Normal is not as useful a term as people think it is. Normal is just a matter of conforming to norms and what are norms except the way most people are? Norms are not automatically good or desirable. Positive change only comes about from those willing to challenge norms. Not conforming to norms can have negative consequences, but if they only originate as backlash resulting from violation of said norms, this says nothing about the value of the norms themselves in any real sense. It is a societal norm to not murder your grandmother. It is also a societal norm to be heterosexual. Violating either norm can have negative consequences. The former will have said consequences because there was a good reason to have that norm and the latter will have bad consequences only because of the backlash. When a child asks about being normal, she is not worried about the consequences of her personality violating norms in and of themselves, but the backlash for doing so. Being normal has nothing to do with virtue, morality, ethics, value, or sanity. It is merely the capacity and willingness to conform to norms.
Conformity is a major a valuable social skill and the inability or inborn unwillingness to do so is a big part of what gets autistics into trouble. In my own life, I can tell you that the seemingly minor autistic trait of noise sensitivity can cause a great deal of issues in a wide variety of contexts. Think about where young people like to socialize. Mostly, we're talking about sporting events, live concerts, clubs, and rowdy house parties. While the intensity varies, what these things have in common is that they are loud. Not only are they loud, but their loudness is a point of pride and, in some cases, seen as not only acceptable but the primary source of enjoyment. So what happens when you're doing your best to fit in and make friends as a young autistic person and the issue that you find the experience of most social venues bordering on torturous? Well, you don't get out much, that's what. Actually, in my pre-college days, I didn't have any friends at all, and I think my aversion to the primary venues of social interaction had a lot to do with that. There are far more problematic traits of autism that can be even more inconvenient across a wide spectrum of situations, but you can see how one relatively minor trait may do cascading damage.
Those who conform well will be treated well. That's the nature of our species and you can bet that anyone who is considered normal and well-adjusted got to be that way by, at a minimum, their ability to fake conformity when the situation called for it. One can, in most of life's situations, manage to make friends without the ability to conform, but this is a hard road with circles that tend to be small and mostly of one's own gender. This kind of friendship can be very good because it is based yoni honest affection between individuals. A person capable of being friends with oneself while knowing and accepting that one cannot conform accommodate them in any way is a unique and special friend worth having. In a strange way, when one cannot conform, one is giving up all the advantages that come with conforming and claiming all the advantages, as well as disadvantages, that come with conformity. So when anyone, especially a child asks you if you think they're normal, you must remember what they're really asking is whether they're doing a good enough job of conforming.
-Frank
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Friendship Hierarchy
Having once discovered that my former high classmates can be pleasant company a reunion, I must also note that they're never going to be friends in
the same sense that my closest friends are. In fact, I've often said I
didn't even have any friends until I went off to college, which is true
from a particular point of view, if I can get all Obi-Wan Kenobi on
you. Friendship hierarchy is important. For my own purposes, there are
six levels of friendship, in the broad sense of the term.
1. Inner circle:
A good way to determine this one is to ask yourself, were you to get married, who would be your hypothetical wedding party? If you have a lot of friends of the opposite sex as well, assume you get to pick all the bridesmaids and all the groomsmen. People rarely fall from this height, but it can and does happen, in my case,with both genders before.
2. Broader circle:
These are your buddies, and, to continue the wedding analogy, they're the ones likely to serve as ushers and to be handing out programs. They don't know all your deepest darkest secrets, but you know theirs, but they're always up for hanging out and they'll usually have your back if you need help. Most good friends you make will be this category.
3. Aquaintance (positive):
These are people you know, and may even see a lot, but they're not really YOUR friends. They may well be somebody else's friends or somebody else's squeeze (yes, I just used that term, and you can just deal with it :p) and you find them agreeable enough, but the ultimate test is whether it would ever just be you and them hanging out on a regular basis. If the answer is no, then you have your answer don't you?
4. Aquaintance (negative):
These are people you know, and may even see a lot, but you don't like it. They may be somebody else's friends or somebody else's squeeze, but that's just your bad luck. The ultimate test is if you ever leave or your decision to leave turns on them being around. It's in that low barely audible grumble that shows up whenever they are around.
5. Classmates from pre-college years:
These are people you grew up with, and they exist as a listing on the hierarchy only as a matter of listing. They lie along their own spectrum, but it's hard for me to picture them at the extremes, particularly as members of the inner circle or as the sixth category, which I shall get to in a moment, Enemies. The way the bonds I have with these people formed in years of misery so long ago has the strange effect of tempering my relationships with them. Having kept up distance between us naturally, I neither run too hot or too cold on most of them. Although, as stated in another note, some of them are certainly harder to deal with than others. That said, I'm sure there's at least one of them I'm officially on the enemies list of.
6. Enemies:
Virtually all of these people in my case, with one notable exception, started off as one of the other categories. Nearly always though, a friend of some sort managed to get to know you well enough, and then something happened to irrevocably induce mutual hatred. Nothing much more needs to be said about it.
-Frank
1. Inner circle:
A good way to determine this one is to ask yourself, were you to get married, who would be your hypothetical wedding party? If you have a lot of friends of the opposite sex as well, assume you get to pick all the bridesmaids and all the groomsmen. People rarely fall from this height, but it can and does happen, in my case,with both genders before.
2. Broader circle:
These are your buddies, and, to continue the wedding analogy, they're the ones likely to serve as ushers and to be handing out programs. They don't know all your deepest darkest secrets, but you know theirs, but they're always up for hanging out and they'll usually have your back if you need help. Most good friends you make will be this category.
3. Aquaintance (positive):
These are people you know, and may even see a lot, but they're not really YOUR friends. They may well be somebody else's friends or somebody else's squeeze (yes, I just used that term, and you can just deal with it :p) and you find them agreeable enough, but the ultimate test is whether it would ever just be you and them hanging out on a regular basis. If the answer is no, then you have your answer don't you?
4. Aquaintance (negative):
These are people you know, and may even see a lot, but you don't like it. They may be somebody else's friends or somebody else's squeeze, but that's just your bad luck. The ultimate test is if you ever leave or your decision to leave turns on them being around. It's in that low barely audible grumble that shows up whenever they are around.
5. Classmates from pre-college years:
These are people you grew up with, and they exist as a listing on the hierarchy only as a matter of listing. They lie along their own spectrum, but it's hard for me to picture them at the extremes, particularly as members of the inner circle or as the sixth category, which I shall get to in a moment, Enemies. The way the bonds I have with these people formed in years of misery so long ago has the strange effect of tempering my relationships with them. Having kept up distance between us naturally, I neither run too hot or too cold on most of them. Although, as stated in another note, some of them are certainly harder to deal with than others. That said, I'm sure there's at least one of them I'm officially on the enemies list of.
6. Enemies:
Virtually all of these people in my case, with one notable exception, started off as one of the other categories. Nearly always though, a friend of some sort managed to get to know you well enough, and then something happened to irrevocably induce mutual hatred. Nothing much more needs to be said about it.
-Frank
Atheism And I: A Helpful Guide
While once at a high school reunion, I noticed I have a new way to cause an instant
shitstorm. That's right, atheism is an instant way to cause trouble
with small-town classmates who were raised nearly universally Christian.
Who would've thought? Patterns starting emerging in the arguments
regarding their reactions and questions. So, for those of you who don't know, somehow, or are still wondering, here's the answers to the most common questions.
1. How can you be an atheist?
It's quite easy, really. All you have to do is stop engaging in wishful thinking and be ruthlessly rational. The rest follows naturally.
2. How do you explain the complexity of the human body/the natural world?
The same way scientists explain it. All of this evolved gradually, in small steps, over millions of years. The process is known as evolution by natural selection. It's all far more probable than as explained in The Bible and does not result in an infinite regress.
3. Why are you an atheist?
I arrived there over the course of a long span of years, starting with a bad experience with a worship group at Drury University called Logos in 2001. Various other small bad experiences with religion, and bad experiences in general, left my faith battered but not beaten. Most of the work would be done by horrible experiences with four specific women, none more powerful than my engagement to a woman named Marie. In that relationship, I found all the evidence I needed that there was no such thing as a benevolent God. After a rather brutal betrayal by a Sunday School group I was in giving religion one last chance with, I started reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others and eventually had a logical framework for there being no God or supernatural force at all, good, bad or, indifferent.
4. You've got to believe in God!
No, actually, I don't. There isn't a single good reason you can name why I should, other than it being more socially acceptable to do so in this region of the country. Otherwise, Pascal's Wager, the argument from design, the ontological argument, the argument from personal experience, and everything else you can throw at me will fail.
5. I'll be praying for you.
Do you what you like, so long as I don't have to hear it. I used to erase your image from elementary school yearbooks and write hateful things under your class picture, but it never harmed you because you never knew it. Apply that same principle here, and we'll be fine.
6. You'll find God again.
How inconvenient for me, as I worked so hard to lose him. You must understand that becoming an atheist happened by a gradual process of evolution, much as life itself has developed, and I will not suddenly find God again that way. Were it to happen, it would happen gradually. The most important reason it won't happen is, even if I were to become irrational enough to accept theistic ideas again, I have against God an inconsolable rage that ensures, if I find out he exists after I die, he has more to fear from my judgment and wrath than I do from his.
-Frank
1. How can you be an atheist?
It's quite easy, really. All you have to do is stop engaging in wishful thinking and be ruthlessly rational. The rest follows naturally.
2. How do you explain the complexity of the human body/the natural world?
The same way scientists explain it. All of this evolved gradually, in small steps, over millions of years. The process is known as evolution by natural selection. It's all far more probable than as explained in The Bible and does not result in an infinite regress.
3. Why are you an atheist?
I arrived there over the course of a long span of years, starting with a bad experience with a worship group at Drury University called Logos in 2001. Various other small bad experiences with religion, and bad experiences in general, left my faith battered but not beaten. Most of the work would be done by horrible experiences with four specific women, none more powerful than my engagement to a woman named Marie. In that relationship, I found all the evidence I needed that there was no such thing as a benevolent God. After a rather brutal betrayal by a Sunday School group I was in giving religion one last chance with, I started reading Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others and eventually had a logical framework for there being no God or supernatural force at all, good, bad or, indifferent.
4. You've got to believe in God!
No, actually, I don't. There isn't a single good reason you can name why I should, other than it being more socially acceptable to do so in this region of the country. Otherwise, Pascal's Wager, the argument from design, the ontological argument, the argument from personal experience, and everything else you can throw at me will fail.
5. I'll be praying for you.
Do you what you like, so long as I don't have to hear it. I used to erase your image from elementary school yearbooks and write hateful things under your class picture, but it never harmed you because you never knew it. Apply that same principle here, and we'll be fine.
6. You'll find God again.
How inconvenient for me, as I worked so hard to lose him. You must understand that becoming an atheist happened by a gradual process of evolution, much as life itself has developed, and I will not suddenly find God again that way. Were it to happen, it would happen gradually. The most important reason it won't happen is, even if I were to become irrational enough to accept theistic ideas again, I have against God an inconsolable rage that ensures, if I find out he exists after I die, he has more to fear from my judgment and wrath than I do from his.
-Frank
Homosexuality And I: A Helpful Guide
Having just finished watching Bruno, the topic of homosexuality is on my
mind, and I know the movie's going to cause a lot of discussion
regarding it. As a jumping off point, I will say that, with the
possible exception of voting libertarian in the 2000 Presidential
election, I have never been able to vote for a political candidate that
agreed with my position on this issue because the pros always outweighed the cons.
Let's go back to the beginning. In some ways, earlier generations were more fortunate than mine when they learned about homosexuality, because the first time I learned about it was also the first time I learned about AIDS. Movies like Philadelphia and AIDS: And The Band Played On combined with school sex education that explained about both AIDS and homosexuality in the same breath made them virtually synonymous. Nobody specifically called it the "gay cancer", but they might as well have. AIDS was interesting apart from that though, because, outside of increasingly rare blood transfusions or unfortunate birth circumstances, one could only get the disease through sex outside a monogamous relationship or through drug usage. Having it was like a giant Puritan "A" on your face. I will note that it is unfortunate that some at the time actively tried to prevent AIDS research from receiving funding based on the apparently sincere belief that it was God's punishment for homosexuals. Considering the not insignificant number of children born with the disease, I should hope a significant portion of homosexuals don't get diabetes, or that will be an apparent punishment too I suppose. So this paragraph covers AIDS and related issues and having done so, I'll say no more about it.
Despite growing up in Harrison, AR, a community not exactly enlightened regarding such things, I was never really exposed to significant anti-gay sentiment. My mother could fairly be described as more out-of-touch and insensitive regarding it, and, while my stepfather plainly believes it's morally wrong to be a homosexual, he was never preachy about it and even watched The Birdcage with myself and my mother when it came out. Mostly, I was exposed to homosexuals through my oldest stepsister and her male friends, all of whom were invariably gay. This was due either to her friends all being in the drama department, Hannah's personality simply being agreeable to such young men, or a combination of both. Whatever it was, it gave me an impressive gaydar that functions accurately to this day, and an immensely positive view of homosexuals. Hannah's friends were very cool guys and invaluable early tutors in pop culture and film. Particularly of note was a young man named Andrew who worked as a projectionist at our local mall cinema. Running the place with the attitude and audacity of Randal from Clerks, he knew everything about the films playing and would screw up the projection for audiences who talked and were disrespectful to films clearly better than their audience. As far as actual exposure to homosexuals among my own peers, they were mainly closeted, though I certainly had my suspicions. When a woman gets cast as Gaston in a class production of Beauty and the Beast because she can pull off the required masculinity better than any of the men, yeah, that's a hint.
College was, as I imagine it is with most people, the first place I actually encountered uncloseted peers. Even during my evangelical Christian days, I never had a problem with them. My own interpretation of The Bible at that time placed forgiveness, redemption, and compassion above judging or tormenting others. Presently, I've realized that it's not very Biblical to be so kind and tolerant, so the Christians who oppose homosexuals are only having the courage of their convictions. Invariably though, I liked the various homosexuals I got to know. They were fun to smoke with (tobacco for those who, I don't know, had a head injury), made for good roommates, and nobody keeps up in an argument like some of those guys from back in the day, especially one about pop culture. Strangely, and this applies to this day, the number of lesbians I've been friends with, or even aware of, is vanishingly small, although people keep claiming they were there. Do I scream fat oppressive Republican alpha-male? I suppose from a cursory visual examination, I can see it, but that's a rather lazy evaluation of me, I think. Have a little insight won't you, lesbians at Drury from 1999-2006?
Now for the controversial paragraph. Bruno made me realize I've got to have a paragraph like this in here to be completely honest. There is nothing wrong with being a homosexual. Anything. At all. However, some of the stereotypical behavior involved is deeply unpleasant behavior that is not okay...for anyone. Ever. If you're an arrogant, shallow, condescending, elitist, lewd, man-child who talks with an unnatural lisp and valley girl accent...well...it's a free country. I'm not going to stop you from acting like an idiot and a clown, but nor will I refrain from observing that you are, in fact, acting like an idiot and a clown. Observing these things does not make me a homophobe. It makes me a idiotphobe and a clownphobe. Now, some people have talked and acted that way since they were a kid and didn't even know what sex was. That's fine. You don't get to throw away your entire personality that you've had and your closest friends know you as just because you came out of the closet though, an observation I've had a gay friend make, by the way. So, yes, act however you want, but try and have some goddamned dignity about you.
I'll just close by saying that, knowing about Kinsey's scale as I do, it's interesting to talk in strict terms of heterosexual and homosexual, when few people are truly at the extreme polarities in either direction. Kinsey hoped we'd stop defining ourselves by the strict lines of our orientation. Yeah, and you can hope that abandoned land mines will become clean food and water, but it ain't gonna happen. Yet, we've got GBLTQ as a concept now. Not only can you be gay or lesbian, but in the middle as bi, transgendered, which is a whole other thing that I can only imagine complicates matters exponentially, and questioning. Heterosexuals really do have it easy, because we're left alone to discover things on our own mostly. All I had to do was to see Nicolette Scorsese on the diving board in Clark W. Griswold's imaginary swimming pool to have something click, and all of a sudden I understood I was attracted to the opposite sex. What does a homosexual do if, for instance, their trigger is the volleyball scene in Top Gun, or, in the case of a young lesbian, Nicolette Scorsese on the diving board? Surely they cannot embrace their new insight into themselves as openly and with as much support as I was privileged to be able to do? My mind cracks at trying to imagine a similar trigger for a transgendered or transsexual child. What insight my mind is able to gather basically tells me that sex is complicated. More than anything, my most significant relationship taught me that, and I always interpreted that as a tragedy. Sex is such a huge part of all of our lives. Those that embrace chastity or celibacy must still resist their own body chemistry, so there is no real escape. Much better would be simplicity and transparency, so clear communication would be possible and everyone would know one another's motives and where one another was coming from. Instead, we've got this system whereby sex is something we, or at least I, might never fully understand in a lifetime. Given that, a little compassion and a little patience is probably a good idea, because everyone is defining their own path, and the important thing to remember is that their path is not your path. Learn to walk your path as best you can and, if you ever come to the conclusion that you are so wise as to be able to presume to tell another how to walk theirs, perhaps you should give it a moment's thought.
-Frank
Let's go back to the beginning. In some ways, earlier generations were more fortunate than mine when they learned about homosexuality, because the first time I learned about it was also the first time I learned about AIDS. Movies like Philadelphia and AIDS: And The Band Played On combined with school sex education that explained about both AIDS and homosexuality in the same breath made them virtually synonymous. Nobody specifically called it the "gay cancer", but they might as well have. AIDS was interesting apart from that though, because, outside of increasingly rare blood transfusions or unfortunate birth circumstances, one could only get the disease through sex outside a monogamous relationship or through drug usage. Having it was like a giant Puritan "A" on your face. I will note that it is unfortunate that some at the time actively tried to prevent AIDS research from receiving funding based on the apparently sincere belief that it was God's punishment for homosexuals. Considering the not insignificant number of children born with the disease, I should hope a significant portion of homosexuals don't get diabetes, or that will be an apparent punishment too I suppose. So this paragraph covers AIDS and related issues and having done so, I'll say no more about it.
Despite growing up in Harrison, AR, a community not exactly enlightened regarding such things, I was never really exposed to significant anti-gay sentiment. My mother could fairly be described as more out-of-touch and insensitive regarding it, and, while my stepfather plainly believes it's morally wrong to be a homosexual, he was never preachy about it and even watched The Birdcage with myself and my mother when it came out. Mostly, I was exposed to homosexuals through my oldest stepsister and her male friends, all of whom were invariably gay. This was due either to her friends all being in the drama department, Hannah's personality simply being agreeable to such young men, or a combination of both. Whatever it was, it gave me an impressive gaydar that functions accurately to this day, and an immensely positive view of homosexuals. Hannah's friends were very cool guys and invaluable early tutors in pop culture and film. Particularly of note was a young man named Andrew who worked as a projectionist at our local mall cinema. Running the place with the attitude and audacity of Randal from Clerks, he knew everything about the films playing and would screw up the projection for audiences who talked and were disrespectful to films clearly better than their audience. As far as actual exposure to homosexuals among my own peers, they were mainly closeted, though I certainly had my suspicions. When a woman gets cast as Gaston in a class production of Beauty and the Beast because she can pull off the required masculinity better than any of the men, yeah, that's a hint.
College was, as I imagine it is with most people, the first place I actually encountered uncloseted peers. Even during my evangelical Christian days, I never had a problem with them. My own interpretation of The Bible at that time placed forgiveness, redemption, and compassion above judging or tormenting others. Presently, I've realized that it's not very Biblical to be so kind and tolerant, so the Christians who oppose homosexuals are only having the courage of their convictions. Invariably though, I liked the various homosexuals I got to know. They were fun to smoke with (tobacco for those who, I don't know, had a head injury), made for good roommates, and nobody keeps up in an argument like some of those guys from back in the day, especially one about pop culture. Strangely, and this applies to this day, the number of lesbians I've been friends with, or even aware of, is vanishingly small, although people keep claiming they were there. Do I scream fat oppressive Republican alpha-male? I suppose from a cursory visual examination, I can see it, but that's a rather lazy evaluation of me, I think. Have a little insight won't you, lesbians at Drury from 1999-2006?
Now for the controversial paragraph. Bruno made me realize I've got to have a paragraph like this in here to be completely honest. There is nothing wrong with being a homosexual. Anything. At all. However, some of the stereotypical behavior involved is deeply unpleasant behavior that is not okay...for anyone. Ever. If you're an arrogant, shallow, condescending, elitist, lewd, man-child who talks with an unnatural lisp and valley girl accent...well...it's a free country. I'm not going to stop you from acting like an idiot and a clown, but nor will I refrain from observing that you are, in fact, acting like an idiot and a clown. Observing these things does not make me a homophobe. It makes me a idiotphobe and a clownphobe. Now, some people have talked and acted that way since they were a kid and didn't even know what sex was. That's fine. You don't get to throw away your entire personality that you've had and your closest friends know you as just because you came out of the closet though, an observation I've had a gay friend make, by the way. So, yes, act however you want, but try and have some goddamned dignity about you.
I'll just close by saying that, knowing about Kinsey's scale as I do, it's interesting to talk in strict terms of heterosexual and homosexual, when few people are truly at the extreme polarities in either direction. Kinsey hoped we'd stop defining ourselves by the strict lines of our orientation. Yeah, and you can hope that abandoned land mines will become clean food and water, but it ain't gonna happen. Yet, we've got GBLTQ as a concept now. Not only can you be gay or lesbian, but in the middle as bi, transgendered, which is a whole other thing that I can only imagine complicates matters exponentially, and questioning. Heterosexuals really do have it easy, because we're left alone to discover things on our own mostly. All I had to do was to see Nicolette Scorsese on the diving board in Clark W. Griswold's imaginary swimming pool to have something click, and all of a sudden I understood I was attracted to the opposite sex. What does a homosexual do if, for instance, their trigger is the volleyball scene in Top Gun, or, in the case of a young lesbian, Nicolette Scorsese on the diving board? Surely they cannot embrace their new insight into themselves as openly and with as much support as I was privileged to be able to do? My mind cracks at trying to imagine a similar trigger for a transgendered or transsexual child. What insight my mind is able to gather basically tells me that sex is complicated. More than anything, my most significant relationship taught me that, and I always interpreted that as a tragedy. Sex is such a huge part of all of our lives. Those that embrace chastity or celibacy must still resist their own body chemistry, so there is no real escape. Much better would be simplicity and transparency, so clear communication would be possible and everyone would know one another's motives and where one another was coming from. Instead, we've got this system whereby sex is something we, or at least I, might never fully understand in a lifetime. Given that, a little compassion and a little patience is probably a good idea, because everyone is defining their own path, and the important thing to remember is that their path is not your path. Learn to walk your path as best you can and, if you ever come to the conclusion that you are so wise as to be able to presume to tell another how to walk theirs, perhaps you should give it a moment's thought.
-Frank
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Christmas Songs
A number of years ago, I came
up with the idea of separating traditional Christmas carols into secular
and spiritual variations. I actually researched the background and
lyrics of each one I selected and I have most of the popular ones on my
playlists. Here I'll list the tracks of both playlists and follow up
with some commentary in the end. Also, I'll mention the version I got
of each of them, keeping in mind that I think it's the best performance
of that particular song.
Secular Christmas:
The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You) Nat King Cole
Carol Of The Bells Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Deck the Halls Brian Wilson
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Chris Isaak
O Tannenbaum Manfred Krug
Twelve Days of Christmas Burl Ives
We Wish You a Merry Christmas Lou Rawls
Holly Jolly Christmas Alan Jackson
All I Want for Christmas Is You Mariah Carey
Theme - Movie - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Feliz Navidad Jon Secada
Do They Know It's Christmas The Tributes
Frosty the Snowman Willie Nelson
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Christmas Revue
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Andy Williams
Jingle Bell Rock The Brian Setzer Orchestra
Jingle Bells Dolly Parton
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow Michael Bublé
Mele Kalikimaka Bette Midler
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) Winger
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree LeAnn Rimes
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Lynyrd Skynyrd
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town James Taylor
Silver Bells Martina McBride
Winter Wonderland Amy Grant
White Christmas Gloria Estefan
Spiritual Christmas:
That Spirit of Christmas Chuck Brown & Eva Cassidy
Little Drummer Boy Bob Segar
O Holy Night Nat King Cole
What Child Is This? Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Oh Come All Ye Faithful Celine Dion
Christmas Canon Rock Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Do You Hear What I Hear Whitney Houston
Silent Night Sinead O'Connor
Away In a Manger Johnny Cash
The First Noel Bing Crosby
O Little Town of Bethlehem Elvis Presley
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Loreena McKennitt
Hark the Herald Angels Sing Neil Diamond
Joy to the World Judy Collins
Ding Dong! Merrily On High Charlotte Church
Here We Come A-Caroling Ray Conniff
I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day Frank Sinatra
Angels We Have Heard On High Joan Osborne
I Saw Three Ships Celtic Lore
Okay, so there's the songs and I figure it's something of a bipartisan guide for secular participants and faithful participants in Christmas alike. If you feel Christmas is overcommercialized and needs to get back to brass tacks about Jesus' birth, or angels, or prayer, or just something to do with Yahweh and Yahweh-related religion, you can make sure you don't go with the ones that focus on snow, family, presents, Santa, or human solidarity. Those of you who don't want to focus on the religious aspects of the holiday have all the secular stuff you need. These songs aren't without class either. Chestnuts Roasting On An Open fire is pretty much the official Christmas theme song in my mother's house and Happy X-Mas (War Is Over) is a protest song that got promoted to he official Christmas Carol canon.
Now, as accommodating as these lists have the potential to be, there is one thing everyone needs to understand, and that is that Christmas isn't pure. It is not pure as the driven snow, as secularists would like to believe, nor pure as the baby Jesus, as Christians would like to believe. You can tidy it up with all the snow, presents, and songs about trying to get laid (Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow) you like, but in the end Christ is right in the name, as in Christ's Mass. Even the term holiday is derived from holy day, and it's indicative of just how much religion shaped so much of our history that it cannot be avoided any more than culinary traditions that grew out of poverty, musical heritage that grew out of oppression, or literary tradition that grew out of alcoholism. All that snow, shopping, and sexy singing is in there too though, so the Christians can't get away from that. In fact, much of the secular humanist message has seeped into Christmas carols. They speak of the world as a place capable of redemption if humans will just get some perspective, care about those they love all through the year, and generally have that generosity of spirit about them that Charles Dickens definitively captured in his tale. This is far counter to Biblical teaching of human potential, which is basically nothing without Jesus. I'll spare you my usual point about the winter solstice festival of Yule practiced by Northern European germanic tribes in which they would attach bits of metal to fir trees which would be illuminated by the Aurora Borealis while they roasted a sacrificial pig.
Christmas is controversial for many atheists, and even just for people with no family or none they care to go home to. Valentine's Day has been depressing most years of my life for similar reasons, so I do kind of get it, but I would have this to say. Unlike Valentine's Day, which is basically about romantic love, Christmas day is about a lot of things. Hope, generosity, redemption, renewal, and kindness are just a few of the things it is beyond being about family. To quote Lou Rawls, "To all of you out there, you, your family, and friends, and even the people you don't even know, you wish them a Merry Christmas because that's what it's all about. Christmas is about love and love is about life. As long as you got it going on for you, you're doing all right." So if you know you won't be home for Christmas, get into the spirit of things. Take it from someone who has so often depended on the milk of human kindness that any you manage to find it within yourself to generate will not go to waste. See, Christmas has become a symbol of so much more than than a child born destined to become an avatar of vicarious redemption through torture and human sacrifice. It has become a warm smile from all the world to all the rest of the world and the more people participate in that, the better. The more people who say, "Today, just today, I won't hate people or abuse my power over them. I just want to be a better person today and to seek out people who will be a better person to me, because I want one day, just one day, to forget all the bad stuff. All the broken down neverending madness of the world and myself can come to a halt in a shower of commerce and colored light and I can let down my guard because that's what you're going to do too. Maybe, just for one day, we may have human solidarity. Peace on Earth. Good will towards men."
-Frank
Secular Christmas:
The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You) Nat King Cole
Carol Of The Bells Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Deck the Halls Brian Wilson
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Chris Isaak
O Tannenbaum Manfred Krug
Twelve Days of Christmas Burl Ives
We Wish You a Merry Christmas Lou Rawls
Holly Jolly Christmas Alan Jackson
All I Want for Christmas Is You Mariah Carey
Theme - Movie - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Feliz Navidad Jon Secada
Do They Know It's Christmas The Tributes
Frosty the Snowman Willie Nelson
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas Christmas Revue
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Andy Williams
Jingle Bell Rock The Brian Setzer Orchestra
Jingle Bells Dolly Parton
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow Michael Bublé
Mele Kalikimaka Bette Midler
Happy Christmas (War Is Over) Winger
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree LeAnn Rimes
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Lynyrd Skynyrd
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town James Taylor
Silver Bells Martina McBride
Winter Wonderland Amy Grant
White Christmas Gloria Estefan
Spiritual Christmas:
That Spirit of Christmas Chuck Brown & Eva Cassidy
Little Drummer Boy Bob Segar
O Holy Night Nat King Cole
What Child Is This? Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Oh Come All Ye Faithful Celine Dion
Christmas Canon Rock Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Do You Hear What I Hear Whitney Houston
Silent Night Sinead O'Connor
Away In a Manger Johnny Cash
The First Noel Bing Crosby
O Little Town of Bethlehem Elvis Presley
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Loreena McKennitt
Hark the Herald Angels Sing Neil Diamond
Joy to the World Judy Collins
Ding Dong! Merrily On High Charlotte Church
Here We Come A-Caroling Ray Conniff
I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day Frank Sinatra
Angels We Have Heard On High Joan Osborne
I Saw Three Ships Celtic Lore
Okay, so there's the songs and I figure it's something of a bipartisan guide for secular participants and faithful participants in Christmas alike. If you feel Christmas is overcommercialized and needs to get back to brass tacks about Jesus' birth, or angels, or prayer, or just something to do with Yahweh and Yahweh-related religion, you can make sure you don't go with the ones that focus on snow, family, presents, Santa, or human solidarity. Those of you who don't want to focus on the religious aspects of the holiday have all the secular stuff you need. These songs aren't without class either. Chestnuts Roasting On An Open fire is pretty much the official Christmas theme song in my mother's house and Happy X-Mas (War Is Over) is a protest song that got promoted to he official Christmas Carol canon.
Now, as accommodating as these lists have the potential to be, there is one thing everyone needs to understand, and that is that Christmas isn't pure. It is not pure as the driven snow, as secularists would like to believe, nor pure as the baby Jesus, as Christians would like to believe. You can tidy it up with all the snow, presents, and songs about trying to get laid (Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow) you like, but in the end Christ is right in the name, as in Christ's Mass. Even the term holiday is derived from holy day, and it's indicative of just how much religion shaped so much of our history that it cannot be avoided any more than culinary traditions that grew out of poverty, musical heritage that grew out of oppression, or literary tradition that grew out of alcoholism. All that snow, shopping, and sexy singing is in there too though, so the Christians can't get away from that. In fact, much of the secular humanist message has seeped into Christmas carols. They speak of the world as a place capable of redemption if humans will just get some perspective, care about those they love all through the year, and generally have that generosity of spirit about them that Charles Dickens definitively captured in his tale. This is far counter to Biblical teaching of human potential, which is basically nothing without Jesus. I'll spare you my usual point about the winter solstice festival of Yule practiced by Northern European germanic tribes in which they would attach bits of metal to fir trees which would be illuminated by the Aurora Borealis while they roasted a sacrificial pig.
Christmas is controversial for many atheists, and even just for people with no family or none they care to go home to. Valentine's Day has been depressing most years of my life for similar reasons, so I do kind of get it, but I would have this to say. Unlike Valentine's Day, which is basically about romantic love, Christmas day is about a lot of things. Hope, generosity, redemption, renewal, and kindness are just a few of the things it is beyond being about family. To quote Lou Rawls, "To all of you out there, you, your family, and friends, and even the people you don't even know, you wish them a Merry Christmas because that's what it's all about. Christmas is about love and love is about life. As long as you got it going on for you, you're doing all right." So if you know you won't be home for Christmas, get into the spirit of things. Take it from someone who has so often depended on the milk of human kindness that any you manage to find it within yourself to generate will not go to waste. See, Christmas has become a symbol of so much more than than a child born destined to become an avatar of vicarious redemption through torture and human sacrifice. It has become a warm smile from all the world to all the rest of the world and the more people participate in that, the better. The more people who say, "Today, just today, I won't hate people or abuse my power over them. I just want to be a better person today and to seek out people who will be a better person to me, because I want one day, just one day, to forget all the bad stuff. All the broken down neverending madness of the world and myself can come to a halt in a shower of commerce and colored light and I can let down my guard because that's what you're going to do too. Maybe, just for one day, we may have human solidarity. Peace on Earth. Good will towards men."
-Frank
A Growing Concern
As I've written before, ISIS concerns me greatly. The last time I wrote about them, it was because of the potential for them to commit individual murders here in the United States, specifically videotaped beheadings carried out by individuals either sympathetic to or outright part of their organization. While that concern is still valid, it's not what's captured my attention about them lately. It's hard for decent people to understand the hard reality of people so evil that they haven't got even the most basic commitment to morality or ethics. We think, and perhaps cannot help but think, that there are lines in the sand that no person, however evil, insane, and/or religious he might be, would ever cross. Well, that is precisely what we face with ISIS and they sealed my opinion of them with their most recent outrage.
ISIS has been killing civilians for a while now and, bad enough as this is, they have managed to do worse than even that. In the Syrian city of Kobani, they have been terrorizing the citizenry in ghastly ways, including the visceral example of crucifying a teenager for simply videotaping the outside of a local ISIS headquarters building. What pushed me over the edge though was the way ISIS reacted when they came upon a man with Down's Syndrome. He did not have the mental capacity to recognize that he was in danger from them and should flee. Nor was he capable of grasping concepts like Allah or Mohammed. So ISIS beheaded him for being an atheist and a kafir, which is a profound insult and a term to suggest one has read the Koran and rejected it. This poor man could not understand the concept of a deity or the Koran well enough to reject either.
Let us not sugarcoat the depth of the evil I outlined in the last paragraph. People that cannot understand that a man with Down's Syndrome might be an exception to their murderous dogma cannot be reasoned with. There's no room in them for pity, remorse, or logic. They stand prepared to grind everyone and everything that does not fit within their vision for a caliphate into dust. Meanwhile, what are we prepared to do? The weak die under the tyranny of the strong. We drop some bombs, maybe. They'll survive that. More utterly defenseless people will be beheaded. "Too bad," we'll say, because we have our own problems. Because crimes against humanity only concern us when convenient. Because war must be avoided at all costs and if people with Down's Syndrome suffer a fate like this, tough.
-Frank
ISIS has been killing civilians for a while now and, bad enough as this is, they have managed to do worse than even that. In the Syrian city of Kobani, they have been terrorizing the citizenry in ghastly ways, including the visceral example of crucifying a teenager for simply videotaping the outside of a local ISIS headquarters building. What pushed me over the edge though was the way ISIS reacted when they came upon a man with Down's Syndrome. He did not have the mental capacity to recognize that he was in danger from them and should flee. Nor was he capable of grasping concepts like Allah or Mohammed. So ISIS beheaded him for being an atheist and a kafir, which is a profound insult and a term to suggest one has read the Koran and rejected it. This poor man could not understand the concept of a deity or the Koran well enough to reject either.
Let us not sugarcoat the depth of the evil I outlined in the last paragraph. People that cannot understand that a man with Down's Syndrome might be an exception to their murderous dogma cannot be reasoned with. There's no room in them for pity, remorse, or logic. They stand prepared to grind everyone and everything that does not fit within their vision for a caliphate into dust. Meanwhile, what are we prepared to do? The weak die under the tyranny of the strong. We drop some bombs, maybe. They'll survive that. More utterly defenseless people will be beheaded. "Too bad," we'll say, because we have our own problems. Because crimes against humanity only concern us when convenient. Because war must be avoided at all costs and if people with Down's Syndrome suffer a fate like this, tough.
-Frank
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Mob Justice & Other Oxymorons
Hypocrisy is a constant when it comes to criminal trials in the news. When the Owens murder happened in Springfield, many people told me they wanted her murderer to be dealt with via mob justice. Liberals wouldn't want this, pointing out how little mob justice has to do with justice and how much it entirely has to do with vengeance. Then, Michael Brown is shot in Ferguson and everybody switches places. Conservatives want due process and a fair trial with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty for Officer Wilson. Liberals have infinite patience for rioters seeking mob justice prepared to blackmail the community with threats of further and worse rioting if the jury does not abandon fairness, impartiality, and the need for evidence in favor of becoming the instrument of the mob's vengeance. News flash. They're all innocent until proven guilty. Our criminal courts are based on the idea that it is better to let ten guilty men walk free than to incarcerate a single innocent one. So the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a crime. You can't support that only when it's not a case you care a lot about. Whether or not someone committed a crime actually matters. How it looks or how you think it is are nothing and certainly are not beyond a reasonable doubt.
The entire point of criminal law in this country is to protect us from one another. There are criminal laws to protect us from ourselves too, but these are laws I despise and that have no legitimate basis. These are not the laws that work people into a frenzy sufficient to result in a desire for mob justice, however. We know the kinds of crimes that can do that well enough that the matter ought need no spelling out. What makes crimes like the Owens case or the Brown case so insidious is that the emotions roused by them are all too understandable and all too human. Of course we want vengeance against a teacher who murders one of his young charges and of course it's horrifying when a policeman shoots and kills a young person, let alone the suspicion and resentment caused by the racial politics of the situation. Understandable though these reactions may be, they present a choice to be made. Does one want vengeance or does one want justice? If you think you can have both, you are sadly mistaken.
To illustrate the point about how mob justice can and does thwart the possibility of achieving actual justice, let me tell you of the happens of an epoch during which I was only a child. At the beginning of the 1980s, a book was published called Michelle Remembers that detailed the childhood experiences of its titular subject being abused and molested by a Satanic cult. Based on the since discredited practice of recovered repressed memories via hypnosis, the book caused the US to see pedophilia as a crime linked with Satanism and the occult. On the one hand, this caused the tragically misguided prosecution of the McMartin preschool, which lasted six years, destroyed the McMartin family, and resulted in no convictions and no remotely convincing evidence. On the other hand, it contributed to the efforts of many, most notably Sinead O'Conner, to bring attention to the very real, systematic, and widespread rape and torture of children in the Catholic Church to fall on death ears. What could be less Satanic, after all, than the most prominent Christian church in the world? So the next time there's a criminal act that makes you as angry as such an act could make a person, do not demand what your clouded mind perceives as justice. Have the patience and sense to insist upon the genuine article.
-Frank
The entire point of criminal law in this country is to protect us from one another. There are criminal laws to protect us from ourselves too, but these are laws I despise and that have no legitimate basis. These are not the laws that work people into a frenzy sufficient to result in a desire for mob justice, however. We know the kinds of crimes that can do that well enough that the matter ought need no spelling out. What makes crimes like the Owens case or the Brown case so insidious is that the emotions roused by them are all too understandable and all too human. Of course we want vengeance against a teacher who murders one of his young charges and of course it's horrifying when a policeman shoots and kills a young person, let alone the suspicion and resentment caused by the racial politics of the situation. Understandable though these reactions may be, they present a choice to be made. Does one want vengeance or does one want justice? If you think you can have both, you are sadly mistaken.
To illustrate the point about how mob justice can and does thwart the possibility of achieving actual justice, let me tell you of the happens of an epoch during which I was only a child. At the beginning of the 1980s, a book was published called Michelle Remembers that detailed the childhood experiences of its titular subject being abused and molested by a Satanic cult. Based on the since discredited practice of recovered repressed memories via hypnosis, the book caused the US to see pedophilia as a crime linked with Satanism and the occult. On the one hand, this caused the tragically misguided prosecution of the McMartin preschool, which lasted six years, destroyed the McMartin family, and resulted in no convictions and no remotely convincing evidence. On the other hand, it contributed to the efforts of many, most notably Sinead O'Conner, to bring attention to the very real, systematic, and widespread rape and torture of children in the Catholic Church to fall on death ears. What could be less Satanic, after all, than the most prominent Christian church in the world? So the next time there's a criminal act that makes you as angry as such an act could make a person, do not demand what your clouded mind perceives as justice. Have the patience and sense to insist upon the genuine article.
-Frank
Friday, October 24, 2014
Maybe New Meds
I have an appointment with my new doctor Monday. Mostly, we'll see how this whole diabetes thing is going. However, I'll also be asking about medication for depression. My company is out of business, my romantic life gone, I'm out half a million, and I just had a car wreck. Paxil helped with anxiety and I hope something can help me at least cope better with these bitter circumstances. It's hard to say if I have depression or not, but I do feel numb and hopeless. Maybe that counts. Along with Attention Deficit Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disorder, depression is one of the four conditions for which autism is commonly mistaken, which is why I call autism the mockingbird of developmental disorders. What I'm feeling lately goes beyond the basic melancholy disconnect that I, and I think all autistics, feel and, while I'm managing to function on a basic level, I desire to take some of the screaming edge off of the weight of sadness I seem to endure in every conscious moment.
One psychologist used to tell me that depression is when things aren't going badly but you're still sad, whereas if you're sad because lots of bad things have happened to you, that's just a normal reaction. Well, I certainly have indisputable bad things that have happened to me and they have all happened in the space of two months. That much is certain. However natural and normal it is to feel sad after one's professional and personal life falls apart though, this does nothing to mitigate the unpleasantness of always feeling that way. Sure, I CAN live with constant sadness, just as I could live with the autistic meltdowns (basically a specialized form of panic attack afflicting those on the spectrum) before Paxil removed the need to do so, but why do that if it's possible I don't have to?
To be clear, I am not absolutely certain that I have depression and just as uncertain as to what my new doctor's reaction to what you've read here will be on Monday. Perhaps the crushing sadness caused by permanent unemployment and permanent loneliness will just be something I must tolerate for the rest of my life. However, I've never been open to the possibility of antidepressants before, so exploring medication as a solution to this problem is undiscovered country. Since I have determined that the brute facts of my life are immutable, the logical goal ought to be to find a way to be happy within those circumstances a and those limitations. It is by no means clear to me that there exists a pill that will aid me in my goal of becoming as happy as I can be, but I owe it to myself to try whatever I can to get there.
-Frank
One psychologist used to tell me that depression is when things aren't going badly but you're still sad, whereas if you're sad because lots of bad things have happened to you, that's just a normal reaction. Well, I certainly have indisputable bad things that have happened to me and they have all happened in the space of two months. That much is certain. However natural and normal it is to feel sad after one's professional and personal life falls apart though, this does nothing to mitigate the unpleasantness of always feeling that way. Sure, I CAN live with constant sadness, just as I could live with the autistic meltdowns (basically a specialized form of panic attack afflicting those on the spectrum) before Paxil removed the need to do so, but why do that if it's possible I don't have to?
To be clear, I am not absolutely certain that I have depression and just as uncertain as to what my new doctor's reaction to what you've read here will be on Monday. Perhaps the crushing sadness caused by permanent unemployment and permanent loneliness will just be something I must tolerate for the rest of my life. However, I've never been open to the possibility of antidepressants before, so exploring medication as a solution to this problem is undiscovered country. Since I have determined that the brute facts of my life are immutable, the logical goal ought to be to find a way to be happy within those circumstances a and those limitations. It is by no means clear to me that there exists a pill that will aid me in my goal of becoming as happy as I can be, but I owe it to myself to try whatever I can to get there.
-Frank
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Facebook Statuses You'll Never See
1. NAME is married to a shiftless, impotent, and useless man and wishes she'd listened to her mother.
2. NAME is so on top of homework right now. Writing papers...SQUEE!!!
3. NAME is not.
4. NAME has the grandkids over and the little shits keep stealing my candy.
5. NAME recalls the yellow cotton dress foaming like a wave on the ground around your knees.
6. NAME is sitting on the cat and will keep doing so until it learns to not interrupt my computer time.
7. NAME loves applications! Send me more! I want to own useless electronic plants and support causes I have no interest in! Tis truly my deepest desire.
8. NAME was lonely and single but then a facebook ad offering to solve that actually worked!
9. NAME doesn't feel like cooking tonight, so she is thawing out some frozen hot dogs in the sink.
10. NAME just managed to cut himself pretty deeply, but is facebooking and dialing 911 at the same time. Yay multitasking!
11. NAME is really quite happy about the way the Razorbacks played tonight.
12. NAME is in love. That's right, in love, with you Bethany Johnson. Bet you thought I'd be vague about it didn't you? No such luck here sister friend.
13. NAME has written a happy poem about rainbows and bunnies that is not at all about suicide, lesbians, or suicidal lesbians.
14. NAME feels sorry for starving European white children.
15. NAME is the picture of mental health. No stress getting to me, nosiree bob.
16. NAME thinks the government can fix the economy, and soon.
17. NAME got hit on today. Far from being creepy, it was flattering, and I didn't even think about wearing his genitalia as a hat over it.
18. NAME's children let her take a nap today. They're so empathic and nurturing.
19. NAME is so happy to be out in the real world now away from my friends and regular interaction with smart people.
20. NAME's wife is kinda funny lookin'. You can't quite put your finger on it, but something's off. This seems obvious.
21. NAME is completely satisfied with how emotionally available you are. Don't go changing for me you sexy, sexy man.
22. NAME is amazed by how stress-free work has been lately. Sometimes when I'm at home, I lie awake in bed and think about being at work while I touch myself.
23. NAME always has so much time on her hands. Clearly she needs a hobby. She's considering taking up underwater basket weaving.
24. NAME thinks nature is boring, sticky, painful, and makes it hard to breathe.
25. NAME thinks floating sounds dangerous, cold, painful, and basically aggressively insane.
-Frank
2. NAME is so on top of homework right now. Writing papers...SQUEE!!!
3. NAME is not.
4. NAME has the grandkids over and the little shits keep stealing my candy.
5. NAME recalls the yellow cotton dress foaming like a wave on the ground around your knees.
6. NAME is sitting on the cat and will keep doing so until it learns to not interrupt my computer time.
7. NAME loves applications! Send me more! I want to own useless electronic plants and support causes I have no interest in! Tis truly my deepest desire.
8. NAME was lonely and single but then a facebook ad offering to solve that actually worked!
9. NAME doesn't feel like cooking tonight, so she is thawing out some frozen hot dogs in the sink.
10. NAME just managed to cut himself pretty deeply, but is facebooking and dialing 911 at the same time. Yay multitasking!
11. NAME is really quite happy about the way the Razorbacks played tonight.
12. NAME is in love. That's right, in love, with you Bethany Johnson. Bet you thought I'd be vague about it didn't you? No such luck here sister friend.
13. NAME has written a happy poem about rainbows and bunnies that is not at all about suicide, lesbians, or suicidal lesbians.
14. NAME feels sorry for starving European white children.
15. NAME is the picture of mental health. No stress getting to me, nosiree bob.
16. NAME thinks the government can fix the economy, and soon.
17. NAME got hit on today. Far from being creepy, it was flattering, and I didn't even think about wearing his genitalia as a hat over it.
18. NAME's children let her take a nap today. They're so empathic and nurturing.
19. NAME is so happy to be out in the real world now away from my friends and regular interaction with smart people.
20. NAME's wife is kinda funny lookin'. You can't quite put your finger on it, but something's off. This seems obvious.
21. NAME is completely satisfied with how emotionally available you are. Don't go changing for me you sexy, sexy man.
22. NAME is amazed by how stress-free work has been lately. Sometimes when I'm at home, I lie awake in bed and think about being at work while I touch myself.
23. NAME always has so much time on her hands. Clearly she needs a hobby. She's considering taking up underwater basket weaving.
24. NAME thinks nature is boring, sticky, painful, and makes it hard to breathe.
25. NAME thinks floating sounds dangerous, cold, painful, and basically aggressively insane.
-Frank
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
The Frank Bailey Justice System
The whole debate of forcing
sex offenders to put signs up in their yard made me realize something
important. We deal with criminals in a halfassed way. Believing that
sex offenders can never be rehabilitated would mean that they should
stay in prison forever. Believing that they can be rehabilitated, and
presumably have been if they're out of prison, would mean no sign should
be necessary. What does letting sex offenders that you believe are
likely to offend again out of prison mean, exactly? Does it mean the
prisons are too full, so you decided to start letting out rapists and
child molesters before junkies, prostitutes, and tax cheats? Come on.
It means we feel it is wrong for child molesters to be in prison forever
but that we think they sure don't belong outside of prison either.
Well, either they should be in or they should be out. They should not,
in any event, be a permanent underclass with full access to commit
crimes again, with as little attachment to society and fellow human
beings as possible, and with no walls or guards to stop them them
offending again. Here is what should happen with the justice system:
Five basic sentences.
1. Fines. Varying degree. To be set by judge depending on nature of crime.
2. Probation. Don't know if it strictly fits the definition, but this includes seeking some sort of therapy. If you're stealing because you don't have a job, that might be vocational training. Rehab for addicts. If you're hooking, you are referred to one of the legal brothels that would exist under the system, where you are cleaned and tested. Different crimes might get psychiatric therapy of various kinds.
3. Useful Labor. For crimes not serious enough for my harsher penalties, but too big a deal for my previous ones, we have useful labor. Can be up to 20 years or as little as a week, depending on the judge. The work would be the sort of thing Mike Rowe shows us on Dirty Jobs or that illegal immigrants do now. Useful things like houses, roads, sewer lines, ditches, and landscaping will come out of this. We will gain an ultra cheap labor force to build infrastructure and the workers will get paid, with half their paycheck going directly to their victim or their victim's family. Workers are not prisoners and will not have a felony on their record when they get out. Failure to show up to work results in being hunted down and killed like a rabid dog, but care is taken to prove they KNOW that and they get a number to call if they're sick or can't make it. Lying about not being able to show up adds a year for each offense. This means, only no call/no show gets the hunting down and killing treatment. This is also the default punishment for any criminal that a judge deems capable of being rehabilitated. For any criminal judged not capable of rehabilitation...
4. Life in prison. No parole. In it until the day you die. A very humane prison though, since the prison population is so much less, we can afford decent toilets for the cells, libraries, and other nice amenities. All privacy is lost, however, and 24 hour CO staff watches all prisoners at all times, including showers and pooping. COs are armed with full automatic weapons at all times and the penalty for harassing or threatening another prisoner is being machine gunned to death. Zero tolerance. Leave other prisoners the fuck alone. You won't ever get a chance to be alone with them to hurt them. The moment you try ANYTHING, you're dead. This isn't the playground where the teacher doesn't care. The teacher is armed to the teeth. Yeah, yeah, "fresh meat", well listen cocksucker, you got in here for preying on the weak, but if you do it in here, I'm turning you into bloody red swiss cheese and feeding you to the guard dogs. Don't even try me. So, yes, prison will be utterly safe and humane, aside from brutally enforcing the rule about not harassing or threatening other prisoners.
5. Death penalty. Nothing fancy. Sit you in a chair in front of a shooting range. Executioner shoots you in the head six times with a semi-automatic high-caliber weapon. You don't fall over, as the chair is secured. Your death should be anywhere from instant to within four seconds. Hurts less than anything they've got today. More messy maybe, but hey, we're killing you. Doesn't seem like we should try and forget that. The death penalty is limited to judges who choose it, criminals (any of whom can choose it over the other four types of sentences) who choose it, and any lifer who manages to somehow threaten, hurt, or kill another inmate without getting blown away for it at the time.
At no time is torture or inhumane treatment allowed here, unless it is specifically employed to get relevant information. Once the information is retrieved, the torture or inhumane treatment must stop immediately.
All the above is meant to reflect my idea of a justice system that would truly have, as its top priorities, individual liberty and quality of life. I'm curious what you think, as both political sides can find things not to like.
-Frank
Five basic sentences.
1. Fines. Varying degree. To be set by judge depending on nature of crime.
2. Probation. Don't know if it strictly fits the definition, but this includes seeking some sort of therapy. If you're stealing because you don't have a job, that might be vocational training. Rehab for addicts. If you're hooking, you are referred to one of the legal brothels that would exist under the system, where you are cleaned and tested. Different crimes might get psychiatric therapy of various kinds.
3. Useful Labor. For crimes not serious enough for my harsher penalties, but too big a deal for my previous ones, we have useful labor. Can be up to 20 years or as little as a week, depending on the judge. The work would be the sort of thing Mike Rowe shows us on Dirty Jobs or that illegal immigrants do now. Useful things like houses, roads, sewer lines, ditches, and landscaping will come out of this. We will gain an ultra cheap labor force to build infrastructure and the workers will get paid, with half their paycheck going directly to their victim or their victim's family. Workers are not prisoners and will not have a felony on their record when they get out. Failure to show up to work results in being hunted down and killed like a rabid dog, but care is taken to prove they KNOW that and they get a number to call if they're sick or can't make it. Lying about not being able to show up adds a year for each offense. This means, only no call/no show gets the hunting down and killing treatment. This is also the default punishment for any criminal that a judge deems capable of being rehabilitated. For any criminal judged not capable of rehabilitation...
4. Life in prison. No parole. In it until the day you die. A very humane prison though, since the prison population is so much less, we can afford decent toilets for the cells, libraries, and other nice amenities. All privacy is lost, however, and 24 hour CO staff watches all prisoners at all times, including showers and pooping. COs are armed with full automatic weapons at all times and the penalty for harassing or threatening another prisoner is being machine gunned to death. Zero tolerance. Leave other prisoners the fuck alone. You won't ever get a chance to be alone with them to hurt them. The moment you try ANYTHING, you're dead. This isn't the playground where the teacher doesn't care. The teacher is armed to the teeth. Yeah, yeah, "fresh meat", well listen cocksucker, you got in here for preying on the weak, but if you do it in here, I'm turning you into bloody red swiss cheese and feeding you to the guard dogs. Don't even try me. So, yes, prison will be utterly safe and humane, aside from brutally enforcing the rule about not harassing or threatening other prisoners.
5. Death penalty. Nothing fancy. Sit you in a chair in front of a shooting range. Executioner shoots you in the head six times with a semi-automatic high-caliber weapon. You don't fall over, as the chair is secured. Your death should be anywhere from instant to within four seconds. Hurts less than anything they've got today. More messy maybe, but hey, we're killing you. Doesn't seem like we should try and forget that. The death penalty is limited to judges who choose it, criminals (any of whom can choose it over the other four types of sentences) who choose it, and any lifer who manages to somehow threaten, hurt, or kill another inmate without getting blown away for it at the time.
At no time is torture or inhumane treatment allowed here, unless it is specifically employed to get relevant information. Once the information is retrieved, the torture or inhumane treatment must stop immediately.
All the above is meant to reflect my idea of a justice system that would truly have, as its top priorities, individual liberty and quality of life. I'm curious what you think, as both political sides can find things not to like.
-Frank
Child Free
In
churches, there are things called crying rooms where babies can be
taken if they're crying. This is one of a very short list of good ideas
religion has ever come up with. Think about how offended people would
be if crying rooms were introduced to other parts of life. Movie theaters,
fine dining establishments, airplanes, live public speaking events, all
could benefit from the addition of crying rooms. Somewhere nearby
where the mother or father of the offending infant can simply run off to
with their child and allow the rest of us to benefit from soundproofing
technology. But noooooooooooooo. We're all supposed to act like that
shrill wail doesn't bother us in the slightest, or at least that we're
capable of thinking any thought that isn't,
"SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTU
A few caveats here.
1. If I'm in Shoney's, or McDonald's, or Chuck E. Cheese and this is happening...fine. Family places are family places. Kids can yell and scream and run and put ketchup on the walls and pee directly on the seat in the bathroom and it's fine because they're kids and I'm in a place that is really more meant for them than me.
2. As for stuff that's just kid behavior of the pretty standard variety, that's fine. If they're talking too much, being too loud, drawing attention to themselves, being creepy, or being somehow annoying...here's the thing. Adults do that. Lots of adults. I do that, if we're talking about the talking too much and too loud thing. So I'm hardly the one judging. Kids have equal rights to be irritating in public as do adults. I will happily concede the point.
3. If the kid's throwing a tantrum and the parent is at least acknowledging it and trying to do something about it, I am willing to cut them some slack...up to a point. If you're trying to get them to behave and what you're trying isn't working after like ten minutes, either try something else or go away.
If there is a kid you control so poorly that he or she actually comes over to me and starts actively trying to bother me, we have problems. You are not respecting my individual liberty to be child-free and I will proceed to not respect your individual liberty to have your child go on believing that there is A). A Santa, B). A God, C). A chance in hell they were planned. I have zero obligation to tolerate your children or to help you raise them unless you're a friend or relative, and even then I'd like the responsibilities to be rather minor.
Getting to the point made in the title, I do believe that you should be able to be completely free from other people's children. Those of us who have made the decision to never have them have not just decided to not procreate. We have decided to not live in a world where everything is sticky, smelly, irrational, chaotic, extra expensive, staining, loud, needy, and owning nice things is absolutely futile. You have chosen to go a different route. Good for you. Leave us out of it. Do not take your children to see 10:00 showings of R-Rated movies just because it's for violence instead of boobies. Do not take your children to eat anywhere they offer a wine list unless you're prepared to leave the moment a disturbance starts. Do not take your children to live plays (I have actor friends who claim they've seen it), do not take your children to designated smoke break areas/smoke shops/cigar bars and then complain people are smoking (seriously, fuck you, go elsewhere), and, generally, do not take your children places that children neither want to go or should go. We go to those places to escape children and they should be sacred. There should, in fact, be child-free flights. I'd pay HUNDREDS more for my ticket to be separated from a single colicky baby.
Look, I've got a two nieces and I love them. I get it. Indeed, I was once a child and I do not dislike children. There is just a time and a place for them and that time and place is not always and everywhere. You've made a decision to procreate and I realize if everyone was like me the human race would die off. Keep in mind though that I don't like people and the idea of less of them doesn't exactly make me sad.
-Frank
A few caveats here.
1. If I'm in Shoney's, or McDonald's, or Chuck E. Cheese and this is happening...fine. Family places are family places. Kids can yell and scream and run and put ketchup on the walls and pee directly on the seat in the bathroom and it's fine because they're kids and I'm in a place that is really more meant for them than me.
2. As for stuff that's just kid behavior of the pretty standard variety, that's fine. If they're talking too much, being too loud, drawing attention to themselves, being creepy, or being somehow annoying...here's the thing. Adults do that. Lots of adults. I do that, if we're talking about the talking too much and too loud thing. So I'm hardly the one judging. Kids have equal rights to be irritating in public as do adults. I will happily concede the point.
3. If the kid's throwing a tantrum and the parent is at least acknowledging it and trying to do something about it, I am willing to cut them some slack...up to a point. If you're trying to get them to behave and what you're trying isn't working after like ten minutes, either try something else or go away.
If there is a kid you control so poorly that he or she actually comes over to me and starts actively trying to bother me, we have problems. You are not respecting my individual liberty to be child-free and I will proceed to not respect your individual liberty to have your child go on believing that there is A). A Santa, B). A God, C). A chance in hell they were planned. I have zero obligation to tolerate your children or to help you raise them unless you're a friend or relative, and even then I'd like the responsibilities to be rather minor.
Getting to the point made in the title, I do believe that you should be able to be completely free from other people's children. Those of us who have made the decision to never have them have not just decided to not procreate. We have decided to not live in a world where everything is sticky, smelly, irrational, chaotic, extra expensive, staining, loud, needy, and owning nice things is absolutely futile. You have chosen to go a different route. Good for you. Leave us out of it. Do not take your children to see 10:00 showings of R-Rated movies just because it's for violence instead of boobies. Do not take your children to eat anywhere they offer a wine list unless you're prepared to leave the moment a disturbance starts. Do not take your children to live plays (I have actor friends who claim they've seen it), do not take your children to designated smoke break areas/smoke shops/cigar bars and then complain people are smoking (seriously, fuck you, go elsewhere), and, generally, do not take your children places that children neither want to go or should go. We go to those places to escape children and they should be sacred. There should, in fact, be child-free flights. I'd pay HUNDREDS more for my ticket to be separated from a single colicky baby.
Look, I've got a two nieces and I love them. I get it. Indeed, I was once a child and I do not dislike children. There is just a time and a place for them and that time and place is not always and everywhere. You've made a decision to procreate and I realize if everyone was like me the human race would die off. Keep in mind though that I don't like people and the idea of less of them doesn't exactly make me sad.
-Frank
Monday, October 20, 2014
The Ghost Of Christmas Future
I'm relistening to a book Lewis Black came out with a few years ago called I'm Dreaming Of A Black Christmas. Mr. Black wrote the book to give an alternative perspective on Christmas. On several fronts, he is not in a position to enjoy the holiday. He is a Jew, he has no family of his own, he has no great love of Germanic tradition, despises winter, and has no patience for shopping or holiday advertising. However, he does enjoy being invited over to friends' homes for holiday dinners and wine. In a small way, I can relate to Mr. Black. Likely as a result of a bad marriage wherein his wife tricked him info thinking her pregnancy was his doing (It was from an affair), he's never been able to have a wife and child of his own. His parents are terrible cooks, so he avoids them at the holidays, which also means Thanksgiving is a no-go. So he's alone on Christmas, aside from the friends who will take him in for a time. This is my future as well, although I doubt I'll be invited in by friends, as Mr. Black is fortunate enough to be. So I must ask myself how one enjoys Christmas alone.
If you stay single long enough, there is a very particular set of things that will happen. At first, you'll be okay because the elders of your family will keep everyone coming together in one large family gathering in all the multiple generations. Eventually though, the elders die off and you are left with your own generation. Your own generation will have made their own families by then and want to have their own Christmas gatherings in their own homes, as they have acquired in-laws and additional extended family. Family, in this sense, is an exhaustible resource and you'll lose that resource eventually if you don't replenish it by starting your own. At the point you face being alone on Christmas and the important thing to figure out is how to cope with that circumstance. You may well end up alone on your computer or in front of your television while nearly everyone you know celebrates family, generosity, and also Jesus, if they like. Avoiding that has become a preoccupation of mine.
Fortunately, I've got a while before I really have to face being alone on Christmas and that gives me time to figure out what to do when the time comes. I figure there are about four options of ways to handle the problem. Ideally, you get invited to someone's actual Christmas. It's a little like getting adopted, I suppose. You're all out of family, so someone else lets you borrow theirs when you need it most. Another route is to simply throw your own Christmas party, inviting over everyone else that also has nowhere to go. Finding enough people in that circumstance is the main flaw in that option. Then there's parties other people organize before actual Christmas, like the one in the cigar shop I've been hanging out in for 15 years. Those only have the problem that they're not on Christmas itself, so you're still alone on Christmas. Finally, there's going on vacation during the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. While I have the advantage that I can cover all expenses for a traveling partner, which I require for if to be fun, I still have to find another person with nowhere to go on both holidays. None of these solutions are perfect and I may well end up alone in my condo on Christmas one day, but I'll try and enjoy my favorite holiday however I can as long as I can.
If you stay single long enough, there is a very particular set of things that will happen. At first, you'll be okay because the elders of your family will keep everyone coming together in one large family gathering in all the multiple generations. Eventually though, the elders die off and you are left with your own generation. Your own generation will have made their own families by then and want to have their own Christmas gatherings in their own homes, as they have acquired in-laws and additional extended family. Family, in this sense, is an exhaustible resource and you'll lose that resource eventually if you don't replenish it by starting your own. At the point you face being alone on Christmas and the important thing to figure out is how to cope with that circumstance. You may well end up alone on your computer or in front of your television while nearly everyone you know celebrates family, generosity, and also Jesus, if they like. Avoiding that has become a preoccupation of mine.
Fortunately, I've got a while before I really have to face being alone on Christmas and that gives me time to figure out what to do when the time comes. I figure there are about four options of ways to handle the problem. Ideally, you get invited to someone's actual Christmas. It's a little like getting adopted, I suppose. You're all out of family, so someone else lets you borrow theirs when you need it most. Another route is to simply throw your own Christmas party, inviting over everyone else that also has nowhere to go. Finding enough people in that circumstance is the main flaw in that option. Then there's parties other people organize before actual Christmas, like the one in the cigar shop I've been hanging out in for 15 years. Those only have the problem that they're not on Christmas itself, so you're still alone on Christmas. Finally, there's going on vacation during the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas. While I have the advantage that I can cover all expenses for a traveling partner, which I require for if to be fun, I still have to find another person with nowhere to go on both holidays. None of these solutions are perfect and I may well end up alone in my condo on Christmas one day, but I'll try and enjoy my favorite holiday however I can as long as I can.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Forty Fun Food Facts
Being in culinary school has afforded me the opportunity to learn many
fun things about food, as has over a year of religious devotion to The
Food Network and, especially, Good Eats. That said, here I'll share my
bountiful knowledge with you and try to make it interesting.
1. Chocolate was originally used primarily as a beverage by the colonial Spanish in South America. It was particularly useful for staying awake in church and was so popular that a powerful bishop was poisoned for speaking out against its consumption. Having a mother who is a confirmed chocoholic, I understand their priorities.
2. Coconut water is some of the purest stuff on Earth. There have been times in early 20th century wars where soldiers would be given the stuff intravenously. That's how pure and sterile it is. It also tastes really good when mixed with virtually anything, even Diet Rite.
3. Smoked food tastes good to us for evolutionary purposes. Not only does it taste bad to flies, but it also helps preserve the food, as does salt and sugar. Virtually anything that tastes good to humans has some survival value
4. Dark food looks better on a white plate and light food looks better on a black plate.
5. To beat the heat of spicy foods, use milk, alcohol, or sugar water. Bread, straight water, or soda don't really help much.
6. Okra is common in gumbo because the slime inside acts as a great thickener, and thickening is always a central concern in soupmaking. Fried okra is really the peak application though, and can be done as either a wet or dry method.
7. Pink peppercorns are not actually pepper nigram. They are simply a berry that looks similar. They are, however, good on deviled eggs regardless.
8. There are two kinds of cocoa powder. Unsweetened, or regular, cocoa powder is a highly acidic product with a pH of around 6 and is noted for it's reddish brown color. Dutch process, or Dutched, cocoa powder, on the other hand, has a sweet chocolate taste and is a color closer to what most people would think of as well. They're both great for a lot of uses, but you have to know what you're doing. Basically, anytime there's a lot of fat and sugar in the recipe, you'll want unsweetened, but if there's not a lot of fat and sugar to counter the bitterness, Dutch process is the way to go.
9. When cutting broccoli on the mandoline, you'll want to make sure and cut stem-first. The florets are structurally weak and the stem's really the only think holding anything together.
10. Carrots have a lot of natural sugar to them, which is what makes carrot cakes work. The sweet potential of carrots was discovered by the British during sugar shortages of WWII. In many ways, the carrot is an old reliable favorite to the British, much like corn is to us.
11. Angel food cake is heavily protein laden and completely fat free, by definition. See, egg foams won't form if there's even a fleck of yolk, or any other fat for that matter, and there's like 5 or six egg whites in an angel food cake. It's a ton of protein, certainly enough to counteract the relatively minor amounts of flour and sugar involved. One of the healthiest cakes you could eat!
12. Homemade mayo is not going to give you salmonella poisoning because vinegar and lemon juice are involved. Acid is really good at killing salmonella.
13. That scooper thing that the lunchladies used to use to dish out mashed potatoes? The one with the scraper inside the bowl that moves back and forth to get the foodstuffs out? That's not called an ice cream scoop. It's called a disher and it's a wonderful portioning device. Depending on the type of dough, but especially for things like chocolate chip cookie dough, it will ensure your cookies are big and also that they are evenly cooked.
14. Don't ever put good knives that you actually care about in the dishwasher. The blades might be able to handle it but the handles will crack and break. Besides, having super-sharp stuff flying around in there, well, that's just...not...real...bright.
15. Chicken is the radioactive hot potato of contaminated food. Don't ever cut chicken on a wooden cutting board. Only plastic ones will do and, ideally, you'll have a particular cutting board for which you always and only use chicken.
16. If your dog eats a little bit of a chocolate bar, relax. There needs to be a lot of cocoa solids for it to actually become a real problem. Actual baker's chocolate is when you should really worry.
17. Don't make sauces in a saucepan. You need to be able to get a whisk down into the sides and the straight sides of a saucepan make that pretty touch. Instead use a saucier, which basically looks like a bowl with a handle on it.
18. Even if you're not worried about plating, try and get your knife cuts relatively even. They're functional as well as pretty, in the sense that similarly sized things cook more evenly and get completely cooked at the same time.
19. Peanuts are not nuts, but many other things that we think of as nuts are actually drupes, but then again many things we call berries are drupes...and some things we call vegetables are berries...so there's really nothing good down the nitpicking road.
20. To lessen the teary-eyed effect of chopping onions, work near an open flame and use a sharp knife so you damage the leaves less.
21. If you're not sure about a piece of meat, push on it with your fingers. If it bounces back and leaves no impression of your fingers, it's a go. If there's a lasting imprint...run.
22. I always thought icing was so difficult to make. It's easy once you have a good stand mixer. Just follow the recipe on powdered sugar bags and, if you want a different flavor, replace it with that flavor of extract. Easy.
23. Hand mixers are wonderful backups and really the only way to whip up egg whites right. Stand mixers just can't quite compete in this category. Likewise, don't ever try to cream butter with a hand mixer. You'll get there eventually but your arm'll fall off in the meantime.
24. Fresh ground spices really do matter. Outside of ginger, it is really worth it to keep a separate grinder for spices. Your coffee one will work, kind of, but I've reached the limits of my patience with mine. A pepper mill is fine for pepper, but you'll use the grinder real fast once you decide volume is a priority.
25. Don't buy butter spread. Whip up butter in the stand mixer and put it in a container in the fridge. Just as much spreadability, ten times the flavor. Throw in garlic or herbs if you like.
26. Homemade microwave popcorn. 1 brown lunch bag, 1/4 cup popcorn, 2 tsps popcorn oil or olive oil, 1 tsp fine salt, 1 tsp flavored salt. Fold over three times, staple shut with two staples. Microwave until five seconds between pops. You'll be amazed how much better this is.
27. Remember with garlic that the finer you chop it the more intense the flavor's going to be.
28. Only try candymaking if you're not afraid of burning yourself. Depending on what you're doing, a sugar-based syrup can get more than 200 degrees above the boiling point of water. Culinary napalm, pastry chefs call it.
29. Always look to see if it says the simple words "maple syrup" on maple syrup. If it says pancake syrup, waffle syrup, butter-flavored syrup, maple-flavored syrup, or anything like that, it's not the genuine article. Usually there will be only one or two packages of it on a store's shelf and it will be much less flashy than its synthetic cousins. Also be prepared for a much different viscosity and a much richer product.
30. Pam is close to 100% fat. It is not, as advertised, 100% fat free. If you think you can grease a pan without fat being involved...well...you're special.
31. Don't ever leave salt out of recipes. Salt doesn't just make food salty, but serves to make it more flavorful. It literally turns up the flavor receptors on your taste buds, and you'll never miss it until it's gone.
32. Don't drink juice instead of soda and kid yourself that it's healthier. Fructose is not all that much better than high fructose corn syrup, you know.
33. Do not use the same batter for waffles and pancakes. You are going for a crisp product with a creamy texture on the inside with the former and a soft cakey texture throughout with the latter. You think you can accomplish this with the same batter...why?
34. When buying ham, only buy ham that says on it, simply "ham" or "ham in natural juice." If it says "ham and water product" or "ham, water added", do you think that's a good sign?
35. If you're worried about food poisoning, there's no need to overcook everything to high heaven. Most microbial beasties die between 135-165 degrees, depending on the food you're preparing. Use an instant-read thermometer and know the proper doneness temperature you're looking for. That way, you can taste the food instead of the cooking process itself. And if you're worried about ordering food out, believe me, the chefs know what they're doing by now.
36. Kosher salt doesn't have iodine added to it like normal table salt. That's part of why Alton Brown advocates the stuff and I agree. Just try it sometime. It tastes...more like salt.
37. If you're separating eggs, and you don't like to use your hands or the shell itself, use a slotted spoon. Use three bowls. One to separate over, one to put the yolk in, and one to put whites in. That way, one disastrous separation doesn't spoil the whole bunch with flecks of unwelcome yolk.
38. Broccoli tastes better than you've ever realized. Just steam it for fifteen minutes and when it comes out add some garlic salt, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper. It's really quite good. Most likely the stuff you had to eat as a kid was boiled. Boiling is a TERRIBLE way to fix broccoli.
39. Excellent low-calorie snack: 2 cups blueberries, 2 cups Kashi seven-grain cereal, 4 tablespoons of sugar/16 packets of Splenda (depending on how sugar and you get along) and whatever kind of milk you like. First add the blueberries, then the sweetening agent, then just enough milk in the bowl (a big bowl) to cover the blueberries, followed by the cereal. Stir well enough to mix everything up. Suddenly, you've got a fruity meal that's probably around 300 calories (well more if you used half and half or something).
40. Sweet potatoes, while sweeter than their regular potato cousins, actually have more fiber and vitamins/minerals. Strange that diabetics would be better off with something sweet in the name, but it's true.
-Frank
1. Chocolate was originally used primarily as a beverage by the colonial Spanish in South America. It was particularly useful for staying awake in church and was so popular that a powerful bishop was poisoned for speaking out against its consumption. Having a mother who is a confirmed chocoholic, I understand their priorities.
2. Coconut water is some of the purest stuff on Earth. There have been times in early 20th century wars where soldiers would be given the stuff intravenously. That's how pure and sterile it is. It also tastes really good when mixed with virtually anything, even Diet Rite.
3. Smoked food tastes good to us for evolutionary purposes. Not only does it taste bad to flies, but it also helps preserve the food, as does salt and sugar. Virtually anything that tastes good to humans has some survival value
4. Dark food looks better on a white plate and light food looks better on a black plate.
5. To beat the heat of spicy foods, use milk, alcohol, or sugar water. Bread, straight water, or soda don't really help much.
6. Okra is common in gumbo because the slime inside acts as a great thickener, and thickening is always a central concern in soupmaking. Fried okra is really the peak application though, and can be done as either a wet or dry method.
7. Pink peppercorns are not actually pepper nigram. They are simply a berry that looks similar. They are, however, good on deviled eggs regardless.
8. There are two kinds of cocoa powder. Unsweetened, or regular, cocoa powder is a highly acidic product with a pH of around 6 and is noted for it's reddish brown color. Dutch process, or Dutched, cocoa powder, on the other hand, has a sweet chocolate taste and is a color closer to what most people would think of as well. They're both great for a lot of uses, but you have to know what you're doing. Basically, anytime there's a lot of fat and sugar in the recipe, you'll want unsweetened, but if there's not a lot of fat and sugar to counter the bitterness, Dutch process is the way to go.
9. When cutting broccoli on the mandoline, you'll want to make sure and cut stem-first. The florets are structurally weak and the stem's really the only think holding anything together.
10. Carrots have a lot of natural sugar to them, which is what makes carrot cakes work. The sweet potential of carrots was discovered by the British during sugar shortages of WWII. In many ways, the carrot is an old reliable favorite to the British, much like corn is to us.
11. Angel food cake is heavily protein laden and completely fat free, by definition. See, egg foams won't form if there's even a fleck of yolk, or any other fat for that matter, and there's like 5 or six egg whites in an angel food cake. It's a ton of protein, certainly enough to counteract the relatively minor amounts of flour and sugar involved. One of the healthiest cakes you could eat!
12. Homemade mayo is not going to give you salmonella poisoning because vinegar and lemon juice are involved. Acid is really good at killing salmonella.
13. That scooper thing that the lunchladies used to use to dish out mashed potatoes? The one with the scraper inside the bowl that moves back and forth to get the foodstuffs out? That's not called an ice cream scoop. It's called a disher and it's a wonderful portioning device. Depending on the type of dough, but especially for things like chocolate chip cookie dough, it will ensure your cookies are big and also that they are evenly cooked.
14. Don't ever put good knives that you actually care about in the dishwasher. The blades might be able to handle it but the handles will crack and break. Besides, having super-sharp stuff flying around in there, well, that's just...not...real...bright.
15. Chicken is the radioactive hot potato of contaminated food. Don't ever cut chicken on a wooden cutting board. Only plastic ones will do and, ideally, you'll have a particular cutting board for which you always and only use chicken.
16. If your dog eats a little bit of a chocolate bar, relax. There needs to be a lot of cocoa solids for it to actually become a real problem. Actual baker's chocolate is when you should really worry.
17. Don't make sauces in a saucepan. You need to be able to get a whisk down into the sides and the straight sides of a saucepan make that pretty touch. Instead use a saucier, which basically looks like a bowl with a handle on it.
18. Even if you're not worried about plating, try and get your knife cuts relatively even. They're functional as well as pretty, in the sense that similarly sized things cook more evenly and get completely cooked at the same time.
19. Peanuts are not nuts, but many other things that we think of as nuts are actually drupes, but then again many things we call berries are drupes...and some things we call vegetables are berries...so there's really nothing good down the nitpicking road.
20. To lessen the teary-eyed effect of chopping onions, work near an open flame and use a sharp knife so you damage the leaves less.
21. If you're not sure about a piece of meat, push on it with your fingers. If it bounces back and leaves no impression of your fingers, it's a go. If there's a lasting imprint...run.
22. I always thought icing was so difficult to make. It's easy once you have a good stand mixer. Just follow the recipe on powdered sugar bags and, if you want a different flavor, replace it with that flavor of extract. Easy.
23. Hand mixers are wonderful backups and really the only way to whip up egg whites right. Stand mixers just can't quite compete in this category. Likewise, don't ever try to cream butter with a hand mixer. You'll get there eventually but your arm'll fall off in the meantime.
24. Fresh ground spices really do matter. Outside of ginger, it is really worth it to keep a separate grinder for spices. Your coffee one will work, kind of, but I've reached the limits of my patience with mine. A pepper mill is fine for pepper, but you'll use the grinder real fast once you decide volume is a priority.
25. Don't buy butter spread. Whip up butter in the stand mixer and put it in a container in the fridge. Just as much spreadability, ten times the flavor. Throw in garlic or herbs if you like.
26. Homemade microwave popcorn. 1 brown lunch bag, 1/4 cup popcorn, 2 tsps popcorn oil or olive oil, 1 tsp fine salt, 1 tsp flavored salt. Fold over three times, staple shut with two staples. Microwave until five seconds between pops. You'll be amazed how much better this is.
27. Remember with garlic that the finer you chop it the more intense the flavor's going to be.
28. Only try candymaking if you're not afraid of burning yourself. Depending on what you're doing, a sugar-based syrup can get more than 200 degrees above the boiling point of water. Culinary napalm, pastry chefs call it.
29. Always look to see if it says the simple words "maple syrup" on maple syrup. If it says pancake syrup, waffle syrup, butter-flavored syrup, maple-flavored syrup, or anything like that, it's not the genuine article. Usually there will be only one or two packages of it on a store's shelf and it will be much less flashy than its synthetic cousins. Also be prepared for a much different viscosity and a much richer product.
30. Pam is close to 100% fat. It is not, as advertised, 100% fat free. If you think you can grease a pan without fat being involved...well...you're special.
31. Don't ever leave salt out of recipes. Salt doesn't just make food salty, but serves to make it more flavorful. It literally turns up the flavor receptors on your taste buds, and you'll never miss it until it's gone.
32. Don't drink juice instead of soda and kid yourself that it's healthier. Fructose is not all that much better than high fructose corn syrup, you know.
33. Do not use the same batter for waffles and pancakes. You are going for a crisp product with a creamy texture on the inside with the former and a soft cakey texture throughout with the latter. You think you can accomplish this with the same batter...why?
34. When buying ham, only buy ham that says on it, simply "ham" or "ham in natural juice." If it says "ham and water product" or "ham, water added", do you think that's a good sign?
35. If you're worried about food poisoning, there's no need to overcook everything to high heaven. Most microbial beasties die between 135-165 degrees, depending on the food you're preparing. Use an instant-read thermometer and know the proper doneness temperature you're looking for. That way, you can taste the food instead of the cooking process itself. And if you're worried about ordering food out, believe me, the chefs know what they're doing by now.
36. Kosher salt doesn't have iodine added to it like normal table salt. That's part of why Alton Brown advocates the stuff and I agree. Just try it sometime. It tastes...more like salt.
37. If you're separating eggs, and you don't like to use your hands or the shell itself, use a slotted spoon. Use three bowls. One to separate over, one to put the yolk in, and one to put whites in. That way, one disastrous separation doesn't spoil the whole bunch with flecks of unwelcome yolk.
38. Broccoli tastes better than you've ever realized. Just steam it for fifteen minutes and when it comes out add some garlic salt, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper. It's really quite good. Most likely the stuff you had to eat as a kid was boiled. Boiling is a TERRIBLE way to fix broccoli.
39. Excellent low-calorie snack: 2 cups blueberries, 2 cups Kashi seven-grain cereal, 4 tablespoons of sugar/16 packets of Splenda (depending on how sugar and you get along) and whatever kind of milk you like. First add the blueberries, then the sweetening agent, then just enough milk in the bowl (a big bowl) to cover the blueberries, followed by the cereal. Stir well enough to mix everything up. Suddenly, you've got a fruity meal that's probably around 300 calories (well more if you used half and half or something).
40. Sweet potatoes, while sweeter than their regular potato cousins, actually have more fiber and vitamins/minerals. Strange that diabetics would be better off with something sweet in the name, but it's true.
-Frank
Advice For Amateur Bakers
If you are a serious amateur baker, you're going to need one thing above all others and that is people to eat your product. After all, you can't eat quantities of baked goods intended for several people all by yourself. That's a good way to end up hideously fat and washing yourself with a rag on a stick. How to find that audience and what to bake for them is a challenge all amateur bakers face and it is the most defining one. Having been seriously pursuing amateur baking for some seven years now, I can tell you that I've learned a few tricks for how to make things go smoothly. Rather than my usual long paragraph form, I'll make a list of tips with brief explanations underneath them. This is not a guide for how to bake itself. If got want that, purchase Alton Brown's I'm Just Here For More Food and follow it like the damned Bible.
1. For small groups, stick to your ringers:
I have a mental list of recipes that I know always work and always wow. If I've got a small group or if it's an important event, I know I have to stick to my ringers. Otherwise, I could end up throwing away a lot of food and/or embarrassing myself.
2. For medium groups you can experiment, but only a little.
If you've got a good amount of people, you can change some variables to your ringers, so long as it's only a couple of them. By that, I mean a different shaped pan, brand of product, flavoring agent, and that type of general thing. If it's not quite as good, but close, enough will be consumed to avoid embarrassment.
3. For large groups, you can try brand new things.
Generally speaking, if a baked good is present and is at least of passable flavor and texture, a large group will chomp through it with no problems. Get as creative as you want here, but bear in mind that the important next rule is absolutely crucial here because there's no point if you don't...
4. Taste any food you're going to serve to people.
You don't know it's good until it's good, even if it's a ringer you've made many times before. One never knows when something unnoticed will go wrong and for that reason you should always...
5. Give yourself time to make a last-ditch ringer in case whatever you're making doesn't turn out.
We all have bad days and people are counting on you. Have a backup plan.
6. Where possible precut.
Finding a knife or transporting a knife is a pain and a half. Cut right before you're going to take your baked goods to their destination and everyone will have an easier time.
7. Try and bake things that don't require a plate and fork.
Cookies, muffins, brownies, candies, and the like all make for an easier time with less trash created.
8. If you must bake things that require plates and forks, provide them.
I don't care if you have a blood oath from the people you're taking baked goods to that they will provide paper plates and forks, never count on it.
9. Never take chocolate chip cookies paired with anything else.
You will have to throw away the something else. Trust me.
10. Check if they'll have something else before you bring something.
You'll either upstage or be upstaged. Neither ends well.
-Frank
1. For small groups, stick to your ringers:
I have a mental list of recipes that I know always work and always wow. If I've got a small group or if it's an important event, I know I have to stick to my ringers. Otherwise, I could end up throwing away a lot of food and/or embarrassing myself.
2. For medium groups you can experiment, but only a little.
If you've got a good amount of people, you can change some variables to your ringers, so long as it's only a couple of them. By that, I mean a different shaped pan, brand of product, flavoring agent, and that type of general thing. If it's not quite as good, but close, enough will be consumed to avoid embarrassment.
3. For large groups, you can try brand new things.
Generally speaking, if a baked good is present and is at least of passable flavor and texture, a large group will chomp through it with no problems. Get as creative as you want here, but bear in mind that the important next rule is absolutely crucial here because there's no point if you don't...
4. Taste any food you're going to serve to people.
You don't know it's good until it's good, even if it's a ringer you've made many times before. One never knows when something unnoticed will go wrong and for that reason you should always...
5. Give yourself time to make a last-ditch ringer in case whatever you're making doesn't turn out.
We all have bad days and people are counting on you. Have a backup plan.
6. Where possible precut.
Finding a knife or transporting a knife is a pain and a half. Cut right before you're going to take your baked goods to their destination and everyone will have an easier time.
7. Try and bake things that don't require a plate and fork.
Cookies, muffins, brownies, candies, and the like all make for an easier time with less trash created.
8. If you must bake things that require plates and forks, provide them.
I don't care if you have a blood oath from the people you're taking baked goods to that they will provide paper plates and forks, never count on it.
9. Never take chocolate chip cookies paired with anything else.
You will have to throw away the something else. Trust me.
10. Check if they'll have something else before you bring something.
You'll either upstage or be upstaged. Neither ends well.
-Frank
Friday, October 17, 2014
No Plan
For the vast majority of my life, I've had big plans for the future. We all do a bit when we're kids. It starts with what you want to do when you grow up, which you are asked constantly by every adult who wanders into your general vicinity. From there, you're off the races. With each grade, with puberty, with your first job, with college, and more, you make plans. Once in college, you have to make plans for each semester and have a specific academic plan for courses that will both allow graduation and the attainment of your chosen major. Sometimes, as in my case, college doesn't end and you end up chasing graduate and professional degrees, largely because your plans probably didn't work out. Eventually though, other plans will be necessary. A career and/or a family is the ultimate plan for most people. What happens, then, when there no longer is a plan?
As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, my plans have not worked out. Career, family, a big house with a projector TV room, or whatever other big plans I might've had are all beyond my reach. What I have is a status quo that allows me to have fun. So, if you insist on calling the intention to maintain the status quo a plan, that's about the extent to which I have one. There's a lot to be said for my status quo. I have the money and the time to simply have as much fun as a reasonable single adult should ever want. Of course, that's what most people think they want. A life of unending hedonism is a tempting prospect. This misses the idea that, just as all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, all play and no work make Jack a superficial boy. These plans I talk about that most people have is how one builds a life with substance. My outlet for substance is these writings. Hopefully, I'll write something that's funny, informative, enraging, or that otherwise impacts real people in a significant way.
There are a few plans that I am forming in my mind, but these are the sort of plans that do not connote ambition. They're things like vacations I want to take at a certain time each year, what kind of desserts I'd like to make at the holidays, articles I'd like to write, pipes I'd like to buy and that sort of thing. As a diabetic must enjoy desserts vicariously and so must I enjoy certain substantive elements of living vicariously. My friends are going to have their spouses, their kids, their careers, and everything that comes with most adult lives. Of course, I will be happy for them when these things go well and cry for them when they don't. In any event, the larger idea here to to try and become content with a life free of ambition. After all, life isn't short, as if often said. Life, to paraphrase Chris Rock, is long, especially if you don't have a lot going on in yours. So I'm going to try and be as happy as I can be with whatever remaining time I have left.
-Frank
As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, my plans have not worked out. Career, family, a big house with a projector TV room, or whatever other big plans I might've had are all beyond my reach. What I have is a status quo that allows me to have fun. So, if you insist on calling the intention to maintain the status quo a plan, that's about the extent to which I have one. There's a lot to be said for my status quo. I have the money and the time to simply have as much fun as a reasonable single adult should ever want. Of course, that's what most people think they want. A life of unending hedonism is a tempting prospect. This misses the idea that, just as all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, all play and no work make Jack a superficial boy. These plans I talk about that most people have is how one builds a life with substance. My outlet for substance is these writings. Hopefully, I'll write something that's funny, informative, enraging, or that otherwise impacts real people in a significant way.
There are a few plans that I am forming in my mind, but these are the sort of plans that do not connote ambition. They're things like vacations I want to take at a certain time each year, what kind of desserts I'd like to make at the holidays, articles I'd like to write, pipes I'd like to buy and that sort of thing. As a diabetic must enjoy desserts vicariously and so must I enjoy certain substantive elements of living vicariously. My friends are going to have their spouses, their kids, their careers, and everything that comes with most adult lives. Of course, I will be happy for them when these things go well and cry for them when they don't. In any event, the larger idea here to to try and become content with a life free of ambition. After all, life isn't short, as if often said. Life, to paraphrase Chris Rock, is long, especially if you don't have a lot going on in yours. So I'm going to try and be as happy as I can be with whatever remaining time I have left.
-Frank
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Observations On Life & Death
In the movie Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood's character is asked at one
point what he knows about life and what he knows about death. Seems
like an interesting question for anyone to answer. So I'll give it a
shot.
One thing I am sure of about life is that it has no inherent meaning. Nothing that applies to everyone universally anyway. Oh sure, there are some common themes like finding your work, starting a family, and that sort of thing, but they sure as hell don't apply to everyone. From a biological perspective, you don't really exist for any reason beyond perpetuating your genes. If that's really what life is all about, I already plan to fail, because there's another truth about life that I'm sure about. Reality is a suffering pit. Sure, we distract ourselves with pleasures of the flesh, pleasures of the mind, and the few moments of happiness we manage to eke out, but, on the whole, suffering pit. From the moment we wake up and stub our toe on the nightstand or bump into furniture because we're still drowsy to the moment we go to bed at night with our feet hurting, or a pain shooting up a leg, or a headache, isn't it all just a demoralizing endless struggle to escape the suffering? What else do you need to know about life? Is there anything more of substance you could even come up with?
When most people think of death, I suppose concepts like fear and sadness have close associations. Not for me. What I know about death tells me that it is most often a mercy. Go visit a nursing home and look real close at the vast majority of the patients in there. My own grandmother was 102 when she died and she thought I was in in grade school. Another woman in that same nursing home just sat there in her wheelchair with her hair cocked to the side with drool coming out that nurses occasionally come by and wipe up. One woman was screaming at the top of her lungs begging to be killed. Living is no mercy for these people, but a form of purgatory. They're biologically functioning, but they cannot live anymore. Shadows of their former selves, they live as ghosts looking out on a world through windows and televisions that they might as well be viewing through the ether for all they can interact with it anymore. While our lives are filled with eating out, talking with friends, and being productive, theirs are lives of bedpans, aches and pains, bigass pills, and hoping each time they fall asleep will finally be the time they won't wake up. Death is not the enemy, but the one mercy and the one thing of true democracy and equality we can all expect to find. People have been amazed by me because I do not fear death because it is simply the unknown. The unknown does not scare me. This world of endless stupid struggle, that scares me, and whatever death is, it is not that.
-Frank
One thing I am sure of about life is that it has no inherent meaning. Nothing that applies to everyone universally anyway. Oh sure, there are some common themes like finding your work, starting a family, and that sort of thing, but they sure as hell don't apply to everyone. From a biological perspective, you don't really exist for any reason beyond perpetuating your genes. If that's really what life is all about, I already plan to fail, because there's another truth about life that I'm sure about. Reality is a suffering pit. Sure, we distract ourselves with pleasures of the flesh, pleasures of the mind, and the few moments of happiness we manage to eke out, but, on the whole, suffering pit. From the moment we wake up and stub our toe on the nightstand or bump into furniture because we're still drowsy to the moment we go to bed at night with our feet hurting, or a pain shooting up a leg, or a headache, isn't it all just a demoralizing endless struggle to escape the suffering? What else do you need to know about life? Is there anything more of substance you could even come up with?
When most people think of death, I suppose concepts like fear and sadness have close associations. Not for me. What I know about death tells me that it is most often a mercy. Go visit a nursing home and look real close at the vast majority of the patients in there. My own grandmother was 102 when she died and she thought I was in in grade school. Another woman in that same nursing home just sat there in her wheelchair with her hair cocked to the side with drool coming out that nurses occasionally come by and wipe up. One woman was screaming at the top of her lungs begging to be killed. Living is no mercy for these people, but a form of purgatory. They're biologically functioning, but they cannot live anymore. Shadows of their former selves, they live as ghosts looking out on a world through windows and televisions that they might as well be viewing through the ether for all they can interact with it anymore. While our lives are filled with eating out, talking with friends, and being productive, theirs are lives of bedpans, aches and pains, bigass pills, and hoping each time they fall asleep will finally be the time they won't wake up. Death is not the enemy, but the one mercy and the one thing of true democracy and equality we can all expect to find. People have been amazed by me because I do not fear death because it is simply the unknown. The unknown does not scare me. This world of endless stupid struggle, that scares me, and whatever death is, it is not that.
-Frank
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Illegal Immigration
While watching comic Ralphie May discuss a variety of controversial subjects in his act tonight at the Gilloz, the subject of illegal immigration, which he discussed extensively, inspired me to write a note on the subject. Now, I've argued about political issues a lot in my 33 years of life. I first became interested in politics in Mrs. Newman's class in 1991 when she taught us about the American Revolution and I read Rush Limbaugh's The Way Things Ought To Be. This interest only intensifies in the summer of 1992 when I got to tour the U.S. Capitol building, including the stuff you usually don't get to see, with then sitting Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt. From there, I followed the debates on the news and whatever political writing I could get my hands on. High school didn't provide much in the way of...um...worthy opponents for debating, so that didn't really begin until college. Ever since 1999, I have been arguing with other college-educated people about every political issue you'd care to name, either in school, with friends from school, or on facebook or other online forums. That means I've been interested in and an autodidact of politics for 20 years and actively engaged in political debate for 12. In that time, I have seen other people and have often myself been very full of shit. Your average septic tank for your average rural fishing lodge is less full of shit than I have been or I have seen others be on a wide variety of issues. I have to tell you though, I have debated from one end of the political universe to the other and I've never seen anything people on every side of an issue are more full of shit about than illegal immigration. Not only does the emperor have no clothes, but neither do the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, or all the king's horses or all the king's men. There is enough lying going on here to make a Little Rock politician blush.
Let's start with the three major arguments that are made by various sides of this debate.
The right's argument: Illegal immigration is taking jobs away from Americans and leading to chaos and real economic damage. We've got to solve this problem and the important thing to do is to control both the southern and northern border.
The left's argument: Illegal immigration is about Latin American people trying to make better lives for themselves and their families in the spirit of the American Dream. They are, after all, providing a useful service in that they are doing the jobs Americans just won't do anymore.
The Latin American argument: Immigrants in this country are treated like shit and decent treatment ought to come about in the form of some sort of immigration reform.
My response is as follows.
The right's argument: Bullshit.
The left's argument: Bullshit.
The Latin American argument: Bullshit.
Allow me to expand upon this. The right's argument is bullshit because the jobs that are being taken are being taken only because illegal work is available. Americans are both unwilling and, generally, unable to work for the kinds of wages and under the kinds of conditions illegal workers do. That's why employers take the risk of having illegal workers. They are cheap, disposable, and defenseless. No unions, no regs, no nothing. Without illegal immigrant employment, that work would simply be outsourced to other nations, mechanized, or done for wages so high that prices would go up for everyone. The left's argument is bullshit because illegal immigrants aren't living the American Dream. It will be extremely difficult for them to ever become citizens given their illegal status, actually, and most of them just want the employment in a mercenary way that has nothing to do with assimilation into United States culture for either themselves or their children. Not that they have to be all gung-ho about citizenship and melting pots, but it's worth pointing out that they are not, in fact, comparable to late 19th century Italians and Irish in this respect. Legal Latin American citizens, green card holders, and visa holders maybe, sure, but not illegals. The Latin American argument is bullshit because a clear path to citizenship en masse, which is what immigration reform normally means, doesn't address the underlying problems. Citizenship renders them no longer cheap, disposable, or defenseless, which are exactly the reasons they're even able to function as employed illegal immigrants in the first place. Now, this argument has human rights at heart and its heart is in in the right place, but the brain's gotta wake up here.
People like to say the illegal immigration problem is complicated. No. The situation in Egypt is complicated. Interacting with a woman you're attracted to is complicated. U.S. taxes are complicated. This is kiss simple. Do one of three things:
1. Abolish the minimum wage and all regulations and unions meant to protect workers, or make it totally legal for them to waive their rights to such protections in exchange for employment, and you'll have solved the illegal immigration problem because they'll no longer have an advantage. Workers who demand safe conditions, decent pay, and general human rights will be at a marked disadvantage, but you'll have solved the illegal immigration problem.
2. Crack down on all employers who hire undocumented workers of any kind. Do this by requesting each state to send in the National Guard to inspect every single employer in the state for however long it takes to do that. A two week grace period is allowed before this commences for each employer to seek out every single undocumented worker and dismiss them. If this is done in time, all is forgiven. Even a single undocumented worker at any employer means that their business is confiscated by the federal government and sold off at auction piece by piece. Consider this holding down employers and screaming at them to no longer employ undocumented workers while punching them in the face however long it takes for them to decide that they'd rather follow the law and keep their business than they would break it and lose it. Anything less than a crackdown this hard will not be enough to stop illegal immigration from happening because there is too much economic incentive to do so. Also, be prepared for rising prices on a whole galaxy of things like you just don't know.
3. Stop with the phony outrage and admit that Americans like their cheap products, but are unwilling to give up their human rights and other protections for their own citizens, and are willing to exploit people from other countries in ways they would never allow to happen to their own in order to keep those cheap products. Remember that this is no different than sweatshop-made t-shirts, toys, or sneakers, except that it happens domestically where it saves the United States even more money. Sure, it's an appalling violation of human rights, a great way of creating an infrastructure and support system for undocumented criminals will use just as freely as undocumented workers, and shares quite a few similarities to slavery, but hey we're not willing to give up our own rights, as in the first option, or fight very hard to protect both our rights and the rights of illegal immigrant workers, as in the second option, so we're just going to get down off our moral high horse and admit that we benefit extensively from the blood, sweat, and tears of those who are doing the illegally low-paying, unsafe, and inhumane jobs Americans would never allow to happen to their own. Doing nothing lets their rights continue to get violated. Creating a path to citizenship does nothing to protect the rights of those who choose to remain illegal. Securing the border does nothing to deal with the considerable illegal work force already here with no incentive to become legal because illegality is exactly what makes them extra special employable.
Get off your high horse if you think the borders should be secured. That does nothing. Get off your high horse with your nonsense about jobs Americans just won't do. Those jobs are criminally underpaid, unsafe, and inhumane and your patronizing slogan is elitist and useless at addressing the resulting plight. Get off your high horse about how America is racist against Mexicans. That argument is always followed by a patronizing explanation about how we need Mexicans for their labor. Yeah, Americans who oppose illegal immigration are automatically racist against Mexicans because they oppose their exploitation? All of you, on all sides of this debate are so full of shit. Something's got to give here. Workers' rights go bye bye in the name of cheap prices, the United States attains moral high ground and everything gets expensive, or the status quo is maintained and we admit this isn't about border security, immigrants, or race. Money, morality, or cold elitist pragmatism. Make. Your. Choice.
-Frank
Always The Sword Of Reason
Not long after I first joined facebook, I added a little app called Knighthood. Knighthood is a game, one that I never really learn how to play, but I did figure out how to give my knightly order it's own motto. By now, I've forgotten what the Latin was (yes, I figured it out in Latin), but it meant, "Always The Sword Of Reason."
When I look back on my life, I realize that a lot of it has been spent dealing with irrational people. That's not a religious slight from an atheist, at least not exclusively. People have many many reasons and justifications for being irrational. This is so very true for so many people that being rational tends to be viewed as deviant. Being simultaneously rational and honest is a near perfect formula for a lifetime of being disliked and in unpleasant confrontations with the people around you. Most people won't even understand the nature of the conflict. They'll think that you're just a jerk who says things to get a reaction out of people. Only a brave few will ever understand you and you may take those who do as a consolation, while, at the same time, failing to forget that they are the exception that proves the rule.
My natural inclination has always been to call things as I see them, without fear, peer pressure, wishful thinking, or anything else interfering. That record isn't perfect, as is the case with anyone you could name, but part of the reason for that is that I have not always been conscious of the true nature of the conflict. Mine has been a life spent trying to counter the isolation that circumstances I have not always understood fully fostered. Now things are different though. In every sense that can be named I have been getting stronger. Funny thing about getting stronger. You're less afraid, more sure of who you are, less vulnerable to manipulation, and less willing to put up with one more moment of your life being stolen by irrational nonsense. The uncompromising atheism that many of you have seen from me in notes and elsewhere is but the tip of the iceberg. So many things in human life are irrational and for these things I no longer have any patience, mercy, use, or time. For those who would impede their own lives with nonsense I have no quarrel, but to those who wish for their nonsense to rule my life or for me to acknowledge the sense of their nonsense, I shall not show the slightest pity or mercy. Life is too short to be cowed, silent, or patient in the face of reckless nonsense from anyone, in any context, at any place, at any time.
When I look back on my life, I realize that a lot of it has been spent dealing with irrational people. That's not a religious slight from an atheist, at least not exclusively. People have many many reasons and justifications for being irrational. This is so very true for so many people that being rational tends to be viewed as deviant. Being simultaneously rational and honest is a near perfect formula for a lifetime of being disliked and in unpleasant confrontations with the people around you. Most people won't even understand the nature of the conflict. They'll think that you're just a jerk who says things to get a reaction out of people. Only a brave few will ever understand you and you may take those who do as a consolation, while, at the same time, failing to forget that they are the exception that proves the rule.
My natural inclination has always been to call things as I see them, without fear, peer pressure, wishful thinking, or anything else interfering. That record isn't perfect, as is the case with anyone you could name, but part of the reason for that is that I have not always been conscious of the true nature of the conflict. Mine has been a life spent trying to counter the isolation that circumstances I have not always understood fully fostered. Now things are different though. In every sense that can be named I have been getting stronger. Funny thing about getting stronger. You're less afraid, more sure of who you are, less vulnerable to manipulation, and less willing to put up with one more moment of your life being stolen by irrational nonsense. The uncompromising atheism that many of you have seen from me in notes and elsewhere is but the tip of the iceberg. So many things in human life are irrational and for these things I no longer have any patience, mercy, use, or time. For those who would impede their own lives with nonsense I have no quarrel, but to those who wish for their nonsense to rule my life or for me to acknowledge the sense of their nonsense, I shall not show the slightest pity or mercy. Life is too short to be cowed, silent, or patient in the face of reckless nonsense from anyone, in any context, at any place, at any time.
-Frank
The Difference
Random thought: It just occurred to me that there is a very big difference between the disagreement that fiscal liberal and fiscal conservative have and the disagreement a social liberal and a social conservative have. A fiscal liberal will say something like, "Poverty is a big problem and those who live in it are at great risk of being abused. Therefore, we should remedy this by instituting, insofar as possible, redistributive taxation and regulation on industry," to which a fiscal conservative might reply, "Indeed, poverty is a big problem and those who live in it are at great risk of being abused. However, the proper way to remedy the problem is to work to allow opportunities for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty. For this reason, regulation of private enterprise should be done with a balance between protecting people and not stifling opportunities inside and outside of industry." Whatever the disagreements are, the problem and a need for a solution are agreed upon by both parties. Compare this to when a social liberal says something like, "I believe all people should be treated with respect. Congress should make no law, and the other two branches should make no policy or judgment, meant to protect men from themselves, rather than one another. Each man's life is his own and he ought to be free to do with it as he likes so long as, by his action, no harm may come to another," to which a social conservative might reply, "I believe all men ought to be treated in accordance with Mosiac Law. Congress shall make no law, and the other two branches shall make no policy it judgment, inconsistent with the law of Yahweh, lest it be inauthentic law. Each man's life is not his own, but God's, and he is free to live his life only within the confines of His will being done." These two have far more fundamental disagreements than the fiscal
liberal/conservative do.
-Frank
liberal/conservative do.
-Frank
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Game On
I recently played a game I really liked called Cards Against Humanity. The game involves completing sentences or answering questions on black cards with the content on white cards. Typically, the content is profane or obscene. It's a lot of laughs. You can even write your own cards. Playing a game like that makes for a great deal of catharsis after a time when things have all gone to crap, which, as I've written here before, they have for me. So I'll use the game as a jumping off point to talk about my own history with gaming. This will focus on my history with non-roleplaying games. Anything where you're doing interactive storytelling, in my experience, while fun in theory, is usually a demoralizing argument in practice. Card/board games, on the other hand, have nearly always gone well for me, with the notable exception of Risk, which I'll touch on later.
My earliest experience with games was probably with the board kind. Mostly, I played Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit with my family. I was of middling skill with the former and rather dominant at the latter. In the days before the Internet, or, at any rate, before Arkansas saw much of the Internet, these were pleasant ways to while away the hours. It wasn't until I got to college that I was introduced to card games. Although my mother had successfully taught me poker as a tween, your traditional deck of cards was not my real entrance into things. That was a game called Magic: The Gathering, which had a complexity and versatility the likes of which I had never seen. Quickly, I learned my favorite colors were red and white and that I favored simple strategy based on direct attack and healing myself. From there, I was exposed to the comedic antics of Munchkin and the intellectually stimulating fun of Apples To Apples. Only Risk has proven entirely inaccessible to me, as I have no skill whatsoever for the game and it forces me to just slowly bleed to death.
It took me a while to figure out what exactly it was about playing Cards Against Humanity that inspired me to write about it and card/board games in general. The conclusion I've come to is that it made me realize I has thrown the baby out with the bath water. When I abandoned roleplaying games, I made what I continue to believe was a good decision, but there wasn't ever a real reason for me to abandon everything in the game store. Video games are too complex, roleplaying games too argumentative, but card/board games did me no wrong. With that in mind, perhaps Cards Against Humanity can be something of a springboard to get me back into these type of games. Now, I've not got many people to play with, so that'll be an issue, but it's nice to have something to be excited about beyond my usual smoking and cooking interests.
My earliest experience with games was probably with the board kind. Mostly, I played Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit with my family. I was of middling skill with the former and rather dominant at the latter. In the days before the Internet, or, at any rate, before Arkansas saw much of the Internet, these were pleasant ways to while away the hours. It wasn't until I got to college that I was introduced to card games. Although my mother had successfully taught me poker as a tween, your traditional deck of cards was not my real entrance into things. That was a game called Magic: The Gathering, which had a complexity and versatility the likes of which I had never seen. Quickly, I learned my favorite colors were red and white and that I favored simple strategy based on direct attack and healing myself. From there, I was exposed to the comedic antics of Munchkin and the intellectually stimulating fun of Apples To Apples. Only Risk has proven entirely inaccessible to me, as I have no skill whatsoever for the game and it forces me to just slowly bleed to death.
It took me a while to figure out what exactly it was about playing Cards Against Humanity that inspired me to write about it and card/board games in general. The conclusion I've come to is that it made me realize I has thrown the baby out with the bath water. When I abandoned roleplaying games, I made what I continue to believe was a good decision, but there wasn't ever a real reason for me to abandon everything in the game store. Video games are too complex, roleplaying games too argumentative, but card/board games did me no wrong. With that in mind, perhaps Cards Against Humanity can be something of a springboard to get me back into these type of games. Now, I've not got many people to play with, so that'll be an issue, but it's nice to have something to be excited about beyond my usual smoking and cooking interests.
-Frank
Saturday, October 11, 2014
The Third One
I have been called out for an unwillingness to criticize Islam. Atheists often get accused of this in the United States. The fact of the matter is that there's two things that keep people from criticizing Islam. 1) Since most of its adherents are Arabic, Asian, recent African descent, or otherwise nonwhite, they perceive any criticism as being racist. 2) They are simply afraid for their lives and property, since Islam is prepared to violently suppress criticism and apostasy to the point of mass homicide. Anyone so concerned about myself, however, is simply mistaken. Like all religion, Islam is simply philosophy with untenable beliefs that must be taken as immutable truth on the basis of insufficient evidence. Islam is not composed wholecloth of bad philosophy, as it would be difficult to design a religion that met this test, but it certainly contains tenets to which no modern person who believes in free speech, feminism, human rights, pluralism, or any number of any modern liberal ideas should be willing to adhere. However a moderate Muslim might need to reach the conclusion that he need not adhere to these tenets of Islam makes no difference to me. Any Muslim, as with any person, willing to obey secular law and not interfere with the rights of others has no quarrel with me.
So let's get the central question out of the way here. The terrorism, the death warrants on the heads of people like Salmon Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, and various violent responses to the infamous cartoons published in Dutch newspaper Jyllands-Posten all carry with them a central question of whether the response was due to Islam itself or due to insanity, political motives, socioeconomic motives, and whatever other traits on the part of the perpetrators. I firmly believe that Islam itself is the motivation behind these things, and, perhaps tellingly, so do the perpetuators of these various problems. Now, that doesn't mean I have any prejudice against Muslims whatsoever. Although I should be brief so as to not repeat the many criticisms I've made of other Abrahamic faiths, I will say that The Old Testament condones slavery, rape, and extreme sectarianism, while The New Testament condones human sacrifice and torture as a means of atonement for sin. These criticisms, and, admittedly, more, do not mean I've any ill will towards believers in Judaism of Christianity and the same goes for Islam.
I forget if I've ever posted it here, but I once wrote an article about how secular people and religious people could coexist. This is important because, in the western world anyway, neither side is going anywhere anytime soon. Islam can certainly be a part of this, but the rules of this coexistence I have written will likely be unacceptable to much of the Muslim world. There are two rules we must all follow if the religious and the secular are going to coexist. First, we must all be equal before the law. Second, we must all agree on a uniform standard by which to raise children. Perhaps you can already see the issues that much of the Muslim world would have with my rules. The central problem with the first rule would be Sharia Law as a very concept. Having a separate set of laws to which some citizens are beholden because of their religion is the opposite of being equal before the law. Education for girls is the central issue they would have with my second rule, as much of the Muslim world violently opposes education for girls, particularly if it is equal, as it must be in a society that values women, to education for boys. Let it never again be said I don't have the guts to criticize Islam, because, in the preceding paragraphs, I have done just that.
-Frank
So let's get the central question out of the way here. The terrorism, the death warrants on the heads of people like Salmon Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, and various violent responses to the infamous cartoons published in Dutch newspaper Jyllands-Posten all carry with them a central question of whether the response was due to Islam itself or due to insanity, political motives, socioeconomic motives, and whatever other traits on the part of the perpetrators. I firmly believe that Islam itself is the motivation behind these things, and, perhaps tellingly, so do the perpetuators of these various problems. Now, that doesn't mean I have any prejudice against Muslims whatsoever. Although I should be brief so as to not repeat the many criticisms I've made of other Abrahamic faiths, I will say that The Old Testament condones slavery, rape, and extreme sectarianism, while The New Testament condones human sacrifice and torture as a means of atonement for sin. These criticisms, and, admittedly, more, do not mean I've any ill will towards believers in Judaism of Christianity and the same goes for Islam.
I forget if I've ever posted it here, but I once wrote an article about how secular people and religious people could coexist. This is important because, in the western world anyway, neither side is going anywhere anytime soon. Islam can certainly be a part of this, but the rules of this coexistence I have written will likely be unacceptable to much of the Muslim world. There are two rules we must all follow if the religious and the secular are going to coexist. First, we must all be equal before the law. Second, we must all agree on a uniform standard by which to raise children. Perhaps you can already see the issues that much of the Muslim world would have with my rules. The central problem with the first rule would be Sharia Law as a very concept. Having a separate set of laws to which some citizens are beholden because of their religion is the opposite of being equal before the law. Education for girls is the central issue they would have with my second rule, as much of the Muslim world violently opposes education for girls, particularly if it is equal, as it must be in a society that values women, to education for boys. Let it never again be said I don't have the guts to criticize Islam, because, in the preceding paragraphs, I have done just that.
-Frank
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Real Problems
Grandad used to tell us that no real problem could be solved with money.
What he meant by that is that if someone's dead, someone doesn't love
you back, someone's hurt, someone's crippled, or anything like that, you
can't fix that with money. He was a rich man trying to tell his kids
and grandkids to remember what's important and be humble about the
great power into which they had been born. Of course, when you're not
born with money, there's awful lot of problems that can be solved by it.
Maybe that's why the man had a reputation for generosity that I
inherited. So many things in the lives of wealthy men aren't fixable by
money, because they've tried that already. However, when they see all
the things in the lives of those about whom they care that could be
fixed with money, some of them quite important, they feel the weight of
their power. Much has been given to them and much will be expected.
I suppose not all men have the generosity impulse, but I do. Mine is quite difficult to regulate, but I've had to learn to keep it at least somewhat in check. Mostly, the problems arise by either those who take advantage, the most successful of which I call the 5,000 dollar club (based on how much they usually swindle from me before I notice), or because there are simply too many outstretched arms for the purpose. You can't, and in more cases than I often care to admit, shouldn't save everyone. Maybe their problems are of their own making, beyond your resources to meaningfully help, or they are simply lying about them to get money out of you. Anyone who has been consistently trying to help others for a long time knows just how various are the issues that doing so can cause and how much capacity for ingratitude and deception many people possess.
Of course, I've got my own real problem. No amount of money can solve autism. If I had Bill Gates' money, I still couldn't use it to make myself employable or capable of maintaining a relationship. Maybe that's the kind of wisdom Grandad had going for him at the time of his later years when I was growing up. Here's a man who tried a lot of things in his life and had both failed and succeeded. At times, he had financial security and at other times he did not, so he knew what happiness was and could be both with and without money. If I had that kind of wisdom, I'd want to pass it on to the next generation. Respecting money's power and knowing its limitations are hard tricks to master, but master them you must, whether you've got money or not during different periods of your life. You'll always be seeking solutions and you'll always have problems. When money can't fix those problems, often nothing can. That's when you've got to find a way to keep moving, because any problem all comes down to whether or not it stop you.
-Frank
I suppose not all men have the generosity impulse, but I do. Mine is quite difficult to regulate, but I've had to learn to keep it at least somewhat in check. Mostly, the problems arise by either those who take advantage, the most successful of which I call the 5,000 dollar club (based on how much they usually swindle from me before I notice), or because there are simply too many outstretched arms for the purpose. You can't, and in more cases than I often care to admit, shouldn't save everyone. Maybe their problems are of their own making, beyond your resources to meaningfully help, or they are simply lying about them to get money out of you. Anyone who has been consistently trying to help others for a long time knows just how various are the issues that doing so can cause and how much capacity for ingratitude and deception many people possess.
Of course, I've got my own real problem. No amount of money can solve autism. If I had Bill Gates' money, I still couldn't use it to make myself employable or capable of maintaining a relationship. Maybe that's the kind of wisdom Grandad had going for him at the time of his later years when I was growing up. Here's a man who tried a lot of things in his life and had both failed and succeeded. At times, he had financial security and at other times he did not, so he knew what happiness was and could be both with and without money. If I had that kind of wisdom, I'd want to pass it on to the next generation. Respecting money's power and knowing its limitations are hard tricks to master, but master them you must, whether you've got money or not during different periods of your life. You'll always be seeking solutions and you'll always have problems. When money can't fix those problems, often nothing can. That's when you've got to find a way to keep moving, because any problem all comes down to whether or not it stop you.
-Frank
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