honda owner, the other has "bad luck" when it comes to her turbo-charged european sports car staying in one, undamaged piece. while one regularly has dinner with a friend made in kindergarten, the other changes friends more often than she changes her thong underwear.
so while this is only an n of 1, it's a pretty strong freakin' n. and if 2 is a pattern, then surely 1 is more than enough to toss out a construct that has always been problematic and hotly contested, at best. no?
then again, maybe one of the best hospitals in the world just isn't that good at keeping track of which baby belongs to whom...
Sunday, August 24, 2008
is it bad if it's only a little?
recently i've been mulling the idea that some times things that are Bad Ideas are also necessary.
now hear me out on this one...
sometimes in order to go from being an absorbing, consuming Bad Idea, one needs to stop trying to shove the Bad Idea into a little box to be stashed away in the far corners of one's mind long enough to just go with it. not completely and not without knowing that it's a Bad Idea, but go with it. just enough to take the mystique-fueled wind out of its sails. just enough to reassure yourself that the world will go on even if you do the one thing you're convinced will grind the earth to a screeching halt.
you can't do it to convince yourself that it's a good idea after all. you can't do it on the spur of the moment (unless you've already thought about it). you can't do it unless you can honestly tell yourself that you'll be ok with the consequences (which you've considered).
but sometimes you just have to do it.
now hear me out on this one...
sometimes in order to go from being an absorbing, consuming Bad Idea, one needs to stop trying to shove the Bad Idea into a little box to be stashed away in the far corners of one's mind long enough to just go with it. not completely and not without knowing that it's a Bad Idea, but go with it. just enough to take the mystique-fueled wind out of its sails. just enough to reassure yourself that the world will go on even if you do the one thing you're convinced will grind the earth to a screeching halt.
you can't do it to convince yourself that it's a good idea after all. you can't do it on the spur of the moment (unless you've already thought about it). you can't do it unless you can honestly tell yourself that you'll be ok with the consequences (which you've considered).
but sometimes you just have to do it.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
an open letter to the people in charge
dear people in charge,
why must you suck so much? is it that the 5,983 hours of "management training" that you've been forced to endure have turned your brain into pulverized spaghetti? is it that you've 'paid your dues' and now must force top-down insanity on those below you? or is it, perhaps most terrifying of all, that you really think that's a good idea?
if it's one of the first two, i really can't help you. your problem is beyond my purview, and probably beyond that of even the most skilled neurosurgeon or mad doctor. but if it's the latter, then i think i just might have a solution to the problem of not knowing what would be best for something you're not working on. ready? here's it is (listen carefully, it's tricky): ASK THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING ON IT!!! if you want, we could even do it true or false style; everyone likes true or false. here, i'll give you an example to show you just how fun and effective it can be:
-true or false, that research study that you're trying to find a host event for requires the participants who enlist to be at least 30 years old?
-true or false, 80% of the participants at event x are under 18?
-true or false, event x would be a good place to host that research study?
see how easy it is to decide what to do when you ask the people who will h'actually have to do it???
if only your management training had been 5,984 hours long...
love,
everyone
why must you suck so much? is it that the 5,983 hours of "management training" that you've been forced to endure have turned your brain into pulverized spaghetti? is it that you've 'paid your dues' and now must force top-down insanity on those below you? or is it, perhaps most terrifying of all, that you really think that's a good idea?
if it's one of the first two, i really can't help you. your problem is beyond my purview, and probably beyond that of even the most skilled neurosurgeon or mad doctor. but if it's the latter, then i think i just might have a solution to the problem of not knowing what would be best for something you're not working on. ready? here's it is (listen carefully, it's tricky): ASK THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING ON IT!!! if you want, we could even do it true or false style; everyone likes true or false. here, i'll give you an example to show you just how fun and effective it can be:
-true or false, that research study that you're trying to find a host event for requires the participants who enlist to be at least 30 years old?
-true or false, 80% of the participants at event x are under 18?
-true or false, event x would be a good place to host that research study?
see how easy it is to decide what to do when you ask the people who will h'actually have to do it???
if only your management training had been 5,984 hours long...
love,
everyone
Monday, July 14, 2008
nyt: wtf?
file under: the liberal bastion that wasn't...
the 6.22.08 issue of the new york times magazine was full of carefully worded, thoroughly researched, non-hegemonic gems. here are a few for your enjoyment:
-in his article, "the new pariahs? sixty years after the holocaust, europe still may not have learned to accept outsiders", noah feldman (a 38 year old harvard, oxford, and yale educated white man living in cambridge, ma) accuses europe of being racist, basically. he says that in western europe, old school anti-immigration sentiment is morphing into an anti-islamic bias. he cites supporting examples before offering up that, "the u.s. had its own terrible legacy of legalized racism in the form of jim crow laws, which hitler imitated for his own purposes. in the aftermath of world war II, however, we began slowly and agonizingly to come to terms with this past. racial bias is still with us, but so is self-consciousness about our problems and how they must be overcome."
hooray, the white man from cambridge says racism is over! hey cell block 4, did you hear that? racism is over so quit complaining about the higher incarceration rates of black men, the difference in length of time it takes one to reach for their gun when faced with black vs. white perpetrators in simulation exercises, and the like...
-in a featurette on male floral designer daniel ost, ost shares with readers how his father was "less enthusiastic" about his young son's early predilection for flowers. he says, "'when i was young, many people thought floral design was gay so to "cure" me, he sent me for a while to military school.' (ost is happily married and the father of two.)"
thank you, new york times, for establishing that ost is... happily married and the father of two.
oh, wait, did you mean to establish that he's not gay? 'cause that isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with this whole "married father" thing. crazy, i know...
-in a article praising jim rogers for being such an environmentally-friendly big energy (coal) company baron, the nyt paraphrases his prediction that, "coal will never go away, because it's cheap and more accessible than any other energy source."
pop quiz, mine workers (those that aren't dead already or currently trapped in a mine, that is): raise your hand if you think there's a more accessible form of energy. no? no hands? well great then, it's settled, coal is the most accessible form of energy.
(or the mine workers' arms were all too tired to raise their hands since they'd just come off their 4,680th 12-hour shift digging coal out of a mine hundreds of feet below the ground. we don't really want to press this though, lest we give the impression that we care about the value of a human life. after all, if we did that, we might find out more about these workers, like how they'd been stealing coal dust by putting it in their lungs and then we'd have to fire the whole lot of them and then where would we be? awfully cold in our mcmansion, that's where! no, no, we can't have that. this little democratic exercise is over, back underground you go!)
the 6.22.08 issue of the new york times magazine was full of carefully worded, thoroughly researched, non-hegemonic gems. here are a few for your enjoyment:
-in his article, "the new pariahs? sixty years after the holocaust, europe still may not have learned to accept outsiders", noah feldman (a 38 year old harvard, oxford, and yale educated white man living in cambridge, ma) accuses europe of being racist, basically. he says that in western europe, old school anti-immigration sentiment is morphing into an anti-islamic bias. he cites supporting examples before offering up that, "the u.s. had its own terrible legacy of legalized racism in the form of jim crow laws, which hitler imitated for his own purposes. in the aftermath of world war II, however, we began slowly and agonizingly to come to terms with this past. racial bias is still with us, but so is self-consciousness about our problems and how they must be overcome."
hooray, the white man from cambridge says racism is over! hey cell block 4, did you hear that? racism is over so quit complaining about the higher incarceration rates of black men, the difference in length of time it takes one to reach for their gun when faced with black vs. white perpetrators in simulation exercises, and the like...
-in a featurette on male floral designer daniel ost, ost shares with readers how his father was "less enthusiastic" about his young son's early predilection for flowers. he says, "'when i was young, many people thought floral design was gay so to "cure" me, he sent me for a while to military school.' (ost is happily married and the father of two.)"
thank you, new york times, for establishing that ost is... happily married and the father of two.
oh, wait, did you mean to establish that he's not gay? 'cause that isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with this whole "married father" thing. crazy, i know...
-in a article praising jim rogers for being such an environmentally-friendly big energy (coal) company baron, the nyt paraphrases his prediction that, "coal will never go away, because it's cheap and more accessible than any other energy source."
pop quiz, mine workers (those that aren't dead already or currently trapped in a mine, that is): raise your hand if you think there's a more accessible form of energy. no? no hands? well great then, it's settled, coal is the most accessible form of energy.
(or the mine workers' arms were all too tired to raise their hands since they'd just come off their 4,680th 12-hour shift digging coal out of a mine hundreds of feet below the ground. we don't really want to press this though, lest we give the impression that we care about the value of a human life. after all, if we did that, we might find out more about these workers, like how they'd been stealing coal dust by putting it in their lungs and then we'd have to fire the whole lot of them and then where would we be? awfully cold in our mcmansion, that's where! no, no, we can't have that. this little democratic exercise is over, back underground you go!)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
something to which i can aspire...
bill bryson is fantastic. in the following passage from his memoir about growing up in the 50s, the life and times of the thunderbolt kid, he fondly recalls his days of constructing models...
"at least candy gave actual pleasure. most things that were supposed to be fun turned out to be not fun at all. model making, for instance. making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable but it was really just a mysterious ordeal that you had to go through from time to time as part of the boyhood process. the model kits looked fun. the illustrations on the boxes portrayed beautifully detailed fighter pilots belching red-and-yellow flames from their wing guns and engaged in lively dogfights. in the background there was always a stricken messerschmitt spiraling to earth with a dismayed german in the cockpit, shouting bitter epithets through the windscreen. you couldn't wait to recreate such lively scenes in three dimensions.
"but when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. the tubes of glue by contrast were the size of pretty large pastry tubes. no matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object--a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal--and become an infinitely long string.
"any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or world war II. the only thing the glue wouldn't stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other; never drying. the upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn't give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else."
though it is possible you and you editor have some slight verb agreement deficiencies and a loathing for commas that i do not share, you are wonderful bill bryson and i beseech you to write more. a lot more. in the meantime, i will read your novels that are not about growing up in the 50s or australia (i.e. the other 9 books in your catalogue that are not dictionaries or illustrated books). i'm a fast reader though so get to it!
"at least candy gave actual pleasure. most things that were supposed to be fun turned out to be not fun at all. model making, for instance. making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable but it was really just a mysterious ordeal that you had to go through from time to time as part of the boyhood process. the model kits looked fun. the illustrations on the boxes portrayed beautifully detailed fighter pilots belching red-and-yellow flames from their wing guns and engaged in lively dogfights. in the background there was always a stricken messerschmitt spiraling to earth with a dismayed german in the cockpit, shouting bitter epithets through the windscreen. you couldn't wait to recreate such lively scenes in three dimensions.
"but when you got the kit home and opened the box the contents turned out to be of a uniform leaden gray or olive green, consisting of perhaps sixty thousand tiny parts, some no larger than a proton, all attached in some organic, inseparable way to plastic stalks like swizzle sticks. the tubes of glue by contrast were the size of pretty large pastry tubes. no matter how gently you depressed them they would blurp out a pint or so of a clear viscous goo whose one instinct was to attach itself to some foreign object--a human finger, the living-room drapes, the fur of a passing animal--and become an infinitely long string.
"any attempt to break the string resulted in the creation of more strings. within moments you would be attached to hundreds of sagging strands, all connected to something that had nothing to do with model airplanes or world war II. the only thing the glue wouldn't stick to, interestingly, was a piece of plastic model; then it just became a slippery lubricant that allowed any two pieces of model to glide endlessly over each other; never drying. the upshot was that after about forty minutes of intensive but troubled endeavor you and your immediate surroundings were covered in a glistening spiderweb of glue at the heart of which was a gray fuselage with one wing on upside down and a pilot accidentally but irremediably attached by his flying cap to the cockpit ceiling. happily by this point you were so high on the glue that you didn't give a shit about the pilot, the model, or anything else."
though it is possible you and you editor have some slight verb agreement deficiencies and a loathing for commas that i do not share, you are wonderful bill bryson and i beseech you to write more. a lot more. in the meantime, i will read your novels that are not about growing up in the 50s or australia (i.e. the other 9 books in your catalogue that are not dictionaries or illustrated books). i'm a fast reader though so get to it!
Sunday, July 6, 2008
to rent or to buy?
there comes a time in most individuals' lives where they have to decide whether to rent or to buy a living space. as this is not a financially small decision, many people take to making lists to delineate the pros and cons of each domestic situation. this list can often grow to be quite long as there is no shortage of considerations.
for example, if you have no idea what you're going to be doing a year from now, buying a property is usually ill advised. if you are part of the fortunate few who do have a clue, then now is a great time to screw a current homeowner who is looking to sell for reasons that could only be described as incredibly desperate*, given the market.
another issue many people consider when drawing up their little two column lists is maintenance. many people who are disinclined to maintain their property and/or born with hooves for hands often place maintenance (or, rather, the lack thereof required of them) in the pro column for renting.
while this is a popular notion, it is, at times, a false one. while renters often enter the agreement thinking that maintenance will be sooo not their problem should a situation arise, the landlord is often a professional at dodging maintenance. it’s like buying a car: the buyer is toast from the get-go because they’re going up against someone who screws people all day for a living.
so, given the terms of the lease, the landlord needs to be a little suave in their maintenance dodging. they can’t just come out and say “you live there and now it’s broken; that sounds like a personal problem. fix it your damn self.” (this is, incidentally, a large part of why i don’t ever foresee myself as a landlord...) what they can do, however, is make it *seem* like a big deal to clean and repair the gas stove that makes your apartment smell like gas when you turn it on such that when the pilot light gets too low to turn on half the burners and the smoke alarm goes off every time you turn the oven on, you don’t call them. it’s easier just to brainstorm desserts to bring to the party that don’t involve your oven.
or they can be so rude and unpleasant that when your kitchen sink completely backs up and all the Nastiness from the disposal is backing up into the adjacent sink, you decide that you would rather take apart all of the pipes below the sink, have filthy water spraying everywhere (including but not limited to into the bucket you placed below the pipes), clear the algae-esque Nastiness out of the pipes with your own hands, walk to the store to buy two bottles of harsh drain clearing chemicals that you don’t believe in (including “foaming pipe snake” – woohoo!), and then, only then, when 24 hours have passed and one sink still backs up with filthy water when you run water into the other sink, do you call the maintenance guy that works for your landlord (who is also, incidentally, a big jerkface).
and then there are the blamers. the blamers are the landlords that blame the tenants for anything that goes wrong, regardless of how preposterous the assertion is. for example, if a rickety old wooden fence is found disheveled on the ground after a particularly gusty windstorm, then it must have been that the 24-year-old young professional women that live in the house were playing on the fence and that’s what brought it down. clearly.
so next time you find yourself with pen in hand, scratching out a list of pros and cons, do be careful as to in which column you place seemingly obviously categorizable attributes, lest you find yourself fanning the smoke alarm with algae/last night’s dinner flying off your fingers wishing, “if only i could call the repairman myself and have someone competent take care of this once and for all!”...
*addendum: or a result of phD-induced psychosis, apparently...
for example, if you have no idea what you're going to be doing a year from now, buying a property is usually ill advised. if you are part of the fortunate few who do have a clue, then now is a great time to screw a current homeowner who is looking to sell for reasons that could only be described as incredibly desperate*, given the market.
another issue many people consider when drawing up their little two column lists is maintenance. many people who are disinclined to maintain their property and/or born with hooves for hands often place maintenance (or, rather, the lack thereof required of them) in the pro column for renting.
while this is a popular notion, it is, at times, a false one. while renters often enter the agreement thinking that maintenance will be sooo not their problem should a situation arise, the landlord is often a professional at dodging maintenance. it’s like buying a car: the buyer is toast from the get-go because they’re going up against someone who screws people all day for a living.
so, given the terms of the lease, the landlord needs to be a little suave in their maintenance dodging. they can’t just come out and say “you live there and now it’s broken; that sounds like a personal problem. fix it your damn self.” (this is, incidentally, a large part of why i don’t ever foresee myself as a landlord...) what they can do, however, is make it *seem* like a big deal to clean and repair the gas stove that makes your apartment smell like gas when you turn it on such that when the pilot light gets too low to turn on half the burners and the smoke alarm goes off every time you turn the oven on, you don’t call them. it’s easier just to brainstorm desserts to bring to the party that don’t involve your oven.
or they can be so rude and unpleasant that when your kitchen sink completely backs up and all the Nastiness from the disposal is backing up into the adjacent sink, you decide that you would rather take apart all of the pipes below the sink, have filthy water spraying everywhere (including but not limited to into the bucket you placed below the pipes), clear the algae-esque Nastiness out of the pipes with your own hands, walk to the store to buy two bottles of harsh drain clearing chemicals that you don’t believe in (including “foaming pipe snake” – woohoo!), and then, only then, when 24 hours have passed and one sink still backs up with filthy water when you run water into the other sink, do you call the maintenance guy that works for your landlord (who is also, incidentally, a big jerkface).
and then there are the blamers. the blamers are the landlords that blame the tenants for anything that goes wrong, regardless of how preposterous the assertion is. for example, if a rickety old wooden fence is found disheveled on the ground after a particularly gusty windstorm, then it must have been that the 24-year-old young professional women that live in the house were playing on the fence and that’s what brought it down. clearly.
so next time you find yourself with pen in hand, scratching out a list of pros and cons, do be careful as to in which column you place seemingly obviously categorizable attributes, lest you find yourself fanning the smoke alarm with algae/last night’s dinner flying off your fingers wishing, “if only i could call the repairman myself and have someone competent take care of this once and for all!”...
*addendum: or a result of phD-induced psychosis, apparently...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
