Shocking, I know, but I did not win the Powerball.
Guess I’ll have to find another second job in January after all.
Damn.
The loser’s standing small
29 11 2012Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: job, life, lottery, Powerball
Categories : Follow-up
I take my chances
28 11 2012I will not win at Powerball tonight.
The jackpot is over 500 million dollars—over half a billion dollars—and inching even higher as those who usually don’t bother with the lousy odds join the regular assortment of dreamers and fools. And if no one wins tonight? Whoo-dog!
I was thinking of what I’d do with the winnings. This is something I do with disturbing regularity—think about cashing in on big money—so I have a general sense of “save some, spend some, give some away”, as well as a near-certainty that I wouldn’t renew my lease on my current apartment.
The cash payout for the current pot is estimated at 360.2 million, so after paying off my debts and buying myself a nice apartment in Brooklyn (yeah, I like Brooklyn, so why not stay?), I’d have a few bucks left over. Give some money to family, sure. Money to friends? I’d like to do that. And set up a foundation to give money to organizations which are doing good work: Planned Parenthood US & International, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, groups working in Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans organizations, and if there are any organizations helping kids with the transition out of foster care, I’d like to throw some bucks at them.
What else? Occupy Sandy, Red Hook Initiative, others helping folks recover from Hurricane Sandy. The Audre Lorde Project, a space for queer teens in Manhattan, took a hit and could use the help. And critters could always use a hand.
My alma maters: the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Money for undergrads at Madison, and for grads at Minnesota, and aid for mental health services for all students at both places.
Which reminds me: Dental care isn’t covered (why not?!) under the Affordable Care Act, and is usually expensive. If you’ve got a chipped or missing front tooth it can be damned difficult to find work, so I’d want some money to go toward any kind of low- or no-cost dental service.
But what do I know about money? I’d have to hire someone help me figure out how to dole out all of this money, as well as to set aside a few mil for myself. I’d like to travel, and maybe buy some property out west, and maybe in Québec. Huh, maybe B and her husband J could help me out with this. . . .
I told you I spent too much time thinking about all of this—all for something which will never, ever happen. It is foolish even to think about, much less spend money on.
You already know the punch line, don’t you? Yeah, I bought two tickets.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: fantasy, life, lottery, money, Powerball
Categories : Musing
We might as well try: Can you hear me?
27 11 2012I almost turned off the radio.
I’m not a big fan of This American Life as it is—I don’t hate it, but I don’t go out of my way to listen to it, either—but this story, ohhh, I couldn’t stand it:
The Dakota War of 1862, the lead-up to and aftermath which led to decimation of the Dakota nation and dispossession of their lands.
The entire episode is devoted to the war, how it’s taught in Minnesota today, what it means in Minnesota, and by extension, the United States, today. If you don’t know the history, listen to it; if you do know the history, listen to it.
I half-knew the story, and made myself listen all the way to the end because I thought, Goddammit, you can’t turn away. You can’t stop listening just because it’s hard.
I used to have such a strong stomach for atrocity. It sickened and horrified and angered me, but I was driven by the twin senses that if others could live through it, I could at least read what they lived through, as well as the notion that maybe, somehow, such witness could be turned to good use. If attention were paid to genocide and abuse and injustice, such attention might lead to survival and protection and justice.
There’s something to that, I’d guess: The whole world is watching! is meant both to exhilarate and to warn. Amnesty letter-writing campaigns have apparently altered the conditions or lengths of sentences for many political prisoners. Human rights activism from afar can embolden those near, and efforts to get the State Department or the president to express concerns about this person or that group can make a difference.
At some point, however, I lost my stomach for atrocity, and whether as cause or result of my turning away, lost the belief that witness—or, at any rate, my witness—mattered. I turned away.
I can beat myself over this. After all, there’s a self-absorption in turning-away, a kind of thinking that my despair is the point, but, honestly, there was a self-absorption in the attention as well, a kind of thinking that my involvement could lead to justice. Kantian abstractions might appeal on the page, but as a practical matter, motives for even the most altruistic act are often mixed.
No, the problem with the despair is less selfishness than the closing out of possibility: doing nothing leads to nothing. Writing letters or e-mails or making phone calls or even just paying attention might not accomplish anything, but is anything accomplished without action? To act may be to fail, but the possibility of failure is not its certainty.
If I accept that as a general matter, for others, then why not accept that for myself, as well? I may not be a Kantian, but there are worse standards than act as if your will were universal law. Or, to bring it down to this cracked earth, if others can do it, why shouldn’t I?
Can I do anything about the Dakota War of 1862? Almost nothing. But if I think it mattered, if I think it matters today, for who and how we are as an American people, then I can do the one thing that is available to me: I can pay attention.
I can listen.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: action, atrocity, Dakota War of 1862, despair, failure, human rights, inaction, Kant, pay attention, This American Life
Categories : Musing
I want to ride my bicycle
25 11 2012I hate writing, but I love having written.
I would never say that.
Having written is just fine—there is a satisfaction after finishing a long or difficult piece—but I don’t love it. And even with the satisfactions, there is also a kind of emptiness at the completion. I’m done is an occasion for melancholy and relief.
But writing? Hell yeah, I love writing. It’s even something beyond love: It’s as if I become who I am, that there is no distance between the being and the doing, that everything comes together in a moment of tumbling stillness. I disappear and am more there than I ever am, less a paradox than a transcendence, a clarity of purpose in which the purpose dissolves into itself.
Working out, on the other hand, yeah: I hate working out, but I love having worked out.
No, I don’t really hate working out, but I don’t really like it, either. I put up with it, because I don’t like what happens when I don’t. I want to be fit and reasonably trim and able to take care of myself, and so I work out. But the weightlifting and the bicycling and the stretching and all that?
Eh.
When I was younger I was fairly active, but I have no idea if I liked workouts or not. Maybe I did, or maybe I just didn’t think to ask whether or not I liked working out. I said I liked running, and, honestly, on my best days I still do like running, but did I really mean it? Did I really like lacing up the Brooks or Adidas or Saucony and wriggling into my jog bra and heading out to loop around the track or the neighborhood?
It’s possible, I guess, but this was probably a story I told myself as a way of crowbarring my sorry ass off the couch. I had an image of myself as more-or-less athletic, so I needed to say that I enjoyed partaking of athletic activities. Even if I didn’t.
Well, okay, I did like playing catch or shooting around, and I do enjoy taking bike rides with friends, but hauling myself on to my bike to lap around Prospect Park or over to the gym? Nope. Means to an end.
It’s good that I don’t hate weightlifting or biking, because I do like what they do for me: Nicer arms, stronger legs, increased endurance—and the sense that I’m not just a slug growing in Brooklyn.
But if I could accomplish all of that by napping? Oh, now that’s something I do enjoy.
Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: biking, ends, life, means, napping, purpose, weightlifing, writing
Categories : Musing
I’d burn up into a million pieces
19 11 2012I’ve mentioned my nuclear nightmares, haven’t I?
I had them fairly regularly as a teen and young adult, and they still pop up occasionally, but for the most part they’ve slipped out of my unconscious and lodge mainly in a side aisle on the fifth floor of memory.
Then Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns & Money linked to the fascinating NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein, and that memory box popped open.
It’s so easy to use! Simply drag the target to your preferred neighborhood or type in a city, select a nuke from a dropdown list, and fire away!
I’m mostly not worried about nukes in New York, but since I do occasionally wonder what would happen if a terrorist exploded one in Manhattan, I decided to detonate a relatively small and crude device (10kt) in the Financial District.
The effects would be felt up to Little Italy and Chinatown and would reach Governor’s Island and Brooklyn Heights, but that’s it.
Not until the bomb reaches 300 kilotons would it hit my neighborhood, and then only with thermal radiation (which, it must be said, could set off a firestorm).
The biggest bomb? A hundred megaton “Tsar Bomba”, the largest Soviet bomb designed (although never tested). That would take out all five boroughs, over half of Long Island, large chunks of New Jersey, and even a bit of Connecticut.
Why mention this, and with such good cheer? Honestly, it’s cool, in a ghastly sort of way.
And it’s so remote. I remember when it wasn’t, when I had a real, hmm, if not fear, then a kind of resignation, that the world would end in a hail of missiles; now, I am no longer resigned to that end (tho’ don’t worry: there are many ways for the world to end!), and the fear is tamed. The nukes are, if not in cages, at least no longer MADly menacing the landscape.
Of course, then I watched the clip of The Day After Farley posted, and my cheer drained away. Guess I’ll have to nuke another city to get my mojo back.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: apocalypse, life, New York City, nuclear nightmares, nuclear war, NUKEMAP
Categories : Musing
Running to stand still
18 11 2012What is the line between acceptance and resignation? Is there a line?
I do not accept my body. No, wait, that’s not right: It’s my body, and it feels like my body, and some parts are fine and some parts are not, blah blah.
But it is rounder than I would like and I wonder if this is what inevitably happens with age or with the shifting assertion of my Absurd and Beat genes or if this is simply the result of my unwillingness to give up cheese and beer and chocolate or to work out more than I do.
If it is a battle of wills, then my will for my kick-ass home-made peanut butter bars is kicking my will for a taut ass.
I’ve been going to the gym for over two (three?) years and have “progressed”: I am stronger and my muscles have more definition and despite my recent back-induced sabbatical, I’m confident that this trend will continue.
Why the scare quotes for “progress”? Because in this context I’m not sure what it means. Is progress about gaining strength, or staving off decline? Is it about being healthy for my age, or to be healthier than others my age—to be healthy for someone younger than me? Is there some point at which I won’t add be able to add more weight, to increase my speed on the bike or treadmill or loop around the park? Will it be progress simply to be able to do anything at all?
I’d like to run the New York marathon some day, and to do that I will train, with a clear goal in mind (finish within a respectable period of time).
But I’m not now training for that marathon, I’m training for. . . huh: I’m not training at all. I want to look better and feel better even if I don’t know what “better” means, I know that it’s not what I look like now. I’d like to be leaner, tighter: I’d like my discipline apparent in my body.
Ah, and there it is: my discipline is apparent in my body.
*Sigh*
Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: age, body, discipline, fitness, life, will
Categories : Musing
It’s gone, gone, gone, and it’s never coming back
15 11 2012File this under “oh for fuck’s sake!”
All City University of New York campuses were closed that Monday-Thursday of the storm, and although weekend classes were held beginning that Friday, most of us didn’t return to work until the following week.
Fine.
The different campuses/CUNY had to decide what to do with that missing week, whether to adjust schedules, extend the semester, write off the time off, etc.
Again, fine. A missed week of instruction is a serious matter, so considering how to deal with it is reasonable.
However.
Not everything can be fixed. There have been suggestions about assigning students extra work, making up classes at another time, scheduling activities outside of the class, which again, while not unreasonable, lead me to that exasperated ohforfuck’ssake.
I put a lot of work into my syllabus, and losing that week matters to me, but it is precisely because I put a lot of thought into the semester’s schedule that I find the suggestions that I shoehorn something extra in just. . . y’know, to pretend that the lost week was not, in fact, lost, really crisps my nippers.
I’m being churlish, I know, and the suggestions offered are not necessarily bad ones, but honest to pete, do administrators really think that either instructors or students can somehow add hours to the week? Do they not understand that students (and their laaaaarrge contingent workforce) have other commitments that might just conflict with the make-up time? Do they in fact think that time is fungible, such that the hours not used during that lost week can somehow be plucked out and glued on to the weeks following?
*grumble mumble piss moan sniff*
The week is gone gone gone daddy gone, and unless my campus is willing to extend the semester a week, we should just say sayonara and be done with it. Anything else is mere Potemkin pedagogy.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: complaining, CUNY, Hurricane Sandy, teaching, time
Categories : Musing, Rant
Weird wonder 16 redux: Kathryn Rathke!
14 11 2012Hey! Remember Kathy Rathke?
Sure you do! She’s the bitchin’ graphic artist who created this, back in the day:
And other stuff!
Amazing sly talented Kathy—ahem, Kathryn, her professional name is Kathryn Rathke, and you can see her current work here—is featured in The Stranger’s Slog series of people who both voted for Obama and manage to wake before noon*:
(Who took this photo? It’s a great shot!)
*Stranger writer Goldy posted a vid of conservative crybaby Cal Thomas complaining that Obama was elected only by moochers who sleep until noon, so his colleague Dominic Holden decided to run with it.
Anyway, read what she has to say, then read the comments and see “katrat” responding to a compliment with a thank you and a pug.
Yes, a pug. She’s sly that way.
Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: Barack Obama, Cal Thomas, Kathryn Rathke, The Stranger
Categories : Follow-up
AbsurdBeats 