I didn't even have to use my AK. After waking up from the previous night of exhausting Ulti, I jumped into action Wednesday with some errands to run before traipsing in for a 8.5 hour tutor-a-thon. I was almost out the door when the Roger Clemens debacle began, and I forced myself to sit down and watch a few minutes so that I could bask in the cultural experience and have all those remember-when reference points.
Interesting things about it? Well, one, it seems bizarre to me that a guy like Roger Clemens, with access to mounds of cash and the lawyers that those mounds afford, got such terrible advice on how to comport himself. Stuttering and repeating "I'm a good guy" and interrupting the inquisitors, egads. He basically made himself look like more of a criminal than he already was. Again, it's not that "Roger Clemens looked like a criminal" is an interesting opinion or statement, it's more "how does that happen?" when you've got the best counsel money can buy. Idiotic.
The second were some rather interesting conceptions of truth. Sports dudes, and I've already rantily posted about the quality of their coverage, repeatedly referred to the two stories being "diametrically opposed." They chose this vocabulary as opposed to "inconsistent" or "contradictory." It may have been catch-phrase sloppiness, but it's indicative of a prevalent precept of "common-sense" truth, namely that matters are always by nature dichotomous. While the entirety of the truth of the two parties' stories may have been said to be inherently inconsistent, there is nothing left-right opposite about them, at least in an absolute sense. The "either he is lying or he is lying" invokes an unfounded exclusive or - both could be lying, right? And with the complexity involved in years-old memories, etc., it seems that "lying" oversimplifies concepts that might overlap quite a bit with "misremembered." It's nothing necessarily new, but the mainstream approach to these things - one state two state red state blue state - by nature dumbs things down and renders them inaccurate. I'm all for simplification as a teaching method, and I recognize (and profess) that our knowledge system is doomed to incompleteness, but to go around intentionally dumbing things down - why? Do the PTB just assume that people are too stupid to grasp nuance? Seems a self-feeding approach.
Beyond that, just listening to the continued "Is it true that you had a conversation where you said that you had said that she said...?": whatever happened to hearsay? And the reliability of memory? I've talked about this with super neuropsychologist Meghan before; the unreliability of memory (and its plasticity and susceptibility to intentional bias) is mind-boggling. But we incarcerate routinely on its basis. Yikes.
Anyways, I eventually dragged myself away from the TV to go on a failed trip to the recycling center. Bins full - yay Scottsdale. I then headed over to the grocery store for some materials for a VDay Eve present and my normal holiday gift to the Beck of sushi. You say roses, I say raw fish. I also say peeps - I made a Peeps bouquet. It had all the quality of a five year-old's masterpiece in pasta medium. The intent - to obliquely celebrate my love for the Beck without kowtowing to typical capitalist VDay commodity - was there; the execution lacking. Oh, well, she appreciated it.
Moment of surreal at the grocery store - I rounded a corner to stumble into about 20 Fry's employees, all decked out in red garb, posing for a picture. Only: no camera man. So we've got people dressed in crazy Valentine's Day celebration garb on the wrong day (this was the EVE) posing for a picture that doesn't exist. "Performance art!" I accused. Nope, the guy with the camera had gone to replace the battery or something. Still, I definitely had a "glitch inthe matrix" moment there. I've probably failed miserably in relating this.
So I headed home, made the bouquet, took care of dogs, and headed in for a long day of work. Nothing that crazy*. I was working with a lot of SAT kids, but we also had an influx of youngins who were working with some of the other teachers. And one of the other teachers asked every single kid a litany of detailed questions about the Valentine's cards they had bought for their classmates. Holy indoctrination!
I'm admittedly not the world's biggest VDay fan - some of my friends and I routinely referred to it as "Black Thursday," or whatever day it happened to be that year, back in high school. But hearing the same series of questions leveled at academically struggling seven year olds brought part of the problem into clear focus. We're teaching, at a very early age, that the appropriate manner in which to express your affection for others is by purchasing pre-constructed cards and then delivering one of these to every single person in the class. Now, the egalitarian approach of giving one to every student is on surface a good idea - we don't want to be crafting Timmy into a world-hating, angst-ridden and potentially violent future adolescent by isolating him in the "who-gets-a-VDAy card, not you" world - but it's also false. Kids aren't stupid. Pretty chicas Keri Mendoza and Kelly Southwell get the Valentine's with Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, while fat-girl Susie Sally Millicent gets porky pig. Our commodities have relative value, duh, and a whole level of cultural analysis could go into the subtle implications of giving a fellow male the Bugs Bunny dressed as a girl Bunny card. Choo-choo-choose me, indeed. All of this is predicated on the actions of teachers and parents who, like my colleague, made the purchase of VDay cards a mandatory action. What are the teachers teaching? How are we molding the creative process via such actions?
I was talking about this with my dad, and suggested that we "celebrate" this dumb ass corporate-devised holiday by teaching our kids that they should write or say something nice to everyone in the class. Or if you insist on the heart and lace motif, just stick to using construction paper for constructed celebrations. This seems to foster all kinds of individual creativity, personal sentiment, and educational opportunities (you could even check the grammar on their cards!). Of course, I'd be asking a culture to do something heartfelt when the radio is saying things like "is your VDay budget only $100 this year?" VDay budget? Whaaaaa....? This all points toward the great idea of giving our loved ones lumps of coal for VDay. When the inevitable disappointed glances come, you say, hey, carbon is carbon.
(or, to reuse a joke that I originally stole from Mitch Hedberg, say "Just wait").
Heard on the radio this morning: "Is your diamond jewelry out of style?" No, this is not a problem that I have. This is not a "problem" that anyone has. STFU, mr. radio salesman. Though I do give you some unintentionally funny points for saying such things the day after VDay.
ANyways, that's enough of an anti-VDay diatribe. I got home after work, and in a joking mode, Beck greeted me at the door. Sparkle had a sock, Wrigley had a shoe, and Beck had an envelope...
* - Not as crazy as, say, Thursday. I have an adorable 8 year-old student named Essa whom I work with on math and reading every week. I walked into the office, and she is sitting in the waiting room *reading an issue of Arizona Parenting*. I give her a weird look, and she says, "Just in case my baby comes early." Straight-faced.
Later, we read a story about a rabbit who couldn't sleep because a frog was singing. I asked Essa why she thought the frog was singing at night. She responds, in her best Barry White, "for the ladies."
I also made the mistake of teaching Essa to add by using dice. I rewarded her efforts by teaching her a simple version of craps. And now she comes in every week and asks,"if I do a good job, can we gamble today?" Oops.
Shimon once argued that he disliked Sixth Sense because he thought kids don't act as precocious as Haley Joel Osmond. I continue to contest.
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