The Trifecta
I have three general ideas kicking around in my head, none of which seems to deserve a post all it’s own, so I’m doing them as a triptych instead.
Inserting a Strange Attractor Into Your Life
Last Wednesday, Liv and I got up, ate some oatmeal and were deciding what to do with ourselves, and I noticed that Syracuse’s first-round game in the Big East Torunament was on TV. We colored, played with Legos and watched the game.
I had pretty low hopes. My beloved Syracuse Orange(men) (they just recently stopped being the Orangemen, a archaic reference to members of the Onondaga tribe, and became just the Orange, which creates all kinds of interesting pluralization puzzles, but anyway…) were a weak bubble team playing in a stacked conference tournament with a guard, Gerry McNamara, who the Syracuse student paper and anonymous assistant coaches around the league had labeled “overrated.”
And then, down by two, that very same Gerry drained a carnival shot three with a half second left, and I scared the crap out of Olivia will my little girl squeal.
The next day, playing the #1 team in the country, Gerry again, with five seconds left nails the three that forces overtime, and the Orange go on to win.
Holy shit. They might win. A week before they got blown out by some JV girls team called DePaul.
Friday night, me and the girls and The Orange and the hATed Georgetown Hoyas. We get pushed around all night, but stick around. Livvie gets into it – I taught her to say “Syracuse is the master of the zone!” Less than a minute, and Gerry drains yet another three to pull within one, dishes off a sweet pass for the go ahead bucket, the first lead they have had the entire game and it comes with nine seconds left. Gerry steals the inbound pass and they become the first team to ever win a tourney game after an overtime win, and the fifth team to advance to the finals.
At this point its academic to say that I went out and got very drunk with two very good guys I rarely see, the Orange beat Pitt handily to take the title and overrated Gerry McNamara was the runaway MVP.
For four days, this delightful little narrative appeared in my life. I mean, I actually care about Syracuse basketball, which may seem silly, but opens up the possibility that some random Wednesday morning, my team will embark upon a magical championship run.
Love of sports is a strange attractor, a point around which phenomenon will gather, and one with a non-rational element. Sure, I’m stretching the definition from chaos math here a bit, but the idea is that opening yourself up for the possibility of random narrative is worthwhile.
Why care about sports? Why the fuck not? It’s fun.
Progressions and Regressions
I’m happy to report that I was being a big, whiny baby about potty training. It has gone incredibly well, and most credit goes to my wife. But, Liv digs it. Less than a week in, she was refusing diapers at night (with only a few minor issues since) and actually requesting that we wait until we go out so she could use public potties.
And, damned if she doesn’t seem to be so much older with just this one difference in our lives. So much more a little kid than a baby, so much more independent.
Yeah.
Did I mention that apparently whatever brain cells she used to upload the potty training overwrote any ability to actually listen to her father? Within the space of a twenty minutes this morning, she set off the car alarm after being told not to play with my car key, spread the contents of my wallet around the living room after being told to put it back on the table, and lost my house keys after being told they weren’t toys. Considering each offense was rewarded with a two-minute time-out, leaving just fourteen minutes for actual perpetration, that’s damned impressive.
How is it that she seems so much older, and yet I’m suddenly feeling the need to baby-proof the house all over again?
And, I’m starting to see what lies ahead, the brand of mayhem native to the third year that Livvie is quickly approaching. As evidence I offer these words coming from my mouth yesterday…
“Olivia, do not put you toe in the cat’s butt! And, oh, no, don’t put your toe in your mouth!”
Are things moving forward or backward?
The Journalism of Opinion
A few weeks ago, my fiction professor, an accomplished writer well north of seventy, had a peer observation. He had picked up the results on the way in to our last class meeting, and started reading from them.
It was an exceptionally dry telling of the day observed. “David opened the class by asking if anyone had any news. One student reported having a story accepted by Byline Magazine. David then asked if anybody had a story to turn in that day. The workshopping for one student’s story began.”
He set the paper down and said “It goes on like this. Very journalistic for two pages.” He looked down. “Well…” A breathy sort of resigned well that said we might just as well commence.
I almost said something, but hesitated because the professor tends not to quite hear me, whether from poor hearing or my mushmouth speech, and will swing his head toward me with a quizzical look, which, magnified through his trifocals, reminds me in a very unsettling way of bespectacled lunatics from Don Bluth cartoons (the geeks among you will understand).
But, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the content of the evaluation. I’ve gotten a peer evaluation at Western before. They are required, though scheduled at the instructor’s leisure, and they never ever say anything but report what went on in the classroom that day. I read my first one twice and then like looked on the back asking “OK, but was I any good?”
What occurred to me in that moment as I watched David lament the state of peer evaluations is that this situation likely arose from a litigious past. Someone writes a poor eval, and you don’t get tenure, so you sue for libel. A key defense against libel is truth, but nobody, not even a lawyer, wants to argue the nature of truth with a fucking English major. So, best answer, say absolutely nothing, but use a lot of words.
Shit, when I worked in the banking world, the only thing we could say if someone called with a reference is their title and how long they worked there. You couldn’t even say something positive, because then someone might claim that the absence of a positive review actually constituted a negative review.
The result? I know for a fact that I reported innocuous information to potential employers of former employees of mine when I really wanted to say “Never, ever hire her! She is the devil! Do you understand! Princess of Darkness, dude, and she can’t even type fer shit.” And a couple of lovely people weren’t given the leg up I wanted to give them.
(OK, that last part, totally not true, I talked ‘em up and BIG because I’m a motherfuckin’ rebel, yo.)
And, teachers can’t even help other teachers be better teachers.
But, we do this all the time, don’t we? Focus on the innocuous, take objective journalistic stances, because speaking our minds is dangerous, risks blowback. We’ll learn to say nothing even when we have something to say, and kid ourselves that it is an effective ruse.
Inserting a Strange Attractor Into Your Life
Last Wednesday, Liv and I got up, ate some oatmeal and were deciding what to do with ourselves, and I noticed that Syracuse’s first-round game in the Big East Torunament was on TV. We colored, played with Legos and watched the game.
I had pretty low hopes. My beloved Syracuse Orange(men) (they just recently stopped being the Orangemen, a archaic reference to members of the Onondaga tribe, and became just the Orange, which creates all kinds of interesting pluralization puzzles, but anyway…) were a weak bubble team playing in a stacked conference tournament with a guard, Gerry McNamara, who the Syracuse student paper and anonymous assistant coaches around the league had labeled “overrated.”
And then, down by two, that very same Gerry drained a carnival shot three with a half second left, and I scared the crap out of Olivia will my little girl squeal.
The next day, playing the #1 team in the country, Gerry again, with five seconds left nails the three that forces overtime, and the Orange go on to win.
Holy shit. They might win. A week before they got blown out by some JV girls team called DePaul.
Friday night, me and the girls and The Orange and the hATed Georgetown Hoyas. We get pushed around all night, but stick around. Livvie gets into it – I taught her to say “Syracuse is the master of the zone!” Less than a minute, and Gerry drains yet another three to pull within one, dishes off a sweet pass for the go ahead bucket, the first lead they have had the entire game and it comes with nine seconds left. Gerry steals the inbound pass and they become the first team to ever win a tourney game after an overtime win, and the fifth team to advance to the finals.
At this point its academic to say that I went out and got very drunk with two very good guys I rarely see, the Orange beat Pitt handily to take the title and overrated Gerry McNamara was the runaway MVP.
For four days, this delightful little narrative appeared in my life. I mean, I actually care about Syracuse basketball, which may seem silly, but opens up the possibility that some random Wednesday morning, my team will embark upon a magical championship run.
Love of sports is a strange attractor, a point around which phenomenon will gather, and one with a non-rational element. Sure, I’m stretching the definition from chaos math here a bit, but the idea is that opening yourself up for the possibility of random narrative is worthwhile.
Why care about sports? Why the fuck not? It’s fun.
Progressions and Regressions
I’m happy to report that I was being a big, whiny baby about potty training. It has gone incredibly well, and most credit goes to my wife. But, Liv digs it. Less than a week in, she was refusing diapers at night (with only a few minor issues since) and actually requesting that we wait until we go out so she could use public potties.
And, damned if she doesn’t seem to be so much older with just this one difference in our lives. So much more a little kid than a baby, so much more independent.
Yeah.
Did I mention that apparently whatever brain cells she used to upload the potty training overwrote any ability to actually listen to her father? Within the space of a twenty minutes this morning, she set off the car alarm after being told not to play with my car key, spread the contents of my wallet around the living room after being told to put it back on the table, and lost my house keys after being told they weren’t toys. Considering each offense was rewarded with a two-minute time-out, leaving just fourteen minutes for actual perpetration, that’s damned impressive.
How is it that she seems so much older, and yet I’m suddenly feeling the need to baby-proof the house all over again?
And, I’m starting to see what lies ahead, the brand of mayhem native to the third year that Livvie is quickly approaching. As evidence I offer these words coming from my mouth yesterday…
“Olivia, do not put you toe in the cat’s butt! And, oh, no, don’t put your toe in your mouth!”
Are things moving forward or backward?
The Journalism of Opinion
A few weeks ago, my fiction professor, an accomplished writer well north of seventy, had a peer observation. He had picked up the results on the way in to our last class meeting, and started reading from them.
It was an exceptionally dry telling of the day observed. “David opened the class by asking if anyone had any news. One student reported having a story accepted by Byline Magazine. David then asked if anybody had a story to turn in that day. The workshopping for one student’s story began.”
He set the paper down and said “It goes on like this. Very journalistic for two pages.” He looked down. “Well…” A breathy sort of resigned well that said we might just as well commence.
I almost said something, but hesitated because the professor tends not to quite hear me, whether from poor hearing or my mushmouth speech, and will swing his head toward me with a quizzical look, which, magnified through his trifocals, reminds me in a very unsettling way of bespectacled lunatics from Don Bluth cartoons (the geeks among you will understand).
But, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the content of the evaluation. I’ve gotten a peer evaluation at Western before. They are required, though scheduled at the instructor’s leisure, and they never ever say anything but report what went on in the classroom that day. I read my first one twice and then like looked on the back asking “OK, but was I any good?”
What occurred to me in that moment as I watched David lament the state of peer evaluations is that this situation likely arose from a litigious past. Someone writes a poor eval, and you don’t get tenure, so you sue for libel. A key defense against libel is truth, but nobody, not even a lawyer, wants to argue the nature of truth with a fucking English major. So, best answer, say absolutely nothing, but use a lot of words.
Shit, when I worked in the banking world, the only thing we could say if someone called with a reference is their title and how long they worked there. You couldn’t even say something positive, because then someone might claim that the absence of a positive review actually constituted a negative review.
The result? I know for a fact that I reported innocuous information to potential employers of former employees of mine when I really wanted to say “Never, ever hire her! She is the devil! Do you understand! Princess of Darkness, dude, and she can’t even type fer shit.” And a couple of lovely people weren’t given the leg up I wanted to give them.
(OK, that last part, totally not true, I talked ‘em up and BIG because I’m a motherfuckin’ rebel, yo.)
And, teachers can’t even help other teachers be better teachers.
But, we do this all the time, don’t we? Focus on the innocuous, take objective journalistic stances, because speaking our minds is dangerous, risks blowback. We’ll learn to say nothing even when we have something to say, and kid ourselves that it is an effective ruse.
posted by JJisafool at 11:15 PM
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