I'm pissed I might have to vote in the upcoming Federal election. I haven't voted in a federal election since, let me think, shit I have to check wikipedia. In 1993 I voted for the Marxist Leninists in London North. They didn't win.
I am, like the majority of Canadians, a non-voter. I guess I am political for a non-voter but all that "If you don't vote, don't complain" bullshit bothers me so much I never ask people if, or how, they vote. You can always complain. It's a human right. The trick is finding someone who will listen. I don't know how political most non-voters are. It might be that all the most politically opinionated people I know are also non-voters. Anyway, back to why I might be forced to vote.
When I was young and exciting about participating in the democratic process I used to vote in every mayoral election. Mostly because a crazy person named Agnes Shaw ran on a two point platform - legalize prostitution and build a huge landing pad for alien spaceships. Both these ideas are so self-evidently right I felt I had an obligation to do what I could to help. And that was the beginning of my disenfranchisement. Londoners kept electing klepto business people instead of a woman of vision. It is worth pointing out two of London's three previous mayors have been indicted under corruption and fraud charges (and the other was booted out of office for letting her husband run an illegal business from her office) and London still doesn't have a UFO landing pad.
Reading Noam Chomsky's analysis of the American political system pretty much guaranteed I would never vote again. Chomsky's point (one of them and you should read him rather than take my word for it) is elections are theater. There purpose is to make you feel like you have a say. You don't. Only 20% of the population have any influence in American politics. They are the people in charge and all the policies of both parties are formulated specifically to keep them happy. So if you aren't in that 20% it makes no difference to you who wins. I think that 20% number is way too high but it doesn't change the argument. I'm not one of those people.
I think of American presidential elections as a race to 55 million votes. Each vote has a price. In 2000 it was approximately $7. By 2008, it was $14. Now it's about $20. Inflation is a bitch. All the debates, all the speeches, all the rallies - they are just the show you can choose to pay for. The true election is the race to $1.1 billion. This isn't a perfect rule: in 1964 Lyndon Johnson won while spending only 55% as much as Barry Goldwater (but Goldwater was a creepy nazi). And in 1996 Clinton spent less than Bob Dole (but only 1% less). Your vote by itself is worth nothing. Your vote and $20 is worth about 1/25 000 000th of the President's time and attention - so you are still going to be reckoning with units borrowed from physics. You get the point.
So no matter what happens in the next election I'm not getting any richer, any happier, or any closer to realizing my dream of living right beside the world's largest UFO landing pad but, and this is the thing, I really don't like Stephen Harper. I also don't like elections where I have no choice but to vote against something I dislike rather than for something I like but, landing pad.
Canadians have never managed to define what we are but we are very good at saying what we aren't. We aren't Americans. And Harper doesn't represent the Canada I believe in - I've been reading that one a lot on FB recently. What is the Canada I believe in? Apparently not Stephen Harper. I might have to vote because of how much I dislike Stephen Harper. I hate his sweaters. I hate his face. I hate his politics and his pro-business, pro-oil economic agenda. I hate how he can blow through tax money like a sailor on shore leave but still keep his reputation as a "fiscal conservative" because, well I don't know why that is. Mostly I will vote against him because he is a jerk to librarians. I've written about the current government's rules re librarians before and, seriously, fuck that shit. You pick a fight with librarians, you pick a fight with me. And yes I know, the hot woman with the glasses and the uptight demeanour who is really a total slut is a porn only fiction but still, librarians. So fuck you Harper. I will show my disrespect for you in the only way I know how - by voting for the first time in 22 years.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
On Politics - Canadian and American
Who cares about Canadian politics? I'm Canadian and I don't. I care about politics but not as the word is applied in Canada. I used to think this was because Canadian politics is just so damn boring. We don't have completely insane people running for office anymore. We used to - W. L. Mackenzie King was certifiable. His top two advisors were a portrait of his dead mother and his talking dog. But since the economy just kept improving while he was prime minister, people just kept voting for him (a policy I approve of). Now we have sensible politicians running just to the left of centre and just to the right of centre. Not much to get excited about.
Most people I know are either vocally terrified or silently hopeful that Stephen Harper will win another election. I don't like Harper, I don't think his politics represent the best Canada but I can't get that excited about it. That he is a dick has been amply documented. He has no respect for the rights of citizens, his government has silenced scientists, jumped on every war America has suggested, and generally been for the wrong shit and against the right shit is well known. But still, who cares?
There is a reason no one ever talks about the Canadian dream. It's because the Canadian dream consists of only two things: a rational and reasonable government and beating the Americans at hockey. American politics is so wonderfully bizarre because there are competing and completely different versions of the American dream. That is doesn't matter at all who sits in the Oval Office is immaterial. It is theatre and it is entertaining. There is a Canadian election right around the corner and an American election a year away and still the American version is better. Where is the Canadian Donald Trump? Or Bernie Sanders? Or Michele Bachmann?
Also, I think I would care more about Canadian politics if the people running for office did more illegal shit. Americans have committed treason to win the presidency. No Canadian seems to care that much. If you want to be my prime minister, you should be willing to commit a capital offence to get my vote. I would like to see a story in the news about Elizabeth May having her staffers murder people to win more seats.
There is a kind of fatigue that sets in that saps the ability to care about problems when the answer is known to everybody but no one fixes them. For instance, first past the post vote counting. This is just stupid. Everyone who reads about alternate methods of vote counting thinks, "that's a great idea, we should do that." But no one does and so you just get tired of saying it and tired of hearing it. Similarly gun control in the US. Some people don't think it's right that some American citizens shouldn't be allowed to own semi-automatic weapons. Fuck them. Some Canadians don't think it's right that child porn should be illegal, we don't call for a national debate about it. So when the problems and the solutions are all out there and still nothing gets done all that is left is theatre. And Americans do that better than Canadians.
Most people I know are either vocally terrified or silently hopeful that Stephen Harper will win another election. I don't like Harper, I don't think his politics represent the best Canada but I can't get that excited about it. That he is a dick has been amply documented. He has no respect for the rights of citizens, his government has silenced scientists, jumped on every war America has suggested, and generally been for the wrong shit and against the right shit is well known. But still, who cares?
There is a reason no one ever talks about the Canadian dream. It's because the Canadian dream consists of only two things: a rational and reasonable government and beating the Americans at hockey. American politics is so wonderfully bizarre because there are competing and completely different versions of the American dream. That is doesn't matter at all who sits in the Oval Office is immaterial. It is theatre and it is entertaining. There is a Canadian election right around the corner and an American election a year away and still the American version is better. Where is the Canadian Donald Trump? Or Bernie Sanders? Or Michele Bachmann?
Also, I think I would care more about Canadian politics if the people running for office did more illegal shit. Americans have committed treason to win the presidency. No Canadian seems to care that much. If you want to be my prime minister, you should be willing to commit a capital offence to get my vote. I would like to see a story in the news about Elizabeth May having her staffers murder people to win more seats.
There is a kind of fatigue that sets in that saps the ability to care about problems when the answer is known to everybody but no one fixes them. For instance, first past the post vote counting. This is just stupid. Everyone who reads about alternate methods of vote counting thinks, "that's a great idea, we should do that." But no one does and so you just get tired of saying it and tired of hearing it. Similarly gun control in the US. Some people don't think it's right that some American citizens shouldn't be allowed to own semi-automatic weapons. Fuck them. Some Canadians don't think it's right that child porn should be illegal, we don't call for a national debate about it. So when the problems and the solutions are all out there and still nothing gets done all that is left is theatre. And Americans do that better than Canadians.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
On the Honda Civic
Yesterday on my way home from work I got cut so hard by a Honda Civic I almost wound up in the ditch. Five minutes later, the same car stopped traffic in both lanes by trying to merge and winding up stuck at a forty five degree angle to traffic flow. When I got off the highway I got in behind another Honda Civic who blew through a solid red without slowing down. Then, on my way from the parking lot to my front door there was a head on collision right in front of my building - which is really rare on a one way street. Care to guess what kind of car was heading in the wrong direction?
Honda Civics are the Hannibal Lectors of the highway. And, like Hannibal, they can be very unassuming. My Mom bought one when she was in her sixties. You know that joke people make about used cars, "Used to be owned by a little old lady who only drove it to the grocery store once a week..." that was my Mom and her Civic. Still, if someone is going to do some completely psychotic shit to you on a highway - you know what they will be driving.
Maybe the psychos are attracted to the reliability, the reasonable price, and the high resale value.
When you spend time on the highways brands and models of cars take on personalities. Everyone thinks BMWs are the cocks of the road. And, while it is true I have met some, the shit people seem to associate with Beemers is mostly done by Toyotas. I think this is because most taxis are Toyotas. The mechanism that allows the assholery of cabbies to transfer itself to the brand as a whole remains a mystery. One presumes scientists are working on it.
My personal theory - nothing scientific about it - is owning a Toyota is such an awful, soul-killing experience the drivers need to spread the pain around just because they start to hate and resent the whole damn world.
And if you are going to get stuck behind someone doing 20 kph less than the rest of the traffic - they will be driving a Nissan. I would have said that clunking looking mini minivan would be the worst offender for this but it isn't. It's all Nissans except the supercar version.
My advice is this - don't get stuck behind a Nissan, in front of a Civic or beside a Toyota. If you have a choice nestle up close on to the bumper of one of those crossovers that looks like a jumped up hatchback (but not a Nissan Rogue or a Toyota Rav 4). Those people have a surburban sense of entitlement. They have worked hard for everything and they have and they aren't going to wait in traffic! And they really really really don't want to get a scratch on their brand new hatchback thing.
Honda Civics are the Hannibal Lectors of the highway. And, like Hannibal, they can be very unassuming. My Mom bought one when she was in her sixties. You know that joke people make about used cars, "Used to be owned by a little old lady who only drove it to the grocery store once a week..." that was my Mom and her Civic. Still, if someone is going to do some completely psychotic shit to you on a highway - you know what they will be driving.
Maybe the psychos are attracted to the reliability, the reasonable price, and the high resale value.
When you spend time on the highways brands and models of cars take on personalities. Everyone thinks BMWs are the cocks of the road. And, while it is true I have met some, the shit people seem to associate with Beemers is mostly done by Toyotas. I think this is because most taxis are Toyotas. The mechanism that allows the assholery of cabbies to transfer itself to the brand as a whole remains a mystery. One presumes scientists are working on it.
My personal theory - nothing scientific about it - is owning a Toyota is such an awful, soul-killing experience the drivers need to spread the pain around just because they start to hate and resent the whole damn world.
And if you are going to get stuck behind someone doing 20 kph less than the rest of the traffic - they will be driving a Nissan. I would have said that clunking looking mini minivan would be the worst offender for this but it isn't. It's all Nissans except the supercar version.
My advice is this - don't get stuck behind a Nissan, in front of a Civic or beside a Toyota. If you have a choice nestle up close on to the bumper of one of those crossovers that looks like a jumped up hatchback (but not a Nissan Rogue or a Toyota Rav 4). Those people have a surburban sense of entitlement. They have worked hard for everything and they have and they aren't going to wait in traffic! And they really really really don't want to get a scratch on their brand new hatchback thing.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Toronto's Chinese Condo Boom
Every Sunday I get up early to sit and enjoy the silence of no construction going on around me. I live on the edge of the gaybourhood and construction sounds have been so continuously present (except Sunday mornings) that I don't even notice workers cutting steel with grinding wheels anymore. And that is an annoying sound. WEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEEEW.
I used to know exactly how many condo projects were underway in Toronto and how many tower cranes there were and a lot of other relevant statistics. But then I got a job where knowing those things wasn't important (not that it was important for any previous job I had). If you care you can check the UrbanToronto website. It was a lot of condos and a lot of cranes and a lot of other numbers that were counter-intuitive or just plain excessive. And if you talk to anyone about the condo market for more than half a minute they will tell you most of the units are bought by Chinese investors. How would anyone know that? If you are the best condo salesperson in Toronto and you sell 90% of all the condos by yourself - ok you would know. Maybe. You would know the name on the mortgage (or the name of the person who handed you a sack of cash / big cheque / other method of payment). Plus it's against the law (or so I've read) to release information like that or possibly just to keep track of it. I'm not a lawyer. It makes sense that you can't just tell the newspapers who owns what and when they bought it. At the very least it would be bad business. So unless this whole China buys condos thing started by someone drinking too much and telling tales out of school I don't see it.
This seemed to me like a simple urban myth. The condo market doesn't make sense. People like things that make sense more than things that don't make sense. Someone says it's overseas Chinese and people start telling each other that because it makes them seem smart or knowledgable or whatever and people believe it because it's easier to believe than the other prevailing theory (ie. that in two years the population of Toronto will be 175% larger than the population of the whole world or is it that everyone in the world will own 175 condos in Toronto?). Simple. Who else could be buying all those condos? Maybe George Soros is buying them all as part of his plan to take over the world through the UN. Or maybe I've been watching too much Alex jones on Youtube.
I don't know how I feel about this theory. I don't believe it. Sure some of the condos are being bought by actual Chinese people from China. Some are probably being bought by actual Paraguayans from Paraguay. China is bigger than Paraguay therefore...
At its root this theory feels a little racist. Because of that whole inscrutable thing people like to believe. I have never found Chinese people to be less scrutable than anyone else (except those I have dated). But that's part of our mythology so it's going to interact with other myths (semi-myths, pseudo, or part myths). More importantly it says something about the construction of the fake world we wander around with in our heads.
40 years ago strange, improbable, and maybe threatening things were either the US acronym agencies or the Soviets. 20 years ago it was the Japanese (although mostly in fiction and / or gameshows). Now it's China - the land of boundless weird. Anything that is too complex to understand but doesn't involve heavyweight physics, the answer is going to be China. Maybe not in so many words but still, China. 1.2 billion people of disputed scrutability, crap news agencies, a vague and menacing government, a whole lot of mystery and a whole lot of money.
Read apocalyptic fiction - the Chinese are doing fine after the End of the World. Or at least they haven't been reduced to eating each other. Or know one knows because China.
And while I feel bad about the racist part, the whole crazy maybe myth - maybe truth of this makes me feel vaguely hopeful. We are like a small town on a planetary scale; China is that weird house on the end of the street that sometimes seems deserted and sometimes seems like a giant party and G*d only knows what they are doing in there...
I used to know exactly how many condo projects were underway in Toronto and how many tower cranes there were and a lot of other relevant statistics. But then I got a job where knowing those things wasn't important (not that it was important for any previous job I had). If you care you can check the UrbanToronto website. It was a lot of condos and a lot of cranes and a lot of other numbers that were counter-intuitive or just plain excessive. And if you talk to anyone about the condo market for more than half a minute they will tell you most of the units are bought by Chinese investors. How would anyone know that? If you are the best condo salesperson in Toronto and you sell 90% of all the condos by yourself - ok you would know. Maybe. You would know the name on the mortgage (or the name of the person who handed you a sack of cash / big cheque / other method of payment). Plus it's against the law (or so I've read) to release information like that or possibly just to keep track of it. I'm not a lawyer. It makes sense that you can't just tell the newspapers who owns what and when they bought it. At the very least it would be bad business. So unless this whole China buys condos thing started by someone drinking too much and telling tales out of school I don't see it.
This seemed to me like a simple urban myth. The condo market doesn't make sense. People like things that make sense more than things that don't make sense. Someone says it's overseas Chinese and people start telling each other that because it makes them seem smart or knowledgable or whatever and people believe it because it's easier to believe than the other prevailing theory (ie. that in two years the population of Toronto will be 175% larger than the population of the whole world or is it that everyone in the world will own 175 condos in Toronto?). Simple. Who else could be buying all those condos? Maybe George Soros is buying them all as part of his plan to take over the world through the UN. Or maybe I've been watching too much Alex jones on Youtube.
I don't know how I feel about this theory. I don't believe it. Sure some of the condos are being bought by actual Chinese people from China. Some are probably being bought by actual Paraguayans from Paraguay. China is bigger than Paraguay therefore...
At its root this theory feels a little racist. Because of that whole inscrutable thing people like to believe. I have never found Chinese people to be less scrutable than anyone else (except those I have dated). But that's part of our mythology so it's going to interact with other myths (semi-myths, pseudo, or part myths). More importantly it says something about the construction of the fake world we wander around with in our heads.
40 years ago strange, improbable, and maybe threatening things were either the US acronym agencies or the Soviets. 20 years ago it was the Japanese (although mostly in fiction and / or gameshows). Now it's China - the land of boundless weird. Anything that is too complex to understand but doesn't involve heavyweight physics, the answer is going to be China. Maybe not in so many words but still, China. 1.2 billion people of disputed scrutability, crap news agencies, a vague and menacing government, a whole lot of mystery and a whole lot of money.
Read apocalyptic fiction - the Chinese are doing fine after the End of the World. Or at least they haven't been reduced to eating each other. Or know one knows because China.
And while I feel bad about the racist part, the whole crazy maybe myth - maybe truth of this makes me feel vaguely hopeful. We are like a small town on a planetary scale; China is that weird house on the end of the street that sometimes seems deserted and sometimes seems like a giant party and G*d only knows what they are doing in there...
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Paolo Bacigalupi
First, let's get the obvious out of the way - he needs a new name.
That said The Windup Girl is a fantastic book. PB (there is no way I am typing Bacigalupi more than twice) has, according to the blurb on the back page, written a lot of short stories that won awards and acclaim and some people read. I didn't TS:DR. So Windup is kind of like a first book. Fuck, google him if you give a shit about his biography. I want to talk about TWG.
Yes, this is going to be filled with acronyms. Live with it or go back to looking at kittens that look like celebrities.
TWG takes place after two significant events: the end of oil and global warming fucking everything up. So instead of measuring energy in joules or watts of whatever, they measure it in calories. Easy to forget the calorie is a unit of energy. When characters in the book think about industry they wonder how anyone could get the calories to power such a great enterprise. Which brings us neatly to PB's first wonderful invention - the calorie man. This is the derogatory name for employees for one of the big agri-combos that control most of the worlds food production. They are almost omnipotent in most of the world but Thailand has successfully kept them at arm's length.
Setting the book in Bangkok was another brilliant idea. Anywhere else and the action would have to take place in several different cities but Bangkok is the political, religious, and economic center of Thailand so one stage fits all. And, to my very white, very North American eye the politics and social realities of Thailand could be as fictional as the Windup Girl herself but I wouldn't know. It's extremely weird and very sci-fi to read about murdering rapists deeply shocked by a perceived insult to the Child Queen.
The agri-combos competitions with each other have introduced new pestilences and plagues that have forced most of the world to the brink of starvation and humanity's future is measured in planting seasons. Generippers (genome hackers) try to keep one step ahead of them but everything they come up with must be hidden and protected in case it infringes on the agri-combo's patents. Everything the characters eat is ripped one way or another - by the combines or the generippers.
Up against the calorie men and the Ministry of Trade and just about everyone else are the White Shirts - the kamikaze attack squads of the Ministry of the Environment. The White Shirts combat invasive species, including plagues. They're preferred tool is the torch. They are hated and feared and corrupt as hell.
The other great sci-fi invention is the Windup Girl. Japan have the opposite problem than the rest of the world - too many jobs, more than enough calories and not enough people. So they created New People. And, being pragmatic, they anticipated the desire of New People's owners to fuck them senseless. Think genetically engineered Geisha. They are called windups or heechy-keechy because they were engineered to move in a stuttering / clock work kind of way so no one could think they were human. Except they are people - smarter, healthier, faster, and more intelligent that "from the womb" humans.
What stands out, even in a book that is filled with invention, is PB's view of humanity. It is bleak but not brainlessly so. Some sci-fi I have read recently takes the position humanity being what we are means everything we do must finally be fucked up by our small-mindedness, short-sightedness or other-flawedness. There is nothing so passe as a hero in TWG and no clear villains either. People are self-interested, selfish, flawed and still interesting. The end is bleak but not completely so. If one accepts oil running out will fuck us up and global warming is a threat and yet, senselessly, we are doing nothing about either, PB's view of humanity isn't hard to accept or endorse.
Reading this again it sounds like an amateurish book review. Which I guess it is. I'm trying not to drop any spoilers because TWG is really worth reading if you like sci-fi and so is the follow up The Water Knife. I can't really think of anything profound or even amusing. I blame the fact I'm listening to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell while I write this. Fucking love this album. So hopelessly cheesy and wonderfully great at the same time. Also Todd Rundgren is a genius.
Fuck it. Buy the book. Read it. Enjoy. Also listen to Bat Out of Hell more. You can skip Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. I give you my permission. If you want to read something at least a little inspired about modern fiction - try my thing about Murakami called "Piblokto Madness". It's a good one.
That said The Windup Girl is a fantastic book. PB (there is no way I am typing Bacigalupi more than twice) has, according to the blurb on the back page, written a lot of short stories that won awards and acclaim and some people read. I didn't TS:DR. So Windup is kind of like a first book. Fuck, google him if you give a shit about his biography. I want to talk about TWG.
Yes, this is going to be filled with acronyms. Live with it or go back to looking at kittens that look like celebrities.
TWG takes place after two significant events: the end of oil and global warming fucking everything up. So instead of measuring energy in joules or watts of whatever, they measure it in calories. Easy to forget the calorie is a unit of energy. When characters in the book think about industry they wonder how anyone could get the calories to power such a great enterprise. Which brings us neatly to PB's first wonderful invention - the calorie man. This is the derogatory name for employees for one of the big agri-combos that control most of the worlds food production. They are almost omnipotent in most of the world but Thailand has successfully kept them at arm's length.
Setting the book in Bangkok was another brilliant idea. Anywhere else and the action would have to take place in several different cities but Bangkok is the political, religious, and economic center of Thailand so one stage fits all. And, to my very white, very North American eye the politics and social realities of Thailand could be as fictional as the Windup Girl herself but I wouldn't know. It's extremely weird and very sci-fi to read about murdering rapists deeply shocked by a perceived insult to the Child Queen.
The agri-combos competitions with each other have introduced new pestilences and plagues that have forced most of the world to the brink of starvation and humanity's future is measured in planting seasons. Generippers (genome hackers) try to keep one step ahead of them but everything they come up with must be hidden and protected in case it infringes on the agri-combo's patents. Everything the characters eat is ripped one way or another - by the combines or the generippers.
Up against the calorie men and the Ministry of Trade and just about everyone else are the White Shirts - the kamikaze attack squads of the Ministry of the Environment. The White Shirts combat invasive species, including plagues. They're preferred tool is the torch. They are hated and feared and corrupt as hell.
The other great sci-fi invention is the Windup Girl. Japan have the opposite problem than the rest of the world - too many jobs, more than enough calories and not enough people. So they created New People. And, being pragmatic, they anticipated the desire of New People's owners to fuck them senseless. Think genetically engineered Geisha. They are called windups or heechy-keechy because they were engineered to move in a stuttering / clock work kind of way so no one could think they were human. Except they are people - smarter, healthier, faster, and more intelligent that "from the womb" humans.
What stands out, even in a book that is filled with invention, is PB's view of humanity. It is bleak but not brainlessly so. Some sci-fi I have read recently takes the position humanity being what we are means everything we do must finally be fucked up by our small-mindedness, short-sightedness or other-flawedness. There is nothing so passe as a hero in TWG and no clear villains either. People are self-interested, selfish, flawed and still interesting. The end is bleak but not completely so. If one accepts oil running out will fuck us up and global warming is a threat and yet, senselessly, we are doing nothing about either, PB's view of humanity isn't hard to accept or endorse.
Reading this again it sounds like an amateurish book review. Which I guess it is. I'm trying not to drop any spoilers because TWG is really worth reading if you like sci-fi and so is the follow up The Water Knife. I can't really think of anything profound or even amusing. I blame the fact I'm listening to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell while I write this. Fucking love this album. So hopelessly cheesy and wonderfully great at the same time. Also Todd Rundgren is a genius.
Fuck it. Buy the book. Read it. Enjoy. Also listen to Bat Out of Hell more. You can skip Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. I give you my permission. If you want to read something at least a little inspired about modern fiction - try my thing about Murakami called "Piblokto Madness". It's a good one.
On Smart Phones
I own a smart phone but I don't use it. I use a stupid phone. The stupidest cell phone I could find: Motorola's FONE. Google it if you don't know what I am talking about. I bought it because it is a phone and that's all.
I don't like coffee makers with clocks in them. I own a clock and a coffee maker and I like it that way. In the words of Master Tsunetomo, "It is not good when one thing becomes two." I wanted a phone that was just a phone. Not a camera, not a calculator, not a computer, not anything other than a phone and FONE was as close as I could get.
Someone gave a a smart phone out of charity and, I think, the deep suspicion that anyone without a smart phone must be cripplingly poor. Or that not having one was wrong in a fundamental, existential way. But I don't use it because the manual is two inches thick and that just describes the functions. To learn how to use them you have to download a 15 GB pdf file. My life is confusing enough, thanks.
Everyone in the construction industry has a smart phone. Or at least a cell number. It is bizarre to encounter someone who doesn't. While I do have a cell (and consequently a cell number) I don't give it out to people I work with. For one thing FONE is too dumb to hook up to hands free (or I am too dumb and I am just blaming FONE). Most people's cards have their work number, cell number, alternate number, fax number (what? no telegraph number?), email address, alternate email address. Mine has my work number and the firm's mailing address. And my name spelled incorrectly.
I don't like the way cell phones make you permanently available to every single person who wants to reach you. I figure if my firm wants me to have a cell number, they should buy me a smart phone and teach me how to use it. I could then call it my "work phone" and turn it off whenever I want.
This is the thing with cell phones smart and stupid - if you don't answer it the person calling you will assume you are screening them. People who are not middle aged will probably not understand this but I have a few hours every day and at least one day a week I guard very jealously. In that time I don't want to see anyone, speak to anyone, or even consciously ignore anyone. I want to be left alone. And my being alone during that time shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. I have structured my entire life to protect those precious hours of solitude. I don't have a wife / partner / significant other, or kids, or pets, or anyone who can reasonably demand my attention in that time. When my jobs demands as much time as it is now the only way I can protect my solitude is driving around (a poor substitute but what I am left with). A smart phone, or stupid phone I carried with me, would wreck that.
The cell phone has a very strange and unprecedented place in most people's lives. It is the first thing they grab in the morning and the last thing they put down. I misplace mine for days at a time.
So I am that guy who sits in site meetings without first putting my phone on the table. I never carry it with me. In some ways this is aspirational. When you are important enough you don't have to carry a phone - someone else carries it and relays the messages to you. Someone (I forget who) remarked no celebrity can dial a phone. They all have people who do it for them. They just say, "Get so-and so for me!" and they are handed a pre-dialed phone. I wouldn't mind that.
This isn't me saying, "look how special I am." This is me saying, "If you want to reach me, email" Kurt Vonnegut took a job at a University because they let him choose the writers who would be invited to a conference and he really wanted to introduce William Styron to Pablo Neruda. He and Styron were just leaving his office when Neruda arrived on the campus - some grad student picked him up at the airport. So Vonnegut introduces them and stands back. Let the magic begin! They say hello to each other and the conversation just collapses. Both of them are trying desperately to think of something to say and failing. So they start walking. About five minutes later Styron turns to Neruda and says, "So you're from Chile! It must be nice to come from a country to long and narrow."
The point is even really smart people say stupid things if you don't give them a chance to think first. Phones are a bad way to communicate generally and every extension of them makes the problem an order of magnitude worse. I am currently dealing with some severe fall-out from a conference call. Something that would never have happened if we had been emailing and will probably cost someone (but thankfully not me) about $60,000. I email. I'm good at it and I take perverse pride in that. And I want to do it from a big screen I can fucking look at, thank you.
I don't like coffee makers with clocks in them. I own a clock and a coffee maker and I like it that way. In the words of Master Tsunetomo, "It is not good when one thing becomes two." I wanted a phone that was just a phone. Not a camera, not a calculator, not a computer, not anything other than a phone and FONE was as close as I could get.
Someone gave a a smart phone out of charity and, I think, the deep suspicion that anyone without a smart phone must be cripplingly poor. Or that not having one was wrong in a fundamental, existential way. But I don't use it because the manual is two inches thick and that just describes the functions. To learn how to use them you have to download a 15 GB pdf file. My life is confusing enough, thanks.
Everyone in the construction industry has a smart phone. Or at least a cell number. It is bizarre to encounter someone who doesn't. While I do have a cell (and consequently a cell number) I don't give it out to people I work with. For one thing FONE is too dumb to hook up to hands free (or I am too dumb and I am just blaming FONE). Most people's cards have their work number, cell number, alternate number, fax number (what? no telegraph number?), email address, alternate email address. Mine has my work number and the firm's mailing address. And my name spelled incorrectly.
I don't like the way cell phones make you permanently available to every single person who wants to reach you. I figure if my firm wants me to have a cell number, they should buy me a smart phone and teach me how to use it. I could then call it my "work phone" and turn it off whenever I want.
This is the thing with cell phones smart and stupid - if you don't answer it the person calling you will assume you are screening them. People who are not middle aged will probably not understand this but I have a few hours every day and at least one day a week I guard very jealously. In that time I don't want to see anyone, speak to anyone, or even consciously ignore anyone. I want to be left alone. And my being alone during that time shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. I have structured my entire life to protect those precious hours of solitude. I don't have a wife / partner / significant other, or kids, or pets, or anyone who can reasonably demand my attention in that time. When my jobs demands as much time as it is now the only way I can protect my solitude is driving around (a poor substitute but what I am left with). A smart phone, or stupid phone I carried with me, would wreck that.
The cell phone has a very strange and unprecedented place in most people's lives. It is the first thing they grab in the morning and the last thing they put down. I misplace mine for days at a time.
So I am that guy who sits in site meetings without first putting my phone on the table. I never carry it with me. In some ways this is aspirational. When you are important enough you don't have to carry a phone - someone else carries it and relays the messages to you. Someone (I forget who) remarked no celebrity can dial a phone. They all have people who do it for them. They just say, "Get so-and so for me!" and they are handed a pre-dialed phone. I wouldn't mind that.
This isn't me saying, "look how special I am." This is me saying, "If you want to reach me, email" Kurt Vonnegut took a job at a University because they let him choose the writers who would be invited to a conference and he really wanted to introduce William Styron to Pablo Neruda. He and Styron were just leaving his office when Neruda arrived on the campus - some grad student picked him up at the airport. So Vonnegut introduces them and stands back. Let the magic begin! They say hello to each other and the conversation just collapses. Both of them are trying desperately to think of something to say and failing. So they start walking. About five minutes later Styron turns to Neruda and says, "So you're from Chile! It must be nice to come from a country to long and narrow."
The point is even really smart people say stupid things if you don't give them a chance to think first. Phones are a bad way to communicate generally and every extension of them makes the problem an order of magnitude worse. I am currently dealing with some severe fall-out from a conference call. Something that would never have happened if we had been emailing and will probably cost someone (but thankfully not me) about $60,000. I email. I'm good at it and I take perverse pride in that. And I want to do it from a big screen I can fucking look at, thank you.
Monday, July 20, 2015
On Doctors
I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I work on schools. Pre-K to 12 - I do it all. And here's the thing about working on schools: you can design the most beautiful school in history, one all your friends and associates and architecture students and architecture critics and magazines love, and it could be so good that every student who goes there wins a Nobel prize and you can bring it in for $8 a square foot and have everyone in the world think you are the greatest genius to design a building since Mies van der Rohe and F. L. Wright knocked each other up BUT if it isn't ready on the first Monday in September your clients will hate you. So from May 24 to Labor Day I work 12 plus hours a day, 7 days a week. Which means, like a dumb ass, I let my prescriptions run out.
I'm not going to list the medications I'm on. It's not your business. If you really want to know I'll give you a hint: I've talked previously about the problems lazy people have in a world that doesn't understand laziness is a medical condition. Seriously, mind your own business. Anyway,
My doctor will see you as a walk in if you don't have an appointment. But you have to wait. Typically the wait is about an hour. Today it was more than two. And when I finally get in to see him he expects me to feel bad about how long the wait was but he expects me to feel bad for him. He kept saying, "You think you're busy!" I thought that was funny. Brightened up an otherwise kind of shitty Monday.
Sometimes I wonder about doctors. I think spending your working life having to deal with people who have real problems like cancer or leprosy or some other nasty shit really fucks with your sense of proportion.
I have terrible skin. No kidding. It is like having the worst dandruff in history but all over my body. I also have the worst dandruff in history. It is embarrassing as hell and I'm very self-conscious about it. So I'm writing about it on the internet because that makes sense. I've tried everything I ever read about and everything I could think of to fix it. Nothing worked. If you aren't from Canada you probably think our socialized medical care is great (and it is) but try getting an appointment with a dermatologist if you live in a small town. You can hang it up. It's not going to happen. So when I moved to Toronto, I finally got an appointment to see one. And she told me, "It's dry skin. Live with it. Some people have real problems."
Which is true. But also, fuck her.
And when I was unemployed (long story) I got depressed. So I went to see a psychiatrist. Here is our conversation - slightly condensed:
Me: I'm depressed.
Dr: Why do you think you are depressed?
Me: Because I'm depressed.
Dr: What are your symptoms?
Me: Depression.
Dr: You sound like you are suffering from depression.
Me: Really?
Dr: You should take these pills.
Me: What are the side effects?
Dr: In some cases they cause depression.
Me: How often?
Dr: It's rare.
Me: More rare than clinical depression?
Dr: Clinical depression occurs in about 5% of people.
Me: And how often does the drug cause depression?
Dr: About 5% of the time.
Me:[laughing]
Dr: Are you feeling better?
He helped me about as much as the dermatologist but at least he had a sense of humour.
I'm not going to list the medications I'm on. It's not your business. If you really want to know I'll give you a hint: I've talked previously about the problems lazy people have in a world that doesn't understand laziness is a medical condition. Seriously, mind your own business. Anyway,
My doctor will see you as a walk in if you don't have an appointment. But you have to wait. Typically the wait is about an hour. Today it was more than two. And when I finally get in to see him he expects me to feel bad about how long the wait was but he expects me to feel bad for him. He kept saying, "You think you're busy!" I thought that was funny. Brightened up an otherwise kind of shitty Monday.
Sometimes I wonder about doctors. I think spending your working life having to deal with people who have real problems like cancer or leprosy or some other nasty shit really fucks with your sense of proportion.
I have terrible skin. No kidding. It is like having the worst dandruff in history but all over my body. I also have the worst dandruff in history. It is embarrassing as hell and I'm very self-conscious about it. So I'm writing about it on the internet because that makes sense. I've tried everything I ever read about and everything I could think of to fix it. Nothing worked. If you aren't from Canada you probably think our socialized medical care is great (and it is) but try getting an appointment with a dermatologist if you live in a small town. You can hang it up. It's not going to happen. So when I moved to Toronto, I finally got an appointment to see one. And she told me, "It's dry skin. Live with it. Some people have real problems."
Which is true. But also, fuck her.
And when I was unemployed (long story) I got depressed. So I went to see a psychiatrist. Here is our conversation - slightly condensed:
Me: I'm depressed.
Dr: Why do you think you are depressed?
Me: Because I'm depressed.
Dr: What are your symptoms?
Me: Depression.
Dr: You sound like you are suffering from depression.
Me: Really?
Dr: You should take these pills.
Me: What are the side effects?
Dr: In some cases they cause depression.
Me: How often?
Dr: It's rare.
Me: More rare than clinical depression?
Dr: Clinical depression occurs in about 5% of people.
Me: And how often does the drug cause depression?
Dr: About 5% of the time.
Me:[laughing]
Dr: Are you feeling better?
He helped me about as much as the dermatologist but at least he had a sense of humour.
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