MadMup.com

It might not be summer just yet according to your calendar, but according to my school calendar it is. The students were done last Wednesday and the teachers were there one more day after that. While there are still a couple of teachers organizing and cleaning or planning to retire, for the most part the place is empty. Summer school starts next week, so there’ll be more people around, but this in-between time is kind of eerie.

I think I’m a little lonely. That doesn’t make sense, but I think that’s what it is.

See, I’m kind of my own little island at work. A high school tends to be like a bunch of little schools all in one building. There’s the English School, the Foreign Language School, the Math School, and on it goes. Most departments are in the same general area and they have a department office where they gather. From my perspective it seems that most department members get along pretty well with each other. I don’t know how the different departments get along because, really, there aren’t that many opportunities for them to gather. At the few staff lunches I’ve been to it looks like the departments pretty much stick together and sit as a group.

Then there’s me. I don’t really have a department. There are 17 schools in our school corporation and there are 7 techs for those schools. Each high school tech has just the high school, but the other techs have three (and sometimes four) schools that they visit on different days throughout the week. When I first started, I had two middle schools and one elementary school. I got to know one or two people, but it was difficult because I wasn’t at the schools much, so I didn’t interact with them much. I made one good friend that I still see occasionally, even though we’re not at the same school anymore, but that’s an exception. The other school techs are my department, but we don’t really see each other much, except at our weekly tech meetings. At my school, I’m pretty much departmentless.

Being at a high school means I’m there every day, so I interact with the teachers more frequently. In theory, anyway. In practice, I only see the ones who are having computer issues, and then we’re pretty much interacting for the purpose of getting the issue fixed. Not a whole lot of “get to know you” chat going on there. There are times where I’ll pass someone in the hall and we’ll stop and talk for a bit and sometimes some personal info sneaks in – they mention a sibling or a pet or that they do kung fu or something – but it’s safe to say that “Acquaintance” is pretty much the highest level I’ve reached with any of them.

Like any workplace, there are people that seem like it’d be nice to be friends with and other people who … well, it’d be nice if their computers never had trouble. It’s just the way of it. A friend recently reminded me that I’d have to be superhuman to be able to get along with every last personality out there. It’s hard to balance that with the desire to be liked, but that’s where we all precariously sit.

King Solomon said “A man who has friends must himself be friendly” (Proverbs 18:24). Meaning, if I want to have friends, I need to go out and take steps on my own to make that happen. I, as you may have gathered if you are a regular reader, am not so good at this. I’m a very good responder, but I am terrible first step-taker.

So I remain separate, apart. I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t feel … noticed. If another tech took my place tomorrow, it would be all the same to the teachers.

Explain, then, this loneliness. Can it be just the absence of people, even if the people aren’t really friend-people? Why is walking the halls and not having people to interact with any different than walking the halls and not interacting with the people who are there?

I have plenty to keep me busy – summer is, after all, a school tech’s busiest time – and I suspect I’ll shake off this feeling eventually.

The only worrisome thing is that in H. G. Wells’ Invisible Man, the guy eventually goes crazy from lack of people interacting with him, doesn’t he? 4 comments

I don't care for baseball - I won't watch it on TV and I won't often choose to go see a game in person - but for some reason I really like baseball movies. If it's a baseball movie starring Kevin Costner, well, for some reason that makes it better.

I just finished watching For Love of the Game, in case you were wondering. I know you'll want to sass me for liking it so much, and I guess that's okay. If it'll help you any, I also teared up while watching it. 1 comments

This morning I went into work like any other normal day, turned on my computer, had my granola bar/iced tea breakfast, checked my email, and went out to check on the guys installing the new PA system in my server room.

Pretty normal, but something seemed ... off. Something wasn't quite right. Hmm.

Oh, yeah, the big giant bird flapping around my server room. That wasn't there before.

The birds know I don't like them, so now they're sending secret agents in to where I work to try and get me. Good thing they're stupid. Secret agents are supposed to blend in, be unnoticeable. If I'd seen, say, a monitor, or a stack of books, or a trash can, I wouldn't have expected anything. But the big flapping bird? Total giveaway.

Recognizing the danger, I did the only thing I could: retreated to my office and closed the door.

The bird agent, realizing the futility of trying to finish his mission, tried to escape by flying out into the Media Center and smacking its head against the windows. This is a bird's Standard Operating Procedure in just about any situation. A nearby cat? Head for the nearest window, bash your head against it. Rain? Window. A change in the political climate of Guatemala? Window. Birds aren't terribly creative.

Apparently the bird was captured and released outside - I like to think the release was a warning to other birds, but who knows if that message will get relayed?

Safe again, I emerged from my office and went on about my day.

But seriously - birds freak me out. 2 comments

I’m going to Canada next week (not all of it, mind you, just the Nova Scotia part of it) to be in a wedding. Mike and Meags are getting married, and they asked me to be a part of it. More specifically, they asked me to be an usher, which should be well within my capabilities. I say “should” because frankly, I’m concerned that maybe ushering in Canada is different than ushering in The States. Am I supposed to walk on the left? How many kilometers are in a church aisle? If a guest tells me to “take off, eh” am I obligated to do so? So many questions.

I’ve been to Canada before, but never this area. The closest I’ve come is New Brunswick, which was pretty nice. And I might as well get this out of the way: I don’t care how close Prince Edward Isle looks on the map, I will not be going there to fulfill any Anne of Green Gables-inspired dreams you might have, so don’t even ask.

I’m flying out of Indy on Thursday morning to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I hope my car rental reservation actually worked so I can drive to … uh, the town I’m supposed to go to. There’s been a “Yarmouth” mentioned, and I know there’s a “Wolfville” up there somewhere. I figure I’ll just drive around the province until I stumble upon a wedding that looks like it could use an usher.

I checked on the rates for using my cell phone up there and the short version is: leave me a message and I’ll call you when I get back on Sunday. If I leave my phone on and even get called without answering, I get charged! It doesn’t seem right. Canada’s closely enough tied to us that you can dial a Canadian number without any sort of international dialing code, but it still gets charged like an international call. If we can share DVD regions I feel like we could share long distance calling without any extra charges. Borders, schmorders! …at least where calling is concerned. I don’t want any Canadian moose coming down here and taking jobs away from our hard-working American moose.

I really wish “moose” had a cooler plural than “moose.” “Mooses” or even “meese” would be so much better.

While I’m not completely sure what all my ushering duties entail, I’ve decided that one of them is “have whiter teeth than I do currently.” To that end I picked up some Crest Whitestrips last week. I’ve used a different version of these before and I think they worked okay, but these are the “premium” ones, so there’s the danger that they will whiten my teeth to the point of them disappearing- you know, along the lines of “the brightness has caused a temporal rift!” and that sort of thing. You never know. Crest says they’re safe, but if my teeth jump into the future without me, I wouldn’t be able to form cohesive sentences well enough to confront them, I’d guess.

For the uninitiated: Crest Whitestrips are little strips of … something with some sort of gunk on them that you put over your teeth. There’s a strip designed for the upper row and a strip designed for the bottom row. You leave them on for a half hour, and with this version, anyway, you do it twice a day. The instructions even say you can do the first set, remove them, wipe your teeth off (!), and use the next set.

The problem with this whole thing is that the strips impair my ability to talk and they kind of activate my gag reflex sometimes. When last I did these, I’d put them on before I left for work, so by the time I got to work I only needed to keep them on for ten more minutes or so. I usually didn’t see anybody for those first ten minutes or longer, so it worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, at this job, I see people from the moment I step in the door. It wouldn’t be good for me to be foaming at the mouth first thing in the morning. Late in the afternoon, sure – that’s almost expected. But first thing in the morning is no good.

I got the “premium” version for one reason and one reason alone: they only take 7 days instead of the 10-14 of the other ones. Turns out this was a good idea… since I’m leaving in about 7 days. Once again my procrastinatorial nature has gotten me down to the wire and if I don’t start these things tomorrow, I will have failed in my first usherial duty. From that failure it’s just a slippery slide down the slope of seating people incorrectly, tripping guests, and accidentally spitting on small children.

I like to think that I’m sort of a symbol of how Mike and Meags met – I didn’t really have anything to do with them meeting, but we all met each other online at the THorum, and I was around when they first started telling me that maybe they liked each other. From there it was all cruises and summer vacations (for them), and we haven’t been able to keep in touch as well as we used to, but it’s been an exciting journey and neat to see. I’m looking forward to meeting Meags in person finally, though I feel I already have. I met Mike “for reals” when I bought my van in Texas, and he didn’t hack me into pieces or anything, so he seems a decent sort. I wish them all the best and I’m honored to be a part of their wedding.

My only hope is that my blindingly white teeth don’t distract from the ceremony. 4 comments

Make your own! 4 comments

I watched Serenity again tonight (my 153rd movie for the year and my fourth time total seeing it, for those keeping track), and it struck me why I like it so much: it finishes the story Firefly began. I like the characters and the world they inhabit, but knowing what the deal was is even bigger for me.

For the two of you who don’t know: Firefly was a television series that Fox canceled too quickly. The complete series was put out on DVD, which is where I learned about it, watched it, and loved it. Last year the movie Serenity, a movie based on the show, was released. It didn’t do very well in theaters and it’s probably the last we’ll see of the Firefly universe.

The series had an overarching storyline about a girl named River Tam with a mysterious past. Hints and pieces of the puzzle were given in the series, but they were little more than “the Alliance did things to her brain and now she’s just not quite right” sorts of things. The movie, though, answered the questions and put a period at the end of the sentence. Sure, there were some loose ends (Shepherd Book? What about him?!?), and there are certainly more stories that could be told, but the main mystery was answered. Done. Finished. End of story.

I can’t understand how writers can do this kind of thing. It’s hard enough telling a story, but telling a story over several episodes, only giving hints here and there – man, I couldn’t do it. The X-Files did it for nine seasons. Lost has been at it for two. If I hadn’t fallen into The X-Files a couple seasons in, I don’t think I would have had the patience to watch it until the end. I don’t watch Lost and you can’t make me.

I need to know the whole story. I want to know why the things that happened happened. Smallville’s okay for me, because even though I might not know what’s going to happen in the current “what’s going on?!?” storyline, I know that Clark ends up being Superman and Lex ends up being his worst enemy.

Oh, uh, spoiler alert, I guess. I hope I didn’t ruin the upcoming Superman Returns for you.

I don’t think I’m alone in my desire to know the full story. Why do people read newspapers and news websites and watch “Behind the Scenes” specials? There’s a special feeling you get when you know something someone else doesn’t. I can spend hours reading the trivia on IMDB. I find those little details so very interesting.

I think “desire to know” is what spawns conspiracy theories. There’s got to be more than just one guy shooting JFK. There have to be UFOs. The government can barely handle getting laws passed, but they have to be hiding all sorts of secret agendas from us.

All of this “knowledge,” though… how much of it is worthwhile? I think maybe we’ve been sold a counterfeit product. Instead of seeking wisdom, we look for knowledge and facts.

Alexander Pope said, “People who know only a little do not understand how little they know and are therefore prone to error.” Or, put plainly, “a little learning is a dangerous thing.” And in the grand scheme of things – life, love, happiness, pain – doesn’t any amount of learning end up being “a little”?

I think that’s why it’s so satisfying to know the end of a thing, to know the full story: it gives us a little foothold on the huge cliff of “Everything,” something we can deal with.

Sometimes that’s all we need to get us through a rough patch. 4 comments

For reference: O'Charley's
Also for reference: O RLY? owl

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I entered the Poetry competition in the Academic Regionals my Junior year of high school. The whole trip and competition was a surreal experience that I’ll try to detail more when I get to that entry in my school memories series.

The way it worked was all the entrants would gather in one room with paper and pencils, and at the appointed time the proctor would announce the topic and start the clock. We’d have an hour to write a poem and then it’d get judged and announced later in the day. Our topic that year was “rain,” a perfect topic for a poem-writing angsty teenager, yes? I ended up writing a parallel sort of thing, with the first section being about nice, peaceful, refreshing rain and the second section being all stormy and violent. I was pretty happy with it at the time, though I’d be loathe to reproduce it here these days, I’m sure.

I’d never tried anything like this before – writing on a specific topic in a specific time frame. I’ve since learned that I work best with specific guidelines and specific deadlines, but at the time it was a new thing.

My friend Dave was in the same competition, only in the Senior category. When we were finished and were outside discussing the whole thing, he mentioned that when he turned in his poem, he happened to catch a glimpse of someone else’s poem in the stack. To this day I can still remember the bit he quoted. In fact, I sometimes just say it because the rhythm of it amuses me so:

I hear the pitter and the patter
As I sit beneath the tree.

Say that out loud in the sing-song way that most students read poetry in class and it might tickle your funny bone the same way it did ours. If it doesn’t, well, I guess that’s okay. It will never cease to amuse me.

It wasn’t that we were such fantastic poets, I don’t think. It was more of a recognition that it followed fairly basic poetic “rules.” The rigid meter was a dead giveaway that rigid rhyme schemes would follow. Dave and I wrote poems recreationally a lot, and he tended to be free-form and non-rhyming, while I was more about trying to be creative in the stricture of specific guidelines. Even so, I found the da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da meter amusing. It might be why I eventually strayed from it later on, though another big part of it was the poem I did in the competition my Senior year. Oog. It was every bit as laughable. Bad, bad, bad.

I went through the typical teenage phase of writing poems and “songs” and trying to get my feelings on paper in some way that people could understand mostly, but not fully. I tried to be deep and true and all of that. Man, I was going to be a writer.

I read some of that stuff every so often and I can’t help but shake my head. The sure-he-knew-everything youthful version of me never made it to my 34th birthday. I read what he wrote and remember why he wrote it, and I wish I could go back and tell him some things and try to get him to understand, even though I know he wouldn’t. Oh, he thought he did, of course, but one stage of life doesn’t understand the next, no matter how much it tries and prepares.

I read poetry sometimes, but it’s difficult for me. I know the poems mean more than they appear to mean, and since I don’t know what they’re trying to mean, I get frustrated. I can read a Robert Frost poem and immediately understand

Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

But when William Carlos Williams writes

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I wonder if I’m stupid for not getting it or if he’s the crazy one for writing it.

I like my allegories and allusions like I like my stop signs: evident and effective. Kenneth Koch hits at the very level of my frustration when he writes

In a poem, one line
May hide another line,
As at a crossing,
One train may
Hide another train.

It makes me feel ignorant. If I can’t visualize abstract ideas and am left with only concrete, what does that say about me? An imagination, an understanding of concepts and ideas – these are important to me.

Ultimately it was a Beatles song that helped me understand another concept. Rather, it was Dave’s explanation of a Beatles song that helped me. I complained to him that songs like “Come Together” make no sense to me. They weren’t telling any sort of story and the collection of phrases didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other. I don’t remember his exact words, but the gist of his explanation was that sometimes words paint pictures inexactly and it’s more about the sound of the words used. It doesn’t seem like much, but that explanation has helped me appreciate many a poem and song since then.

These days, I’m more inclined to latch onto a line here or there from a poem or song – what it says, how it says it, something just grabs me every so often. It’s usually something I can understand right off the bat, which still bothers me some times, but I don’t know how to work on that particular understanding “muscle,” so I do what I can.

To my surprise, I came in second in the poetry competition that year. The judges returned my poem to me with comments all over it, and it was the first time I’d had major attention paid to something I’d written. One of the judges really liked my “English spelling” in a phrase I’d used: “Spectre of Death.” I always wished I could have talked to her about her comments, but it never happened.

I don’t write poetry much any more. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did. The closest I get these days is rewriting lyrics to songs, but that hardly counts. I just don’t seem to have the … heart or will or strong enough feelings or something. Poetry needs to come from somewhere deep and I feel so shallow these days that it’s not surprising.

I leave you with the following lines which caught my eye during this last National Poetry Month (April). The media specialist at school had put up a poster that had snippets and lines from a bunch of different poets, and one line struck me. It’s from Robert Penn Warren, and I think I like it because it says what it means:

You think I am speaking in riddles, but
I am not, for the world means only itself.

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Sure it's a repeat, but having a birthday is, too.


Courtesy of PBF Comics, which aren't necessarily always something I'd recommend. 3 comments

To the tune of "When I'm 64" by The Beatles:

When I get older, postings are rare, a couple hours from now
Will you still be clicking on things underlined, email links and commenting fine?
If I don’t post ‘till week number three, would you get too bored?
Will you still need me, will you still read me
When I’m thirty-four?

Mmmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
You’ll be older, too. (Aaaaah)
And if you say the word,
I will post for you.

I could eat candy, noting the lines written on the wrap
You could read other sites while waiting for posts, read a good book or take a long nap
Talking of cats and Snakes on a Plane, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still read me
When I’m thirty four?

Every year in school I will comment on and write about, if it’s not too drear.
I will rant and rave.
Comments are welcome from: all of you. And Dave.

Send me an email, drop me a line, tell me ‘bout your blog.
Indicate precisely if you’ve got an URL, I might link to you, boy or a girl.
So for now I’ll keep posting these things, rambling more and more
Will you still need me, will you still read me,
When I’m thirty-four?

Based on my friend Kat's singing just the line "When I'm thirty-four" on the phone. She'd kill me if I didn't give her at least a little credit.

Labels: music

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I’ve realized something lately. Maybe it’s my advanced age (I’m almost 34!) but I’ve noticed that people aren’t very polite to each other any more.

I guess it’s possible a couple of other things could be true:

1) People never were polite to each other
2) I’m just now noticing what people do

It is, of course, more noticeable online. With the anonymity the Internet affords (identity thieves be hanged!), people seem to more freely be impolite. Not having to look someone in the face and say “Your opinions, desires, and beliefs don’t mean a hill of beans to me” makes it easier to say things like that. It becomes natural to use sarcasm and nastiness to deal with everything.

It seems that a lot of it gets filed under “my right to free speech” or “I’m being real.” Sadly, that last one is becoming more and more true, I think – impoliteness is how people are becoming.

See, it’s easy to blame the anonymity of the Web for some of the lack of politeness, but it’s spilling out into the “real world.” Frankly, I think that’s part of the problem, that separation, that thinking that certain behavior is fine in certain contexts. We forget that the people we deal with in email, in forums, and on instant messaging are real people. I wonder if it’s because we’re reading their words rather than hearing them? We react differently to the written word than to the spoken, and often one does not translate well to the other.

It’s no excuse. Our desire to be hip or funny or sarcastically observant comes at the expense of treating others poorly. When “I have a right to say what I want!” becomes more important than “I want to do my part to make it easier for us all to co-exist” and “Being ‘real’” becomes more important than “being polite,” it’s no wonder we have road rage, people who sue at the drop of a hat, and teenagers wearing rude T-shirts.

Lack of politeness boils down to lack of respect, really. If, in response to your stated opinion, I respond with “That’s stupid and anyone who believes that is stupid and probably ugly” what I’m really saying is “You’re not important to me because you’re different than me.”

“But,” you say, “people need to earn my respect!” Long-term respect, sure. But that general respect for others, a respect for life because its life, should be as natural as breathing. Because you’re a person I should have enough respect for you to at the very least be able to listen to you without calling you names. Will I agree with everything you say? Not likely. You won’t agree with me, either. But “We can agree to disagree” goes a lot farther towards fomenting harmony than “You jerkwad idiot monkey-brain.” How we treat others is often more important than if we agree with them.

Bottom line, it’s ego: “My opinion matters more than yours.” What makes you better than someone else? Your incredible intellect? Your amazing good looks? Your ability to walk and chew gum at the same time? Where’d you get all those things? You had nothing to do with the gifts you were given by being alive so stop pretending you did. Sure, you might have studied or practiced something to get better at it, but did you create your brain and give it the ability to learn new things? Nope, you sure didn’t. And whether you believe you were given those abilities and gifts by God or whether you believe mankind evolved itself up to the point where they happen naturally with every new life, you didn’t have anything to do with it either way. I’m no better than you and you’re no better than the last person you ridiculed.

Being impolite and disrespectful has another effect: it causes the person you ridiculed to build walls. Different people build different walls – some build walls of further disrespect and sarcasm and react by cutting the other person down and escalating the hate (esca-hating?). Some build walls of silence and react by not saying anything. Some build walls of deafness and react by not listening. Closing oneself in away from others is a sure path to not growing as a person anymore. If all we’ll ever know is what we already know, there’s no chance of growth.

In the last couple of years, I’ve met and become friends with many different types of people with many different types of personalities. It’s taken constant work on my part and on theirs to deal with the differences. I grew up in an environment made up of people with whom I shared belief systems. Being around others who don’t share that system has been scary, enlightening, and affirming all at the same time. The more I see other beliefs, the more it helps me understand my own. On their part, they’ve had to come to understand that “religious” doesn’t mean “hate-filled bigot.” Being friends or even being polite doesn’t mean you automatically accept what they believe, but understanding that they DO have different beliefs is important.

You’ve heard the phrase “Nobody’s perfect”? I think that’s a hope-filled phrase rather than a despair-filled one. We all have faults and there’s actually a pretty big chance that someone else is going through the exact same thing we are. If someone else can do well and be okay in spite of whatever that is, there’s hope for us. Realizing that we’re all more alike than we like to think is a part of growing up and a part of realizing how the world around us works.

This has been kind of meandering and probably not as concise and boiled down as it could be, but my basic point is that we should treat other people with more respect. From waiters to coworkers to random people we see in Target, be polite. If you think they’re an idiot, you don’t have to say so.



Of course, this is all my own opinion. 3 comments