Entry 456: The Importance of Being Earnest

I knew this was going to happen, and it's another reason I didn't want to sign up for the ten-mile run I mentioned in my last post.  I'm getting sucked in.  I ran today for an hour, and I tracked my pace and distance (9:54 per mile for 6.3 miles), and I'm becoming emotionally invested in this race.  Now, if I don't perform well, I'm going to be disappointed.  I haven't even decided what performing well means yet for me (finishing in under 90 minutes?).  But whatever I come up with, if I don't do it, I'll be bummed.  And I don't need that type of stress in my life right now.  S doesn't understand this.  Her attitude is -- who cares?  Just run it for fun.  You're in decent shape -- you don't even need to train.  If she just finishes it, she'll be happy.  But I'm too vain to adopt that point of view.  I can't make it not matter to me.

If this sounds like a humblebrag (I can't not be motivated!), I sincerely don't mean it to be.  It's legitimately the way I am.  I care a lot about "dumb" things and not very much about "important" things.  I have a Ph.D. in math, and I almost never talk about it or even think about it.  (I've been called "Doctor" in an unironic way maybe five times in my life.)  I just got a pretty good raise at work, and it didn't elicit more than an emotional "that's nice" from me.  On the flip-side, I got some crossword puzzles rejected from the New York Times recently, and it made me feel like a total failure; I said the wrong thing at trivia the other night and stewed about it the rest of the evening and the entire next morning.*  On the flip-flip-side, I had another good session at Krav Maga and told S and the kids all about it, even though I knew they couldn't care less.**  That's just how my wiring works.  I couldn't help it, even if I wanted to, and I don't usually want to, but sometimes I do, and this race is one of those times.

*The worst trivia experience I've ever had happened the very first time I played with my current team.  The question was, "What team holds the record for fewest points scored on them in a Super Bowl?"  I can name the winners and losers of every Super Bowl ever played, in order -- and cite the correct score of many of them.  I know that The Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys played a 24-3 game in Super Bowl VII, so, wanting to impress everybody, I said, "The Dolphins!" with confidence.  But it was actually the Cowboys who won, only allowing a single field goal.  I knew this, but for some reason, I reversed the teams in my head, and it put me in a foul mood until we played again the next week.  I'm still a bit bothered by it, to be honest.

**We were doing a drill where one person starts on the ground and has to get up, and the other person starts on top of them and has to punch them in the face (only about 80% speed, and we have 16-oz. gloves on, so it doesn't really hurt when you get hit, but it's uncomfortable and frustrating).  I was whupping my partner -- a big dude -- pretty handily.  After class, a guy who was watching, waiting for the next class to start, said to me, "Dude, nice job in there!   You were kicking some ass!"  If you told me I could either keep my raise or keep that compliment, I would be legitimately torn.

In other news, this Jussie Smollet story is pretty crazy, huh?  If his intent was to raise his profile, he certainly did that.  I had never heard of the guy before, and now I'm on pins and needles wondering what's going to happen to him.  Being charged with a felony seems overly harsh to me -- he had himself beaten up, not somebody else -- but maybe it's not.  As Dan Savage pointed out on a recent podcast, he effectively terrorized his own people.  A hate crime serves two functions: It directly hurts somebody in a particular community; it scares everybody else in that community.  Smollet only physically hurt himself, so the former doesn't really apply, but he very much accomplished the latter.  So, I'll defer to black and queer people on this one.  If they want the book thrown at him, then I'm okay with that; if they want leniency, then that's what I want too.  (This is also how I feel about all this blackface garbage in Virginia, by the way.  As best I can tell, most black Virginians don't want Ralph Northam to resign, so I think he shouldn't.  I do wish he would have moonwalked though.)

One thing I've been hearing about this Smollet story is that it makes it so that future hate crimes, real ones, will be less likely to be believed now.  Is this actually true though?  I'm dubious.  The people who bring the most attention to false claims like these -- the Fox News, Trump types -- aren't bothered with what's true anyway, so they are changing no matter what.  (Remember, Trump still says the Central Park Five are guilty.)  Everybody else, I think, understands that there will always be some false claims, and it doesn't mean real crimes don't happen.

On a similar note, I hear a lot of left-center people, saying something to the effect of, "See, this is why we can't make blanket statements like 'Believe victims'.  We have to take it on a case-by-case basis."  To these people I say:  Quit being so literal.  That's not how language works.  When people say something like "Believe women," they don't mean literally believe everything every woman says in every instance.  I have literally never heard anybody advocate for this.  "Believe women" is a rhetorical device.  It's shorthand -- a pithy aphorism.  It's like saying "Don't judge" or "Love thy neighbor."

What people mean when they say "Believe x" is to take seriously and pursue the claims of x, because x is from a historically marginalized group, whose claims have often not been taken seriously and pursued in the past.  And, as it happens, this is exactly what happened in the Smollet's case.  Everybody took him seriously -- the media reported the story (as they should) and the police took on the case (as they should), and then through earnest investigation it came out he was probably lying about it.  The truth came out (as it should).  If anything, this Smollet case is a prime example of the "Believe x" model working correctly.  But, of course, that's not how it's likely to be perceived.

That's all for today.  Until next time...

Entry 455: You Gotta Run, Run, Run, Run, Run

I just registered for the Cherry Blossom 10-mile race here in D.C.  I'm not very excited about it.  In fact, I don't really want to do it.  The only reason I am is because S is doing it, and she wants me to do it too.  Initially I wasn't signed up, but she knows somebody who was registered but can't go, and she got him to transfer his bib to me.  So, I guess I'm in.

I'm just not a big fan of races like this.  I don't get the appeal.  I like running okay, but I'm not into it enough to seriously train and meticulously log my times and all that.  So, I won't have a goal, other than finishing, but finishing is not a challenge, as you only have to keep a 14-minute-mile pace to finish in the allotted time, and that's really slow for 10 miles.  I jogged 5.5 miles today at a 10-minute-mile pace, and it was very leisurely.  (I'm a bit hungover today for the first time in months.  I played trivia, and then afterwards, we went to this cool, dive-chic bar, and the '90s-era hip-hop was bumpin' and everybody was movin' and groovin' in their seats and singing along -- You lied to me... yes, I tried, yes, I tried... -- and next thing I knew I was a six-pack deep, realizing I was going to have to book an Uber and pick up my car in the morning.)



I figure I will have to practice, at least a bit, before the race, so I'll probably run for 45 minutes to an hour a few times a week.  It will actually be a pretty good complement to my Krav Maga training.  I'm not worried about the running at all.  The main reason I don't want to do it: It starts at 7:30 am!  That means I have to wake up at like 6:00 am to get there on time.  I hate waking up that early for anything, and it will be doubly bad because I'll be anxious about it the night before, which means I won't be able to sleep, which will only make me more anxious and so on.  Another example of how society favors the lark, even though we owls can't help the way we are.

Speaking of not being able to help the way we are, S and I finished the Ted Bundy documentary.  He was a very sick man -- literally -- I think he had a mental illness that compelled him to kill young women.  Perhaps his sickness was the result of abuse from when he was a child.  I seems nobody really knows for sure, but the movie does allude to this possibility.  And if this is the case, then how much do you hold what he did against him?  It's not an easy question to answer, and it's one that applies to transgressions far less serious than murder.  With substance abuse, for example, we're learning more and more that addicts are basically controlled by their disorders, and it's not really an issue of willingly making bad choices.  The same thing is true for people who suffer from depression or bipolar disorder.  Most of the time these illnesses don't manifest in violence, but sometimes they do.  How should we handle sick people who hurt people because of their sicknesses?

I don't know.  But the best answer I can come up with is that you don't hold them accountable for being sick, but you do hold them accountable for not getting help.  This is not a particularly satisfactory solution, because you can just peel it back a layer -- what if their sickness is preventing them from getting help? -- and you are left with the same dilemma.  But it's the best I can come up with.  It's essentially the adage: You can't control how you feel, but you can control how you act.  I don't know if this actually true or not, but I think the best we can do is to behave as if it's true, until we learn more about mental illness.  In the case of Ted Bundy, he couldn't help that he had violent, sexual impulses toward young women, but he could have (and obviously should have) managed them and gotten help before he hurt his first victim.

Another complicating factor is that people often don't have the resources to pursue mental health care, and/or they don't want to endure the social costs and stigmatization that comes with admitting they have a problem.  The latter has gotten much better in my lifetime -- I mean, you now have professional athletes in the "manliest" of sports raising awareness on such issues, unheard of even 10 years ago -- but it's still not where it needs to be.

In conclusion: It's okay to think awful thoughts and have terrible impulses that are damaging to yourself and others, but it's not okay to not treat them.  Either that or every event in history of the universe past, present, and future, was determined the instant the Big Bang occurred, and we are just a collection of particles interacting in an amazingly intricate way to give us self-awareness and the illusion of free will.  That's possible as well.  And if that's the case then I'm predetermined to change the subject right now and stop thinking about it.

I took Lil' S1 to see The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.  It was okay, tolerable, which is all I can really ask for from a kids movies.  It's mostly just madcap nonsense, but there's at least a semblance of plot line running through it.  The jokes were a bit too wink-wink for me.  Lots of meta-humor and little asides that are meant to go over the kids' heads.  (Example: Somebody says they finally understand Radiohead, and Lego Batman replies, "Bro, you should check out Elliott Smith.")  Those are kinda funny, I guess, but the reason jokes like that work is because they play against our expectations.  If the entire movie is filled with them, then they stop being funny.  Also, my general gripe applies in this case: It's too long!  It's actually only 1:47, which isn't outrageous, but it felt too long watching it.  Ten fewer minutes would have been appreciated.

Lil' S1 certainly didn't mind though.  That kid is a champion watcher -- movie, TV, iPad, what have you.  He's indefatigable when it comes to screen time.  His newest thing is to watch videos of Street Fighter 2 for SNES on YouTube.  (It's my fault -- I showed him the first one.)  For the past few days, he's been telling me about the characters, whom I already know all about, because I played that game a lot as kid.  There's this monster who can turn electric, and this girl who can do a super power kick.  Lil' S2 got in on it too.  They both watch the videos, and then we have a battle, and they act out the moves on me.  I'm usually Zangief because then I can pick them up and toss them around and stay in character.  It's pretty fun.

Alright, that's all I got for tonight.  I'm quite tired, and it's back to the grind tomorrow.

Until next time...

Entry 454: Some Topics About Which To Blog

S is out for the night, and the kids are downstairs watching Incredibles 2, so I'll take the opportunity to crank out an entry on as many topics as I can.

First topic: Incredibles 2.  It's running time on Netflix is 1:58 -- WTF?!  Two hours for a kids movie?!  Why?  What could possible be that vital in a kids movie.  Just cut 20 minutes out somewhere, anywhere.  The kids won't care, I promise.  I put it on at 6:45 pm, thinking it'd go to 8:15 or so, and I could have them in bed before 9:00.  But now that's out of the question.  Once I noticed how long it is, I tried to get them to watch something else, but they were ready to throw a dual-tantrum if I forced the issue.  Plus, it took them like ten minutes and three fights to get them to agree on this movie, as it was.  So, whatever.  It's the weekend.

Speaking of kids movies, we went to "movie night" at the kids' school last night.  It's a fun idea, you bring a picnic dinner to their little gym (which for some reason they call "the lollipop"), and watch a movie with the other families.  In practice, it wasn't so great.  For one thing the AV equipment is not exactly top of the line, so the quality of picture and sound was subpar.  Then you have to sit on the floor or a metal fold-out chair the entire time, which I really struggle with.  Lastly, the movie was Happy Feet, which is awful -- the part I saw, anyway.  It was Robin Williams playing a penguin who talked like Elvis?  I dunno.  Like I said, the audio was really bad.  Lil' S2 didn't last long -- he's hit or miss with movies -- so he started playing in the hall, and I realized it was my chance to escape, so I went with him.  Then I just stayed there even after he went back.  I stood in the hall and read (I came prepared with a book).  I'm sure the other parents who passed me on their way to the bathroom thought I was some kind of weirdo -- either that or they were jealous they didn't bring a book as well.

The book I'm reading is Educated by Tara Westover.  It's really good -- like really, really good.  Maybe the best memoir I've ever read.  It's a mostly serious, in many ways profound story of transformation, and yet somehow it reads like a breezy page-turner.  I recommend it.

In other news, I had another great day at my Krav Maga class this week.  We did a drill where one person grabs their partner's leg single-leg-take-down style, and then it's a battle -- either the person with the leg gets a takedown or the other person defends against a takedown with a cross-face (a move in which you put your hand across the attacker's face and torque their head to break their grip on your leg).  My partner was this big tall guy.  He's like six-foot-five, but he's gangly, and I was just schooling him -- taking him down every time I was the attacker; shucking him off every time I was the defender.  At one point the instructor came around to watch, and I twisted my partner all the way to the ground with a cross-face, and the instructor made one of those "whoa!" whistling noises.  And then my partner got up, and he was legit pissed, like he was actually going to really fight me or something.  But instead he just yelled "fuck!"  So, the instructor asked him what was wrong, and he said, "I just keep fuckin' getting outmuscled -- every time!"  And then he gave me the stink-eye, as if I had done something wrong.  He's a cool guy, though.  After class he apologized for losing his temper, and we dapped it out.  It's all good.  I've been on the other side of that before, and it sucks.  No hard feelings at all.

But, I'm paying the price now.  I slept on my neck wrong and woke up Thursday in pain.  I'm sure it's related to my class.  It's super stiff and uncomfortable now.  I don't think it's a serious injury, but I might skip class next week.  That's definitely the worst part about doing Krav Maga -- constantly being dinged up.  With that and with having to miss class due to a familial responsibilities, it's really hard to get a good consistent regimen going.  But I go when I can, which is still almost always two to three times a week.  I just wish I had started 15 years ago (although I couldn't have afford it).  The recovery time is so much longer now than it was when I was younger -- and I'm not getting any faster on my feet either.  But I more than hold my own in class against younger dudes, and there's an instructor who must be in his mid-50s, who can still whup some ass, so I might have some scrapping years left in me.

[Demonstration of a cross face, but it's a little different than what we were doing in the drill.  The attacker in the video is doing a double-leg takedown, for example.]

In other news, I had an impromptu sex talk with my kids the other day.  I think it went well.  I was reading them a book about hybrid animals like tiglons and zorses (real things), and there was a blurb about genes, and Lil' S1 didn't really understand it, so I was explaining how children are half of each of their parents.  Being in an interracial marriage is helpful for this, because he can see that his skin color is between mine and S's: white and brown make light brown.  But then he asked, "But how did you and amma make us?"
I hadn't really planned out a response to this question, so I made a split-second decision to just be factual.  "There's something called sex," I said.  "It's when a man puts his penis into a woman's vagina..."
He cut me off: "What's a vagina?"
At this point, S overheard our conversation and suggested we shelve it for a later date, but I didn't see the harm in having it now.  I definitely knew what sex was at Lil' S1's age (and it mostly went over Lil' S2's head, anyway).  So, I just gave them a quick, accurate run-down of how babies are made, S even got in on it, and then Lil' S1 said, "Oh, can you keep reading now?"  And that was pretty much that.

It got me thinking back to my childhood, and I don't think there was ever a time I didn't know what sex was.  Obviously, there must have been, but I can't remember it.  I definitely knew in first grade because I remember getting in trouble for saying two kids in class were "humping in the bathtub."  It's possible my parents had a conversation with me, and I don't remember it, but being that I called it "humping," it's much more likely I picked it up from a older kid.  This would make sense since I spent a lot of time with my older sister and two older family friends back then.

Speaking of my childhood, S and I are two deep in the four-part Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix.  (Well, S is more like one and a half deep since she falls asleep three-fourths of the way through.  I'm not sure how you can fall asleep in a documentary about a serial killer and not have your dreams haunted, but she's on of those people who can fall asleep in almost any circumstance.  I envy those people.)  By the time I was a cognizant being, Bundy had already been caught and was on death row.  But it was still a big story, given that he was a hometown kid.  (The joke the day he was executed, when I was in fifth grade, was that the cafeteria was serving "Bundy Bacon.")  So, I knew the basics, but it's really interesting to fill in the details.  The only problem is that they use a lot of choppy, strobe-like, flash imagery for effect, and it gets irritating after a while.  I actually didn't even notice it, but then S mentioned it, and now I can't not notice it.  Anyway, it's not annoying enough to keep me from watching the last two episodes.  I recommend it.

Okay, I think I hear kids coming upstairs.  Until next time...

Entry 453: I Already Loathed Howard Schultz

The name in the news this week is Howard Schultz.  The billionaire coffee mogul announced that he his exploring the idea of running for president in 2020 as an independent.  This set off alarm bells among many anti-Trumpers, as it seems possible that Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, would siphon off votes from the Democratic candidate were he to run as a third-party candidate.  I'm somebody who is more open to third-party candidates than most (I will still defend Ralph Nader), and I think Schultz is a total fool for even flirting with a presidental candidacy.  My hope is that it's mostly a ploy to drum up interest for his book, but given how passionate he seems to be about it, and how he's discussing the logistics of getting on the ballot in all 50 states, it seems like he's serious.  It sounds as if he took a look at the state of the union and the political landscape and said to himself: You know what the country wants right now?  An uncharismatic, socially liberal, fiscally conservative billionaire to channel the awesome powers of centrism.

But this isn't what the country wants.  As Jonathan Chait points out there just isn't that big a market for a candidate like Schultz.  One thing we learned from 2016 is that the popular "centrist" position is diametrically opposed to Schultz -- it's socially conservative (anti-abortion, anti-diversity, pro gun) and economically liberal (remember, Trump explicitly distinguished himself from other Republicans during the primary by pledging to protect entitlements, and prominent supporters like Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter sound a lot like Bernie Sanders when they talk about economics) -- and this is especially true in the Midwestern swing states.  And even if this isn't the case -- even if there is a massive, undetected bloc of would-be-Schultz supporters -- this is not the election to go rogue.  It is going to be Trump versus non-Trump, period.  So, if Schultz wants to run, he should pick a party, run in the primary, and make his case.

But he doesn't want to do this, because he realizes, correctly, that he's extremely unlikely win a primary.  So, he's maybe going to run as a third party, which is contrary to his stated goal of not wanting Donald Trump to get reelected.  It's utterly idiotic.  If your goal is to not get somebody reelected then you should work to not get them reelected.  Think about all the things Howard Schultz's money could do if he applied it to getting the Democratic candidate elected, whomever it might be -- political ads, a massive ground game, wide-scale voter registration drives, etc.  He could have a huge influence in defeating Donald Trump, if he actually works to defeat him.

So, why isn't he doing it this way?  I'm not sure.  One possibility is that he honestly believes that the Democrats are going to elected somebody too far to the left, and the swing voters are going to therefore vote for Trump, and the best way to combat this is not to work to make this far-left candidate more palatable to centrists, but rather to run against them.  That might be what he actually believes, which is insane -- the basic math of voter affiliation makes it impossible to win in this way (as Michael Bloomberg quickly realized).  But people like Schultz often think the math doesn't apply to them.  Because they defied the odds once, and hit the jackpot, they think they have some sort of special odds-defying power.  It's like going all-in on a hand of poker, hitting a straight-flush on the river, and then thinking you can do it every time.  I heard Schultz in an interview dismiss the "naysayers," so maybe the fact that everybody is saying this is idiotic will only fuel him more.  I'll prove everybody wrong.  I hope that's not the case.

Another reason he might be doing this is that, to some degree, on some level, he wants to stick it to the Democrats for moving to the left on economic issues.  They were his party for many years, and now people like him are often cast as the villain.  When Elizabeth Warrens rails against the billionaires, who aren't paying their "fair share," who's she talking about if not a person like Howard Schultz?  Schultz might be pulling the ultimate take-my-ball-and-go-home stunt.  You want to castigate me?  Fine, let's see how you do when I run against you.  Because it just makes no sense to run as a third-party when your primary goal is to defeat a single candidate.  You run as a third-party candidate when you think the two parties are converging into one, or they're both equally bad, or you want to plant the seeds of the movement.  You don't do it when one candidate is only 55% of what you want and the other is Donald Trump.

The other thing about Schultz is that he doesn't seem to have any tangible policy ideas.  He only speaks in platitudes and political clichés about change and unity.  He talks like Barack Obama, if Barack Obama was a boring old white guy who thinks a coffee pun is the zenith of wit.  The closest he has ever come to being a public servant is owning the Seattle SuperSonics, and he totally fucked that up, and the Sonics are gone because of it.*  The dude is just a dud of a candidate all around.

With all that said, if you gave me two options -- 1) Howard Schultz decides not to run; 2) he stays in and somehow wins -- I would take the latter in a heartbeat.  I really do just want to beat Trump.

Alright, that's all I got for today, hopefully this is the last time I have to write an entry about Howard Schultz.

Until next time...

*Quick recap: Schultz owned the Sonics in 2007, and he wanted the city to spend $220 million to renovated Key Arena, which was just rebuilt, like, 13 years earlier.  The city understandably didn't want to do this, because arena and stadium deals almost never work out in the public's favor (they are public risk for private gain), so they said no.  He then sold the team to a group of investors from Oklahoma, who everybody knew wanted to put an NBA franchise in Oklahoma City.  The only condition of sale addressing relocation was that the new owners had to make a "good faith effort" to keep the team in Seattle for one year.  

So, the Sonics played in Seattle for one season; the new owners asked for $500 million in taxpayer money to build a whole new stadium 20 miles outside of Seattle, and when the answer was predictably no (it was $280 million more than what they had already turned down), they moved the team to OKC.

Once Schultz started getting heat from the public about the move, he filed a bullshit lawsuit, which he quickly dropped, because he had no grounds to sue under the contract he signed (in fact, the contract explicitly stated that he couldn't sue).  He claims he never intended for the team to leave Seattle, which is the epitome of "stupid or lying."  I was a grad student on the other side of the country, only half paying attention to the story, and I knew the instant the sales was announced that the Sonics were gone.  To sum it all up: a super-rich guy couldn't bilk a city out of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to help his bottom line, so he let a beloved institution leave town.  Howard Schultz for president, everybody!

Update: Apparently Howard Schultz addresses SonicsGate in his not-yet-released book, calling it a big mistake and apologizing for it.  That's fine and all, but he also essentially confirms all the bad things people were saying about him throughout this episode.  I mean, his stated reason for selling to an outside group is that he thought they would have better leverage over the city in getting money for an arena.  So, there you go Sonics fans.