Family-Coordinated Halloween Costumes and What's Lost

Is Halloween participation declining? I've wondered about this for some years. This year's Halloween theme, it seemed on social media, was family-coordinated costumes. Sometimes with the kids being character counterparts, but this year often with the parents (my friends) involved. OK, it makes for a cute Facebook photo, but I have to believe it was the parents that "coordinated" (insisted) that. The sad part is that is squashes the child's individuality and wishes a bit for the parent's selfish desire for photo "likes". I sort of loved the organic clashes that could arise in a group of trick-or-treaters: a ninja with a hillbilly with a ghost with a vampire. The kid gets to be what the want. I'm saddened holiday children's play is another causality of narcissistic parents in the Facebook age.

Get off my plane!!!

In boredom, I spent the afternoon watching Air Force One. The movie is unnecessarily nationalistic. Two guys (at least) take a bullet for Harrison Ford; well, one takes a bullet, the other take a missile from an enemy fighter. And they're heroes? Well, Harrison Ford is a good guy, but I think promoting dying for someone just because they're the president of the United States (and literally no other reason) as valor is not a good thing. But I could see why if you're the president you'd want to promote that. I dunno. It's a fun popcorn movie, but a little too rah-rah-rah for "Mr. President" (the office not the man). Gag me.

SICK Syndrome (Stress Induced Comfort-Killing)

In college my long-time roommate remarked to me once that I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I really get sick. This is one of those times.

Since yesterday morning, I've been sick as a dog. Body aches, out of breath feelings (noone seems to understand these things when I say I feel sick...are they exclusive to me?!?), but also runny noses (my grandpa told us we're backwards 'cause our nose runs and our feet smell...). Together, it's only slightly worse than the "stress headaches" I've been experiencing...they were bad when I first went home (the night I first found out about my brother, I could feel my heartbeat throbbing my pillow), then went away but had come back towards the end of my stay in Norwalk, now only supplanted my this illness.

I don't know where it came from...maybe the two plane trips on Tuesday? I think from all the stress I've been under has decimated my immune system...this morning I joked I have developed non-HIV AIDS. Even when I used to get terribly sick, it was just these 'one day' things I'd always bounce back from after a night's sleep...what's wrong with me? Maybe I'm getting old...

Stealing Innocence

I don't know where the "Christmas in July" concept originates from, but today would be the six-month mark until the next Christmas (I already know what I'm getting my mom!).

While brushing my teeth last night, I thought of the jerk 3rd grader who told me at seven that Santa didn't exist, that it was really my parents leaving presents out for me. I wish I could find him now, and beat the living shit of out him. That little tidbit served no purpose but to ruin the fun and take away a large part of Christmas's magic.

Economists studying social interactions literally model knowledge flows like a disease spreading. Of course, some knowledge could be "bad", catching like a virus and "scarring" a childhood. I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, comparing growing up with catching a disfiguring disease (although I found puberty in general was very much a disease to me - but that's another post...). To me, it's something more than taking away a blissful ignorance. I see the beautiful, pristine, fresh-fallen snow of childhood, and then one asshole coming to trample over everything, then undoing his zipper and turning the remaining untouched snow yellow.

There is a scene sequence in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden sees something "unpleasant" written in several very public places. He worries about the effect it will have on who might see it, as well as experiences a sunken heart as he feels the graffiti ruins the tranquility of the place it was written. I've always related completely with his thoughts:

While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them — all cockeyed, naturally — what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally...

I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible...

I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another "Fuck you." It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they tick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

Some months ago, Leslie Stahl (if I recall) did a story on 60 Minutes which profiled a memory pill - or rather, a "forgetting pill" - that eases reoccurring flashbacks among individuals suffering from post-traumatic events. E.g., one lady, a subway operator, was haunted by the memory of the man she watched commit suicide by jumping on the tracks underneath her subway car. I wish there was something we could give to children to help them forget all the crap in the world they've inadvertently witnessed when they were still too young to have deserved to.

Yet, this very morning, I saw posted on CNN.com an Associated Press story with the headline "'Potter' fans keeping the secrets". Although revealing the ending of the Harry Potter saga would not ruin the innocence of one's childhood, the restraint by those who have read it is promising in that a small joy could easily be ruined for others. So I'll still retain some faith in humanity.

Cynical On July 4th

On today, the 231st anniversary of the founding of our country, I am filled with cynicism.

In a blatant display of cronyism, President Bush recently commuted jail time for former Vice Presidential Aide Scooter Libby, a perjurer convicted by a jury of his peers. The president's approval ratings are presently so low that he probably figured it didn't matter anymore, so just help out this friend of a friend, or more likely he didn't even care what the general public thought. By the way, when Bill Clinton gave out his pardons, I thought it was equally sleazy. If the government really wants to be serious reducing corruption, the pardon power needs to have some checks attached, because it is clear to me the pardons are not used for justice but rather to help out friends, in most unjust ways.

However, filling me with a deeper cynicism today are memories of the the original Transformers movie, on my mind because the new one opens today.

It's hard to not be cynical when your childhood hero was killed off in an effort to promote new merchandise. Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Prowl, and many more, all victims of the pursuit of profit. What does it matter if you break a 5-year old's heart? You use your two-hour commercial to introduce new characters that will become new toys. I grew up fast in 1986.

John Swansburg wrote a piece in Slate, entitled "Why the original Transformers movie is better than the new one", and alt Here in an excerpt:

To use a phrase I learned the day I saw Transformers, "Oh Shit!" No one ever died in these shows. Even in G.I. Joe, a cartoon about a special U.S. Army strike force, no Rattler was ever shot down without the pilot first safely ejecting. But in the Transformers movie, the death toll was jaw-dropping. More than a dozen marquee characters are dispatched in the film, among them one of my personal favorites, Starscream, the Decepticon malcontent always scheming to relieve Megatron of his command.

Of course, all of this bloodshed had a specific purpose—to move toys. In the commentary track on the 20th-anniversary edition of the movie, Flint Dille, one of the writers, explains he was instructed to eliminate much of the existing product line to make room for the new characters Hasbro was planning to sell me. I already owned Optimus Prime, after all.

As a 9-year-old, it hardly occurred to me that this robot bloodbath was a marketing ploy. It just blew me away. Witnessing death on that scale was shocking to a sensibility that had been nurtured on white-knuckled but always successful repair operations by the trusty Autobot mechanic-medic, Rachet.

I think of the boardroom meeting that must have went down with the idea to kill off a bunch of characters, and I want to spit. Presidential pardons really don't affect my life; at most I'll scream at the TV. But at the time of the original Transformers movie, I really loved those Autobots, and it's disgusting that the Hasbro executives did not give two shits about me or my friends. I truly believe this is one of the purest forms of corporate greed: causing millions of children tears just to make more money. The powers that be didn't care about the general public, either. They probably never saw the crying or probably never thought about it. I'll never forget that.

Finally, as I think every year, "thank you" to the people of Morocco for being the first nation to recognize the independence of the United States.

Let Our Powers Combine...

Earth!...Fire!...Wind!...Water!...Heart!...

What was disheartening for me about Captain Planet and the Planeteers was that the creators oversimplified the problems by displaying exaggerations of cartoonish super-villainy: "I've created a machine the chops down the Amazon rainforest and turns the trees into toxic waste...mwuhahahahahahahaha!!!...." So it teaches kids that the planet would be safe if only a blue-skinned, green-mulleted depiction of what a committee lamely decided "cool" would look like showed up and used his Superman-breath (or whatever).

Much better (and accurately more morally complex) would be if you turned on the for 30 minutes the cartoon was just a headshot of Captain Planet's head, saying "Hey kids at home...your watching TV right now is contributing to the planet's ill-health. You're burning fossil fuels. Want to make a difference? Turn the the TV off. Go outside. Now. Turn the TV off. Turn it off. Go outside. Turn it off....."

Thin Walls

The walls in my apartment are very thin. I used to have a problem with the neighbor on the side near my bedroom. He was a 30-something that stayed still 3am playing Mortal Kombat every night. He might also have listened to Backstreet Boys loudly. He lived alone; for some reason he didn't have a girlfriend. I was so happy when I saw that he moved out. Otherwise I doubt I would been able to sufficiently prepared for my microeconomics final.

My new problem is my other neighbors on the living room side of the apartment. They are sexually active and I know all about it - their headboard shares a wall with my living room couch. I used to think after hearing the banging that someone was assembling furniture. Then I heard "other" noises that clued me in.

They do it like clockwork; every Sunday night plus a few "surprises" for me during the week...but really on the Sunday night thing - I could set my watch to it. I sort of dread that time of the week now, because I can't escape the audio...the vibrations travel through the walls even if I go to the other room. There is no escape. I hear everything. My poor virgin ears.

I think it was this Thursday that I was having a pretty heated argument with a friend on the phone. In the middle of me yelling, I suddenly hear the neighbors starting to go at it. It was very unsettling. I wanted to bang on the wall, yelling "c'mon, people...you're ruining the mood in here!!!"

Shouldn't it be the other way around?