What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Monday, October 27, 2003

UH OH....I'M THE HAPPY ONE!

Strange week -- everything's going very well for me and lousy for everyone else.

My old friend Josh is suddenly back in town after immigration authorities in the States abruptly terminated his visa. After four years in California, he's no longer allowed in the US until at least the end of January. He's very upset for several reasons but I'm sure his pregnant wife Terri is the major one.

Tara's grandmother finally died this week. I say 'finally' because she'd been so very sick for so very long. Her decline's been hard on Tara but her passing is worse, for she was the only family member Tara could depend on.

My boss Stan is spending all his time visiting his father in the hospital. Stan's dad has suffered a major stroke, paralysing part of his throat and other areas, and enraging a once-proudly-self-sufficient guy.

My own father is still taking expensive medication for gout and both he and my step-mother are currently out-of-work. Josie's company was bought up by another and the staff predictably down-sized. Money is getting very tight with my dad unable to go back to work as soon as he'd like but we're determined to keep him home until he's healthy.

And as for me? It seems I've got the apartment and the money situation might be OK for paying first-and-last. I'm campaigning for a raise at the store and, despite coming down with a cold this weekend, my health seems fine. Meanwhile, I'm reading Michael Moore's new book, "Dude, Where's My Country?" and enjoying it immensely.

I feel like one of the criminals in "Intacto" who've stolen luck from ordinary people around them but that's A) too silly, and B) way too Catholic. I'm just going to relax in my good fortune while I try to help my friends and family with their lack thereof. Isn't that the whole point?

Labels: family, friends, introspective

OH, GROW UP

Job hunting depresses me faster than an Ingmar Bergman triple-bill. With no particularly solid experience in any one narrow field (or the piece of paper from U of T), I feel generally useless when asked, "Why should we hire you?" I know I'm supposed to be a Go-getter who Believes in Himself but, hey, I'm Catholic and sensible enough to ask questions even of myself.

Besides, it doesn't help when all the job ads I check into read like this one:

You will be a confident leader who will inspire and motivate your team to deliver excellent sales and customer service, and maximise revenue for all our business streams...able to manage and meet your weekly and monthly revenue targets. In return we offer a great package and benefits, a fun working environment and challenges to meet your personal and career goals.

Well, it certainly sounds like a fun environment, doesn't it?

I know that the only true path to adulthood is to stop snivelling over missed opportunities and pick something concrete but what? People say, "What's your passion?" and I say, "This! Conversation, communication, brainstorming. Ideas, opinions and jokes. Connection." I don't know how to successfully make a career out of that yet, when everything I just described is generally in the service of promoting some pointless product or one-note political candidate.

Yes, this is my Holden Caulfield 'all-men-are-phonies' rant, fifteen years too late. I've got to grow the hell up but I just don't see where to start. As always, when in doubt, I turn to Mark Twain for advice:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover.

HOME SWEET HOME?

Loooooove the new apartment, or maybe I should say old apartment, as the building was built in 1904. It's full of high ceilings, big wooden doors and grotty 'Barton Fink' charm. OK, 'Barton Fink' was a horror movie, but still...

Let's hope the credit check works out -- despite funnelling nearly everything I make into debt payments, my history is still lousy and the co-op I'm currently living in has never considered me a dream tenant. I hate being judged on one's history. I realize that most people have little else to go on (and it's an argument most war criminals must trot out often) but I still believe that what a person is currently doing means so much more than what they have done.

I've been a good boy, dammit, and I deserve a home (It's my new mantra)!

Jerry, by the way, took the news better than I thought, though it was easier to deliver after he started telling me that he called the guy in Seattle again. This is the 'friend' he's never met in person who broke off their friendship earlier this year yet has been hounded by phonecalls from Jerry seeking 'closure.' I used to be sympathetic but, by this point, I'm just wigged out by his refusal to accept that this married guy wants nothing to do with him anymore. "Are you in love with him?" I asked once. I got a furious denial.

When Jerry told me this weekend that he'd called him again anyway, I couldn't help but holler, "Are you freaking kidding?"
"What?" said Jerry, looking hurt.
"He's made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing to do with you," I sputtered, "What part of that is vague?"
"I'm only asking for a simple job reference," Jerry said, "A five-minute phone call. What's the big deal?"
I'll leave that for someone else to answer -- hopefully, I'll be home alone with a book in my hand, a CD on the stereo and tea on the stove.

Crossing my fingers.

BE AFRAID, I SAID BE VERY AFRAID

Listen up everybody, it's another one of George Bush's "blanket warning of a general threat" from "the evildoers!" According to this MSNBC story, we should now be afraid of teddy bears. It seems that the terrorists are now working with a cotton-like explosive that can be packed into pillows or toys in order to destroy us. I'm not worried -- I've seen those airplane pillows and they just couldn't be less padded. I am, however, casting a wary eye on that little girl with the Gund bear...

THE BANALITY OF EVIL

It seems that, despite the best of intentions and a solid Catholic upbringing, I've launched myself on the path to true evil. When future historians look back trying to discover the moment Scott Went Wrong, tell 'em it was Dido's fault. Yes, Dido, that pretty English singer from the Eminem video. Her new album, "Life for Rent," is as charming as the first and the title track is one of those perfect little pop songs that totally captures how I'm feeling these days. Check out her website for the song, and here's the lyrics that grabbed me:

I haven't really ever found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize that once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind that your heart ain't exactly breaking

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I've always thought that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me

It's just a thought, only a thought

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive

But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

Nothing too profound there but, as I said, it neatly captured my mood since the summer, as I continue the seemingly endless struggle to make things better for myself. As I said to Stan at the store earlier today, I'm just looking for a place that I can grow in. The record store doesn't seem to be it, sadly, though it's been the closest thing so far. All I do know is that I've got to start answering that question that scares me silly: what do I want?

People ask me that and I start stammering like an idiot because I just won't allow myself to sit down and lay claim to my own desire -- and how sad a life is that? It's as though I'm playing some kind of zero-sum game in which a victory for me means pain for someone else and I can't bear the discomfort of that. This month, however, I decided to start changing that by losing that zero-sum game and ruining another man's life.

OK, that's more than melodramatic but, after tolerating an increasingly irritating roommate all year (culminating in that June 9th rant that spawned 88 Lines About 4.4 Roommates), I'd decided to move out and get my own place. I want it, I need it, I deserve it. Only trouble is, Jerry's not a member of the co-op -- merely my "long-term guest" -- so if I go, he goes. That rule had me stalling for months, possibly forever, until the new ruthless me decided, "fuck it, I can't go on like this." Magically, a couple of decent apartment offers suddenly came my way and I felt like everything might work out for me.

Fair enough, you say, but where's the evil? Well, it started this week, when Jerry finally got around to giving me his half of the rent on October 7. Four days earlier, I'd said in a mild tone, "Hey, I got the nasty letter from the co-op again," and Jerry just shrugged at me. Yes, the camel's back was piled with straw by now. I finally broke this morning when, as I debated how to break the news to Jerry that he'll have to move out in six weeks, he announced that -- just like last fall -- he's been fired from his job. I listened to his endless explanation of how his "hypocrite" boss tried to soften the blow, how hard Jerry's worked, how minor the reasons for the firing were, and how ungrateful they all are for Jerry's efforts. I felt myself sinking deeper into the sofa as I realized just how little I cared about any of this.

I'm tired. I'm tired of the drama. I'm tired of feeling like an intrusion in my own home. I'm tired of feeling that Jerry is an intrustion in my own home. I'm tired of nagging him for the rent and I'm tired of the fear that he'll suddenly stop paying it. After three dreary roommates in a row -- each one chosen from a series of interviews with people much worse -- I've finally realized that I must live alone, no matter how much money I have to spend or how empty the place may occasionally feel. I'm not so uncomfortable with solitude that I'm willing to endure all this for it.

But the taint of evil frightens me a little. For all my self-actualizing babble, what I'm essentially doing is kicking a man when he's down, turning him out onto the street when he's at his lowest point. Is that not horrible? Am I not horrible? It's frustrating because, despite all this, I just can't bring myself to care any more.

It's that damn Dido song. It's helped stir up mud that I'd kept settled at the bottom of my mental lake. I want a home. Not necessarily a house or a condo or anything I can't yet afford to buy but, at the very least, a place to rent that I can make my own -- paint the walls a warm colour, throw some dinner parties, play jazz CDs good and loud, and just plain relax without the worries of dealing with someone else's needs. I don't think I've ever had that. As I said to a friend this evening, even if I end up working so much to pay for it that I'm only home for three hours a week, I want those three hours to be MINE. It's all so very small, so very ordinary and -- as I force a poor man out of his home -- so very evil.

WRAP YOUR BRAIN AROUND THIS ONE

During all the millennial hype in 2000, one of the most persistent comments about the close of the twentieth century was that it was a century of bloodshed and breakdown -- all the old orders fell, the centre cannot hold, yada yada yada. Conservatives and liberals alike now decry the collapse of all the old traditions and institutions and we all feel as though we're adrift at sea without a sail, rudder, compass or north star. Just look at that wheezy Pope desperately trying to maintain Order while the people of the world stock up on gas masks and build bomb shelters. We just can't seem to handle the new complexity.

Not that I can, mind you -- I'm as lost as anyone else -- but, long ago, I became quite fond of the idea of paradox as a guide. It always seems to me that the more vulnerable you allow yourself to be, the stronger you become; the more you focus on solving on your own problems, the more help you are to others; the tighter you hold on to people, the quicker you lose them; and so on and so forth. In a culture that seeks to force everything into a duality of opposites -- light, dark; good, evil; forward, backward -- recognizing how these so-called opposites blend into and create one another is a good first step towards a more rational understanding of life's multiplicities.

Two writers -- working in wildly different genres -- have been enormously helpful to me. Charles Handy is a business thinker and consultant whose book The Age of Paradox is a remarkable examination of the trends and pitfalls facing people, business, governments and other organizations in our new 'information age' of globalization. In this interview, he also comes across as a warm and engaging man, as well.

Lawrence Miles is a sharp and witty fantasy author who created Faction Paradox, a pack of time-travelling voodoo cultists who deliberately distort established history in order to create true paradoxes in hopes of unravelling time itself. And they're the good guys. In this interview, it seems that Miles himself has trouble explaining the meaning or even purpose of this ongoing series of interlocking novels, comic books and audio plays. Which of course means, as Charles Handy might approve, that the audience has to work a bit in sorting out all the contradictions and mobius-strip plot threads. Sort of like real life, no?

END OF DAYS

And here I was, thinking that Ontario had just elected a walking X-factor in Dalton McGuinty, when California just went ahead as threatened and made Arnold Schwarzenegger their new governor. Were I not merely a casual observer of the political scene in California, I'd have a more solid opinion than "huh?" Fortunately for all of us, Slate journalist Mickey Kaus discusses the Schwarzenegger victory with razor-sharp precision. Be sure to scroll down to the headline, "Schwarzanoia strikes deep: Was he behind the recall all along?" Kaus offers his 6-point conspiracy theory list and it's brilliant.

Faced with such finger-on-the-pulse journalism, what more on Ah-nuld can my own humble blog offer? Only my firm belief that, if you can't be smart, be a smart-ass...

POSITIVE OUTCOMES FROM THE SCHWARZENEGGER ELECTION:

-- Arnold's busy new schedule leaves no time to film "Kindergarden Cop 2"

-- California journalists will find newer, more exciting uses for the word 'terminated'

-- Maria Shriver now one step closer to her goal of being 'new Jackie O'

-- Feminists have a fresh source of outrage following Clinton presidency

-- California will quickly extradite that 50% obese population we keep hearing about; Nevada soon fills with flabby, girly-men

-- State policy papers will replace dull, 'governmenty' titles with new ones like "Hasta la Vista, Deficit!" and "Unions: Talk to the Hand!"

-- Action films like "Predator" and "Commando" will seem as bizarre as those 1950's Ronald Reagan westerns

-- Austria hasn't been this influential since 1938

-- New opportunities for campaign aides and friends Rob Lowe and Jay Leno will further erase that annoying line between politics and entertainment

-- Victory continues myth of the American dream, in which penniless dreamers can one day become wealthy leaders and, if they don't, it's all their fault, the losers!

MEET THE NEW BOSS...SAME AS THE OLD BOSS...

I hope everyone in Ontario has had a chance to vote today -- the polls close at 8, I believe, and we cannot, cannot, cannot allow these Tory lunatics another chance to destroy Toronto. Under the one-two punch of the provincial PC party and mayor Mel Lastman, this city has been crippled. In the last few years, the downtown core has been a dreadful place to live and work, and that has got to change.

My only fear is that I don't see much in Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty that leads me to believe anything will improve. He's been maddeningly vague about his policies -- the way good Liberals always have been -- so I don't feel entirely safe about his apparently-imminent victory. At least he'll do less harm, mind you. I don't want to sound like those people in the States who allowed George Bush to take over because they saw "no difference" between him and Al Gore. Didn't these people have eyes and ears?

I do understand what they were getting at, though -- the concern that, like the Who song says, "we don't get fooled again." Dalton will have to work a little harder at convincing us that better times are ahead with him in charge.

Labels: George W Bush, Trawna