A little something about “The Last Emperor”

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Seeing as how American and Chinese relations are, at this point in time, competitive, to say the least, I found “The Last Emperor” very interesting. It was such a sweeping grand narrative across, supposedly, the entire life of a single human being, albeit, an exceptional one. At the time of its release, it completely dominated the academy awards, as some films did once upon a time, and may still do now though I don’t watch the oscars regularly anymore nor do I follow new movies very closely. What is it about “The Last Emperor” that so enraptures the imagination? I think, to answer my own question, it is several things: 1) history, plain and simple. History has the capacity to fascinate us all in one way or another, though it can also be very boring paradoxically. And Chinese history in particular seems so rife with titillation for a Western Audience. 2) Ruling is something that the average individual dreams about perhaps more than anything else and this IS the story of a ruler. 3) The 20th century was fraught with upheaval on all fronts and this movie makes the most of China’s inwardly-focused upheavals. While America was scattered across the entire world for various militaristic and economic reasons throughout most of the 20th century, China was seemingly, again, inwardly-focused going through massive changes and power structure overhauls.

While the west was running around the globe, China was parked behind its national borders seething with tumult and chaos.

Somehow, this movie scrutinizes that inward-facing vision through an outward-facing lens, and does it well.

To be honest, I’m not really a history buff. I’m sure if someone examined my above assessment of China’s and America’s roles in the 20th century, they could poke it full of holes if they felt so inclined. But I do know that while I may not have my facts straight, I have the general idea right: the idea being that China’s political structure went through some massive changes in the 20th century while America’s political system was, by comparison, very calm and stable.

So presumably, if somehow the Chinese could make a movie about America’s 20th century global exploits using some kind of communal subject instead of a single individual,, who knows, maybe they could produce something similar. The story of America’s 20th century global hijinks as told using a certain cohesive group of people as a subject, I like that.

New Horizons

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

I love traveling. I’m sure that sounds like a cliche but it’s true. I feel my most free when I am on my way somewhere new or even somewhere old. The exhilaration of movement is perhaps my favorite sensation in the world. A lot of people espouse this idea as I understand it: the idea that traveling is all they really want to do, if only they could quit their jobs and just travel the world. Makes sense I guess. It’s like the holy grail of human life if you ask me: finding a way to just keep moving on and on and on through the world never really having to worry about money and jobs and attachments and all the rest of it. I mean, isn’t that what some of the most popular social media sites are all about? Traveling around and taking pictures of oneself in exotic places, having new experiences everyday, just seeing new and interesting things forever? Well, who knows what the hell social media is really all about. I certainly don’t, and I’m not sure I really care anyway. All I know is, life usually doesn’t seem so bad when I’m going somewhere that isn’t home. I mean, travel has its hassles for sure, especially now with updated “security” measures all over the place, but still, for the most part, the pleasure of the journey is worth the BS.

I’m planning a trip with my father to the American Southwest that’s scheduled for about 3 months from now. I’m really looking forward to it but I hope I’m not setting myself up for a letdown.

I’ve taken a bunch of trips in the last 5 years or so and a lot of them have most certainly had their share of hassles but… they were all international. This is the first domestic trip I’ve taken in quite a while. That means… no language barrier, no customs, no sense of being a foreigner in the true sense of the word (although you are always a foreigner to some extent when you travel outside your customary circles), no currency exchange, and I won’t have to limit my cell phone usage to when I’m near a WiFi signal (maybe being able to use my cell-phone more often isn’t such a good thing but whatever).

The last international trip I took, I went to Belize and man, that did not go well. I won’t go into the details but I had to completely rearrange my plans halfway through it and the people with whom I originally set up the trip kicked me out of their group for no good reason. But I did do something cool while I was there, I took a bus from one end of the country to the other and I had a great time. It was insanely cheap and I was the only white guy on this old beat up school bus traveling down these dirt roads with lots of sunshine and palm trees and reggae music blasting over the stereo most of the way. I felt very self-sufficient and like a really accomplished traveler. You can bet your average American tourist has never traveled anywhere in a foreign country like the way I did on that trip. I mean, who knows, maybe they have but the point is not whether or not other people have done what I did but the way I felt doing it and the fact that it made me feel competent and accomplished at the time.

This trip, no more school buses. I’m going to be traveling in style. I’ve decided to rent a Jeep from a company called Turo, which I heard about through Doug DeMuro’s Youtube channel. I really, really wanted to get a convertible for this trip and all the traditional car rental agencies didn’t have one. Turo’s rates seemed ok and they were the only car rental company (traditional or otherwise) that offered an option for a convertible vehicle. We are going to be driving a long way too. We’re going through a lot of desert and mountains and a convertible just seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. All route 66, roadside diners, Americana, and the open road with my head out the window and shit. Or something like that. That’s how I pictured it anyway, we’ll see how reality aligns with my expectations when I get there.

My own and my Dad’s interests seem to get more and more similar as we age in parallel. I don’t think I could have planned or executed this trip with him in my 20’s or 30’s. But now that I’m 40ish and he’s 80ish, I just feel like he and I have both relaxed our… our… well, I don’t know what exactly. Maybe I’m just rationalizing spending a lot of his money to take a trip for myself and bringing him with me. I mean, it was my idea and honestly, some of my ideas really don’t work out that well but he and I have both agreed that this is definitely something we want to do. I am optimistic about it.

Furthermore, the other trips I’ve taken in recent years have been planned exclusively by me. I’ve asked for advice here and there from this or that person but basically I did all the planning and I had the final say on everything I did. This time, we (my father and I) have really put our heads together and planned it jointly, sharing the responsibility of deciding where we go and where we don’t. I had the opportunity to put in my two cents as often as I liked but I don’t think I could have talked him into doing something he didn’t want to do. The trip (and the planning of it) feels moderately egalitarian and I like that about it. We came up with a bunch of really fun and interesting places to stay along the way although the places we stayed were mostly (again) my ideas. However, he did make one suggestion for a place to stay called “The Firetree Inn” which is on the Utah/Arizona border in the middle of the desert. It looks really cool to me. Here is the link to their website if you want to check it out: https://www.firetreeinn.com. I have no idea how the hell he found this place by the way. He said he did some kind of search for it but I don’t think I would have found it. Anyway….

A long time ago, when I was in Mexico with some friends from California helping to build an orphanage on the outskirts of Tijuana, I participated in something called a “sweat lodge” ritual. Basically, the sweat lodge is where you enter a small hut in which are placed several extremely hot stones upon which are poured buckets and buckets of water until the temperature in the hut gets very, very warm. There is chanting and you stay inside until you can’t take anymore. Then you emerge and you feel cleansed. You take a cold shower and your pores feel sparkly clean afterwards. It’s great. If you have the means to partake, I highly recommend it.

This hotel my father found reminds me a lot of the sweat lodge thing I did oh so long ago. And for that reason (among many others), I’m looking forward to it.

There are many other things about this trip I’m looking forward to although predominantly it is the traveling itself for which I can’t wait. Again, looking at this sentence, it does seem kind of cliche to me, talking about traveling on my blog but who cares, I’m pumped. I’ve never been to the Southwest before but I’ve heard a lot about it and seen plenty of pictures. I always think of it as kind of quintessentially American. You know, cowboy hats, sunsets, drive-ins, big open spaces, etc. I mean, the Southeast and Northeast have plenty of charm too but I still think of the Southwest as very characteristically and stereotypically American. I imagine that when outsiders think of what America is like having never been here themselves, they picture a landscape like the one in the Southwest. That’s all for now.

Life after 40

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

When I was a kid, I never thought much about what my life would be like when I got older. I was just too busy being miserable, being happy, playing sports, doing schoolwork, crushing on this or that girl, jumping on the trampoline in our backyard beneath the old oak tree, mowing the lawn, playing tennis, getting my license, etc etc. I don’t know exactly what I did with my time when I was younger but I didn’t waste it worrying about the future, I’m pretty sure about that.

So what really happens after you turn 40 years old? Well, obviously anybody past the age of 40 knows the answer to that question but everybody’s different am I right? I guess what I mean by that is: life after 40 for you won’t be the same as life after 40 for me. Maybe that’s obvious too but I think it deserves to be pointed out.

In some ways, the media would have you believe that, for all intents and purposes, you’re pretty much dead after you turn 40. There are so few representations of anybody outside of their teens, 20’s, and 30’s in mainstream media. It’s almost like the whole world forgets you exist once you no longer fall into one of those age brackets. You’re dead exactly, just nobody really pays much attention to you anymore. Maybe they never did in the first place even when you were younger but it’s like passing 40, they’re less concerned with you than ever. Does this sound depressing? I don’t mean it to. I’m just trying to draw attention to the idea that, past a certain age, well, it’s kind of up to you to decide what’s true and what isn’t. And by that, I just mean, there are fewer signposts and role models and images telling you who you ought to be, what you ought to look like, how you ought to behave, so on and so forth. The makers of those things tend to focus on a younger crowd.

So… is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it liberating? Confusing? Sad? Do you have to unlearn all the crap they crammed down your throat when you were younger about what’s important in life?

Many people say that as middle age wears on, happiness increases. At least, a great deal of research supports that assertion as far as I know. And I think it’s very much because the media doesn’t make such a fuss about people past 40.

I turned 40 a little over a year ago and I feel like I’m still waiting for that whole “happiness” thing to happen. Maybe I’m just being impatient and I need to give it another year or so.

There’s a quote from a movie called “Waking Life” (one of my absolute favorites) in which a character utters the cryptic soundbyte: “…the systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.” Basically, he’s talking about feeling disillusioned with the world and how he and his compatriots ought to slough off the ideas and ambitions foisted upon them by their elders in an effort to… i dunno, be more authentic. A defining characteristic of this character and the group he finds himself in, however, is his (their) age. They’re clearly headstrong, idealistic young men. Kinda doesn’t sound like something an older man might say but who knows? After losing a bunch of worldly things like a house, a job, a wife, maybe someone older might redefine (or at least try to) what happiness is all about.

I’ll certainly say the pace has slowed significantly. It’s not quite as go, go, go anymore. Maybe it will be again one day but right now, it’s definitely not like that. I often feel listless and unsure about the choices I’ve made that have led me to where I am now. Like, what would life be like if I had done X instead of Y? But it’s sort of pointless to think about those things. Wasted mental energy or something.

Anyway, I’ve got some things coming up this year I’m really looking forward to and it’s never over till it’s over as they say. Who knows what life as an old geezer has in store for me… 😉

Getting off unemployment insurance

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx
Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?
View all responses

I’m unemployed right now and receiving unemployment insurance but it won’t last forever and the longer you’re on it, the less money you get. I really need a job or at least something to work towards. Finding that will be my biggest challenge I’m pretty sure. But it seems like it raises so many questions too: like, if I get a job, am I willing to relocate for it? And if I am, where would I go? How would I get there? Basically, earning income of some kind is the challenge. Hopefully, once something starts moving in that direction, the rest will fall into place.

Donald Duck: a glimpse into the life of an average Joe

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

When I was little, my father brought me many a Donald Duck comic book. I now own hundreds of them from all the comics he brought home to me as well as from my subscriptions. I have been rereading them of late and I find that they are as funny, poignant, and enjoyable now that I’m in my 40’s as they were when I was a preteen.

I think that a lot of my peers were reading superhero comics while I was reading Disney comics. Judging from my memory of their doodles in class anyway. Donald duck is a really wonderful creation, especially the way he appears in a lot of the comics from the 40’s and 50’s. This was when he was being drawn by a man named Carl Barks who created many characters within the Donald Duck universe in addition to drawing Donald himself.

Donald is a wonderful character for many reasons, not the least of which being his tendency to get in over his head very quickly with tricky situations and ornery people and then refuse to back down even when things seem hopeless. In a way, his obstinacy is purely selfish: he wants to win at any cost. But in another way, his easily provoked fury is his most endearing quality, at least from a reader’s point of view. When he gets well and truly mad, and goes berserk, his antics are some of the most entertaining things in the whole world.

But it’s not only that that makes his obstinacy endearing. As we, the readers, get caught up alongside whatever mission he happens to be on, naturally we identify with his plight or struggle and want him to persist. And his unfailing gumption when faced with adversity is what delights readers the most.

Of course, he doesn’t always win and he doesn’t always get so riled up that he goes berserk. As often as not, he becomes a whimpering, trembling puddle of feathers when faced with a problem and it is only through the violent, forceful coaxing of his nephews or other friends and relatives that he makes any attempt to bear up and take action at all.

Barring the above two scenarios, there is another side of Donald, which I would argue is reflective of his darker, more sinister nature. Occasionally, when a problem presents itself, Donald makes up his mind to cheat (or at least do something very unethical) with little to no compunction. Usually, when this side of Donald presents itself, his face (or at least the way Barks draws it), takes on a devilish appearance with a maniacal grin and sometimes he even sprouts little horns on his head. This side of Donald is usually short-lived however and either his evil, cheating plans fail and he is exposed for his crimes (instantly wiping away his devilish glee) or his conscience gets the better of him and he spends the rest of whatever story he is involved in trying to undo his mischief.

But what is it exactly that made (or makes) Donald Duck so irresistibly appealing and FUN? Although its possible I truly missed out on the superhero genre of comic book while devoting my childhood comic-book reading activities solely to Donald and Disney (for the most part), I regret nothing. Especially now, at the dawn of my middle age. To picture Donald’s face when he is engaged in an argument, or when he has caught one of his nephews in a lie, or when he is escaping a foe (having found himself in some dangerous entanglement), is to bring to mind all the wonderful things about being human, all those things one would want to do if the real world would just stop telling us we can’t. Donald, although a duck, is so very human himself in his frailties, his foibles, his desires, his impetuousness, his firey temper, his fear of danger, and his overconfidence in his abilities to do things with which he has no experience.

To my mind, Donald Duck very much embodies middle-class American values and qualities. I think that is one reason I began to revisit him, because all things middle-class are becoming so hard to find these days. That, and also just because they brought back some happy memories from childhood, memories of a simpler, less… interconnected time. But he’s not only “middle-class,” he’s also very ordinary and it’s this ordinariness that obviously sets him apart from the super-hero genre of comics but also makes all his adventures that much more fun to read about because it makes it that much easier to imagine ourselves (us poor run-of-the-mill average Joe’s reading comics) in his shoes, partaking in his extraordinary exploits.

To me, Donald Duck is a very comforting presence. Specifically, as he is drawn by Carl Barks. It’s probably because I grew up with him and I have powerful associations of comfort and safety and love surrounding these comics but I can only imagine that if I had never read these comics as a child and were just discovering them for the first time today, I would still feel the same way about them. I’ll never know. Donald, and the entire universe he inhabits, Duckburg and the world beyond it, is a familiar comfortable place for me. I’m deeply fond of it and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I’m sure most people don’t feel quite as strongly as I do about these things but who knows, maybe they do.

These comics were very much a product of bygone days: days when paper and ink were the only way of making a comic. Nowadays, seeing as everything is online and all of an artists’ tools are available in paid applications and whatnot, the level of craftsmanship, of depth of feeling, of understanding of human temperament are gone. Donald was very much a product of his age and that age certainly seems to be over as far as I can tell. But I’m deeply grateful I have copies of these wonderful creations and that I was able to revisit them the way I was.

Donald Duck, as drawn by Carl Barks, was and is a force to be reckoned with, a joy to behold, and a dyed-in-the-wool American artform in and of himself, if only you care to seek him out.

Bicycles

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

A little over a year and a half ago, I was involved in a serious bike accident. I was hit by a drunk driver after making a questionable move at an intersection and my left ear almost got torn off my head. It didn’t actually but I did have to have a lot of stitches. It left a very clear scar on my head and a not-so-clear scar in my head. Added to this, the accident occurred at the height of the “health crisis” (I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) and because of this, the hospital I was taken to immediately afterward was a very strange place indeed to spend any amount of time in. Also, my family refused to visit me after the accident, claiming that they were taking “recommended precautions” as per various government agencies. I was in the employ of the government at the time of the accident but left government service shortly thereafter on a rather unresolved note. I do not feel that I have received very much care or support (physical or emotional) in terms of recovering from it (the accident). The doors to support of any kind seem to me to be barred somehow and I can’t understand why. I don’t wish to dwell too heavily on this but since I am in the process of creating a new bike and will be, presumably, getting back onto the road fairly soon, I wanted to address it, for my own peace of mind if for nothing else.

The option to sue is open to me now and has been since the accident occurred. I have not exercised this option yet. I believe it is open to me for another year and some change so I have some time still to decide if I want to do it. I’ve sued people before and didn’t have a very good time of it which is one of the main reasons I’m not sure I want to do it again. I did make an attempt with one lawyer but he refused to take the case so I’m not sure where that leaves me. There are plenty of other lawyers out there but so far I haven’t wanted to enlist the help of another lawyer as my recourse.

The health crisis has ebbed in intensity since the time of my accident but it has certainly not disappeared altogether, far from it. It seems that it is basically here to stay albeit in the background. But that is neither here not there.

I AM in the process of making a new bike (as I said) which is vastly superior to the last bike I owned. I have given it better components, and the frame itself is of higher quality than my old early 2000’s Cannondale (which is the bike I was riding at the time of the accident). My new bike is made of Titanium and it is actually older than the Cannondale I believe, but it is in great shape and I think age has less of an effect on a metal like titanium than on say, aluminum. My new bike is almost ready to ride and I swear, I have never looked forward to anything as much as I’m looking forward to riding this new bike. I have put A LOT of effort AND money into it and I’ve done basically everything myself insofar as it has been within my power to do. I didn’t very well smelt and weld the frame myself nor did I assemble each and every moving part but I located components that were compatible with the kind of frame I have and made sure that everything fit properly and paid for it all myself. My father gave me the money for the frame as a birthday present but I paid for everything else. And, as I said, I put everything together including the wheels. I’m very proud of it and it is kind of the only thing I care about, really, at this point in my life. I mean, I love my folks but we live a ways away from each other and we don’t see each other much these days.

It will be finished by the beginning of June, I’m sure of it. I bought it in the beginning of January so I guess I’ve been working on it for about 4 months but it feels like a lot longer than that. Here is a picture of it with a new fork, headset, crank, rear derailleur, and front derailleur attached:

It is much more complete than this by now but I wanted to give you an idea of what the frame looked like on its own.

All I know is that I can’t wait to ride it. I have truly poured myself into it and I dearly hope that it performs up to my expectations which I do not doubt that it will. My plan is to ride it in a 100 mile “ride” (not a race…) that happens in Boston annually sponsored by Bikes not Bombs. I rode in this last year and had a good time. That’s all for now.

A Day in the life

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Waking up this morning was a pleasant experience. I had a profound experience of serenity and calm. Lying in bed, I felt warm, cozy, and relaxed. I attribute the sense of relaxation to having played football with some old friends the other day and my muscles, having been worked, used, and pushed a bit, were pleasantly sore. Eventually, I tumbled out of bed, ate some breakfast, took a call from my office in New York about a new survey I’ve only recently begun to work on, and then proceeded to leave the house and drive to a local bookstore in my neighborhood to buy my mother a Christmas present, she having requested a nonfiction book of any kind which met my approval. The bookstore, having missed the economic tidal wave which shuttered the doors of so many print bookstores all across the country was a quaint little place, seemingly trapped somewhere in the 20th century. I looked around for a while before I settled on a science book about an experiment to commit several sane people to mental institutions in different parts of the country (which looked UTTERLY FASCINATING) and also an architecture book for my Pop. Satisfied with my purchase, and the fact I somehow caught an error made by the cashier which would have overcharged me a few bucks, I headed out along Route 95 towards Stop & Shop, in search of groceries. The highway was packed as it always is (I despise this particular stretch of highway, it seems dangerous and unwieldy to me) and I noticed one car pull over with smoke coming from its engine. Eventually I reached my exit and was about to turn into the Stop & Shop parking lot when a lady in an SUV pulled out right in front of me, stopped and started a few times, aggressively pulled out further into traffic, shouted something at me I didn’t catch, and then roared off. I pulled into the parking lot, feeling miffed and rolled down my window to smoke a cigarette and try not to let this woman’s road rage and general hostility rub off on me. As I was sitting in a parking space, a bee flew into my car. I am allergic to bees, last time I checked. It flew around for about a minute or two before buzzing menacingly close to my face and then finally flying out the window. I decided against going to Stop & Shop getting some bad vibes about continuing any further with this decision and headed to whole foods. Whole foods certainly seemed like the better choice: it wasn’t as chaotic and I got a few things I needed. The cashier was accommodating as well when I told her I was looking for an additional item. She also recommended a yoga pose for me when I told her I had trouble getting food down. I took my groceries and books and headed back home.

Then, just now, a therapy group I’ve been going to and had bad experiences with called me and informed me I’d missed an appointment and there was going to be a no-show fee of $50 and that I’d be unable to attend any more appointments until I’d paid. I suppose this is just protocol but I don’t think I’ll be going back to this place. The insurance people are a pain in the ass to work with and the staff: psychiatrists and therapists alike seem somewhat out of touch. It’s a shame. I did want to get back into therapy but it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle: the dealings with bureaucracy and people who are just unfamiliar with my medical history and have to collect it all from scratch.

How could a day which began so peacefully and happily go so far afield so quickly? I am utterly mystified by life’s vagaries and vicissitudes. It just makes me want to stay in bed for the rest of my life…

A Postscript to this post: this was written yesterday even though it reads in the here in now. Just FYI.

2020: inches away…

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Winter is rearing its ugly frostbitten head… The weather is getting colder, the fall leaves are almost all gone, and the chill isn’t just in the air. Now is definitely the proverbial winter of our discontent here in good ole America, whatever that means. I can feel it in the occasional ugly stare, the aggression on the freeway, and in my heart. Winter, winter, winter… It’s the deepest, darkest part of the year, when the human animal needs its most resourceful self to be fully present or all may be lost. At least, that’s how it used to be. Who the hell knows now?

Our technology has come so far and yet so many of us live in the dark ages, in a technologically defunct world, where nothing works the way its supposed to. And isn’t that what technology is all about, making things work better, more efficiently, more quickly, for all those in its possession? But it is certainly true that the best technology on earth is only as good as its user. A tennis racket in the hands of Roger Federer isn’t the same thing as a tennis racket in the hands of Bill Nye, if you take my meaning. But it seems as though some of our best technologies are being handled solely by those rich enough to afford them, who know next to nothing about them in actuality.

The idea of a technocracy solves this problem in my opinion: I wrote a detailed essay about this idea in Grad School many moons ago. Essentially, technocracy is the idea of rule by professionals, by experts, government by experts, rather than elected leaders. Throughout history, this has been tried several times by various countries. It seems, apparently, that it is best served in small doses and for very limited periods of time. They say it can work, that it can fix a host of formidable problems but that it isn’t designed to be a lasting solution but more of a temporary fix. Like a spare tire on a car perhaps.

It almost seems like cheating in a way doesn’t it? Like if you’re having trouble writing an English paper or doing a problem set or a lab or something like that, you go and find a professional author or a mathematician or a professional scientist or something and you say something like: OK, you take over here, this isn’t my area of expertise but you know all about this stuff so uhh… you do it. This is, obviously, against the rules when it comes to schoolwork, passing someone else’s work off as your own. But the rest of the world really does it all the time, isn’t it so? Famous pop musicians who write none of their own music, who lip sync their lyrics?

I’m getting away from winter here, it’s true but bear with me. Essentially, I see technocracy as kind of like a country or government having trouble with their math homework or their English papers or some such nonsense and saying to the kinds of people who know these things best: here, you do it. There was a technocratic movement in America at one time but it died because its main proponent was revealed to be a fraud. According to the Economist: technocracy offers “crowd-sourced solutions to political problems.” This essentially seems to me to be the way entire world is headed: AKA Google. Any problem you have or issue you encounter, ask Google, the all-powerful. Google is crowd-sourced right? I don’t really even know what that word means. Whatever.

The idea to me is that, through governance by experts, the world or our country or any country that decides to use it really, could solve many problems quickly and easily but perhaps learn very little about what it is to govern in the process. Technocracy almost seems like abandoning the idea of good government altogether in some ways…

I think the idea of good government is on my mind because I’ve been a government employee for the last 2.5 years or so and I know how hard my job has been. From a certain point of view… Next to impossible really. I honestly have no idea how I’ve managed to do it for so long and avoid totally cracking up. I think the answer to that may be that I haven’t been expected to do it full time, and that, perhaps, if it were a full time job, I would have gone off the deep end by now. Also, winter is approaching and doing this job in the winter time is very different than doing it in fair weather. One must be outside a lot and always on the move from house to house even when its snowing. In the summer, this is kind of fun. During the winter months, its just… different. Colder, darker, and winterier… lol. That is not a word by the way. Never let anyone including me tell you it is.

What do technocracy and winter have in common? Nothing that I can think of. I will say this: imagine you could hire someone to go through a winter for you while you just spent said winter on some tropical island and then came back at the end of the season. You would never have to chip the ice off your windshield, never have to get snow in your socks, never feel your fingers lose all feeling while you fumble with your keys, never have your car fail to start, never have to shovel yourself out only to lose your parking place on the street a few hours later to one of your neighbors. Someone else would do all this for you. You would retain not a drop of wisdom from the experience of surviving a difficult season, learn nothing about hardship, about what it means to face a challenging situation and come through it unscathed. On the other hand, you wouldn’t have to… well… do any of this stuff. This is kind of how I see technocracy: its like hiring some expert person to take your place at a difficult moment, shutting your eyes, and saying “You do it.”

This is not the whole story, its more complicated than that, I don’t have to tell you. But it’s close: I mean think about it, “Government by experts.” That’s essentially what they call it. Anything done by an expert is something you don’t have to do yourself. This is why I say it feels like cheating in a way. But does it feel like cheating when you ask a question on Amazon to the millions and millions of customers that have come before you? You certainly could never do this when you used to buy something at Walmart or at Stop and Shop or whatever right? The brick and Mortar business model says to the Amazon business model: you can’t do that, its not fair, it’s cheating. The Amazon business model says to the brick and mortar model: yeah, you wish you’d thought of it first.

Anyway, the weather’s getting colder, I’m a little sick, a little ticked off at any and everything, and I have a lot of work to do this month. Wish me luck. Ideas are for the idle I guess.