Category: Social Media

The Bucket List: There ARE Limits

bucketAs predicted in these pages, the Baby Boomers have gotten hold of the Bucket List (you can read about it here) and buggered it up beyond all recognition.  The collective bucket is now full and overflowing so ludicrously that 19-year-olds are making Bucket Lists for autumn as if the 2012 Mayan Calendar were coming back for a second crack at us.  There are even websites which will make your Bucket List for you, if you can’t think up any good stuff yourself.  Some Johnny-Come-Latelys have even taken to writing anti-Bucket Lists, just to set themselves apart from the horde/(Herd?)  “I’m never going to eat lima beans” kinda diminishes the spiritual value of confronting mortality, head-on.  So, since the Boomers have once again marketed the wonder and whimsy out of another part of the human experience, it’s time to set up some rules.  Bucket all you want, but there is a limit to what the rest of us can endure.

I’m going to write a novel.  The peak of conceit in our ego driven world.  It’s amazing how many people who can’t compose a decent email believe they have a novel inside them, struggling to get out.  Perhaps they do, but, if you answer most of your text messages with “K,” “lol” or “haha,” you might want to rethink this one.  The average novel has 50 to 60 thousand words in it.  At a more-talented-than-Shakespeare rate of 500 words a day, that’s around four months of steady 9 to 5 and beyond work.  Assuming, or course, that every word you write is a gem, every comma, colon and question mark is in the right place and SpellCheck can distinguish between “your,” “you’re” and “yore.”  Typing is easy, but writing is hard — even without rereads, rewrites or all the other editing bits which can — and frequently do — take years.  Honestly, with the Grim Reaper looking over your shoulder, do you really want to spend that much time staring at a computer screen?  Probably not.  You’d be far better off to stick to poetry which is quick, easy, still has the requisite dose of Vitamin I, and can be confined to 20 line bursts of creativity on evenings and weekends.

I will watch a whale, see a grizzly, hug a panda, walk with a penguin, dance, skip, jump and crawl with any number ofbucket1 other assorted exotic species.  Here’s the deal.  Leave wild animals alone.  Their mortality is just as precious as yours, and every time you and your guided tour touristas go stumbling through their environment, you’re moving them one hiking boot closer to extinction.  If you must brag, go to Mexico or some other such place where they’ve captured animals specifically for your enjoyment.  Play with them there –their lives are already miserable.  Besides, I think most people are fed up with the irony of somebody spouting off about swimming with the dolphins while they’re sucking down another order of tuna maki at the sushi bar.

I’m going to get a meaningful tattoo.  What the hell does that even mean?  How is any tattoo significantly different from the millions of others adorning everybody west of the Russian Mafia?  Back in the day, tattoos were neat and unique, but there’s been a lot of ink spilled on the middle class since then.  Freudian symbolism aside, these days, tattoos have more to do with disposable income than creativity.  After all, with a thousand bucks in your pocket, you can get as creative as the market will bear — including making sure there are no spelling mistakes.  Perhaps that’s what “meaningful” really means.

I’m going to skydive, bungee jump, hang glide or engage in some other “extreme” nonsense.  Why is it that when people finally realize they are eventually going to die, the first thing they do is try to hasten the inevitable by challenging gravity to a duel?  I trust technology as much as the next guy.  However, I’m certainly not going to jump off a bridge when the only thing between me and the Gates of Valhalla is an elastic band, secured to my leg by a second year Rec. student who may — or may not — be high on peyote.  The modern fetish for jumping (literally) out of one’s comfort zone is a testament to just how cushy life is for some people in the 21st century.  I suppose that when your biggest challenge to life and liberty is who took your parking spot, a controlled explosion of adrenaline is something of an adventure.  (After all, you’re not really going to get hurt when the guy on top of you has the ripcord.)  However, I wonder just how mundane our lives have become when we have to manufacture danger to fulfill them.

bucket2I’m going to tell the truth about X.  Don’t!  Now, or any time between now and the dirt nap, is not the time to confess an abortion, an adoption, an affair or even a fantasy — especially if it involves something sticky or your daughter’s swimming coach, Morgan.  In the words of Mohandas Gandhi, “Shut up and move on.”  (He didn’t actually say that but…) There are certain things that should safely accompany you to the grave, and if that’s too big a burden on your soul, suck it up, you big baby.  It’s not always about you.

As I’ve said many times, I approve of Bucket Lists.  I’ve had several.  However, now that they’ve become a retirement requirement, we’re rapidly reaching the tiresome top end of one-upmanship.  A sunrise isn’t good enough, unless it’s seen from the slopes of Kilimanjaro.  Spain is not complete without playing dodgeball with the bulls of Pamplona.  And no mountain is worth climbing if it doesn’t have a recognizable name.

If your one desire in life is to eat Fugu soaked in Absinthe served by Albanian virgins off silver trays, by all means do it.  But for God’s sake, shut up about it because I’ve only have a finite number of days left to enjoy my morning coffee.  (It’s Maxwell House, and I like it.)

I Never Watched Breaking Bad

badI’m probably the only person on this planet who wasn’t watching TV last Sunday night.  That’s not unusual because I didn’t see the last episode of MASH, Seinfeld, Friends or Dexter either and, to this day, I have no idea who shot JR.  (Maybe Bobby did it in his sleep?)  I don’t do this stuff on purpose.  I have no philosophical grievance against popular culture; after all, I can name all the dead people on Game of Thrones.   It’s just that popular culture mostly eludes me at the time.  There’s so damn much of it, and it’s easy to tangent away from what’s really important.

I have no idea what I was doing back in 2008 when Breaking Bad first hove up on the horizon.  It doesn’t matter, though, because by the time my friends were waxing eloquent about the antics of Walt and Jesse, I was hopelessly behind and the viewing curve just kept getting steeper.  At the end of Season 3, I realized I had to either take a weekend, OD on Season 1 and get formally addicted — or walk away.  I walked away and probably missed what most critics are calling one of the best dramas television has ever had to offer.  Oh, well!  I have the feeling they’re going to say the same thing about Mad Men when it finally folds up its tent in a couple of years — and with good reason.  My point is that, after decades of being aptly named an “idiot box,” television is now producing some of the finest art of this century.  The problem is unless I want to spend half my waking life smoothing out the ass groove I’ve established in my sofa, I have to miss some of it.  Thus, Walt and I were never friends, so, in reality I cannot mourn him.

However, at the risk of pissing off a bunch of Walt’s legitimate mourners, I’m going to say Breaking Bad was not actually the best thing to happen to TV since John Frankenheimer hung out his shingle on Playhouse 90.  It was good, even great, but the fact is Breaking Bad was only one program in a general resurgence of quality television.  Look around.  Ever since Tony Soprano and his crew showed up on HBO in 1999, there’s been a continuous stream of heavy duty drama on television.  Quality is not an issue here.  This stuff is universally terrific.  Led by Showtime, HBO and AMC, viewers like me can wear out their PVRs recording it all or wait and pick and choose it later on YouTube and Netflix (which, btw, has some cool stuff of its own going on, notably Portlandia.)  We live in a wonderful time when we not only have quality entertainment, we have great quantities of it.

It’s a simple case of a rising tide raises all ships.  Breaking Bad was one of those ships.  It had to be good in order to sail with the likes of Dexter, Boardwalk Empire and the aforementioned Mad Men.  Was it better?  It is right now because that’s how popular culture works (the operative word is “popular.”)  However, I remember a time when Twin Peaks was the best thing since cherry pie and, not so long ago, when the critics were lauding Lost as a replacement for cherry pie altogether.

Breaking Bad is now part of our collective culture.  Taken as a whole, it’s certainly one of the best and brightest of this current Golden Age of TV.  Whether it’s a defining moment remains to be seen, and I’m too old a bunny to start stopping the presses to make that announcement.  Culture, like water, has a way of finding its own level, and despite what the critics will tell you, it takes a while for things to even out.  I plan to watch Breaking Bad eventually, but I want to wait for the tumult and the shouting to hype itself out before I do it.

Two Kinds of Stupid

stupidOne of the many things they never tell you in high school is that there’s a big difference between knowing stuff and being smart.  If you know stuff, you get to amuse your friends and win impromptu arguments, but unless you get on Jeopardy, it’s not really a paying proposition.  However, if you’re smart, you can write your own ticket.  Here’s a simple example.  Given a map, I can generally find most of the countries in the world.  I get a little confused with all the new “stans” that showed up in Asia in the 1990s, and I don’t think even John Kerry knows what’s going on in the Balkans, but I get by.  For the most part, this is useless information, since, in all my years, no one has ever come up to me and said, “By the way, where’s Singapore?”  My point is that just knowing something is useless — unless you know what to do with the information.  Knowledge for its own sake may be a philosopher’s wet dream, but in practical terms, it doesn’t pay the rent.

However, let’s not get carried away with the educated idiot analogy because the other thing they never explain in high school, even while they’re teaching it, is that in order to be smart, you have to know stuff.  Information is fundamental to problem-solving, and you need to learn as many facts as possible because, without them, even the smartest person in the world is a dolt.  Again, let me explain.  Because I do know where Singapore is, I’m way ahead of the curve.  I understand a lot more about my world than the person who doesn’t have a clue about the Lion City.  For example, I know why it’s King Midas rich, how it got that way, and why it’s probably going remain in the Daddy Warbucks’ Top Ten.  Take a look.  Singapore is on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, on the fastest trade wind from the industrial East to the All-Consuming West.  That means it’s a natural stopping point for literally millions of megatonnes of shipping.  When that kind of dinero is going in and out of your front door every day, some of it is bound to sit down and stay awhile.  This analysis is a no-brainer — as long as you know where Singapore sits in the world.  However, without this tidy little tidbit, even Google can’t tell you why an insignificant city state the size of Philadelphia can cough in Asia and people in Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg get a cold.

Here’s the deal.  In this world, there are two kind of stupid people, and even though they might look like there light yearsstupid3 apart in education, income, social status or what have you, they are essentially the same person.  First, there are the folks who believe that because they know who wrote Candide, they’re qualified to spout philosophy.  Then there are the other folks who’ve never heard of Francois-Marie Arouet but spout philosophy anyway.  Group A thinks that learning inherently makes them smart and Group B thinks they’re innately smart and don’t need to learn anything.  However, talk to anyone in either group and the conversation is the same.

Basically, it works like this: whereas you can know stuff without being smart, you can`t be smart without knowing stuff.

And if they’d just teach that in high school we’d all be better off come election time and at dinner parties.