(Some) Men Are Real Buffoons.

I loved this rant I found on the blog "The Girl Works" (http://thegirlworks.wordpress.com). We at RF have posted some of her other entries before. (One about what she wants to do with her life that was amazing called "The Way My Mother Was When She Was Young" that was posted on Rough Fractals on March 28, 2009 and can be found in the archives on the right side of the page or at http://roughfractals.blogspot.com/2009/03/way-my-mother-was-when-she-was-young.html). She is a young woman who lets words rip and is smart and funny and observant.

"Just listened to the most infuriating segment on Tell Me More: the flaccid opinions of two advocates for men. Never have I ever witnesses such a potently impotent admixture of chauvinism, racial ignorance, homophobia, lack of self-knowledge, and whining. In fact, sexism might be the least of the charges to lay at the door of this group of selfish motherfuckers.*

Sample soundbytes:

“All this talk today about rights for this group, rights for that group… when I was growing up we didn’t talk about rights; men in my day had responsibilities.”

Yeah, you had the responsibility of a high-paying, secure white collar job because you and your cracker family never lacked any of those rights you now sneer at women and people of color for working so damn hard to achieve. Responsibility? You don’t even know how light your burden is. You find it so easy to dismiss the value of your rights because no social majority ever dictated that you earn them to its satisfaction.

And:

“Tell us about your book, The Myth of Male Power. What exactly do you mean by power?”
“What I mean by power is the responsibility to work hard at making a living and earning money that is then spent by other people.”

FUCK you. I can’t come up with an applicable epithet that doesn’t also denigrate women, so just… fuck you.

“Its not about entitlement.”

The hell it ain’t. I feel real entitled to punch you in the face for that statement.

Oh, and I’m calling it homophobia but not sexism because the entire conversation was couched in terms of the supposed enmity between men and women, in which men are alleged to be losing. “The women’s liberation movement has done so much for women’s confidence and success in education, business, and other fields, that we wanted to form an organization that could do the same for men.” Are you extending the disadvantages you perceive and the brotherhood you offer to gay men as well as straight? And do you hate lesbians for ostensibly bringing you down, or is that rancor (strong words for such a weak sentiment) reserved for straight women?

I’m guessing more eloquent representatives of the White Male Empowerment Movement could have been dug out from under a rock somewhere, but next time let’s focus on statistics for men of color, and see how much you white boys have to complain about then.

It’s a blessing I didn’t destroy my car radio with evil looks. The funny thing, though, is that I rather like men. They make excellent snacks.

*My mom’s got better taste than that, I like to think."

 

Ven and The Art of Work.

At first I did not think this ven diagram was all that interesting but as I stared at it and thought about the individual circles and the overlap points I changed my mind about it and think its a pretty good summary of what is a kind of unconscious process of the way people think about work, that is, starting with the notion of doing something you get paid for, wanting to do that and doing it well and then taking that to the next level which is learning to do what you do better. The learn to say no part sort of threw me but I can see how that's an important part of doing anything. 

Anyway, the hooray part where all of the elements intersect (the "Ven"), where you are doing what you want to do well and are getting paid to do it, makes sense to me. The question is how do you know what you like to do? If you have never tasted chocolate ice cream how do you know if you like it or are good at eating it? 

Take something that I am pretty good at for example -  collating and stapling.  You probably do not think you either like doing that or are any good at it. But you never know,  if you were well paid to collate and staple you  might find you like it and if you like it you might be darn good at it especially when the view of midtown from, say, the 53rd floor of whatever building your are in, is amazing. In my opinion a lot of white  collar workers in big buildings are doing just that. I think another thing they like about it is that they are only actually working about 3 of the 5 days they are in the office. 

Unmistaken Child

The title above is the name of a recently released documentary about a Tibetan monk's 4 year search for the reincarnation of his Master who died at the age of 84. This movie is chock full of stuff to noodle, such as; faith and proof (the belief in reincarnation is based on faith but identifying the reincarnate is done through proof so there can be no "mistake"); loss and grief; parents and children; social/political/religious order; family; father and son; Rimpoche and monk; purpose... Is the Unmistaken Child the actual reincarnation of the deceased Rimpoche? Does it matter if he is not?

Below the trailer:

Laura Bush endorses Sotomayor

It appears Laura Bush has endorsed Sonia Sotomayor's nomination. She is proud that another woman will soon be on the Supreme Court. Such a genuine sentiment, and sensible too. There have been two woman and no Hispanic Americans on the Supreme Court in over two hundred years, but expressing pride or enthusiasm for either of those steps forward is either dastardly reverse racism, or shameful identity politics. Of course hundreds of years of a court of white men is not to be questioned. Welcome Laura, you are now going to be the object of rabid Gingrich, Limbaugh scorn.

From Supreme Court to Supreme Happiness?

Gretchen Rubin, the woman who made this video, as well as the one entitled The Days Are Long, The Years Are Short, (which Rough Fractals posted as well under the heading Time Is Now Video, graduated from Yale Law School where she was Editor In Chief of the Yale Law Review. After law school she clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. At the end of her clerkship she said she found the law unfulfilling and she left the field to become a writer and start a blog. Her web site can be found at happiness-project.com. 

I think she is very smart in what appears to be an uncomplicated way. Here's another video:

 

The Time Is Now Video...

I believe the message of this video is that life is a journey not a destination, that we should live in the moment and that it's the small things that count. The video itself does not seem very sophisticated and does not seem to have a sense of irony but perhaps both those concepts are overrated.  Anyway here it is, I think I like it. 

Fortuitous Event Of The Week...

For a while now I have been spending some time on a modest goal - to figure out if there is a unifying theory of the Universe, something that will explain everything. I think I have it. I call it The Unifying Fortuity Theory Of Everything. 

Here is both an example and the thought process that led me to this.

I was out jogging today and was listening to music from the album titled: "Steve Miller and Friends" on which Steve Miller is accompanied by various musicians doing covers of Steve Miller Band songs. A song came on featuring Les Paul and started with a recording made about 50 years ago when Steve Miller was 8 years old and Les Paul (a family friend) says to him - "Steve you sing real good, you should keep singing. Steve someday you are going to go somewhere" ... and then the song begins... "Fly Like an Eagle". Right as the chorus "Fly like an Eagle" begins, a guy on his bike about 50 yards in front of me takes his hands off his handle bars only he doesn't just lift them off - he spreads his arms like wings and shifts balance just a bit to mimic gliding so that he looks like, well like,  he is flying (like an eagle). And I thought - "wow, look at that,  just as the words "fly like an eagle" start this random guy in front me starts pretending he is flying like an eagle. And then I thought - there is no real reason for why things happen - they just do, by fortuity. And this is why that matters...because by far the biggest influencing factor in everyone's life is something they have zero control over - namely, where they are born. If you are born, for example, in Calcutta, you are going to have a very different life than if you are born in the U.S. Talk about the illusion that we control our own destiny. Our destiny is set in motion way before we are even conceived. And then if you think about all the littler accidents that have happened to you that had a huge impact such as friends, family, acceptance, rejection, injury, health, lottery number in the draft, and the thousands of things that we do not control it started to seem to me that fortuity plays a much larger part in the course of life than say, free will or self-determination or individual responsibility and accountability (not that any of those are bad things but if I am right about the way the universe works then I suspect those attitudes and the way we individually adhere to them (or not) are largely fortuitous as well). 

So then I was thinking maybe I will start recording all the fortuitous events that happen to me almost daily (it seems). Call it the fortuitous/accidental event of the week. 

My randomly running into a guy pretending to fly like an eagle on a bicycle while Fly Like An Eagle comes on my headphones event is this week's.