Resolution

[I'd like to thank Doug for letting me guest on his blog.  I've had this idea for a brief essay for a while and thought it would be silly to start my own blog without more ideas in the tank.  I might post more in the future, but not nearly as much as the man himself.  For those of you who (like me) visit this blog to see Doug's writing, I hope this post at least approaches your standards.] 

I’ve never been much for new year’s resolutions.  I often view them as desperate and ultimately doomed attempts to become a better person merely because the ceremonial passage of the years has made you realize that (in cosmic terms) you have very little time left on earth.  I wonder, If this is something you wanted so badly to change about yourself, why do so on January 1?  Why not make the change as soon as the problem is identified?  I know that this is a hyper-critical position, and I get that the first of the year can be both a convenient and meaningful time for someone to make a life change.  In a way, the cynicism of my opening sentences illustrates a problem I’d like to fix in myself.  At the risk of being arrogant, I think of myself as a clever and funny person, and I believe my sense of humor (like most people’s) solidified in my mid-to-late teens.  For as long as I can remember being purposely funny, I have been making ironic, hateful jokes.  My main new year’s resolution (yes, after bashing the concept of a new year’s resolution it now turns out that I have more than one!) is to be more vigilant about these satirically offensive jokes.        

I’ve realized for a while that the insincerely offensive remark is a comedic cop-out—a sort of rubber chicken of edgy humor—but I honestly have a hard time stopping myself.  Part of what makes the ironically hateful joke so appealing is that (for a person who wants to believe all their remarks are well received) there is really no discouraging listener response.  It’s a win-win.  If people laugh at your appalling comment it’s because they realize you’re being satirical and appreciate your sardonic wit, but if people don’t laugh it’s because they understand you’re not "being funny" in the traditional sense but being poignant and intellectual.  In this way, the shocking, disingenuous crack can be both a sword and a shield.  A sincere joke must be funny in its own right; it must involve clever wordplay or a relatable observation of the human condition.  But an insincere joke is free to fail, because it’s not supposed to be funny—it’s supposed to be thought-provoking and button-pushy.  People who make ironically hateful comments can therefore become defensive when others are offended by their jokes.  They can think, Why would you be mad at me?  I’m on your side.  I agree that the kind of person who honestly says these things is terrible.  That’s why I say them. 

The problem is that what starts out as an effort to point up the backwardness and stupidity of those who say seriously what you’re saying in jest ends up becoming a reflexive, knee-jerk tendency to make a faux-serious offensive remark at every available opportunity.  The reason for this degeneration is, at least in my case, two-fold.  First, it’s extremely easy to make an insincerely offensive comment.  Unlike an honest-to-God joke (of which I’ve conceived maybe a handful in my entire life, and none of them were particularly good), an ironically hateful joke takes absolutely no effort.  Because a genuinely sexist, racist, ethnocentric, or homophobic comment is usually reductive and indefensibly stupid, an ironic version of the same comment is allowed to be ironically reductive and ironically stupid.  Second, there is something deliciously evil about the insincerely offensive remark.  It allows you to say something you’re not supposed to in a way that minimizes the risks associated with actually saying something you’re not supposed to.  In effect, you get to be every bit as bigoted as the target of your ridicule (indeed, you may well end up saying more hateful things per day than the average bigot) while simultaneously seeing yourself as above reproach.  It’s a tantalizing opportunity that exists in few other contexts.  You can’t assault someone ironically, lie on your tax return ironically, or skip work ironically—no matter how badly you might want to actually do all of these things.  But we tend to give carte blanche to people who make insincerely offensive jokes (or at least, thankfully, the vast majority of my friends have done so for me).

Curiously, although we’re willing to indulge people in their ironic hatefulness (read: Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report), we aren’t always good at distinguishing someone’s satire from their true feelings.  One example jumps immediately to mind: Don Imus’ 2007 fall from grace for racially charged comments about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team.  While dated, this incident sticks out for me because I was a big fan of Imus.  I would frequently watch the Imus in the Morning simulcast on MSNBC before heading to class in my junior and senior years of high school.  I remember finding him tremendously funny, largely because of his insensitivity.  I also remember feeling distinctly aware of the fact that his insensitivity (like Colbert’s) was a put on.  After all, he was a shock jock.  Saying hateful things with a straight face was his bread and butter.  And Imus’ comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team (like his comments about Pacman Jones a year later) didn’t strike me as a true reflection of his heart of hearts.  In fact, looking back on these incidents now, they seem like precisely the kinds of comments I would make in a misguided attempt to be edgy and satirical (albeit to my private group of friends rather than on national television and radio). 

This is the crux of the issue for me.  The line between sincerity and insincerity can become bizarrely blurred—for the speaker as well as the listener.  To the extent that hateful comments are meant to satirize the beliefs of others, there needs to be a specific group of "others" to satirize.  I think this is why Colbert’s brand of disingenuous meanness is so widely accepted.  He is clearly doing a send up of the archetypal conservative media personality (the Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs of the world).  On the other hand, when a person’s ironically hateful comments are meant to satirize wrongheaded ideas and systems generally, the boundaries become fuzzier.  It’s not a performance so much as it is simply saying something you don’t really mean.  Not only does this require your audience to take your insincerity on faith (which the public refused to do with Imus), but it also lowers the net value of things that come out of your mouth.  Irony or no, saying something hateful is saying something hateful.  It’s meant to be funny because of its total lack of value, and so the well-executed insincerely offensive comment is by definition worthless and empty.  In this way, the comedic offender can end up in a hazy, postmodern mindset where nothing really means anything.  And when so many of the things you say are hollow and insincere, even your honest, heartfelt opinions are considered suspect.  Your friends likely wonder, Is he being real right now or not?  Even that brief moment of suspicion detracts from the value of your sincere thoughts and feelings. 

Worse yet, I find that my persistent ironic hatefulness sometimes leaves me wondering what I really think about certain things.  In order to effect a palatable, Colbert-style satire, you need to have a straw-man that is the object of your ridicule.  However, my feelings about many of today’s controversial social issues are so complicated and ambivalent that they can’t be easily siloed.  By way of example, when I make an ironic comment about a friend’s "white guilt," I’m mocking the (far-right) conservative position that white liberals’ political decisions are motivated by guilt over racist traditions in America.  But in truth, I don’t totally disagree with every aspect of that conservative position (although I would never use such a loaded and pejorative term in seriousness), and I’m honestly annoyed when a liberal friend addresses a complex, multi-dimensional issue by making sweeping and dismissive allegations of racism.  (Although racism is very much alive today, and I consider myself far left of center on racial justice issues, I often feel that these generalizations are counterproductive and can bring meaningful discussion to a halt.)  So when I make an ironic comment about "white guilt" am I really being ironic?  Am I being partially ironic?  Is there even such a thing as partial irony? 

This is where I feel I’ve ended up, and this is why I want to stop (or at least significantly scale back) my irreverent jokemaking.  On top of the fact that these comments are often not funny even when they’re known to be insincere, they have a sort of brain-warping and soul-destroying quality to them.  Ironically hateful comments don’t help me better understand my position on complex issues; they further muddle my thinking.  This isn’t to say that I want to become totally serious.  That’s not me.  But I believe it’s time to start thinking more critically about the things I say, and to start saying what I mean more often than what I don’t mean.  I feel like this brief reflection has been a good starting point.                       

Arkansas Adventures: A Day-trip Travelogue

Since moving to Arkansas, I've only been to one other town, which isn't all that surprising when where I live is the metropolitan center and capital of the state. To put it simply, there aren't a lot of reasons to leave when everything you need is close. But staying put is a bad way to soak in culture, and, though the trip to Hot Springs was satisfying, it was a limited sampling of what the Natural State has to offer.

Sam asked if I wanted to tag along when she went to facilitate an outreach for underprivileged kids in Monticello, AR. I asked where it was. She responded, "Close to Mississippi," as if it were a sales point. And then she noted that we'd have to get up early. While I'm not prone to sleeping in much these days, the idea of having to be up early put me in a funk. But I wasn't going to be doing anything beyond playing Mass Effect 3 if I stayed home so what the hell. 

The plan was to take a rental care because somehow it would be cheaper than taking her own car and getting the gas comped by the museum. We had to go pick it up at 8 AM, which was the same time I'd ordinarily be waking up. That meant I'd have to be up earlier than 8 that day. Before 8, I'm a pitiful creature, a more lowly-evolved being. Language is an effort. Thoughts manifest in single emotions: rage, confusion, disappointment.

Sam told me that Enterprise had a Corolla and a Focus available, which were also what she and I drove, respectively. But the rentals were undoubtedly newer than my thirteen-year-old red rambler and Sam's ambiguously aged vehicle (I think an '07?). The youth of the rentals had promise: most cars anymore have that most hallowed feature of an auxiliary port for a headphone jack. No more of this FM transmitter disappointment. A clean signal with no intrusion by gospel or public radio! Hell, if it was a new Focus, it might even have a USB port to plug in the iPhone. I was more excited about this than arriving at the destination, especially when I knew next to nothing about the town and Wikipedia didn't yield more information on it. 

Sam usually wakes up earlier than I do for her job (my previous job didn't require me to be there until the afternoon, both blessing and curse), and this morning kept that routine consistent. Only this time when she got up, the sun had yet to do so itself. Since I'm conditioned to take darkness as an indication to sleep or panic, I shut my eyes and pulled the covers in such a way to hide me from her. If she couldn't find me, she couldn't wake me up, right? Then I heard the question: "Still coming with?" My response was not English or any written language, but translation was simple: "Too tired but okay." The long singular syllable that escape my sleep-salivating gob was what I could mostly muster at 8 AM. Understood or ignored, I got up and let the shower start my day. 

We made excellent time, likely do to Sam's impeccable planning. We got in he car but not before I grabbed my FM transmitter and iPhone USB cable. But then I remembered the prospect of the headphone jack in the car, so I went back inside to grab that too. I also recalled an iPhone car charger that I was compelled to find right then. We had time. I spent five minutes looking in boxes and drawers before I realized no ounce of will on my part was going to make the damn thing materialize after the third time I looked in the end table drawer. I scooped up a cable and got back in the car, only to realize that it was some random USB cable and not the headphone jack I came in to grab in the first place. I ran the stretch of sidewalk between our apartment building and Sam's Corolla like a sprinter conditioning in a pea coat. The return was uphill. I was winded and a little sweaty.

There was no Focus or Corolla waiting for us at the rental place. Instead, we got a Chrysler that was the biggest car I've ridden in recent memory. The legroom was incredible--so spacious that I forgot what proper posture was. My body slipped down the curvature of the seat and my toes never once reached the edge of the legroom. For a long-legged individual, there are a few greater indulgences, especially when most of those that said individual holds close and dear seem to exclusively drive compact cars. Optimally comfortable, we hit the road.

We depended on the rarely-dependable Apple Maps app on Sam's phone, possibly reduced to less dependability since she still hasn't updated to iOS 7. I'm not the update's biggest fan after it temporarily bricked my phone, but if it gave us some sensible directions I'd consider patching up our rocky relationship. We had to forego the robot lady's directions when we saw signs clearly marked for an exit to Monticello, but the robot lady seemed confident that our turn was a couple miles further. She also seemed to disagree with the physical presence of the road that said sign had marked as our little arrow avatar on the app's display showed us on a lonely curve, no opportunities for turning off in sight. 

This was the furthest south I'd been. The lay of the land seemed to shift. Here, the hills stayed uniform to those we have in Little Rock, but trees were more plentiful. These were the trees that stood tall and had most of their branches towards the top like they were playing a game of keep-away from the leaf-eaters on the ground. The lady at the car rental place warned that the hour-and-forty-five-minute drive was boring. A couple times driving that stretch could get samey, but with virgin eyes I stayed attentive. Breaks between the patches of trees presented a bleak picture of rotting fallen logs and grassless turf that intimated death and left little hope that green would return come spring. Buildings along the highway gave off the same vibrations: empty, lifeless windows like black eyes sockets in a skull. A tipped over laundry basket briefly shone like a flickering beacon of life but no clothes suggested either an aborted mission for clean clothes or that the basket served an entirely different and unknown purpose. 

The sky remained a dismal gray with ever ambiguous intentions: maybe us clouds will spit rain on you; we're still mulling it over. This nearly echoed the trip to Hot Springs. That day too was cold and overcast, but then there was an excitement for visiting that town. Hot Springs has a fascinating history with a mostly preserved historical area and famous features (I think you can guess what they are). Early research suggested that Monticello was an inflated version of my hometown. 

In reality, it was about that. There may have been an insular sense of community here, but it was the sort that no outsider was going to feel. I dressed differently from most of them. Lots of camo, lots of Carhart, all a stark contrast to my tattered New Balances and messy wool coat that was missing a button and was about to lose another. Cowboy hats and hunting caps to my unwashed, naked hair. I met eyes with none but I wondered if they looked at me the same way I looked at strangers back home: don't make eye contact but watch them closely until they do something interesting or dangerous.

On the way home after eating lunch at a local hotspot called Ray's, the thought hit me like a stray bullet: I'd never felt more like city folk. I wouldn't consider myself a country boy by any means, but I've never wanted to be around more people as I did then. Not so much to be among them as to be near them, to know there is hope for heterogeneity, some variety, something different. It's hard to just call it "culture." That just feels condescending. 

Worked Over by Wood Work

A few months ago we bought a small table from a country style store a few blocks from our apartment. The salesperson kept referring to it as a “farm table,” which I assumed was another term for “primitive table” as it was tagged, but I haven’t bothered to research into the colloquialisms any further. However, regardless of what you define as a “primitive table” or “farm table,” the best descriptor for either has to be “rough.”

It’s clearly a handmade table, not the sort you might pick up at Ikea (following instructions doesn’t count) or FFO (the prices justify the lack of craftsmanship). There were nails sticking up in spots that were quickly addressed with a hammer. The tabletop was stained but not painted with what appears to be the silhouettes of things that had been spray painted before. This wasn’t just a handmade table, but it was secondhand. There’s a history to the table. It has character. And, while the story isn’t all that interesting, I still wanted to preserve it with some sort of clear coat finish. You know, make it look halfway nice.

About a month after we got the table, I finally drove down to Ace Hardware, nearest supplier of all things manly, and picked up some sandpaper because I knew I had to sand the table down first. Of course, this wasn’t as simple as just buying sandpaper. Ace had six different options split into three different steps. First, you have your 60- and 80-grit for “extreme” and “coarse removal.” Then you got your 120- and 180-grit for “moderate” and “final surface preparation.” For your final step, you’ve got the oh-so-“fine” and “extra fine scruffing” at 220- and 320-grit. After a combination careful deliberation and quiet impatience, I ignored the descriptions and went for the 120-grit.

My effort to sand the table bore some fruit. In the end, I had some nice dark brown piles that had fallen from the tabletop to the hardwood floor, easily scooped up into a dustpan. Too dark to be strictly wood, so I can only guess it was only the stain.

The table was left alone for a bit longer. It was used less as a dining table and more like a laundry room table since it was so conveniently near our washer and dryer. Unfortunately, due to the lack of rags after I sanded the tabletop, there was still that brown residue from the staining leftover that stuck around to make all laundry efforts seem in vain. I claimed I would have it done by Thanksgiving. Due to hazy Thanksgiving plans and my former boss’s plan to schedule 9 PM shows all week, the laundry stayed on the table.

Sam befriended someone she met through work and made plans to hang out with her and her SO, which I was happy with considering the only people I knew in this town were some of her coworkers and my coworkers. I’ve never been one to seek out new people, but the prospect of playing a board game with folks. That and I had an excuse to finish the table.

I was unclear about the terminology. Google searches for “clear coat finish”--the phrase my father would use--kept coming up “polyurethane” and “resin.” Despite it having more syllables, polyurethane seemed like a simpler and more practical option. So on my first Saturday off, I returned to Ace Hardware and set on by an employee. He was helpful--as they usually are--in directing me where to go for the polyurethane. And like a curse, I was doomed with having to pick what size. Three different cans of polyurethane--small, medium, and large. I wanted this table to shine so I narrowed it down to the ones labeled “gloss.” I scoured the labels to see how much area this stuff would cover. They all said the same damn thing: “A gallon will cover 700 square feet.” In my research, I was consistently told that I need to apply three coats. But nowhere did it say how many coats I’d get out of this stuff. So, like a logical person, I assumed that the three coats would come from a single can. Then, tapping away on my calculator in my iPhone, I did the math to see how much the little can would give me as far as square-foot coverage. Of course, regardless of the volume contained in the cans, I was told the same message: “A gallon will cover 700 square feet.”

How many ounces do I have? 8. Google how many ounces in a gallon. 128 ounces in gallon. 128 ounces will cover 700 feet. 8 goes into 128 ounces 16 times. 700 divided by 16 is 43.75. The table is about 4 feet by 3 feet, meaning it’s 12 square feet.

This is why I studied English.

Now, I needed a brush. I asked the employee still nearby what kind of brush to get. He did not know, but he tried anyway. I was skeptical about the price so I kept looking. I recalled my research: you want a natural bristle brush. Synthetic’s gonna put streaks in your polyurethane.

A man in plainclothes addressed me: “What can I help you with?” I explained the situation, and then everything got more complicated.

“First, I’m gonna save you some money,” he said, leading me away from the brushes to the cheap foam brushes. He handed me two of them, and I just accepted them. Then he led me to another aisle. “This’ll be the most expensive thing I sell ya.” He pulled down a can of paint thinner, and, handing it to me, told me, “Smallest I got.” Then we moved to another aisle. “Got any steel wool?” I shook my head, wordless by this point. Boom. Steel wool in my hands. Then he tells me what I’m gonna do: “Get something you can mix the polyurethane and paint thinner in. Half and half. Then you’re gonna put down a coat. How big’s this table?” I tell him. “Alright, you’re gonna wanna let that dry. Get a hair dryer, a fan, whatever you gotta do. Then you’re gonna clean it with this steel wool and a rag. You’re gonna repeat this process again. You gonna put drinks on this table?” I nodded. “Third coat. You’ll definitely need a third coat.”

I wrestled by thoughts back and told him, “Yeah, what I read on the Internet told me a third coat.” Like I knew what I was talking about. He said nothing and walked away. The stranger seemed the sort to laugh at Internet advice. He knew what he was doing out of the womb. For some, this stuff is natural. I think my father is also one of those. I didn’t inherit that gene.

I started work on that table finally. Given the time it would take to dry, I knew it wasn’t going to be completed by Sunday for our scheduled playdate, but it’d at least be dry enough to throw a tablecloth over. The first coat required me to open our balcony door, which is a pain to lock back up without ramming into it with your shoulder (if you’re by yourself). The Internet told me that the room should be well ventilated. Three doorways was good enough for me. It also told me I should be wearing a mask while doing this, regardless of ventilation, so I just held my t-shirt up like someone cut a bad fart.

Maybe it’s my lack of standards or the brain damage from inhaling polyurethane fumes, but I’m happy with it, and I think Sam is too. Maybe I’ll even do the rest of it.