Way Too Soon

I learned something shocking today.  A guy I went to high school with just retired.
   I am not 65.  Nor is he.  Far, far, far from it, in fact.  Evidently he worked for a very long time for the phone company and got enough tenure to retire.  'Good for him,' I thought.  And then I thought some more, and that turned into 'I'm not so certain that's a good thing,' and then I thought some more and realized it's actually not only not a good thing, it's a bad thing.  A very bad thing.
   This guy has easily another 20 years on this Earth - assuming he doesn't take up snake handling or Russian roulette - and more probably has another 30 or 40 years ahead of him.  Essentially half his life is left.  And he's already retired.  Livin' the American dream.  Or more accurately the Greek dream, pulling a pension for the rest of his life without having to lift a finger.
   What's the problem? You might ask.  Well, I'll tell ya.
  Let's assume he doesn't get another job, which seems to be his plan.  Doing nothing but keeping Drew Carey company weekdays from 10-11 AM.*  Let's also assume his pension isn't a flat rate, but includes COLA increases.  That means he'll probably have exhausted everything he contributed within ten years, and for the remaining 10 or 20 or 30 he'll be living off the pension contributions of those people who are still employed.  He'll be the tip of the pyramid of an institutional Ponzi scheme.
  Sound familiar?  Like Social Security familiar?
  He'll be doing fine, presumably, but the people who come after him won't.  Eventually that pension fund will have to face the reality that it cannot meet its payout obligations because it never calculated that the participants would live for decades after retirement, or, indeed, that any of them would retire at 45.  There just isn't enough money.
  And when that pension fund goes insolvent and he can't collect SSI because that's also insolvent or he didn't contribute, who gets to foot the bill?  You and me.  We're funding his indolence.
   A first-time reader might assume from this post that I'm some kind of right-wing nut job, when nothing could be further from the truth.**  I'm so far left I even fence left-handed.  But I don't think anyone - ANYONE - should be collecting retirement income until they're of retirement age.  Which is 70.  Allowing people to suck from the pension teat any sooner destroys the basis for the whole system, which is the idea that most people will die before they retire.  Sounds harsh but it's true.  Neither pensions nor SSI were designed to pay people for decades.
   My grandfather retired at 40 from the US Air Force.  He joined when he was barely 18, at the height of the depression.  He went from that job right into a job with the Civil Service, which he kept for another 10 years, whereupon he retired a second time.  When he turned 62 he started to collect Social Security.  He was a triple-dipper, two retirement incomes and SSI.  'Good for him,' I thought...  After he retired - the second time - he lived another 20 years, and then after he died my grandmother collected a sizable fraction of his triple dips for another 14 years.  That's 35 years of having other people pay you not to work.
  The American dream?  Sure.  But it ain't right.

* when The Price Is Right airs

** seriously, go read some of my other stuff, the only reason I watch Fox is for COPS.  Oh, wait... that sounds kind of redneck too.  Uh... I listen to NPR regularly, how about that?

Wendy Late

Hi, ya'll!  My name is Wendy Tate, but people call me Wendy Late because, well, I have trouble showing up places on time.  Matter of fact it's kind of my defining characteristic, which I suppose explains the nickname.  In a world of uncertainty, the one constant my friends and family can be assured of is that I will not, ever, be on time for anything involving them.
   Let me tell you why.
  It's not because I don't have a clock, because I do.  I have a cell phone that's practically glued to my hand and my head whenever I'm awake.  There's a clock on that thing, and it's synchronized to the national atomic clock in Colorado.  Like all cell phones are. 
  It's not because I forget I have places to be.  If that were the case then you'd never see me, I wouldn't walk through the door.  I actually do show up, but I take my own sweet time about it.
  It's not because something came up at the very last minute.  If that were the case then I wouldn't be late ALL the time, I'd only be late every once in a while.  Like normal people.
   I'm not just late to your things.  I'm late to things I organize too.  Which is really kind of an amazing feat if you sit and think about it.  I'm habitually late even to things I set the schedule for.  Wow.
   So why am I late ALL the time?  It's really a very simple explanation, not complicated in the least.
   I don't respect other people.
  You're just not important enough for me to take a moment and consider that maybe you have things to do in a day that don't involve waiting half an hour or more for me to make an appearance.  I don't care about you or your time.  The least important thing I have to do today - say, trim my toenails - is ten times more important to me than the most important thing you have to do.  My world revolves around me, and I don't see any reason yours shouldn't revolve around me as well.
   For example:  we're going to meet for lunch.  We talk beforehand on my ever-present cell phone, and we agree we'll meet at 11:30.  You know I'm not going to be there at 11:30, I know I'm not going to be there at 11:30, but for the sake of appearances we both maintain the illusion that we'll be sitting for a meal together at 11:30.  I don't start getting ready until 11 AM.  It takes me at least half an hour to get ready, and another half an hour to drive to the restaurant, which puts us at 12 PM at the earliest.  This is if I don't get distracted with a phone call - because nothing is more important than answering my phone - or exfoliating, or taking out the garbage, or any of a thousand other tiny little things that I could easily do some other time but that I feel the need to accomplish before I decide to be in your company.
   The inevitable has happened and I'm late.  Big surprise.  I won't be at the restaurant at 11:30, even though you've done the considerate thing and gotten there by 11:25.  But do I feel the need to call you?  Absolutely not, even though, as I've said, my cell phone has been surgically attached to my hand.  Why do I refuse to call?  Because if I call and tell you I'll be late I've admitted that I'm wrong, and that just can't happen.  Nothing I do is wrong.
  When I'm late, I've automatically put myself in a position of power over you.  You're on MY schedule, bitch, like it or not.  I also don't call to tell you I'll be late, letting you know you're not important enough for even that minor courtesy, and then I don't apologize when I do saunter in.  You get to wait on me because, let's face it, you're just not as important as I am.
   You suck, I don't.  That's it.  That's the totality of my explanation.  I pretend I respect others, and I certainly claim to respect others, but my behavior tells a completely different tale.  Too bad for you, loser.

See you later  (HA!, get it, later...),
-- Wendy Late

Can Someone 'Splain?

I've been pondering imponderables yet again - I just can't seem to stop - and I keep coming back to a list of a few things that I just don't get.  If you have a clue, please help me out.

1.  Smoke alarm batteries only die in the middle of the night.  And almost always after you've had a hard time getting to sleep.

2.  People who insist on voting against their own interests.  Okay, Democrat billionaires I do understand, guilt is a powerful motivator, but trailer park Republicans still mystify me.

3.  City-dwellers who own Ford F-350s.  That truck's designed to haul a horse trailer or a hay wagon, but Cowboy Ned has his chromed like a UFO and has never had it off the pavement, let alone near livestock.

4.  Fedora-wearing douchebag hipster fathers. I saw a guy in the grocery store, older than me, dressed like he was trying to be either 20 years younger or 20 years older.  He had kids with him, so presumably he understands setting a good example, he just chose to ignore it that day.

5.  What is fire?  I mean, seriously.  I understand combustion, so don't use the 'it's oxidation' excuse.  What is the flame?  And don't try telling me 'it's glowing pieces of soot' because that's a load of crap too.

6.  People who claim - usually very loudly - to be religious yet demonstrate their unspeakable cruelty and intolerance daily.  There seems to be an inverse relationship between religiosity and sincerity.  Also kindness.  How can you claim to love your neighbor when you so obviously loathe anyone not exactly like yourself?

7.  Why can't I get a good haircut?  I've paid from $50 to $6 and every amount in between and they're all pretty much the same with different degrees of suck.  I used to despair, now I'm just resigned.

8.  How could the majority justices on the Supreme Court keep a straight face when they ruled that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as US citizens?  It seems like the setup for a really bad punch line, except they never finished the joke.

9.  Wal-Mart.  The whole thing, from the parking to the loading dock and all around the inside.  I don't understand.  Plus, their 'suburst' logo looks like a cat's anus.

Awful People

Stephen Covey died this past week.  If you haven't heard of him you've surely heard of his '7 Habits' book.  I own a copy of this book, many people do because it's sold millions, but I'd never read it, not really.  Scanned it, never absorbed it.  But after he died I pulled it from my shelf and... well... scanned it again.  I'm just not a self-help kind of guy, it all seems too facile to really be applicable.  I did, however, realize that most of the terrible people in the world violate one or more of his 7 Habits.
   So I decided to write my own version.
  These are Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People re-written with the douchebag in mind.  With the career politician in mind.  With the overprivileged American aristocrat in mind.  With the aspirational CEO in mind.  You get the idea.  Assholes.

7 Habits of Terribly Awful People
1.  Be reactive
    Don't think anything through, just say the first thing that comes to mind.  Especially if it's demonstrably wrong, or prejudiced, or misogynist, or evil.  And whatever you do, don't ever, ever admit you were wrong.  You could never be wrong.  You're perfect.

2.  Have no goal other than to preserve your own position.
   Why work towards a greater goal than your own bank account?  Thinking in a larger context is just stupid.  Besides, thinking is hard, and cuts down on the time you could spend being reactionary.

3.  Avoid the difficult stuff.
   Do all the easy work first.  Even better, make other people do the easy work, and then hold them at fault when the hard stuff never happens.

4.  Think win/ lose.
   Every situation is zero-sum.  That's a fancy college term for 'for me to win you must lose.'  Compromise is for suckers.  It's also hard to spell, and you never want to do anything that's hard to spell.

5.  You don't need to understand anyone else.
  Compassion is for suckers.  It's hard to spell too, I mean, are there three s's or only two?  When you try to understand someone else's view then you're on the short track to violating Habit 2 and possibly Habit 1.  You don't ever want to re-evaluate your position, because to do so would be to admit that you were wrong.  And you're never wrong.  You're perfect.

6. Divide.
   Don't bring people together to accomplish a common goal, because if you do you'll never get the credit for anything that comes out of it.  You're the one in charge, so you have to keep Habit 4 in mind always.  When people work together they get a sense that they might not need you around.  That, in fact, your presence might be a hindrance to progress.  However true that might be, you can't ever allow others to realize it.

7.  Dull your tools.
  Don't take care of your body, your mind, your soul, or your relationships.  It's all about you, after all.  You can do everything alone.  You have to, otherwise someone else is going to get credit, and you can't have that.

The Most Dangerous Game

I had a conversation with a friend recently about the information various companies and government entities have about our activities, and whether that's a good or bad thing.  We weren't even talking about sales data or behavioral data or medical data, which are all tracked closely and often, we were talking about our cell phones.
   If you don't already know about your phone's GPS capabilities you should, but even if you have one of those bare-bones pay-by-minute phones, the phone companies - and by extension law enforcement agencies - can track your position simply by triangulating your phone's ID by cell towers.  It's not even particularly complicated math, it's how TV traffic reporters know how fast traffic is moving in the morning.  If your phone is on, it's a beacon.
  My friend was not bothered by this invasion of privacy.  As we discussed it, his position boiled down to three points:
   1. Scientists track animals all the time and that's okay, why not track people for the same reasons?
   2.  Nothing is secret or private anyway, so what's the big deal?
   3.  He doesn't do anything wrong, so if I object to being tracked I must be the bad guy.

I must admit I was astonished.  There's just so much wrong with taking these kinds of positions. Let's examine them one by one.

1.  People are not animals, and vice versa, no matter what PETA says.  Tracking animals is useful precisely because people are screwing up their nesting habits and migrations and their feeding grounds; tracking animals helps people fix what they've screwed up for the animals.  When animals are tracked it's science, when people are tracked it's surveillance.  You wouldn't want some middle-aged, wheezing IT guy following you on the street in a panel van, why would you think it's okay when that same middle-aged, wheezing IT guy works for the FBI and sits in an office all day following you by your cell phone records?

2.  This question gets to the heart of the data ownership debate.  Who owns the record of your coming and going?  You do.  And that information is yours to do with as you please, not someone else's to take without asking.  Saying that no one has an expectation of privacy is not only dead fucking wrong, it automatically gives ownership of your personal data to someone or something else.  It's no one's business what time I walk down the street to check my mail.  But if I carry my cell phone along the way my location is logged.  The only reason the phone company needs to know the location of my phone is so they can provide me a service I've paid for, they're not entitled to use that data for any other reason, because it's MY DATA.  The record is not about the phone company equipment, it's about where I am at a certain point in time.  It's about me.
   This is so important I'm going to repeat it:  you own your data.  You own your name, your SSN, your address, your age, your bank account information, your marital status, even your hair color or the fact that you've got a scar over your left eye.  You also own any positional data collected by the phone company, because it's information about you, not information about the phone company.

3.  This is the age-old argument along the lines of: if you don't have anything to hide from the cops, then why won't you let them search your car?  To which I answer: because the cops don't get to do whatever they want just because they're cops.  Same with the FBI or CIA or anyone else who wants to look at your phone records, including GPS data.  Law enforcement agencies can request access to your personal information - everything I listed above - but they have to have a very good reason to do so.  That's why courts issue warrants, as a check on the authority of law enforcement.  Claiming to be okay with violations of civil rights simply because you yourself 'don't do anything wrong' is abdicating your responsibilities as a citizen.  You're part of the same system I am, like it or not, and if you don't exercise your rights to hold the system accountable you're dismantling the check-and-balance structure brick by metaphorical brick.
  Also, nut up and be a man, you great-big pansy.  Tell the cops no.  Tell The Man no.  Stand up and be counted for once, stick to your principles, don't fold like a cheap hotel sheet when someone flashes a badge.

People will tell you that technology is moving too fast, that there are all sorts of questions about what is allowable and what is not, because we now carry computers in our pockets instead of resting them on office desks.  But those people are full of crap.
   There are guiding principles to all behavior, and those principles don't change just because you've got a new gadget.  Just remember what those simple principles are - e.g. you own any data about you - and you can answer any questions very easily.

Connected

Did you know that my first semester in college, my roommate and I did not have a telephone?
   Unless you were me or Bob, or our parents, you probably did not know that.  But it’s true.  For 16 weeks we lived in a… rustic* apartment at 30th and Guadalupe in Austin, TX, blocks from the University, and our telephone was the pay phone across the street by the front door of the co-op.  Seriously.  We were not connected in any way, and the Internet as we know it now was then a decade from springing full-formed from Al Gore’s skull.  Bob and I were both eighteen, college freshmen, with less money than the Dragworms**  we chatted with on the way home from school, and we managed to make it more or less successfully for four months without a telephone.
   Imagine that now.
   You can’t, can you?  I almost can’t, and I lived it.  Right now I’m sitting at my desk, my computer connected to the Internet, with my smart phone about a foot from my hand.  I am ready, at a moment’s notice, to be interrupted by anyone else’s whim.  You want to text me?  Do it.  You want to send me an e-mail on any one of the seven or so accounts that I monitor regularly?  Make my day.  IM?  I’m waiting for the flashing light to distract me from what I could be accomplishing.  There’s even a desk phone a foot in the other direction, so people from work can call me looking for the person who had that number last.
   Connected?  I’m the spider at the center of the web, baby.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Blogspot, Hotmail… I got it all.  Except Pinterest, because I’m not a chick.  If news breaks, I’m on it.  If there’s a celebrity nip-slip, I’m right there.  Up-to-the-second political theater?  I got a front-row seat.
   But what does all that effort get me?
   Sure, I’m connected, but to what?  I read two news sites several times a day, and I notice that more often than not the top stories are exactly the same.  They’re wire feeds, from real journalists at the AP and Reuters.  Two large web sites, providing this service to me for free, don’t even create the content they pipe to my brain.  Yes, my family can text me and I can text right back, but is that any better than a phone call?  Or a visit in-person?  I read what my former colleagues in LA have said they like to have for dinner, but I don’t know my neighbor’s name.  And while I appreciate being able to stay connected with friends all across the globe, when have Facebook and Twitter been anything but an excuse to avoid doing something you’d rather not do?
   I think back to that time when I was a brand-new freshman at a great-big University.  I was a blank slate.  I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know what was expected of me.  I talked to my family infrequently, on a pay phone 75 yards from my front door and across a major thoroughfare.  I was forced to rely on myself, to decide what was important to me and to make it happen because there was no one else around to look after me but me.  I made new friends, I figured out how to succeed at school, and I encountered Austin’s seamy underbelly and emerged unscathed.  I did a lot of living those 16 weeks and lot of growing up.  All without obsessively consulting other people about it, without a device tethering me to the firehose of largely-pointless information that makes up the Net today.  I had to internalize the experience, I had to mull it over, make my own sense of it and incorporate it in my life.  I had to think about stuff instead of blindly reacting to it.
   I should start doing that again.  You probably should too.

*  the polite term for ‘roach infested moldy cracker box with a backed-up toilet that used to be the HQ for the local pot dealer.’  But all that’s another story.
** homeless mental patients released from the State Hospital about 12 blocks North of the University and pushed out the gates with a change of clothes, a pair of shoes, fifteen dollars and a hearty handshake.  Really.

In Or Out

I grew up in Texas, and summers are hot here.  Hotter recently than I remember they used to be, but that's for Al Gore and climate change deniers to argue out.  When I was young I would stand in the doorway, cool air from the inside hitting my back and hot air from the outside washing over my front.  And my mother would say 'in or out, make up your mind.'
  I'm sure my experience is practically universal.  In or out, but not stuck in between.  You can say that about a lot of things, crossing the threshold is more than a motor skill it's a metaphor.  Going from being a child to being an adult,* or from being single to being married, or from a non-parent to a parent.  Thing is, this metaphor doesn't just apply to people, it applies to societies too.
  I was doing some research for a new novel, one where the idea of boundary space and thresholds plays a very large role, and I came across some research by anthropologists regarding exactly that topic as it relates to cultures.  It's called liminality, from the Latin word for boundary or threshold or space in between spaces.  It's fascinating, if decades old research, about how societies shocked by crisis - usually wars - are forced to move beyond what they were before and become something new.  They cross the threshold and give up what they had been in favor of what they could be.**  These researchers were writing in the 60's and were fervently anti-Communist, and their argument was that for the Soviet Union the Second World War never ended, their society was stuck in permanent liminality.  After 1945 the Communist leadership kept their people in a state of perpetual crisis and held their entire society in the doorway - neither in nor out, not the old Tsarist regime or a new non-Communist state - to the detriment of every citizen.
  Now, a moment of reflection will let anyone realize that the exact same thing can be said of the United States, that the Second World War never really ended, the battlefield just changed.  The Cold War was just a decades-long perpetuation of the circumstances of the Second World War.  We were neither in nor out ourselves, we'd never really fixed the economic or social problems brought about by the Depression, we just spent our way into consumerism designed to distract us from the underlying decay.
  And when the Cold War ended in 1989, what happened?  Almost immediately a new war, Desert Storm, 1991. And new fake prosperity with the Dot Com bubble.  And when that bubble burst, as they all eventually must, what happened?  Yup... another war.  Another two wars, actually.  And another bubble, this time with real estate, all three at the same time.
  American society in the 20th Century has been in a constant state of crisis, the societal equivalent of the teen acne years, neither the old, pre-technical boom-and-bust society of the late 19th Century nor a society or economy much farther along than we were in 1938. Neither in nor out, but standing paralyzed in between.
  This, I think, is the new challenge.  We need to step through the doorway, we need to cross the threshold.  We absolutely cannot step backwards, that's what Russia and the old Soviet states are doing right now and it's not working at all.  If we don't move forward we'll keep fighting the same old fights and running the same old repetitive treadmill as we have the past 60 years.  I don't know about you, but I'm tired of things the way they are, it's not really working for anybody, even for those who seemingly benefit the most.  We need to get to the next thing.  Soon.


* or being tried as one, anyway
** kind of the the Hegelian dialectic model, but 150 years more modern