Things
1. We had a 2.9 earthquake about three hours ago. It didn't last too long, and it felt like an impact at first, then like an earthquake, but since I didn't hear a tank being rammed into our building, I assumed someone was moving a piano or something. Nope, earthquake, I just found out. WTF? It's Portland! Loma Prieta in '89 was funner. ;P
2. My phone is slowly disintegrating. I need crazy glue and epoxy or something. My contract is up in April, merciful heavens. I want a Razr. Haha.
3. sfllaw left a 4-pack of Guinness in my fridge. I don't like Guinness, but after spending all day (after getting up at 1pm, ohhh I needed that) writing a report I won't get paid for doing, I am sure trying to like it. I have not left the apato today, even to get my mail, because I didn't feel like changing out of my PJs. Yes, this is my Saturday night. I am going to die alone. I should get a German shepherd (see Bridget Jones's Diary) or a Pomeranian (see X-Files) so it can eat me when I'm dead.
4. The justices at the WA Supreme Court sit arranged around the Chief Justice in order of seniority. I was pleased that I figured this out myself, obvious as it was. 4 of the justices are women, which also pleases me. All but one of the nine went to law school in WA; the other went to Chapel Hill, and as soon as she opened her mouth, she proved that she qualified for state resident tuition when she went there. "How-deeee!"
5. I wonder if caffeine will ever stop being a socially acceptable addiction. There are certain flaws that affect such a huge percentage of the populace that we are fine with them and don't freak out. Cold sores = herpes, but no one cares, they just make up a euphemism and put matter-of-fact ads on TV for OTC treatments, without all the flowery fragile-brave-smile BS that goes into, say, Valtrex ads. Lately there's been news that as much as half of the populace is catshit insane from Toxoplasma. No, actually I just wanted to make the pun; Toxoplasma can have dire effects, or it can just make you kinda insecure, which Doug Adams would say is just the same paranoia everybody experiences. So, oral herpes, brain parasites, maybe throw in the fact that most men will develop prostate cancer at some point in their later lives, but something else is more likely to kill 'em before the prostate cancer does -- and hey, no big deal. If most people have a certain scary-sounding health problem, that makes it okay.
Beyond infection by parasites and viruses and the inexorable souring of the very thing that gave you such a thrill in your youth when your girlfriend stuck her finger up your ass, there's addiction and its social acceptability or lack thereof. Physiological dependency on caffeine is treated with cheer. If we're all addicts, then it's fine! "A gramme is better than a damn." Smoking used to be like that, but now it's demonized. Have more than two beers at the office party, and people assume you need to make friends with Bill W. "Tax Lattes Not Beer" bumper stickers are funny at first, but when, say, the city government of Salem considers passing a "sin tax" (media moniker) on coffee, the natives get restless. They can tax booze and smokes and continue a stupid fucking "war on drugs", but they'd better not fuck with my 16-ounce double-shot mocha, no whip.
I think the difference in contemporary social acceptance is because addiction to nicotine, alcohol, or hard drugs has an antisocial component. Caffeine addiction leads to coffeehouse culture (see Quicksilver) and increased productivity at work, so even if you're not a coffee fiend, other people's caffeine addiction is either benign or beneficial to you. We scold smokers, alkies, and junkies, not out of any altruistic concern for the detrimental effects of their chosen substance on their health, but out of the self-preserving concern that we not get asthma attacks and cancer from secondhand smoke, run over by drunk drivers, or robbed by meth heads.
Addiction to food is a real addiction too, in some cases treated with the same cheerfulness as caffeine dependency (see every stupid "hand me the chocolate and no one gets hurt" T-shirt ever made), but if you're obese, those of us who aren't will shun you. No, you're not going to rob us or hurt us, though obesity eats up health care monies and thus may indirectly cost us money; we just shun you because of your physical unattractiveness by societal standards. An obese person's perceived weakness in being unable to resist the lure of food also plays into the mockery she receives, yet the skinny person mocking her can turn around and, without any apparent irony, declare, "I'm a monster without my coffee in the morning. Wanna go on a Starbucks run with me?"
And yet the majority of the U.S. population is now overweight, and a third is outright obese. How long before we go back to Rubenesque standards of beauty, or just approach our cellulite and extra chin with the same shrug we do cold sores: it ain't pretty, but we all got it, so it's no big deal? As long as I harm only my own health by being overweight, and the link between my heart disease/diabetes/back pain and your health care premium is too arcane for you to get angry at me like you would if I robbed your grandma for crack money, you may smirk at my fat ass, but you won't get self-righteous at me. And as long as we don't think too hard about the link between my morning mocha and some skin-and-bones kid bent over all day on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, you're not going to take me to task either.
Everybody has it. Everybody does it. It doesn't hurt you personally and immediately. All it means is TV commercials and molecule diagrams on mugs. It's pop culture, marketing, and a "one of us" wink. It's OK.
This is nothing that hasn't been polemicized before - it's not even a polemic, just an observation - and I am much too lazy to go hunting for attributions and linkage. Ah, laziness: another "everybody does it so it's OK" shortcoming. Procrastination, too: I'd better get back to work... and my Guinness. Cheers!
2. My phone is slowly disintegrating. I need crazy glue and epoxy or something. My contract is up in April, merciful heavens. I want a Razr. Haha.
3. sfllaw left a 4-pack of Guinness in my fridge. I don't like Guinness, but after spending all day (after getting up at 1pm, ohhh I needed that) writing a report I won't get paid for doing, I am sure trying to like it. I have not left the apato today, even to get my mail, because I didn't feel like changing out of my PJs. Yes, this is my Saturday night. I am going to die alone. I should get a German shepherd (see Bridget Jones's Diary) or a Pomeranian (see X-Files) so it can eat me when I'm dead.
4. The justices at the WA Supreme Court sit arranged around the Chief Justice in order of seniority. I was pleased that I figured this out myself, obvious as it was. 4 of the justices are women, which also pleases me. All but one of the nine went to law school in WA; the other went to Chapel Hill, and as soon as she opened her mouth, she proved that she qualified for state resident tuition when she went there. "How-deeee!"
5. I wonder if caffeine will ever stop being a socially acceptable addiction. There are certain flaws that affect such a huge percentage of the populace that we are fine with them and don't freak out. Cold sores = herpes, but no one cares, they just make up a euphemism and put matter-of-fact ads on TV for OTC treatments, without all the flowery fragile-brave-smile BS that goes into, say, Valtrex ads. Lately there's been news that as much as half of the populace is catshit insane from Toxoplasma. No, actually I just wanted to make the pun; Toxoplasma can have dire effects, or it can just make you kinda insecure, which Doug Adams would say is just the same paranoia everybody experiences. So, oral herpes, brain parasites, maybe throw in the fact that most men will develop prostate cancer at some point in their later lives, but something else is more likely to kill 'em before the prostate cancer does -- and hey, no big deal. If most people have a certain scary-sounding health problem, that makes it okay.
Beyond infection by parasites and viruses and the inexorable souring of the very thing that gave you such a thrill in your youth when your girlfriend stuck her finger up your ass, there's addiction and its social acceptability or lack thereof. Physiological dependency on caffeine is treated with cheer. If we're all addicts, then it's fine! "A gramme is better than a damn." Smoking used to be like that, but now it's demonized. Have more than two beers at the office party, and people assume you need to make friends with Bill W. "Tax Lattes Not Beer" bumper stickers are funny at first, but when, say, the city government of Salem considers passing a "sin tax" (media moniker) on coffee, the natives get restless. They can tax booze and smokes and continue a stupid fucking "war on drugs", but they'd better not fuck with my 16-ounce double-shot mocha, no whip.
I think the difference in contemporary social acceptance is because addiction to nicotine, alcohol, or hard drugs has an antisocial component. Caffeine addiction leads to coffeehouse culture (see Quicksilver) and increased productivity at work, so even if you're not a coffee fiend, other people's caffeine addiction is either benign or beneficial to you. We scold smokers, alkies, and junkies, not out of any altruistic concern for the detrimental effects of their chosen substance on their health, but out of the self-preserving concern that we not get asthma attacks and cancer from secondhand smoke, run over by drunk drivers, or robbed by meth heads.
Addiction to food is a real addiction too, in some cases treated with the same cheerfulness as caffeine dependency (see every stupid "hand me the chocolate and no one gets hurt" T-shirt ever made), but if you're obese, those of us who aren't will shun you. No, you're not going to rob us or hurt us, though obesity eats up health care monies and thus may indirectly cost us money; we just shun you because of your physical unattractiveness by societal standards. An obese person's perceived weakness in being unable to resist the lure of food also plays into the mockery she receives, yet the skinny person mocking her can turn around and, without any apparent irony, declare, "I'm a monster without my coffee in the morning. Wanna go on a Starbucks run with me?"
And yet the majority of the U.S. population is now overweight, and a third is outright obese. How long before we go back to Rubenesque standards of beauty, or just approach our cellulite and extra chin with the same shrug we do cold sores: it ain't pretty, but we all got it, so it's no big deal? As long as I harm only my own health by being overweight, and the link between my heart disease/diabetes/back pain and your health care premium is too arcane for you to get angry at me like you would if I robbed your grandma for crack money, you may smirk at my fat ass, but you won't get self-righteous at me. And as long as we don't think too hard about the link between my morning mocha and some skin-and-bones kid bent over all day on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, you're not going to take me to task either.
Everybody has it. Everybody does it. It doesn't hurt you personally and immediately. All it means is TV commercials and molecule diagrams on mugs. It's pop culture, marketing, and a "one of us" wink. It's OK.
This is nothing that hasn't been polemicized before - it's not even a polemic, just an observation - and I am much too lazy to go hunting for attributions and linkage. Ah, laziness: another "everybody does it so it's OK" shortcoming. Procrastination, too: I'd better get back to work... and my Guinness. Cheers!