Month: October 2014

After a stretch of not terribly awesome news over the weekend and continuing into this week, I was talking with a friend about my favorite topic – feeling stuck in a place I don't particularly like. She noted, and I immediately agreed, that this is hardly a unique problem. If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone complain that they felt shackled to or stuck in a job they don't like, I would have a very strange way of earning money.
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I'd also have about twenty extra dollars per year. If anything I have less to gripe about than most job-haters given that I don't actually dislike my job but rather its location. Still, it's not pleasant. Just in case you imagined having no life whatsoever outside of work as being pleasant.

My standard line is to tell frustrated friends that all paid employment is pretty awful, because if it was fun and fulfilling they wouldn't have to pay people to do it. This is an exaggeration, but only just (notice how the unpaid intern economy focuses on professions like journalism and activism rather than mundane but economically productive jobs). I doubt this is comforting, but it is hard to get useful advice on this topic since we are all basically in the same boat. The vast majority of us would love to wake up tomorrow morning and never have to work again; more accurately, we would love never to have to work a given job because we needed it.

Everyone tells a version of the same story: I hate this job but I need it. I'm stuck, I'm trapped, it's out of my hands. The reason we all say this is that it is true. Unless you happen to be that rare individual with some high-demand skill, most of us are in an unhappy marriage with our jobs. We live paycheck to paycheck and struggle under some debt burden – educational, medical, consumer, or whatever – that keeps us going back to a job that makes us feel like shit day after day. Getting a different job sounds good in theory but with hundreds of applicants for every job in most fields these days we realize (and are repeatedly told) that we're lucky to have one.

We are not, in any meaningful sense of the word, free. Yes, anyone is free to quit and become a hobo. But for those of us who like living indoors and having exotic luxuries like electricity and running water, the feeling of being Stuck is overwhelming.
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We all realize that the job we have is the best job we can get and the other options reside several rungs down on the ladder. The more I think about this dilemma – and I'd estimate I devote about 25% of my waking time to it on any given day – the more I realize why Americans, particularly the ones under the most economic pressure, talk so much about Freedom and put so much stock in their 2nd Amendment rights and their, uh, unique conception of religious freedom. People cling to those more symbolic types of freedom because they understand, even without admitting it to themselves, that they don't have any real freedom. Saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays" or stocking your home with a ludicrous arsenal of weapons gives life a nice, shiny veneer that looks like freedom. Those things probably feel like great moral victories to a person who spends his days working at a job he hates and for which he is barely paid enough to afford his shitty house and shitty car in whatever eyesore of a town he calls home.

I guess guns and public nativity scenes and refusing to buy health insurance are symbolic things that allow people to convince themselves they are free, or at least to avoid thinking about how little freedom they really have. We are encouraged, and in many cases encourage ourselves, to think of Freedom as intangible because most Americans have none that is tangible. Like Bill Hicks used to say, "You think you're free?
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OK. Try doing anything without money, then you'll see how free you are."

Let me preface this by beating the most pedantic would-be commenters to the punch and recognizing that minor property damage obviously isn't a big priority for law enforcement anywhere. In the grand scheme it doesn't amount to much, obviously.

To make a long story short, after leaving my car in one of the many (obscenely expensive) parking decks in the most expensive area in Chicago, my car was broken into on Saturday night.

A large hole was punched in the passenger window.
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When I found it on Sunday morning, I called the company that manages the parking deck, as there was no actual human on duty. I was told, in the coded language of corporate American customer service, to go fuck myself. This was expected, and I called as a formality since I assumed my insurer would ask. Next I called the non-emergency number for the Chicago PD to experience their new officerless system for filing police reports. Apparently that thing you see on TV where a cop drives up and listlessly fills out some paperwork no longer happens. Officer – oh, let's say "Grabowski" – informed me over the phone that for some reason the new File a Report by Phone system would not allow me to File a Report by Phone and instead I would have to drive to the nearest CPD station.

OK, no big deal. I mean, the entire vehicle is filled with shards of broken glass and since I don't happen to have a shop-vac on my person I can't do much about that, but I'll sit on the glass and get a decent amount of it stuck in my clothes and arms so I can drive to the station with the film backing on the window flapping around and tossing additional bits of glass in and out of the car. Cool. After waiting 45 minutes at the station for no discernible reason – I was the only person there and the gaggle of officers passed the time talking about Jay Cutler – I was informed that it was my fault because I left a pair of gas station sunglasses on the passenger seat. Suitably chastened, I waited until Officer – Oh, let's say "O'Halloran" – finished the report I would need to file a claim. This process complete, I was set free. I asked Officer O'Halloran if perhaps someone could provide me the use of a dustpan, or a roll of masking tape, or a piece of a garbage bag, or anything that I could use to clean up some of the glass or cover the hole.

I was told, in proper police procedural speak, to go fuck myself.
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Finally I called my insurance company – not one of the cut rate ones, but a Legacy Brand – whom I pay handsomely for the privilege of being able to legally drive my vehicle. I thought perhaps they might send out one of those little hatchbacks with the company logo garishly painted on it, just some dude getting paid time-and-a-half to work Sunday to fill out a claim and maybe help me clean up a little.

Nah, they don't do that except on the commercials. They told me to go online later and file my own claim.

You know, I certainly don't expect the world to concern itself much with a rather insignificant property crime committed against an insured white male. It would be nice, however, if perhaps the people who are paid to help out when something comes along to ruin my day in this manner could trouble themselves to pretend like they give the slightest shit. Or offer the most basic "Oh I'm sorry, I'll give you a hand for the three minutes it would take to help you." Life has taught me not to expect much, yet I always find in these situations that I end up wildly disappointed. All that rugged individualism we hear so much about came into focus today; basically when something goes wrong, you're on your own save for whatever help you can wring from a long, frustrating conversation with the overseas call center.

And that's the story of how why 12 hours later I'm still picking microscopic glass shards out of my ass and elbows.

I was living in Bloomington, IN when they demolished the Hoosier Dome (aka RCA Dome) in nearby Indianapolis and I kind of regret not making the drive to watch it come down. After considering it, I decided that it was a little too white trashy / low brow to drive an hour to gawk at a giant building imploding. But what the hell, it's a spectacle and not the kind of thing one sees very often so why not.
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In that spirit, I won't make the same mistake again by missing the opportunity to watch St.
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Louis burn to the ground in a couple weeks when the grand jury announces that we don't even need to bother with the formality of a trial before letting Saint Wilson off the hook.

This case is following a very familiar pattern, with details extremely friendly to the Official Version of Events being leaked at regular intervals while dragging the Grand Jury process out long enough, the police hope, to give everyone a chance to lose interest or forget. Mind you, details like the victim's blood being found on the police car don't actually prove anything about the Official Story. They are the kind of details one would cherry pick to support it while conveniently ignoring other questions like, "If you fired twice in the car, why was it necessary to shoot four more times when he was 15 feet away?
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"

But no matter. The point – one we've had reinforced quite often lately – is that the amount of force one uses to retaliate against a black male who makes you Feel Threatened (legitimately or otherwise) cannot be questioned, second-guessed, or challenged. Once you determine that you are Afraid for Your Life, basically you can pull out a gun and keep pulling the trigger until you feel sufficiently less afraid or run out of ammunition, whichever comes first.

I'm not going to lie, I hope the good people of Ferguson raze that place.
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Some places are so terrible that there's no compelling case for their continued existence. And all the while we will have to listen to White America talk about Looting and Those People and Like Animals and sometimes I think maybe it would be best if we just leveled the whole country and started over.

Growing up in the Chicago area I was only vaguely aware that anything existed south of Interstate 80. I did hear rumors of some distant hamlet called Carbondale, which would not be noteworthy (or perhaps even exist) except as the location of Southern Illinois University.
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With respect to SIU alumni and faculty, some of whom are among my friends, SIU is a party school. Located near nothing, excepting the fireworks-and-Oxycontin vortex point at which Missouri, Kentucky, southern Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee converge, SIU is the school that Chicago-area high school students choose when they can't get into University of Illinois, or UIC, or Northern Illinois, or somehow not even Illinois State. While some of its academic programs are actually pretty good, the modal SIU student does not really belong in college and has interests ranging from drinking to getting high to facilitating unplanned pregnancies.

Southern found its way into the national news once per year at Halloween, when the students rioted. Literally rioted. Tore that one-horse town a new asshole. Overturned cars, smashed windows, injured themselves and one another, and set fires. It got to the point at which the school was known for little other than the annual Grain Alcohol Thunderdome. After many years of tolerating the rampage – Party Schools face the Catch-22 of trying to limit delinquent behavior while admitting to themselves that it is part of the attraction for potential students – Carbondale and the university cracked down hard in 2000 after a particularly destructive melee. Bars were closed on Halloween, fraternities were not allowed to host parties, and so on.

Even young and conformity-prone Ed kind of thought it odd that for so many years it was considered Good Old Fashioned Fun for thousands of mostly white college kids to have a riot. Euphemisms like "party" or "disturbance" were used; the police responded but with remarkably little enthusiasm, content to let the kids go nuts and make a few arrests of kids who crossed the line from Acceptable Crimes (minor property damage, disorderly behavior) to Unacceptable Crimes like assault or use of weapons. The authorities seemed to treat the riot like a regular, predictable weather event – batten down the hatches, board up the windows, and wait for the destruction to run its course.
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Because what else can you do, right?

It goes without saying that there is a double standard involved in media coverage of and social attitudes toward "urban" riots – the kind that involve poor and dark-skinned people – and the Youthful Shenanigans of white middle class college kids. The former must be repressed with the maximum available force to ensure that the natural order of society is not disturbed and that the poor remain docile, servile, and without illusions about their second-class status. The latter…well, that's just boys being boys. After all, it's important for white college students to get the opportunity to rebel against the social institutions that bend over backwards to coddle and privilege them.
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Two related anecdotes.

1. A woman who has recently moved to this city is walking down a residential street with me after dark. She is at the tail end of five minutes of stories relating surprise at the frequency and intensity of catcalling here relative to other places she has lived. We approach three 18-to-21 looking males hanging out on a street corner. They are obviously wasted. As we walk past, they say nothing to her but one nods toward me, makes eye contact, and gives me the trying to be cool "sup" that young males do.

2. A different woman is having dinner alone at a bar. She texts me to live blog the old creeper who is accosting her (not physically) and does not seem willing to leave her alone. She laments that she does not have a boyfriend or at least some male to sit next to so that she might go to a bar and sit there in peace.

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It's equal parts intriguing and disturbing how often men treat women with respect – not invading their personal space or shouting things at them that they would prefer not to have shouted at them – not because they think women deserve to be treated with respect but because they are with a man. The inebriated young men didn't refrain from making suggestive comments because they realized that it's inappropriate; they refrained because I was next to her.
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Old creepers and "pickup artists" do not leave accompanied women alone at bars because they recognize that ignoring all the "please stop" signals is behavior that trends toward Rapey. They do it because the has a Sold tag on her and is already the property of some other man. And many men who would happily treat women with the utmost disrespect would recoil at the thought of disrespecting another man by hitting on his Property.

Many years ago I accompanied a female friend, at her request, to a car dealership. Being younger it didn't occur to me at the time that I wasn't there because I have any special automotive knowledge that might have been useful. I was there because if the (inevitably male) car salesman wouldn't treat her too insultingly in front of Her Man. Women are probably so familiar with and used to this dynamic that they barely bother to think about it anymore. I, on the other hand, never thought about it seriously until the two incidents above happened in quick succession. I understood intuitively for a long time that having a male companion helps women receive better treatment from other men in some circumstances. However, I only recently did the math – women only get treated respectfully incidentally, as a side effect of respecting another man's ownership.

Hopefully by now you have seen this video of a bunch of Tech Bros (allegedly Dropbox employees) trying to kick some teenagers off a soccer field in one of San Francisco's many neighborhoods in which real people are being displaced by this decade's version of Gordon Gekko.

The root cause of this incident, leaving aside the social tensions and gentrification issues in SF for the moment, is a simple misunderstanding.

Apparently the park district has made some kind of policy change that allows fields to be reserved and they haven't done a great job of communicating that to residents. It's not that the Army of Bros is wrong to be peeved.

But you would think that just one of them, or possibly even more than one, would be aware enough to say "You know, there's no way we are going to come out of bossing around and arguing with a bunch of teenagers looking like anything but assholes.

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" It's like these people have some kind of status-induced autism that makes them completely oblivious to what is an appropriate way to conduct oneself in public.

It might have made more sense to leave and call the park district in an effort to get them to resolve the problem on future weekends.
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I mean, that's what a normal adult might have done. Instead, they decided to let the world get a good look at who they really are and trot out every Frat Asshole cliche on the planet. On camera.

I can never tell if these people honestly don't understand that they are being huge assholes or if they figure that they're so rich they don't have to care what anyone else thinks.