Saturday, April 10, 2004
Easter "surprise"
My husband is the type of person whose daily tasks always include many protracted searches for... EVERYTHING. Most days, he has to drag out some of his many storage boxes and sort through them looking for a variety of things that shouldn't be packed away but magically are. Today, as he was doing a search, he came across a giant Easter egg box that he had bought OVER TWO YEARS AGO as a gift for me, hidden away "in a safe place" and never seen since... not until the night before Easter this year. Interestingly, it just so happens that we didn't decorate on either the intervening Easters, so this is the first time since he bought it that I could actually use it. And suddenly it showed up. Of course, he thinks that all of this is a coincidence.
LOL
LOL
Friday, April 09, 2004
Where should our best and brightest be?
According to certain people, the answer to that question is; teaching our children.
PUH-LEEZE!!
We're supposed to waste our finest minds with telling kids that c-a-t- spells cat and 1 + 1 = 2? You don't need to be a genius to do that, or to teach ANY pre-college subject (or many college ones, for that matter); heck, you don't even need AVERAGE intelligence for most of it... all you need to do is have a slighter better grasp on a given subject than the students, and, since they're in the class because they DON'T know the material, that's not too hard, is it? To have a genius wasting her/his time functioning at a 7th grade level (or whatever grade) would be CRIMINAL.
We want our most intelligent, capable people going into fields where those qualities REALLY matter; medicine is at the top of the list. If you or a loved one needs open heart surgery, do you want the smartest person in your area to be down the street at the grammar school chanting "d-o-g spells dog," or do you want them holding the scalpel? If you or a loved one gets a rare disease, do you want the finest minds in your city to be droning out the dates of battles in Western History class at the junior high, or do you want them in the lab finding you a cure? Do you want the high-IQ types discovering new marvels of engineering and science for the benefit of mankind, or do you want them teaching kindergartners to color within the lines?
I'm not saying that teachers and children aren't important, as of course they ARE, I'm saying that we have such a small % of brilliant people that we as a species need them to be saving lives and expanding the boundaries of knowledge... and, they DESERVE to have the chance to make that sort of contribution, and to get the $ and prestige that they can earn in those sorts of fields. Why should they be expected to just add a little bit to the eventual success of the tiny % of kids they'd ever teach who'll accomplish anything, when they can accomplish things THEMSELVES? Why should they be satisfied with bits and pieces of glory, and probably not even that, when they are capable of creating their own damned glory? Do you see the indirect dig at the brainy types implicit in the idea that "the best place for you is teaching my kid, and screw your dreams of curing cancer and winning a Nobel prize"?
There isn't any reason to think that a genius would make a better teacher for kids in any case; geniuses generally have a hard time speaking at a normal adult level, much less at a child's level, and are socially awkward, which hardly allows for the sort of delicate psychology that allows one to open up little minds and shovel knowledge in... what part of THAT makes for a good teacher? The qualities that DO make for a good teacher, such as infinite patience, love of children, ability to create rapport, and an understanding (if only on an intuitive level) of the psychology of kids and of learning, have NO CONNECTION to intelligence, and qualities like a willingness to never rise to a higher level job, to do endless grunt work correcting papers, and to not make any $, demonstrate, sorry to say it, a distinct LACK of intelligence.
But, what if we threw alot of $ at it, and gave teachers assistants to do all the grunt work, and paid them on the level of top professionals; wouldn't that make it desirable for some of our brightest to be teachers? Well, aside from the fact that it's disgraceful to even SUGGEST that some twit with the ink still damp on their college degree and teaching certificate should be able to EVER make as much $ as someone who went to medical school or got a PhD in the sciences, where do you suppose the $ would come from to PAY for these salaries, and for all the extra employees to do the grunt work? Are you paying so little in taxes that you'd be happy to get a hefty increase in them to pay for geniuses to teach your kids, and teach them no better than a less expensive person? Would you be happy to have the scientists, engineers and doctors on whom your quality of life, and often life itself, depends, become significantly less bright as a group? If you answered "yes," I guarantee you that you're in a tiny minority... thank goodness.
So, how CAN we be assured that our kids are well taught? Let's look at when kids WERE being well taught in this country: It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that students learned far, FAR better than they're doing now; during the times when one teacher taught all subjects to all grades, all in the same room (something that none of our modern teachers would be REMOTELY capable of doing), kids LEARNED. And what stellar qualifications did the teachers have to make this happen? Most of them were spinsters with no family to support them, and the rest were men with no land, no family business, and no other prospects... the bottom of the barrel of society, in many ways, although they were obviously at least minimally literate. How then did they manage, with no computers, generally with no library or even enough books for all the pupils, no teaching assistant, no audiovisual aids, no budget for field trips or crafts or projects, to teach circles around today's teachers? It wasn't because all those folks who had failed to find a way to do the normal work of adults, who spawned the old saying "if you can't do, teach," were GENIUSES, it's because they had the one thing that REALLY matters as to whether or not kids learn... the support of the parents.
In those days, if a kid didn't do his homework, didn't study for a test, or didn't obey in class, he could expect his parents to be told... and a trip out to the woodshed would follow. Even parents who were themselves illiterate EXPECTED their kids to go to school on time, keep their mouths shut and listen to the teacher, do all their work and make a best-faith effort at it, and in general to make them proud... so that's exactly what the kids did.
And THAT is what the dimwits who want to throw more $ at a profession that doesn't actually need it don't get; if in fact your actual goal is to give our kids the best possible education, as opposed to just gaining the support of the teachers' union, the solution, the ONLY solution, is to go back to the only thing that has ever been PROVEN to work... intense involvement in the educational process by parents who EXPECT their kids to learn, and are willing to impose serious penalties if their children don't hit the books. You don't win elections, or gain general political clout, by telling parents that they're not doing their jobs, and need to actually RAISE their kids and invest time and effort in helping the schools do their job, so you'll never hear anyone proposing it as a solution... all you're ever going to hear is that old tired rhetoric, "throw more $ at it, and the smart people will show up and fix it for us."
If you REALLY want your kids to get the best possible education, don't ask the best and brightest to leave medicine and science to teach them; give your kids the infinite benefit of their education being aided and overseen by the person in the world most qualified to make them scholastic successes... YOU.
PUH-LEEZE!!
We're supposed to waste our finest minds with telling kids that c-a-t- spells cat and 1 + 1 = 2? You don't need to be a genius to do that, or to teach ANY pre-college subject (or many college ones, for that matter); heck, you don't even need AVERAGE intelligence for most of it... all you need to do is have a slighter better grasp on a given subject than the students, and, since they're in the class because they DON'T know the material, that's not too hard, is it? To have a genius wasting her/his time functioning at a 7th grade level (or whatever grade) would be CRIMINAL.
We want our most intelligent, capable people going into fields where those qualities REALLY matter; medicine is at the top of the list. If you or a loved one needs open heart surgery, do you want the smartest person in your area to be down the street at the grammar school chanting "d-o-g spells dog," or do you want them holding the scalpel? If you or a loved one gets a rare disease, do you want the finest minds in your city to be droning out the dates of battles in Western History class at the junior high, or do you want them in the lab finding you a cure? Do you want the high-IQ types discovering new marvels of engineering and science for the benefit of mankind, or do you want them teaching kindergartners to color within the lines?
I'm not saying that teachers and children aren't important, as of course they ARE, I'm saying that we have such a small % of brilliant people that we as a species need them to be saving lives and expanding the boundaries of knowledge... and, they DESERVE to have the chance to make that sort of contribution, and to get the $ and prestige that they can earn in those sorts of fields. Why should they be expected to just add a little bit to the eventual success of the tiny % of kids they'd ever teach who'll accomplish anything, when they can accomplish things THEMSELVES? Why should they be satisfied with bits and pieces of glory, and probably not even that, when they are capable of creating their own damned glory? Do you see the indirect dig at the brainy types implicit in the idea that "the best place for you is teaching my kid, and screw your dreams of curing cancer and winning a Nobel prize"?
There isn't any reason to think that a genius would make a better teacher for kids in any case; geniuses generally have a hard time speaking at a normal adult level, much less at a child's level, and are socially awkward, which hardly allows for the sort of delicate psychology that allows one to open up little minds and shovel knowledge in... what part of THAT makes for a good teacher? The qualities that DO make for a good teacher, such as infinite patience, love of children, ability to create rapport, and an understanding (if only on an intuitive level) of the psychology of kids and of learning, have NO CONNECTION to intelligence, and qualities like a willingness to never rise to a higher level job, to do endless grunt work correcting papers, and to not make any $, demonstrate, sorry to say it, a distinct LACK of intelligence.
But, what if we threw alot of $ at it, and gave teachers assistants to do all the grunt work, and paid them on the level of top professionals; wouldn't that make it desirable for some of our brightest to be teachers? Well, aside from the fact that it's disgraceful to even SUGGEST that some twit with the ink still damp on their college degree and teaching certificate should be able to EVER make as much $ as someone who went to medical school or got a PhD in the sciences, where do you suppose the $ would come from to PAY for these salaries, and for all the extra employees to do the grunt work? Are you paying so little in taxes that you'd be happy to get a hefty increase in them to pay for geniuses to teach your kids, and teach them no better than a less expensive person? Would you be happy to have the scientists, engineers and doctors on whom your quality of life, and often life itself, depends, become significantly less bright as a group? If you answered "yes," I guarantee you that you're in a tiny minority... thank goodness.
So, how CAN we be assured that our kids are well taught? Let's look at when kids WERE being well taught in this country: It wasn't that long ago, historically speaking, that students learned far, FAR better than they're doing now; during the times when one teacher taught all subjects to all grades, all in the same room (something that none of our modern teachers would be REMOTELY capable of doing), kids LEARNED. And what stellar qualifications did the teachers have to make this happen? Most of them were spinsters with no family to support them, and the rest were men with no land, no family business, and no other prospects... the bottom of the barrel of society, in many ways, although they were obviously at least minimally literate. How then did they manage, with no computers, generally with no library or even enough books for all the pupils, no teaching assistant, no audiovisual aids, no budget for field trips or crafts or projects, to teach circles around today's teachers? It wasn't because all those folks who had failed to find a way to do the normal work of adults, who spawned the old saying "if you can't do, teach," were GENIUSES, it's because they had the one thing that REALLY matters as to whether or not kids learn... the support of the parents.
In those days, if a kid didn't do his homework, didn't study for a test, or didn't obey in class, he could expect his parents to be told... and a trip out to the woodshed would follow. Even parents who were themselves illiterate EXPECTED their kids to go to school on time, keep their mouths shut and listen to the teacher, do all their work and make a best-faith effort at it, and in general to make them proud... so that's exactly what the kids did.
And THAT is what the dimwits who want to throw more $ at a profession that doesn't actually need it don't get; if in fact your actual goal is to give our kids the best possible education, as opposed to just gaining the support of the teachers' union, the solution, the ONLY solution, is to go back to the only thing that has ever been PROVEN to work... intense involvement in the educational process by parents who EXPECT their kids to learn, and are willing to impose serious penalties if their children don't hit the books. You don't win elections, or gain general political clout, by telling parents that they're not doing their jobs, and need to actually RAISE their kids and invest time and effort in helping the schools do their job, so you'll never hear anyone proposing it as a solution... all you're ever going to hear is that old tired rhetoric, "throw more $ at it, and the smart people will show up and fix it for us."
If you REALLY want your kids to get the best possible education, don't ask the best and brightest to leave medicine and science to teach them; give your kids the infinite benefit of their education being aided and overseen by the person in the world most qualified to make them scholastic successes... YOU.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Thursday again...
... and time for some observations on human nature from Mad Mad House.
The judges have been videotaped dissing just ONE of their number, and it's happened more than once; not by coincidence, the victim has been the one who, because he sleeps during the day, spends by far the least time with them... my little lovebug, Don the vampire. In addition, the judge who, by virtue of being the hot babe, seems to be the most in charge, was actually LAUGHING throughout Don's blood-drinking ceremony, and several of the contestants pointed out (outside of her hearing) that she would have FLIPPED if anyone had laughed during HER ceremonies... and I bet she wouldn't have felt free to disrespect anyone else but Don.
All it takes to be seen as an outsider is to be just a little out of synch with the group; the subconscious mindset seems to be "You aren't totally doing everything our way, so you must be rejecting us on some level, so we'll feel free to reject YOU, behind your back at first, and then in your face, and we'll also feel free to be unfair and hypocritical." I've seen this sort of thing before, I've even LIVED it, as I'm unwilling to blindly follow a group against my own preferences, and it points up how very unlikely we are to tolerate differences in behavior within our groups.
There's another part to this, too; in any group, the members gossip about each other, and the more you're not around, the more you'll be the subject (eventually this ties into the "not hanging with the group" issue, of course).
I was VERY interested to see one of the contestants utilizing the "prodigal effect" to gain points today; he faked that he was addicted to taking cold meds to sleep, and then gave them up to show how he'd "grown," knowing that the judges would be all excited about him doing this... and he was dead-on. It's sad to see how consistently people who screw up and then improve, or pretend to, get boosted in people's estimation, and to a higher level than the non-screwups are at.
They ended the show with a clever twist; they pretended that the contestants were going to get to vote someone out, but after the votes had been cast they took it back, and no one was eliminated, leaving the contestants, including the one most of them voted against, to have to sort themselves back out in an unexpected situation. Before this trick was played, it was 4 of them against the girl they thought most likely to win; now 3 of the 4 voted against the 4th one, and unless he's the world's biggest fool he's not going to trust them any more, so does that mean he'll pair up with the former outsider? You really need to NOT be a loner in this sort of situation, so he will if he's smart... but, if the other 3 are smart, they'll try to grab up the outsider before he can get to her, leaving him to swing in the wind and get psyched out.
It gets even better, potentially; if the 4th guy is REALLY smart, he's going to make sure the judges know how the sociopath of the group has been trying to trick the judges into booting the forerunner, and if the other 3 are smart, they're going to tell the judges about how he faked the addiction thing to score points.
The sad, deeper reality is that the 4th guy is going to be seen as a source of dissension now, and, although it is TOTALLY not his fault, as it will have been caused by the actions of others, the judges will understand that if you can't penalize the many, the expedient thing to do is to add insult to the injury of the 1 and punish that 1.
If the 4th guy can convince his former group that he saw that whole elimination as a big joke, and so get back in with them, that's his best hope for not being booted next, but that would be HARD to do, and it's not in THEIR best interests to take him back in any case, as if he's alone it paints a target on his head that gets him kicked out before any of them are.
You won't catch me watching any of the (un)reality shows where they eat rats on an island or let bugs crawl on them, but THIS show is proving to be fascinating. :-)
The judges have been videotaped dissing just ONE of their number, and it's happened more than once; not by coincidence, the victim has been the one who, because he sleeps during the day, spends by far the least time with them... my little lovebug, Don the vampire. In addition, the judge who, by virtue of being the hot babe, seems to be the most in charge, was actually LAUGHING throughout Don's blood-drinking ceremony, and several of the contestants pointed out (outside of her hearing) that she would have FLIPPED if anyone had laughed during HER ceremonies... and I bet she wouldn't have felt free to disrespect anyone else but Don.
All it takes to be seen as an outsider is to be just a little out of synch with the group; the subconscious mindset seems to be "You aren't totally doing everything our way, so you must be rejecting us on some level, so we'll feel free to reject YOU, behind your back at first, and then in your face, and we'll also feel free to be unfair and hypocritical." I've seen this sort of thing before, I've even LIVED it, as I'm unwilling to blindly follow a group against my own preferences, and it points up how very unlikely we are to tolerate differences in behavior within our groups.
There's another part to this, too; in any group, the members gossip about each other, and the more you're not around, the more you'll be the subject (eventually this ties into the "not hanging with the group" issue, of course).
I was VERY interested to see one of the contestants utilizing the "prodigal effect" to gain points today; he faked that he was addicted to taking cold meds to sleep, and then gave them up to show how he'd "grown," knowing that the judges would be all excited about him doing this... and he was dead-on. It's sad to see how consistently people who screw up and then improve, or pretend to, get boosted in people's estimation, and to a higher level than the non-screwups are at.
They ended the show with a clever twist; they pretended that the contestants were going to get to vote someone out, but after the votes had been cast they took it back, and no one was eliminated, leaving the contestants, including the one most of them voted against, to have to sort themselves back out in an unexpected situation. Before this trick was played, it was 4 of them against the girl they thought most likely to win; now 3 of the 4 voted against the 4th one, and unless he's the world's biggest fool he's not going to trust them any more, so does that mean he'll pair up with the former outsider? You really need to NOT be a loner in this sort of situation, so he will if he's smart... but, if the other 3 are smart, they'll try to grab up the outsider before he can get to her, leaving him to swing in the wind and get psyched out.
It gets even better, potentially; if the 4th guy is REALLY smart, he's going to make sure the judges know how the sociopath of the group has been trying to trick the judges into booting the forerunner, and if the other 3 are smart, they're going to tell the judges about how he faked the addiction thing to score points.
The sad, deeper reality is that the 4th guy is going to be seen as a source of dissension now, and, although it is TOTALLY not his fault, as it will have been caused by the actions of others, the judges will understand that if you can't penalize the many, the expedient thing to do is to add insult to the injury of the 1 and punish that 1.
If the 4th guy can convince his former group that he saw that whole elimination as a big joke, and so get back in with them, that's his best hope for not being booted next, but that would be HARD to do, and it's not in THEIR best interests to take him back in any case, as if he's alone it paints a target on his head that gets him kicked out before any of them are.
You won't catch me watching any of the (un)reality shows where they eat rats on an island or let bugs crawl on them, but THIS show is proving to be fascinating. :-)
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Are we blind to our own best interests?
As a culture, it sure looks like we are.
We want to live long, healthy lives, but 2/3 of us are overweight, which skyrockets our likelihood of countless ailments, and we are couch potatoes, which is even worse (and we won't even mention all the people who are still SMOKING).
We want to retire early and have enjoyable golden years, but how many people do you know who are saving ANYTHING for their retirement, much less saving enough to make for a comfortable old age?
We want to move ahead in our careers, but a scary % of workers can't be bothered to show up on time, dress appropriately, treat others, even their bosses and the customers, with courtesy, or get off of the internet long enough to get any work done... and how often do you see QUALITY work from anyone?
We want to find true love, but we persist in leaping into bed with anyone who glances at us twice, and then wasting weeks, months or YEARS finding out that we can not in fact have a lasting relationship with them.
We want to be treated with respect, but we walk around half-naked and/or looking like street people, and fill our conversations with trivial nonsense about celebs and that major oxymoron, pop culture.
We seem to be increasingly likely to bite the hand that's trying to feed us, too, which in a way is the worst of all because it's so personal and specific. I know someone who's letting a friend live with her to help her get her life back on track, and the friend makes messes all over the house, leaves the windows open with the heat running, leaves the DOOR open so that the dog runs out in the street and any vermin or crook could stroll right in, and on and on... despite the fact that she'd be living in a cardboard box if not for this friend, literally. Is there even a NAME for that level of stupidity, that degree of inability to act in one's own best interest?
A friend of MINE learned the first installment of a lesson on how to treat people who are doing her favors today; I have been helping her out with events that she organizes for a couple of years, and have in fact taken on a disproportionate % of the tasks, in return for which she handles the onerous drive to the site, picking me up along the way... or, at least she DID. I got a message ONE day before this month's event, in which she chirpily advised me that she now has an alternate way to get to the events that doesn't include me, so she won't be picking me up... and she looks forward to seeing me there. OH REALLY?!! I'm supposed to bite the bullet and get there by myself to help HER out, or am supposed to contact someone I barely know who's driving from my area and ask for them to pick me up and drop me off, every month forever? Needless to say, I did neither, and I hope she enjoyed doing all the work *I* usually do in addition to her own tasks, and maybe has started to re-evaluate the wisdom of bailing out on me at the last minute without having made ANY attempt at providing me with a convenient substitute way to get there AND HELP HER.
It shouldn't need to be said, but I guess it does; if someone is doing you favors, helping you out, sacrificing their time, $ and energy to benefit you, you need to repay that by, among other things, NOT causing them problems, stress or upset... they don't owe you, and they're totally justified in cutting you loose if you can't show even minimal gratitude.
As to all the other elements of not acting in one's own best interest; health, success, respect, love, and all the rest don't just materialize magically in your living room one day, you have to show some common sense and see the cause and effect between your actions and choices and what you end up with in your life... if you don't like how things are going, change the only thing you CAN change-YOU.
We want to live long, healthy lives, but 2/3 of us are overweight, which skyrockets our likelihood of countless ailments, and we are couch potatoes, which is even worse (and we won't even mention all the people who are still SMOKING).
We want to retire early and have enjoyable golden years, but how many people do you know who are saving ANYTHING for their retirement, much less saving enough to make for a comfortable old age?
We want to move ahead in our careers, but a scary % of workers can't be bothered to show up on time, dress appropriately, treat others, even their bosses and the customers, with courtesy, or get off of the internet long enough to get any work done... and how often do you see QUALITY work from anyone?
We want to find true love, but we persist in leaping into bed with anyone who glances at us twice, and then wasting weeks, months or YEARS finding out that we can not in fact have a lasting relationship with them.
We want to be treated with respect, but we walk around half-naked and/or looking like street people, and fill our conversations with trivial nonsense about celebs and that major oxymoron, pop culture.
We seem to be increasingly likely to bite the hand that's trying to feed us, too, which in a way is the worst of all because it's so personal and specific. I know someone who's letting a friend live with her to help her get her life back on track, and the friend makes messes all over the house, leaves the windows open with the heat running, leaves the DOOR open so that the dog runs out in the street and any vermin or crook could stroll right in, and on and on... despite the fact that she'd be living in a cardboard box if not for this friend, literally. Is there even a NAME for that level of stupidity, that degree of inability to act in one's own best interest?
A friend of MINE learned the first installment of a lesson on how to treat people who are doing her favors today; I have been helping her out with events that she organizes for a couple of years, and have in fact taken on a disproportionate % of the tasks, in return for which she handles the onerous drive to the site, picking me up along the way... or, at least she DID. I got a message ONE day before this month's event, in which she chirpily advised me that she now has an alternate way to get to the events that doesn't include me, so she won't be picking me up... and she looks forward to seeing me there. OH REALLY?!! I'm supposed to bite the bullet and get there by myself to help HER out, or am supposed to contact someone I barely know who's driving from my area and ask for them to pick me up and drop me off, every month forever? Needless to say, I did neither, and I hope she enjoyed doing all the work *I* usually do in addition to her own tasks, and maybe has started to re-evaluate the wisdom of bailing out on me at the last minute without having made ANY attempt at providing me with a convenient substitute way to get there AND HELP HER.
It shouldn't need to be said, but I guess it does; if someone is doing you favors, helping you out, sacrificing their time, $ and energy to benefit you, you need to repay that by, among other things, NOT causing them problems, stress or upset... they don't owe you, and they're totally justified in cutting you loose if you can't show even minimal gratitude.
As to all the other elements of not acting in one's own best interest; health, success, respect, love, and all the rest don't just materialize magically in your living room one day, you have to show some common sense and see the cause and effect between your actions and choices and what you end up with in your life... if you don't like how things are going, change the only thing you CAN change-YOU.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
"Queer Eye For the Straight Guy"
Because I love this show, a friend gave me an old Entertainment Weekly with them on the cover; I'd never seen it before, and it was cool to have it. I read the article, and then decided to tear off the cover and save it; after I got the cover off, I thought I should go back to the article and save IT too, while I was at it, and I asked myself what page it had been on... "62" came immediately to my mind, so I went to page 62... where I found a DIFFERENT article about Queer Eye!! The original story, when I looked it up, turned out to be on page 24-not even CLOSE.
I went back to the table of contents to see if the 2nd article was there and I'd just picked it up subconsciously... and it WASN'T-it was on the SECOND contents page, 2 pages after the only one I'd looked at. The 2nd article was many pages AFTER the one I saw first, so I couldn't have seen it subliminally as I turned to the 1st article. The page #'s aren't inverted versions of each other, eg 24 and 42, so there isn't even THAT as a possibility... I just KNEW the page of an article that I didn't even know existed. Coincidence? Nnnnnnnnnnnope.
As much as I love this show, I'm not surprised I had a psychic blip leading me to an article about it; there's something endlessly entrancing about guys who are so VERY gay. Bravo created the show, not for the gay audience, but for the female audience, which was pretty smart of them, as every woman I know is wild about gay men... which is sort of scary, because the men that women can actually HAVE are very different, and it's sort of twisted for women to like the sort of man that wants another man. It's gotta be some sort of extreme cosmic joke that when gay men finally came out, they turned out to be everything that women had always dreamed of in a man, except not interested in us.
Gay men are generally handsome, charming, witty, well-groomed and -dressed... and, something even more important that you never hear mentioned; openly sexual in their body language, as compared to straight men who usually have very UNprovocative body language. My guess is that THIS is what makes we women so nuts about them, in the same way that straight men instinctively love sexy female body language; after all, we're genetically programmed to look for NATURAL body language cues, and the repressed ones coming from straight men are very different from that, and so of course less attractive to women than the less retrained body language of gay men.
Amazing what thoughts an old magazine and a TV show can give you, isn't it? :-)
I went back to the table of contents to see if the 2nd article was there and I'd just picked it up subconsciously... and it WASN'T-it was on the SECOND contents page, 2 pages after the only one I'd looked at. The 2nd article was many pages AFTER the one I saw first, so I couldn't have seen it subliminally as I turned to the 1st article. The page #'s aren't inverted versions of each other, eg 24 and 42, so there isn't even THAT as a possibility... I just KNEW the page of an article that I didn't even know existed. Coincidence? Nnnnnnnnnnnope.
As much as I love this show, I'm not surprised I had a psychic blip leading me to an article about it; there's something endlessly entrancing about guys who are so VERY gay. Bravo created the show, not for the gay audience, but for the female audience, which was pretty smart of them, as every woman I know is wild about gay men... which is sort of scary, because the men that women can actually HAVE are very different, and it's sort of twisted for women to like the sort of man that wants another man. It's gotta be some sort of extreme cosmic joke that when gay men finally came out, they turned out to be everything that women had always dreamed of in a man, except not interested in us.
Gay men are generally handsome, charming, witty, well-groomed and -dressed... and, something even more important that you never hear mentioned; openly sexual in their body language, as compared to straight men who usually have very UNprovocative body language. My guess is that THIS is what makes we women so nuts about them, in the same way that straight men instinctively love sexy female body language; after all, we're genetically programmed to look for NATURAL body language cues, and the repressed ones coming from straight men are very different from that, and so of course less attractive to women than the less retrained body language of gay men.
Amazing what thoughts an old magazine and a TV show can give you, isn't it? :-)
Monday, April 05, 2004
Brilliant perceptions from Dean Koontz
I think that virtually any successful author has a solid, if sometimes unconscious, grasp of human nature, which (s)he uses both to make characters believable and to manipulate the emotions of the reader; because this sort of thing fascinates me, the authors I love best are masters at these things. Here's a dazzling passage from Koontz's "Odd Thomas":
"It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician-but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility."
So true, so true; people ARE gullible, and DO want to believe, whether it's in magic, or that their lover is exactly as they think (s)he is, or that their friend isn't so much smarter than them as to make them seem stupid by comparison, and they'll eagerly follow along with whatever illusion is presented to them, because it makes them feel better... but, when the bubble bursts, they round on the other person, who in most cases just acted the way normal people do to keep a new lover interested, or to protect their feelings, and attacks them as if they were evil incarnate, as opposed to normal, caring people.
Each of us is fooled countless times each day by others; studies show that we all lie pretty much non-stop, even when we think we're being honest, so it's unavoidable to be lied to (although mostly about trivial things, granted). If we "catch" someone out in fooling us, though, we react with rage, not because of whatever minor untruth was involved, but because "you lied to me"... in other words, "you tricked me successfully, and now, although you're far from the only one, you will bear the full brunt of my anger."
Our idols get all this times 100; the beloved athlete becomes hated if he loses one game, or, more specifically, makes one bad play near the end of the game such that he gets BLAMED for the entire loss... as if he'd only TRICKED us into believing in him and his abilities, and so deserves our contempt. Think how many other examples there are in politics and entertainment of people that our culture first idolized and then turned on... think of the model Linda Evangelista, who made one thoughtless, off the cuff comment 20 years ago about how she and the other supermodels didn't even get out of bed for less than $10k a day, and this one crack in the illusion of models as almost magical, ethereal creatures got her excoriated then and for 2 decades afterwards. Now, if Bill Gates had said the same thing, no one would have blinked, because there's no aura around him the way there is around non-business celebrities, and we EXPECT him to be a bottom-liner and plain talker; those whose star-quality we willingly buy into had better not say anything to shatter the illusion, though.
Also from Koontz, on the same page, even:
"Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread."
This is true of people in reference to small issues in addition to large ones; have you ever treated someone with the most extreme compassion and kindness imaginable, for weeks, months, even YEARS, only to have one preoccupied day, one grouchy, stressed or unhappy day, and all of a sudden they no longer believe in you, and who you are as a person, and how you feel about them, as if they were just WAITING for the moment of "imperfection" so that they could see it as "proof" that you're other than they saw you as, other than you ARE? Have you had such a person go ever farther, and misinterpret some innocent thing to be such a proof, or listen to the poisonous words of some jealous person with an agenda and use THAT as "proof" and reason to turn on you?
And, of course, in the grander sense, people DO look at one instance where something that seemed astonishing really wasn't as reason to disbelieve in the many previous events that WERE astonishing, and demonstrative of the wonder that exists all around us.
If you can look back and see instances where you've built someone up in your mind and then gotten rabid when they showed a "flaw," or evidence of whitewashing the truth or behaving "nicer than their nature" as every human being does, take a moment to promise yourself not to do that again; it's not reasonable or fair, and leads to truly amazing people being driven from your life by your over-reaction.
If you find yourself denying the wondrous elements of universe(s) around us because you saw a fake psychic or whatever, reconsider; just because some people fake being models or millionaires in order to score doesn't mean that models and millionaires don't exist, right? The omniverse IS filled with countless things that no one can explain, and you don't gain points by brushing them all off as government conspiracies or elaborate hoaxes; keep your mind open, and you'll be surprised at how much truth falls into it.
"It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician-but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility."
So true, so true; people ARE gullible, and DO want to believe, whether it's in magic, or that their lover is exactly as they think (s)he is, or that their friend isn't so much smarter than them as to make them seem stupid by comparison, and they'll eagerly follow along with whatever illusion is presented to them, because it makes them feel better... but, when the bubble bursts, they round on the other person, who in most cases just acted the way normal people do to keep a new lover interested, or to protect their feelings, and attacks them as if they were evil incarnate, as opposed to normal, caring people.
Each of us is fooled countless times each day by others; studies show that we all lie pretty much non-stop, even when we think we're being honest, so it's unavoidable to be lied to (although mostly about trivial things, granted). If we "catch" someone out in fooling us, though, we react with rage, not because of whatever minor untruth was involved, but because "you lied to me"... in other words, "you tricked me successfully, and now, although you're far from the only one, you will bear the full brunt of my anger."
Our idols get all this times 100; the beloved athlete becomes hated if he loses one game, or, more specifically, makes one bad play near the end of the game such that he gets BLAMED for the entire loss... as if he'd only TRICKED us into believing in him and his abilities, and so deserves our contempt. Think how many other examples there are in politics and entertainment of people that our culture first idolized and then turned on... think of the model Linda Evangelista, who made one thoughtless, off the cuff comment 20 years ago about how she and the other supermodels didn't even get out of bed for less than $10k a day, and this one crack in the illusion of models as almost magical, ethereal creatures got her excoriated then and for 2 decades afterwards. Now, if Bill Gates had said the same thing, no one would have blinked, because there's no aura around him the way there is around non-business celebrities, and we EXPECT him to be a bottom-liner and plain talker; those whose star-quality we willingly buy into had better not say anything to shatter the illusion, though.
Also from Koontz, on the same page, even:
"Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard's thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread."
This is true of people in reference to small issues in addition to large ones; have you ever treated someone with the most extreme compassion and kindness imaginable, for weeks, months, even YEARS, only to have one preoccupied day, one grouchy, stressed or unhappy day, and all of a sudden they no longer believe in you, and who you are as a person, and how you feel about them, as if they were just WAITING for the moment of "imperfection" so that they could see it as "proof" that you're other than they saw you as, other than you ARE? Have you had such a person go ever farther, and misinterpret some innocent thing to be such a proof, or listen to the poisonous words of some jealous person with an agenda and use THAT as "proof" and reason to turn on you?
And, of course, in the grander sense, people DO look at one instance where something that seemed astonishing really wasn't as reason to disbelieve in the many previous events that WERE astonishing, and demonstrative of the wonder that exists all around us.
If you can look back and see instances where you've built someone up in your mind and then gotten rabid when they showed a "flaw," or evidence of whitewashing the truth or behaving "nicer than their nature" as every human being does, take a moment to promise yourself not to do that again; it's not reasonable or fair, and leads to truly amazing people being driven from your life by your over-reaction.
If you find yourself denying the wondrous elements of universe(s) around us because you saw a fake psychic or whatever, reconsider; just because some people fake being models or millionaires in order to score doesn't mean that models and millionaires don't exist, right? The omniverse IS filled with countless things that no one can explain, and you don't gain points by brushing them all off as government conspiracies or elaborate hoaxes; keep your mind open, and you'll be surprised at how much truth falls into it.
What scares you?
Horror movies are designed to showcase what our culture is afraid of at a given time; when nuclear power was new and scary, we got the "bug movies," when young people started being overtly sexual, we got endless movies in which the kids who had sex died (such as the "Friday the 13th" and the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series), and when technology escalated faster than many of us were comfortable with, we got movies like "Fear.com" and "The Ring"... but those are movies targeted to the general audience; what scares YOU? I don't mean things like getting cancer, losing a loved one, or terrorism, which we ALL fear, but what are the elements of the horror genre that really get to you?
It came to me as I was settling into a recent Dean Koontz novel that, although I enjoy ALL the books by him and Stephen King, some "horror concepts" are just entertaining, while some are truly hair-raising, and I rather foolishly started contemplating this at 3AM, with the house making noises of course. It occurred to me that the things that are "personally scary" can say as much about a person as the most common categories of horror movies say about our culture, so I contemplated the things that really scare me.
Things like vampires and zombies do NOT scare me, as they are fictional beings (sorry, Don), but the better-done ghost movies DO scare me a little, because I know that ghosts/spirits ARE real, and because I've had poltergeist problems and know that they CAN interact with the physical world to some extent. A house where murder has been done, as in The Amityville Horror, is something you couldn't get me into even at gunpoint, as what the spirit of a sick, evil person might do given the chance is NOT something I'd want to be present for. It's this same concept that makes the movie, and especially the book, of "The Shining" so terrifying; that hideous evil had been done over and over in the same place, and that all of it was just there WAITING for minds sensitive enough to be affected to show up... brrrrrrrrrrr
One sort of creature has given me the creeps to such an extent that I haven't felt able to do any research about it; the "supernatural" beings portrayed in "The Mothman Prophecies." This movie is based on actual reports from a bunch of hard-headed farmerfolk, reports of... something. Something they couldn't explain, something with powers beyond explanation, something with, at the very least, a desire to stir us up like a little boy with a stick at a hill of ants, just to see us run around in confusion and fear. My reaction to this movie tells me that I have a deep unconscious belief that we are NOT the only intelligent beings in the omniverse, and certainly not the most powerful... or the only ones capable of evil.
The absolute scariest, though, are those stories where one's very surroundings become surreal, such as in "The Shining" when the Overlook became a sort of time warp where all the "evil times" existed simultaneously, and in the heart-stopping short story "1408," also by King, which is about a hotel room where everything is just slightly off, then less slightly, then less slightly, freaked me out so much that I could barely get through it. It didn't occur to me until I read about a room in Koontz's "Odd Thomas" that became some sort of portal from which evil emerged, and got the creeps, that I made the connection... these stories cut close to the bone with me, and remind me of some of my endless nightmares, where everything around me becomes unknown and malignant, where I'm alone and in danger with nowhere to hide... and that feeling, which is clearly tied to my typically high anxiety level, is the source of many of my deepest fears. It's amazing what you can discover about yourself by analyzing something as "trivial" as these books and movies that no one takes seriously.
Think back to all the horror movies and scary stories that ever raised goosebumps on you, and ask yourself... what scares YOU?
It came to me as I was settling into a recent Dean Koontz novel that, although I enjoy ALL the books by him and Stephen King, some "horror concepts" are just entertaining, while some are truly hair-raising, and I rather foolishly started contemplating this at 3AM, with the house making noises of course. It occurred to me that the things that are "personally scary" can say as much about a person as the most common categories of horror movies say about our culture, so I contemplated the things that really scare me.
Things like vampires and zombies do NOT scare me, as they are fictional beings (sorry, Don), but the better-done ghost movies DO scare me a little, because I know that ghosts/spirits ARE real, and because I've had poltergeist problems and know that they CAN interact with the physical world to some extent. A house where murder has been done, as in The Amityville Horror, is something you couldn't get me into even at gunpoint, as what the spirit of a sick, evil person might do given the chance is NOT something I'd want to be present for. It's this same concept that makes the movie, and especially the book, of "The Shining" so terrifying; that hideous evil had been done over and over in the same place, and that all of it was just there WAITING for minds sensitive enough to be affected to show up... brrrrrrrrrrr
One sort of creature has given me the creeps to such an extent that I haven't felt able to do any research about it; the "supernatural" beings portrayed in "The Mothman Prophecies." This movie is based on actual reports from a bunch of hard-headed farmerfolk, reports of... something. Something they couldn't explain, something with powers beyond explanation, something with, at the very least, a desire to stir us up like a little boy with a stick at a hill of ants, just to see us run around in confusion and fear. My reaction to this movie tells me that I have a deep unconscious belief that we are NOT the only intelligent beings in the omniverse, and certainly not the most powerful... or the only ones capable of evil.
The absolute scariest, though, are those stories where one's very surroundings become surreal, such as in "The Shining" when the Overlook became a sort of time warp where all the "evil times" existed simultaneously, and in the heart-stopping short story "1408," also by King, which is about a hotel room where everything is just slightly off, then less slightly, then less slightly, freaked me out so much that I could barely get through it. It didn't occur to me until I read about a room in Koontz's "Odd Thomas" that became some sort of portal from which evil emerged, and got the creeps, that I made the connection... these stories cut close to the bone with me, and remind me of some of my endless nightmares, where everything around me becomes unknown and malignant, where I'm alone and in danger with nowhere to hide... and that feeling, which is clearly tied to my typically high anxiety level, is the source of many of my deepest fears. It's amazing what you can discover about yourself by analyzing something as "trivial" as these books and movies that no one takes seriously.
Think back to all the horror movies and scary stories that ever raised goosebumps on you, and ask yourself... what scares YOU?
