Month: August 2012

What a Drag it is Getting Old … Not

Actually, I enjoy getting old, not because of the totally scary alternative but because it’s fun.  Old people get to do tons of neat stuff and get away with it.  It’s like being a child with porno and alcohol privileges.  First of all, you can bitch.  In fact, it’s almost expected.  When young people complain, there’s always some wiseacre who wants to talk about “changing the world” and “making a difference;” suddenly, the conversation goes from bad to boring.  However, when I complain, everybody just agrees with me and the conversation keeps on moving.  Nobody wants to provoke another old guy tirade.

You also get to wear comfortable clothes.  This is especially true for women who spend their formative years harnessed into those baby doll jeans that cut them in half.  At a certain age, both sexes can head for the uber-sized sweat (yoga) pants and nobody bats an eyeball.  Baggy shorts with polished dress shoes, evil colours, socks and sandals and those weird sweaters that old people never, ever button up — anything goes.  I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure you could go grocery shopping in your bathrobe if you wanted to.

Plus, and this is the coolest one, you’re never lazy.  You can spend all day eating cookies, drinking lattes and watching reruns of Bewitched on Netflix™ if you want, and nobody looks at you sideways.  If anybody under 30 tried that for very long, there’d be ki-yi-ing from here to Congress.  ‘Lazy bastard!  No wonder he hasn’t got a good job.”  But for people my age and older, it’s all about compassion, “Poor thing!  It must be hard for him now that he’s got nothing to do.”  Yeah, it’s tough.  Pass the Oreos™!”

And that’s the thing: when you start reaching into 60+, the rest of the world wants to drown you in sympathy.  It’s as if you magically caught an incurable disease.  Here’s a brilliant secret.  Leave a couple of Get Well Cards on the coffee table and you’ll never have to clean your house again.  Work it properly, and some of your younger relatives might even wash your dishes for you.  I’m not sure if this is true, but a friend of mine told me that once he left his lawnmower in the front yard to answer an important phone call, and before he could get back, the neighbours had made their kid finish cutting the lawn for him!  People open doors for you, you always get a seat on the bus and nobody complains when you’re late.  They’re probably just relieved that you made it at all, and they don’t have to go to the funeral.

Of course, like everything else in life, getting old has some downside, but trust me, it’s mostly minor.  For one thing, in casual conversation, you start sounding like your parents.  Making noises like your dad isn’t so bad until the stuff he said way back when begins to make sense to you: then you have to worry.

Another difficulty is contemporary music all sounds the same.  It’s like listening to Klingon.  Kanye West could be Kanye East, Snoop Dog (Lion?) is a jackass, and none of the women realize that breasts go on the inside of the dress.  So what?  There aren’t any ballads anymore, anyway and you can’t dance to the rest of it – so crack out the old CDs and carry on.

The only thing that actually is bothersome about being old is you keep getting outrun by technology.  This can be a serious problem, but if you remember that you’ve got the inside track on sympathy, you’ll be alright.  You’d be surprised how many people will make a special trip to reprogram your PVR for you, especially if you can pull a few tears.

The actual secret to getting old successfully is don’t take yourself too seriously.  Never forget that experience doesn’t always equal wisdom.  Even when it does, there’s no law that says you have to be wise every day.  Me?  I’m going to open another bag of Doritos™ and see what Darren and Samantha are up to this afternoon.

The Girl With The Anal Tattoo

Eighteen centuries ago, the Roman Empire was in heavy decline.  Nobody knew it, though.  It was still the largest, strongest and richest political entity on the planet.  Its reach extended from Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland into modern day India and perhaps even further into China.  Not bad when your fastest vehicle is a chariot.  It was the only superpower.  Inconceivably mighty, it dwarfed the disorganized and primitive tribes that skulked on its borders.  Yet, within a generation, it was physically disintegrating, and less than 100 years later, to all intents and purposes, it was gone.  To the average Roman of the day, though, this scenario was as unimaginable as flying a robot to Mars for a look around.  He would have laughed himself stupid at the very suggestion and gone back to the orgy.  However, because history’s telescope has 20/20 vision we can clearly see that the seeds of Rome’s demise had already been planted.

There are as many theories about the fall of the Roman Empire as there are scholars to write them, but most agree that somewhere in the 4rd century, the collective attitude of Rome changed.  It’s all tangled up in a series of complex political, economic, social and spiritual factors, but here’s the Twitter version.  Romans quit looking over their borders for new opportunities and sat down to partake in the spoils of four centuries of war.  From that very moment, the Roman Empire began its steady trudge from lean and mean to fat, dumb and happy — until there was nothing left but flab.  It went from social organization and engineering to orgies and entertainment, and that eventually resulted in 500 years of chaos when European civilization itself hung in the balance.

I said all this to say, the other day, I saw a headline on a most respected website whose name starts with an “H” and ends with an “ington Post.”  It read: “Anal Tattoo Girl Gives Important Interview (NSFW).”  I didn’t read the interview.  I’ve got nothing against tattoos, anal or otherwise.  However, I kinda have the feeling that an interview with a girl whose only claim on my time is an anal tattoo can’t be all that important.  For my money, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers discrediting Obamanomics was much more important.  But, actually, I was holding out for Congressman Todd Akin to explain what a “legitimate” rape was.  (I think there are a lot of people around who would consider that one a biggie.)  My point was (and still is) that although anal tattoos may be fascinating from a strictly logistic point of view, they are not important.  Actually, they’re distinctly trivial, and I was (and still am) surprised that a website of H…….ington Post’s calibre would give it the time of day.  However, since I first saw the headline, I’ve discovered (without much trouble) that anal tattoos are a serious trend among young women.  In fact, the girl with the anal tattoo has quite a following.  If you like, you can see her getting inked, as it were, on YouTube.  (I refuse to give the link, just as I’ve refused to give her a name.  She has all the notoriety she needs without my assistance. )  SPOILER ALERT – Curious as it seems, in order to get an anal tattoo, you need to take off both your blouse and bra.

I’m not a novice here.  I understand that the girl with the anal tattoo is a publicity hound.  She’s looking for her Andy Warhol fifteen minutes — in the hope that it will turn into something more Kardashian in scope.  No worries girl!  If that’s your only marketable skill (notice I didn’t say asset) by all means use it.  My real problem is that, in our society, this sort of thing carries a whack of clout.  If the girl with the anal tattoo had put the same amount of time, energy, money and what must be considerable discomfort, into feeding the hungry, for example, none of this would have happened.  She probably would have been born, lived and died with neither you, nor I, nor YouTube ever realizing her existence.  Her limited fame is based entirely on what seems to be the obscene amount of titillation our society now requires.

We are not Romans in our acquaintance with decadence — yet.  For the most part, our world still looks beyond itself for its reason to exist.  However, I don’t think it’s melodramatic to wonder, if, somewhere in the dark and distant future, some historian will point to the second week in August, 2012 and the girl with the anal tattoo as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.

Reckless Media: They’re At It … Again

It’s too early to talk about the American election (neither party has even had a convention yet) and too late to talk about Pussy Riot (they’ve already gone to jail) but oddly enough both are currently in the news.  Not only that, but each of them is causing a media storm the likes of which we haven’t seen since the glory days of Dick Cheney.  Everybody from the newly affiliated BBC and The New York Times* to the Tallahassee Truck Trader is bending themselves in knots voicing an opinion.  At the risk of crying “Collusion!” they’re all remarkably similar.  Coincidence?  I think not!

Ever since Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan as his running mate, the media has been ever-so-gently warning the public that the Republicans are now committed to throwing grandma, grandpa and 99% of the homeless in America under the corporate bus.  It’s amazing how many times you can call somebody a “mad dog” conservative — without using the “mad dog” part — and still get your point across.  There’s gotta be a Pulitzer in there somewhere.  Plus, quite a few opinionators have taken to giving Obama gratuitous election advice (whisper/whisper – it’s about Florida, stupid!) and they’ve even provided the president with a pro bono campaign slogan: Mediscare.  Actually, the prevailing media wisdom (outside the flyover states) is a Romney administration will be both stuck with Ryan’s insane financial plan (which can’t work) and at odds with it (which is unworkable.)  We call that working both sides of the street.

This is the same media that has given Joe Biden a all-inclusive “Get Out of Jail Free” press pass for the last five years.  No matter how many times Joe opens his mouth to stuff in the other foot, nobody in the media seems to mind.  As resident Canadian curmudgeon Rex Murphy observed recently, Delaware Joe may be the Jar Jar Binks of the Democratic Party.  And remember Joe was the guy who had his own presidential campaign cut short in 1988 when it was discovered he was a serial plagiarist – and not even a good one.  As I’ve said before, this may be the only time in history when an incumbent president is running against the other party’s vice-presidential choice!

Meanwhile, over in Russia, even before Vladimir Putin decided to march Pussy Riot off to prison, the western media was practically peeing its pants with excitement.  It was as if they’d won the Christmas Morning/Birthday/Valentine’s Day lottery.  Oh My God!  Feminist rock band!  Political protest!  Orthodox Church (Orthodox?  They’re Christians, right?) and neo-Czar Putin!  The thing was practically writing itself.  Then when Madonna and a few other celebs threw themselves into the fray, editors all over the world started passing out with the adrenalin hit.  Even the name “Pussy Riot” shouted Saturday Night Live and a Cooper Anderson (Anderson Cooper?) special.

I’m just going to stop the truck for a moment.  To clarify — I totally agree with Pussy Riot’s inalienable right to call Putin a putz if they want to.  Czar Vladimir the first is what happens when macho meets paranoid with a side order of tetchy.  Nobody’s calling Russia a liberal democracy, but two years in jail for name calling is treading on Kim Jong what’s-his-name-this-week territory.  Anybody who isn’t outraged by this kinda Classico-Soviet crap isn’t paying attention.

Okay, back to our story.  The thing that bothers me about this media funfest is nobody this side of Vistula River seems to be the least bit concerned that Pussy Riot was practicing their brand of girl power in an Orthodox Cathedral.  Again, just to clarify.  An Orthodox cathedral is a place of worship, a place of comfort and solace, a place where people seek to transcend the human experience and reach, however briefly, for spiritual guidance and well-being.  It is a place for contemplation and meditation.  For millions of people, it is a sacred place that is a tangible symbol of their personal journey to find meaning in this life.  If we have any respect for our fellow human beings on this planet, we most certainly must respect the need for spiritual well-being just as we respect the need for physical well-being. Even the nastiest of the secularists among us will admit that.  Yet, here we are on the business end of a media feeding frenzy and there’s not one hint that Pussy Riot’s uncontrollable urge to bring their message to the Russian people may have offended millions of them.  Or that it was wrong to choose a place of worship as the venue for their YouTube extravaganza.

These are just two vehicles on the information superhighway.  The American election is going to go on and on until everybody’s just about sick of it, and Pussy Riot will probably be forgotten in a week or two.  They’re two totally unrelated stories, yet they clearly demonstrate the same lockstep reporting that dominates contemporary media coverage. One of the essential components of a democratic society is a free and functioning media.  However, when that media is bleating in unison, it might as well be state-controlled — for all the good it does.

*Mark Thompson, the ex-honcho at the Beeb has been hired to run the show at The New York Times.  I guess, they’re all one big happy family.