Man Martin's Blog, page 113

On Being Poked

I have been poked several times on Facebook.  Let me say at the outset, I just don't get it.

I don't mind being poked, but I don't understand what it means, and my lack of understanding troubles me.

Most Facebook interactions, as far as I can tell, are simulations of real life, face-to-face encounters.  I am "friends" with people whom I never see, some of whom I never have seen.  But this is like actual, real-life friends whom I might hang around with in an actual three-dimensional world other than cyberspace.  When their birthdays roll around I wish them happy birthday, just like the real world.

We have conversations that are just like real-life conversations.  Someone will post something like, "What's up with onion bagels?" and 273 people will make a remark about it.  This sort of thing happens all the time in real life.  Or someone will pose a question like, "Which Jane Austin Character Are You?" and hundreds or even thousands of people will take a quiz to find out, and then share their answers with everyone.

Again, this sort of thing happens in the real world all the time.

When my friends do something I enjoy, I click a button to let them know I like it.  This is an exact analog of a real-life situation.  Suppose my neighbor Cathy invited me next door and said "There's something I'd like you to see."  Inside her living room maybe she'd have a cat in a Halloween costume riding around on a roomba.  And I'd probably say, "I like that."  Or if she showed me some singing goats.  I'd probably like that, too. 

Of course, Facebook isn't a perfect simulation of real life.  A friend of mine has recently undergone chemotherapy, and I feel uncomfortable liking her post.  Of course, in the comment section, I wrote that I would pray for her, but I suppose saying you will pray for someone in a Facebook post is in itself a kind of prayer, isn't it?  I mean, surely God reads Facebook.  But even though I can offer the mysterious power of prayer through cyberspace, it would be nice if I could signify an appropriate emotion at the same time by pressing a button.  In real life, I can just wear a sad expression.  This problem, of course, is just a matter of adding more buttons to Facebook that would cover a greater variety of situations with things like, "I am so sorry to hear that," or "(Wo)men.  Can't live with 'em.  Can't shoot 'em," or "There are some things it's probably better to keep private."

But when someone pokes me, I am truly nonplussed.  Naturally, I poke back.  It would seem rude not to.  But poking seems not only personal, but playfully aggressive.  In real life, if someone poked you, wouldn't you need to up the ante?  Grabbing them and blowing a raspberry on their arm seems an over-reaction, and is impossible to do on Facebook anyway.  Pointing at their shirt and saying, "You have a spot on your shirt," and then, when they look down, bonking them on the nose, is also impossible on Facebook, and is the sort of thing that would only work once anyway.  

I think what I will do to the next real-life friend I encounter is poke them and see what they do.  I won't say anything, nor will I register any emotion, I will merely poke them without explanation or context.  Just like Facebook, they will know they've been poked and by whom they've been poked.  I will then observe their reaction, and that will tell me how to respond on Facebook.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Consolation of Philosophy

[image error]Raphael's School of Athens portrays all the great philosophers of Ancient Greece.
You'll notice they're all old, most of them are bald.  Diogenes, in the center
(I think that's him) has fallen, and he can't get up. 
Aristotle said philosophy is not a pursuit for the young and hot-blooded; you have to reach mature years before you have patience for it.  I think he's right.
I think when you're young, you're too full of hormones and energy to really look around and take stock.  About your mid-fifties, when life is pretty dull and you realize you're approaching death and you'll be dead forever and ever, you start to think, "Huh, well, this sucks.  Guess I might as well learn something."
When I was young, in my twenties or so, all I thought about was going out to parties or having a "good" time.  Now I worry if existence precedes essence or is it the other way around.  That's the sort of thing you don't make time for when you're young.  You think you're enjoying yourself just because you're surrounded with friends and you're laughing all the time and you stay out late and still have the stamina to get up the next morning.  But that's not what real "fun" is.  That's not what makes life worth living.  Now I lie in bed because I wasn't able to sleep all night, and I wonder how much my feet will hurt when I put them on the floor, and there's this one mole that I've been keeping my eye on, and I wonder if the phenomenon of being really can be reduced to the being of phenomenon or if Sartre was right after all.  Now, that's living.
Sure, when I was young, eighteen-year-old girls would look at me without that expression of mingled pity, horror, and contempt.  But now it's so much better.  Sure, young women are no longer interested in me, but they would be if they only knew I could explain to them that life is meaningless and absurd, and we must learn to live without hope.
Good for me.

Toes

As We Mature, Our Toes Begin to Go Their Separate WaysWhen we are little, all our toes are the same.  They're like little shrink-wrapped berries, or peas nestled together.  As we mature, our toes begin to go their separate ways.  They rebel, some of them, others become estranged, some simply develop their own personal interests.  In short, they become individuals.

When I look at my toes now, they might as well be strangers who happen to be on the same subway together.  Their body language is not hostile, exactly, better to call it aloof.  They turn away from each other and refuse to make eye-contact.

What happened to the toes of yesteryear?  My pinky-toe, always my favorite because he was the piggy who went "wee-wee-wee," now is a curmudgeonly old grump.  You would hardly recognize him.  Once so joyous and carefree, he wears the look of a toe for whom life has not turned out as expected.  He is embittered.

Even this, however, is not as troubling as what has become of the penultimate-to-the-pinky toe.  God alone knows what he is up to.  The toenail is transforming into some sort of ramp.  It's about thirty-degrees elevated to the rest of the toe.  I trim it back, but it refuses to stay trimmed.  I can't imagine what a toe wants with a thirty-degree toenail ramp.  I fear he has become mentally unbalanced.

Saturday I went to visit my friends Jamie and Sarah who just had a new daughter, Bailey.  I did not take time to examine her toes, I did not need to.  Like all baby toes, I'm sure they are perfect, as alike as a row of chicklets.

Enjoy those toes while you can, Jamie and Sarah!  Toes are like the blossom of a delicate flower, perfect a moment only.  

The Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle's Student, Alexander the Great, Conquered the World.
It was Better than Listening to Another Damn Lecture.
Last week at the library, I selected a series of audio lectures on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.  Nancy, who was with me, gave me a look like, "suit yourself," and checked out a murder mystery and an historical novel about Henry Tudor.

Let me make this clear, when your wife gives you a "suit yourself" look when you've just selected an audio version of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, you're damn well going to listen to the whole thing.  There's no way you can just say, "Well, I don't really care for it," and not finish it.  So every day driving to and from work, I've been listening to these lectures.

Aristotle is a bona-fide giant of intellectual achievement.  Virtually every field of knowledge in Western Civilization, from science to the arts, can trace its roots back to Aristotle.  The man is profound.  Truly, truly profound.

And godamighty, is he dull.

I should've known.  I read a much shorter work, The Poetics, in a class with Sheri Joseph, and it was genuinely fascinating, and has shaped my understanding of narrative structure from that day to this.  Nevertheless, even in The Poetics, Aristotle has a penchant for pointing out the stunningly obvious.  He's the man who pointed out a story must have a beginning, middle, and and an end.  Then, so help me, he goes on painstakingly to tell us what these terms mean: "The beginning is that part that has nothing before it but something after it; the middle is that part that has both something before it and something after it; and the end is that part that has something before it but nothing after it."  Thanks, Aristotle, for clearing that up.

Well, the Nicomachean Ethics is like that, only a lot longer.  After a long disquisition about the purpose of life, closely reasoned from such startling revelations as the purpose of a hand is to pick things up, and the purpose of a foot is to walk around on, Aristotle proceeds to examine the virtues.  

For the virtue of Temperance, which took about thirty minutes to thoroughly explore, it turns out the best way is between two extremes: we must neither be attracted to physical pleasures too much, nor must we be attracted too little,  Another thirty minutes were devoted to the virtue of Industry.  After careful analysis, Aristotle decides we must work neither too much nor too little.  On the virtue of Courage, the trick turns out to be that we must be neither too foolhardy nor too timid; somewhere in the middle is best.  It took about thirty minutes to settle this point.

The next thirty-minute lecture will be on the virtue of Prudence, and whether it is better to make up our minds hastily or to deliberate a point so long we never make them up at all.

I can hardly wait to hear what Aristotle will have to say about that.

Handy Phrases for the American in Paris

Bonjour.  Nous sommes Americains.When travelling abroad, it is so important to make an attempt to speak the native language.  As a public service, therefore, I offer these few phrases for the typical American visiting Paris.

Ou est la roum d'hommes?  Je reallez avez take un numero deux.

Sacre merde!  Le petite t-shirt avec "j'heart Paris" costez cinquente-cinq francs!

Bonjour.  Nous cherchez por un barre d'titty.

Avez vous otre chose manger?  Cette est nasty.

Nous Americains vraiment sauved votre asses en Monde Guerre Deux, n'est pas?

True Happiness

What will bring us true happiness?  Some things might seem like they will make us happy, but they really won't.  For example, you might think driving spikes into your skull with a ball-peen hammer will make you happy, but it won't.  I know.

Will putting a squirrel down your pants make you happy?  Maybe, for a little while, but is it lasting happiness?  Also you have to take into account the happiness of the squirrel.  If the squirrel you have in your pants is unhappy, it will be difficult for you to be happy yourself.

Love may bring you happiness, but there are many kinds of love out there.  For example, you may love spaghetti, but would you want to marry it?  If you did, you wouldn't be able to have children.  Maybe that's a good thing, considering how they'd look.  You could always adopt.

And money.  Many people believe money will give them happiness.  They're right.  If it doesn't give you happiness, you could use it to buy something that does.

Other Lawsuits

Isabella Tanikumi, who also goes by L. Amy Gonzalez, alleges "Frozen" is based on 18 elements from her memoirs "Living My Truth" and "Yearnings of the Heart," which chronicle her upbringing in the Andean mountains of Peru.  The federal lawsuit, filed Sept. 22, states the similarities include character names, as well as the relationship between the main characters. "Frozen" earned more than $1 billion at the box office and is the highest-grossing animated movie of all time. - Janelle Griffin, NJ.com

Harris Shatner, a cat-tower upholsterer in Queens, alleges that the film Pinocchio stole portions of his life story.  "I was swallowed alive by a giant whale for several days," he says.  "It was a harrowing experience.  My only companion in that terrible darkness was a talking wooden puppet."  Regarding the puppet, Shatner admits, "I may have hallucinated that part."  He is suing Disney for $12 million, and the author of The Book of Jonah for $5 million.

Cleavis Billingsley, a sex worker in Reno, Nevada, has brought suit against Disney's film Snow White because she alleges it was a flimsy rip-off of her tell-all biography, Chastise Me with Scorpions, in which she recounts a summer she cohabitated with six employees of the Eureka County Mining Company.  Billingsley is suing for $6 million.  They took an episode of my life I spent in a shotgun shack in the desert, having savage sex with up to seven men at a time, and they made it into something cheap and tawdry.  In that stupid movie, those men were all little.  Believe me, they were not little."

Cranston Revell, a retired animal trainer, is suing Disney for $7 million for its film Dumbo, which he claims was taken without permission from his own life story, A Loss too Heavy.  Revell's trained elephant Jumbo, either operating under the delusion he could fly, or else clinically depressed, managed somehow to climb to the top of a trapeze and throw himself into the center ring.  "Jumbo had a lot of guts," Revell recalls, wiping a tear from his eye at the memory.  "It took weeks to clean up the mess."  Revell is suing for copyright infringement and emotional distress.  Currently he is owner/operator of Jumbo Burger in Sarasota, Florida.

William Shakespeare has come back from the dead to sue Disney for one of its most popular features, claiming it plagiarized major plot points from his own history of the arch-villain Richard III, which Shakespeare had originally entitled, The Lyin' King.

Historical Perspective

When you're young, you think history is something that's "back then," over and done with.  What you begin to appreciate as you get older, is we live history; the past and its consequences are with us now.  Many world-changing events, which I have personal memories of, are only vague jumbled notions to my daughters' generation.

For example, the fall of the Iron Curtain, they don't even know what that means.  Well, I remember it, and it made quite a clang, I can tell you.  I remember Reagan saying, "Mr Khruschev, tear down this wall."  And Khruschev, he didn't like that.  He pounded his shoe on the table and promised he would bury us, but guess who ended up getting buried?  That's right.  Kennedy had gone over the year before and said, "Ich ben ein Berliner," basically saying he was a Berliner, but no one back in the US even bothered to check his birth certificate.  I mean, the guy had just admitted to being a foreigner for Pete's sake, but in those days they were worried about him being Catholic.  

Kennedy ended up getting assassinated, which was a national tragedy, of course, but you have to admit, he was one hard sucker to kill.  He'd gone to the grassy knoll to meet Marilyn Monroe; these days any president would smell a trap right away.  "Grassy knoll?  Nothing doing!"  But Kennedy was young and idealistic and shows up.  Naturally, just about everyone who could tote a gun was there, too: Sam Giancana, of course, Fidel Castro, John Connolly, Frank Sinatra, Lyndon Johnson, I think even Jackie got in a couple of shots.

People always ask, do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot?  Well, I remember where I was, and if anybody asks, it was not on the grassy knoll.  No way was I on the grassy knoll.

Fidel Castro, that was another one.  What a kook!  Of course, these days he's just an old fart, but in those days he really got around.  He was always hijacking planes.  He'd be getting on a plane, and the stewardess would say, "You can't get on this plane, Mr. Castro."  And Castro, he'd say, "I'm just going to Chicago.  I won't hijack this plane, I promise.  What would I want with another plane?"  And they'd let him on and next thing, guess what?  He hijacked it.

And then there was Nixon.  What a piece of work Nixon was.  He went on TV saying a supporter had given his family an adorable cocker spaniel named Checkers.  Real sentimental, you know, hit you right in the soft spot.  Interesting fact: people who listened to the speech on the radio, thought Nixon won; people who watched it on TV, thought it was the dog.  Anyway, Nixon said, if we didn't vote for Eisenhower, he'd shoot Checkers.  Naturally, Eisenhower won in a landslide.  In one picture, Truman holds up a newspaper with the headline, "Eisenhower beats Truman."  Truman's grinning ear-to-ear because he knew the dog would live.  Nixon would do anything to win.  He later sent Checkers to Vietnam.  Heartless bastard.

Nixon later got his comeuppance, though, when he opened the Watergate and flooded the Tennessee Valley.  Americans finally said, "enough is enough."  The joke was on us, though, because we couldn't find a new president.  We insisted on someone who hadn't taken bribes, or sold influence, or drowned an intern, or rigged an election, or spied on an opponent, or unlawfully abused his power in any way.  Turned out, finding an honest politician in DC was like looking for a virgin at a Clemson game.  Finally we settled on Gerald Ford who was so honest, he didn't even wear a football helmet.  Said it wasn't fair to the other team.  Ford ended up pardoning Nixon, so maybe he wasn't so honest after all.  People kept trying to shoot Ford, but they were all women, so naturally they missed.  They kept saying, "Jerry, why don't you come to the grassy knoll with us?"  But Ford said, "Even I'm not dumb enough to fall for that one."

I remember all that.

Iron Son-in-Law

Last Sunday I watched my future son-in-law complete an Iron Man in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  An Iron Man, in case you didn't know, consists of a two-mile swim, a one-hundred fourteen mile bike ride, followed by a grueling twenty-six-mile marathon.  By law, anyone blogging about the Iron Man must use the adjective "grueling" at least once, and the authorities were watching anxiously to make sure I got it in.

You'd think with a sport like this, they'd have a hard time lining up suckers competitors, but actually there's loads of them.  They were lined up for what seems like a mile waiting their turn to jump in the river for the first leg of the race.  Glenn was with a couple of his buddies, Wade and David.  Prior to the swim, his friends stripped to their swim gear and were nervously - not pacing, exactly - you can't properly pace while standing in line - but they were pacing in place, if such a thing is possible.  There was a twitchiness to their movements, they seemed on the verge of slapping their chests.  But not Glenn.  He was admirably relaxed and didn't remove his sweat shirt and pants until the very last minute.  It was a cool outside, and there was no point being uncomfortable.

Glenn was on the swim team in high school and college, so the swim is his strong suit, not to mention, swimming in the river he was boosted by the speed of the current.  After he got in the river, we watched the other swimmers downstream a little while, their splashing in the distance looked like bait fish jumping, in the memorable simile of Glenn's dad, Brian.

Then we went to the transition area to see Glenn get out of the water and onto his bike.  We didn't see him again until the transition from his bike to the run.  Athletes left their bikes with volunteers and had to trot a fairish distance, wearing either socks or their click-in bike shoes.  Glenn was a longer time appearing than expected, and Spencer speculated that went the volunteer took his bike, Glenn had forgotten to remove his GPS watch, which he'd clipped on the handlebars.  Sure enough, Glenn told us as he came running by, this is exactly what happened, and he'd had to run back and get it.

Evidently, this is Glenn's race-day MO; at least one thing goes wrong.  Once, he forgot his swim goggles, and had to do the backstroke.  On one memorable occasion, he forgot to bring shoes.

This is not to ridicule Glenn, just the contrary.  In addition to being a test of physical stamina, the Iron Man is a serious time commitment and a not inconsiderable expense.  I won't even tell you how much the bicycles cost, but it would make you blanch.  But although Glenn is committed, he never takes himself or it seriously.  Some Iron Men participants are regular snoots, but not Glenn.  He's friendly and affable to everyone, and if something goes awry, he doesn't pout like a prima-donna.  "Okay, I don't have goggles.  I'll do the backstroke."  "I don't have shoes.  I'll buy some shoes."  "Left the watch on the bike.  Oops."

Here's a picture of Glenn mid-gruel of the marathon portion.  He'd been in strenuous activity for about nine and a half hours with two and a half hours left to go.  It had started raining, and by now his shoes were probably wet and beginning to feel like cinder blocks on the ends of his legs.  It had been dark when he'd started the race that morning, and it would be dark when he finished.

Look at him smile.

We love you, Glenn.  Welcome to the family.

Bernie Mandelbrot

[image error]Benoit Mandelbrot created this visualization of his famous set,
but his brother Bernie was the first to point out, "It looks like
someone's butt, or else like a bunch of turtles."Benoit Mandelbrot's little brother grew up in the shadow of his more famous sibling, and yet according to many, Bertie had "more sense" and "better hair."  "Why can't you clean your room once in a while," Mrs. Mandelbrot used to berate her oldest son.  "Look at Bernie."


Mrs. Mandelbrot was to play a crucial role in her sons' development.  "You're both equally smart in different ways," she liked to say.  "Bernie understands fractal geometry, and infinitely reducible non-repeating self-similar patterns, Bertie is very good at getting good TV reception, most of the time.

Both boys grew up to make important contributions to mathematics - Benoit Mandelbroth posited a set of complex numbers for which the orbit of zero in a complex plane under iteration of the something or other, I  mean, who really cares anyway, whereas, Bernie stated the theorem that if everyone divides the check equally, it still isn't fair if one of you got a side salad and a mixed drink, and everyone else just got the entree.

Bernie's inquiries also led him into the field of relativity; he was the first to point out, that if two observers, traveling relative to each other at three quarters the speed of light, each would observe that the other's clock was running 12.5% slower, and yet neither one would be able to make it to the bank before it closed on Saturday, not if he needed to get by the dry cleaner, too.  This led to the inevitable conclusion that the universe is constantly expanding, which is why you can never fit into the pants you wore in high school.

Predictably, rivalry between the two brothers was intense, and not always amicable.  Benoit refused to let Bernie stand behind him, and Bernie suffered from a lifelong fear that Benoit would put something in his socks.  Nevertheless; Benoit offered grudging admiration for his brother, saying, "He has achieved the pinnacle of moronic reasoning."