Crenellated Flotsam

It’s neither profound nor particularly insightful to realize that attitude is everything in life, but that’s unlikely to stop me from posting about it.

Some time ago I took one of those personality tests, and if it was on the Internet than it must have been in the past fifteen years. That would be even more frightening, not because I was seeking wisdom from some website, but because by that time in life I’d already gone through my marriage, risen to middle-management, and had successfully “completed” more than one program designed to treat my ills. Still, if that’s when it happened, that may explain why I call myself a slow learner.

But none of that matters.

The only question I remember from the test wasn’t particulary hard: it was about my favorite color. Answering that was a snap, but the explanation disturbed me. Picking gray as my favorite color, according to them, meant that I was indecisive, and that answer has disturbed me ever since.

I don’t like to think of myself as indecisive, but there you have it. I’m wishy-washy, unable to resolve things or commit, and very likely to end up as road kill. The worst thing about it is that I had a hunch it was true.

When I was in high school I ran across some psych book that talked about inferiority complexes, and I was pleased and eager to claim that label. It gave me something to be, something others would understand, and by doing so, solved all my problems.

I was less encouraged to find out, years later, that I was incapable of making timely decisions, or any at all, and that’s been a private shame for years. The more I experienced, the more I could see it, though, and I spent not a little time trying to be decisive. The results weren’t encouraging, but I’d be damned if I wanted to go through life not making up my mind about anything.

Then, yesterday, it struck me. I was watching Michael Schumacher’s last race and my company was seeing every event unfold and immediately explaining it. No matter what happened, the event was seen as justification for pre-conceived opinions, was viewed only as an example for previously held beliefs, and I was enlightened.

Some people, it seems, have this world all figured out. When they see something new, they strive for an answer and compare the new experience to what they’ve already decided. They’re looking for answers, and use the fodder of existence as it were to prop up their beliefs.

I don’t do that, not so much.

As I mulled this over I realized that, instead of answers, I take things in for the purpose of asking questions. I don’t particularly care what the answer is, nor am I in any hurry to resolve them, but I just love answering the question in as many ways as possible. I’m happiest when asking questions and not all that concerned with the outcome.

When there are multiple answers to a question, and I think that’s almost always the case, I quickly think no one answer is better than the others. Any one of them works to support a world view, but I’m not as convinced that any particular world view is inherently better than another. You can describe the beauty of a sunrise in religious terms or scientific ones, as a model for art or symbolic of some human condition, such as renewal, and every one of the answers is as good as the next. It just depends.

While I’m still less than happy with being indecisive, I can take solace in seeing it as just saying that I like asking questions more than answering them. Sure, we can come up with answers, but I’m not sure that’s the point.

I don’t spend all my time being interviewed for Donavan’s website. Sometimes I read the fine print on political ads.

Years ago there was a comedian who was pointing out the absurdity of the name of some group like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, joking that they were logically fighting some non-existant pro-drunk-driving lobby. I think of that whenever I hear about some group, mentally concocting their opposite and seeing if it makes any sense.

Among other places, this is evident in the fight over a woman’s right to have an abortion. On the one hand we have Pro-Life, on the other Pro-Choice. By labeling their movements as such, in one stroke, they demean and ridicule the opposition. No sane person would be opposed to life, and no rational person would be against choice. The implication, obviously, is that if you’re not pro-life, you’re against it, an untenable position. Or, if you’re not pro-life, you must be pro-death, an even less appetizing position.

Since the political ads on television are how many people decide how to vote, there are tons of ‘em at right now. My favorites are the ones for the propositions, which invariably paint a gloomy view of what will happen if they’re not passed or defeated. What strikes me funny is that these show up every election, but I never notice after the election if they passed or not, and life, pretty much, continues the same. It’s a lot of hyperbole, sure, because that’s what gets our attention, but on a practical note I don’t have any idea what happened to last election’s Indian Gaming things, whose ads either threatened the downfall of civilization or some unimaginably bright and glowing future.

Whatever happened, it doesn’t seem to have affected my life, but I’ve little doubt billions of dollars have changed hands.

The tiny print at the end of these ads list the groups who paid for the ads, and there’s not a one of them that doesn’t contain something like “Concerned Citizens for Decency,” or some such laughable name. Obviously, if I don’t support their position I’m either against decency, or unconcerned. If they’re not “concerned,” they’re “responsible” or something similar, and I find that insulting.

“We’re the concerned ones,” they imply, “and if you’re not with us you just can’t care.” If you label your own side as something categorically decent, anyone who questions your view is necessarily loathsome. “We’re the good guys, by definition,” they proclaim, “so you really can’t go against us.”

Words are very powerful things, and labels even moreso. I guess it gets those who use them more power or props up their cause, but I can’t help laughing when their label is chosen to make me look bad. In the last week alone I’ve been painted as apathetic, unreasonable, and irresponsible, but only passively and not to my face.

And, yet, I don’t feel any different than I did last weekend.

Yesterday I met my new dental student, who may be more properly referred to as my replacement dental student.

I didn’t have any appointments during the previous quarter because of some mixup, and the first thing I heard when this current quarter began was from Shervin, who told me that my case was going to another dental student. I wasn’t sure why, but Jun soon called and we made arrangements for an appointment.

After some scheduling difficulties, for which he apologized, he looked in my mouth and through my folder. Another dental student, who reminded me quite a bit of Chris Baty of National Novel Writing Month fame, was there, which doubled my shame, and I spent the next couple hours wishing I were elsewhere, preferably somewhere in the afterlife.

“Are you scared?” I was asked.

“I wouldn’t use that word.”

“Anxious?”

“More like embarrassed. Ashamed,” I told them.

I was told not to worry, that they saw the worst of dental detrius, and that by seeing so much they no longer noticed. That makes sense, since I think humans become used to anything and end up seeing their work as just that. Ambulance drivers, emergency personnel, all are confronted daily with things that would squick me out, but I guess only the more horrific cases make them sit up and take notice.

The “Chris Baty” dental student did say that they’d just attented a lecture where some medico demonstrated that smoking causes as many dental problems as poor care by the patients, and I wisely chose not to point that only of them looks really cool, though (and I wasn’t referring to having fuzzy teeth).

Briefly, everything done by Shervin is, for God knows what reason, null and void. Another meeting with the ATP (Advanced Treatment Program) dentists is scheduled for Halloween, which I find appropriate. Nothing is more frightening than dental plans. After a couple hours of having impressions made and my head measured again (110mm width between my ear canals), I was instructed to clean up and leave.

On the way down the stairs with Jun, he told me about coming to America from his home in the Philiipines and being filled with wonder at the sight of a stop light outside his window. His village had none. I may have embarrassed him a bit when I asked if he’d carried match boxes with fighting spiders when he was growing up, but we parted on good terms with smiles and handshakes.

Many people are learning about dentistry, thanks to me. I predict good things for the next generation.

I see a lot of misspellings, grammar, and usage errors on Internet (frequently mine), and while I may cringe and wish to correct them, I don’t. No one likes the Grammar Nazis, and I’m all about being liked.

I do mention these things, though, when I’m asked to comment on someone’s writing or when I think someone might be interested in bettering their writing, but I have no idea if I’m at all helpful. I don’t know all the rules and make tons of mistakes on my own, but that doesn’t stop me from harshly judging people who confuse lose and loose or confuse comparatives (less and fewer, number and amount).

I don’t know exactly why, but I hate reading “amount of humans” or “less bodies” when humans are, in fact, countable and not measured and should take the other word. I use the distinction to separate writers into those who make me glow with pleasure and those who disappoint me, but they rarely know this.

People, of which I am one, often get all persnickity when they’re corrected, hence the Grammar Nazi response. What’s interesting in all this, I find, is that when it comes to hard science or factual areas, people are free to correct errors. There’s a distinction between correcting someone’s mistake in the number of DNA genes and their saying there are less of them than another species, and I find that odd.

We usually let people tell us we’re wrong when they correct us on scientific matters, but can get all huffy and dismissive when we correct their English. To me, the two are very similar in that they’re both mistakes, but most people exhalt the sciences. Or, demean the humanitarian.

Grammatical errors are considered secondary, less important, more frivilous, and a whole bunch of things like that, and I find that curious. I wonder why. It may very well be that they are, but I find it something to wonder about.

A woman who grew up in France once told me that, as school children, kids who made mistakes in French would be teased and laughed at. I’m not sure that happens with English, not in America, so it may be as much a cultural thing as anything else. It’s true, I think, that in America we worship science and technology, but I’m not sure why that means demoting everything else. It may be that English has too many confusing rules, or that they’re not as cut and dried, or else we just don’t like feeling like we’re being picked on.

Unless, of course, what we’re being picked on is something cold and definitive, like 14.7

While not as tragic as the recent theft in Long Island, things in my neck of the woods aren’t good, either. It seems our palm trees are dying.

The good news, for those who care about such things, is that they’re being replaced by trees that are actually native to the area, but what’s the sense in having opposable thumbs and imagination if not to modify one’s surroundings? I’m by no means a fan of palm trees, which I consider to be useless for shade and little more than a home for rats, but they are one of the things film producers can use to instantly locate a scene as being in Los Angeles.

Also, they’re a reliable indicator of heavy winds. The day following a blustery night always contains wicked fronds on streets and in gutters, just waiting to upset bike riders or puncture tires.

In spite of my misgivings with them, like so much else in life, my distaste is tempered with a fuzzy, warm association. I once had a dog who’d been rescued (or, “found”) from living in the wilds of the Ballona wetlands. This dog, a shar-pei, was no more native to the area than any dog ever is, and was evidently either dropped off or ran away. For a couple weeks anyone driving along the coast could see him, and several attempts were made to capture him. Flyers were put up, alerting his owners to his whereabouts, but no one could grab the unfortunate dog from his home under a solitary palm tree.

Eventually, of course, like we all do, he succumbed to bacon.

He was the first dog to literally die in my arms, but all through our time together I’d think of his life in the wilds. If he could talk, which he couldn’t, I’m sure he’d have many thrilling tales to tell of that brief time, a time when he could be a dog and hunt and prowl and survive by his limited wits alone.

He had his own little palm tree, no more than three or four feet high, and now it may be dying, along with the others in LA.

Today, by some official estimations, the United States reached three hundred million people. That’s a lot. It’s also, coincidentally, the number of people in India thought to live below the line of poverty in that country.

As large as 300,000,000 is, though, there are probably some who think it’s not big enough to be considered a “very large number.” As a liberal arts major I, of course, am fascinated by the “Law of Very Large Numbers,” but that may be because I never took a class in statistics. I’ve melded the Law of Very Large Numbers, with my understanding of Chaos Theory and Quantum Mechanics to come up with a unified theory of my own:

Anything can happen, and probably will.

The Law actually explains things to me and keeps me from losing my mind. As I understand it, it simply says that if you have a whole helluva lotta samples, just about anything can result. If you take enough showers, sooner or later, against all reasonable expectations, you’ll think of Richard Nixon while scrubbing your armpits. It could be worse (he could show up while you’re masterbating), but the connection between being naked and a disgraced ex-president coming together is explained by the law and, more importantly, signifies nothing.

Sometimes, though, people object to the Law and demand this universe act in a reasonable and consistent fashion. I remember the heartache of the 2000 election, when many were demanding each and every vote be counted and their unreasonable belief that out of several million votes none of them would be questionable.

That was before I learned about the Law, but even then I remembered my mother who worked at the polls every year until I was out of high school. After a long day directing people to the proper booth she and her colleagues had to do a “quick count” for the media, and she’d usually come home talking about how anywhere from five to ten percent of the ballots weren’t clear. A large number of people, naturally, knew they’d ruined their ballot and had asked for replacements, but others either didn’t notice, felt their motivations must have made their choice clear, or were ashamed.

It’s not as if you can tell that they “took back” their vote or had some other second thoughts. They knew their intent, but it wasn’t always clear from evidence. And, given millions of ballots, there are always bound to be many where you just can’t tell.

The universe doesn’t always follow strict cause and effect. Human relations are frequently misinterpreted, and butterflies on the other end of the world are flapping their fragile wings without any concern for the ensuing effects.

All in all, it makes for a lively place. Still, it’s far too crowded for its own good.

It’s fall, which means I may occasionally be writing these entries in a sweater. But that’s not all.

Traditionally, this is when people start thinking about football, the World Series, and Halloween costumes. The other noteworthy event this fall is the upcoming elections, and that means tons of political ads on TV.

I really don’t know why they bother. Last I checked, the American public was deserting our representative democracy in droves and opting for the simpler Parliamentarian system. Instead of choosing candidates, an increasing number of people just vote straight party line tickets, perhaps because it’s less work.

I can see a certain virtue in that, too, but I still frequently throw my vote away on people not aligned and beholden to either of the main two parties.

As often as not, I vote against a candidate simply based on their commercials. I usually write them a letter, too, letting them know why. So far it’s done no good, but I like to let them know that, while I support their stances, I don’t take kindly to being manipulated or considered a fool.

This year the Democratic Party has discovered that a majority of Americans finally caught up with me and dislike George Bush, a man for whom I’ve never cast a vote. Many of the Democratic candidates here in California whom I’d like to win unfortunately have glomped onto this dislike and their ads contain little except pictures of their opponents smiling with the president.

Guilt by association.

I’m thinking someone at the DNC has determined this is the best way to insure a victory, but it turns me off. I was excited to see Jerry Brown, our former governor Moonbeam, was running for something this year and was all excited to put him back on the state payroll. Then, I saw an he, too, decided the best way to put forth his agenda was to show his Republican opponent smiling with Bush. Now it seems I’m once again forced to write a letter, this time to his campaign, and to throw away my vote on some Green or Libertarian guy who has no chance of winning.

I just wish the candidates would tell me how my life would be better if I voted for them.

I’ve never met the man, nor anyone who’s claimed to, but I bet when he wasn’t mucking about with geometric shapes Abraham Maslow was a decent enough sort. If he had kids, I bet he took them to the movies and bought them popcorn and cotton candy.

I’m not as high up as I’d like, but I’m trying to be comfortable where I am. I know, that isn’t easy considering we’re talking about needs instead of wants, but I’m nothing if not a rebel.

And, one of the worst sort of rebels, the Internet variety. Effectively nameless and anonymous, I can be a bully and Internet tough guy and continually seek to drag others down to my level, a practice that’s neither rewarding nor practical.

Still, I must be lacking something crucial. It’s been thirty years since I was introduced to Maslow, and I can’t say as I’ve advanced very much at all in that time. I’ve momentarily bettered myself, but I’ve never been able to get it to stick. The most likely culprit is my lack of drive, but it’s entirely possible I’m just overlooking something evident to the rest of the world.

Oh, sure, I once described all of life on the back of a blue 3X5 card, but I lost it.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible that there would be something sadder and more useless than plastic bags with zippers, but that just shows the limits of my imagination. The depths to which the American public will sink to reward marketing breakthroughs and their own laziness and fondness for new may reach deeper than I’d allowed.

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It’s evidently too much to ask people to turn their squeezable bottles over to dispense the product. I have no idea what, other than laziness, would make anyone think these mustard bottles with the label printed on upside-down are what the world’s been waiting for, but I guess they’re all the rage now. I bought this one because it was cheaper than the typical, upright, style, but I’m less than impressed.

Oh, sure, it saves me turning the bottle over, and if you add that one second to all the mustard used in this great country, I guess it adds up to a lot. Probably even enough for us to have time to cure cancer or resolve the homeless or health care issues.

I thought we’d reached our bottom when another marketing genius decided it was too much work to seal a plastic bag with our fingers, but I was wrong. I grew up with wax paper surrounding my sandwiches, then, later, those plastic bags that had a flap and were supposed to seal. I could never figure out the intricacies of those, but the later version, with the seal, were something I could manage.

Then, they came up with the colored ones so you could tell by the purple or green that you’d managed to correctly align the seal, but I found that less than helpful. Even if I left a gap, I still saw the mixed color. I always found it easier to see if I could press any more air out to determine if the bag was completely sealed.

Then, awhile ago, they decided that sealing the bag by hand was too pedestrian or something. In an effort to further discount any notion that there’s benefits to manual work, they added built in zippers to the bags. Not only does the zipper require much more plastic than the bag itself and a few more steps in the production, from what I’ve seen they’re just encouraging people to be lazy.

Yes, I know we live in a fast-paced society with much to do and those who can’t keep up are relegated to sad, dismal lives of looking up and longing for what might have been, but if we weren’t so quick to reward whatever’s new, we may make some quality progress.

Or, maybe, we’ll just hire more immigrants to do all of our mundane chores.

No car for me.

Maybe I wasn’t quick enough returning his calls, or maybe he’s a flake or mad at me, or had some other flavor of misgivings, but it appears the car thing isn’t going to be happening. Not today, anyway, and maybe not this car.

There are other cheap cars, equally crappy I’m guessing, available all the time, so it’s not as if I won’t ever get a car. It just may not be a convertible with a stick, two things I really wanted.

It’s safe to say that over half of my cars have been ragtops, but I can think of only two that were automatics, and both of them were gifts from my parents. I rented an automatic once, and was shocked at this “point and drive” mentality. It was almost as if driving weren’t something you did but merely had happen around you.

No wonder there are so many accidents.