Friday, January 31, 2014
Lord of the Rings Revisited
So a couple old college friends of mine and I have decided that another fun way to keep in touch while we're scattered across the country is to re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy of our youth, and post individual reviews of each chapter to a shared blog. It's called Lord of the Rings Revisited. I think it's gonna be a ton of fun. Perhaps you would like to follow along too?
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Wild Washington; or, The Living Pacific Northwest
In the Pacific Northwest, it is always better to be outside. I've learned this.
Whenever you're feeling down, or lethargic, or uninspired, in the Northwest you but need to step outside a moment and breath in deep, and that richly oxygenated air will fill up your lungs, awaken your soul, and press thickly against your skin, as you feel renewed and rejuvenated immediately. Even when it's raining--especially when it's raining--it is always better to be outside in the Northwest!
That is not the case in the Midwest, where, between the sweltering, heat-stroking summers that soak your clothes in sweat, and the frigid, frost-bitten winters that cut through all your layers to chill you to the bone, you spend half the year racing to get back in doors--with the Catch-22 that the longer you stay inside, the more Cabin Fever you have.
For in the Midwest, these wide open spaces ironically make you feel more cloistered and isolated; the flat, ever-extending sameness of the landscape ironically limits your views, shrinks your world; the agoraphobia becomes claustrophobia at last. Breath in deep, but the air does not rejuvenate, but stifles you.
Compare that to, say, Utah (where I lived prior) with its wild, un-tameable landscapes, and its mountaneous views that open up before you and open your mind with them! In the deserts there, you witness the tenacity of life, its ability to not just survive but thrive in hostile environments. There is something inspiring, even life-affirming, about encountering life in the deserts; it is a relief to visit Utah.
But then compare that to the Pacific Northwest, where, on top of the mountains and stunning vistas, you behold life not just surviving, not just thriving, but flourishing. You see life growing on top of life, where even the rocks feel alive:
Where there is so much abundance of life, your mind is liberated, for you begin to think less in terms of scarcity, but surplus. A number of Socialist experiments were run in the Seattle-area and Olympic Peninsula in the late-19th century, and it's easy to see why: for when you no longer worry about chronic lack, when there is enough and to spare, it is easier to contemplate an economy without competition, without rivalry, without oppression. Even the Conservatives of the region are of decidedly the more libertarian variety--for how can you not feel free amidst such abundance of life?
For this reason too, there is a warmth to Northwesterners--this is no mere politeness or suppressed anger, but a genuine friendliness, for when you no longer have a scarcity mindset wherine every human being around you is your potential rival for scant resources, it is far easier to relax around each other; and without extremes of hostile weather, it is easier to avoid extremes in behavior, too. Here, we are only angry when we have been wronged--there is far less suppressed rage bubbling beneath the surface.
"But Seattle sports fans are insufferable!" I can hear you protest--and indeed, I rush to agree with you. And you know why we can be such poor sports a-times? Why our tempers can get the best of us? Because we have so little real experience with being constantly angry! Seriously, who can stay mad in paradise? You rarely see Hawaiians angry either--something has to be genuinely enraging to fire our blood.
For Northwesterners are not in a constant state of suppressed anger, carefully controlling our passions for the sake of civility in an existentially-exasperating environment, no--we get so little practice controlling our passions that we let them all out when we are impassioned. Our civility is not practiced; our passion is not an affectation; here we let life flow through us, for here we do not wrestle with the climate, but flourish with it. Our souls move with the Oceans, our gazes rise with the trees--the Pacific Northwest is a living thing.
Whenever you're feeling down, or lethargic, or uninspired, in the Northwest you but need to step outside a moment and breath in deep, and that richly oxygenated air will fill up your lungs, awaken your soul, and press thickly against your skin, as you feel renewed and rejuvenated immediately. Even when it's raining--especially when it's raining--it is always better to be outside in the Northwest!
That is not the case in the Midwest, where, between the sweltering, heat-stroking summers that soak your clothes in sweat, and the frigid, frost-bitten winters that cut through all your layers to chill you to the bone, you spend half the year racing to get back in doors--with the Catch-22 that the longer you stay inside, the more Cabin Fever you have.
For in the Midwest, these wide open spaces ironically make you feel more cloistered and isolated; the flat, ever-extending sameness of the landscape ironically limits your views, shrinks your world; the agoraphobia becomes claustrophobia at last. Breath in deep, but the air does not rejuvenate, but stifles you.
Compare that to, say, Utah (where I lived prior) with its wild, un-tameable landscapes, and its mountaneous views that open up before you and open your mind with them! In the deserts there, you witness the tenacity of life, its ability to not just survive but thrive in hostile environments. There is something inspiring, even life-affirming, about encountering life in the deserts; it is a relief to visit Utah.
But then compare that to the Pacific Northwest, where, on top of the mountains and stunning vistas, you behold life not just surviving, not just thriving, but flourishing. You see life growing on top of life, where even the rocks feel alive:
Leaves grow atop grass atop moss atop lichens:
Full-grown Pine Trees arise on cliff-sides:
You behold not desert fawna in survivalist mode, but towering trees
hundreds of feet high and hundreds of years old, above you, over you,
overpowering you:
You behold what life looks like not in too little water, but too much; not in scarcity, but abundance:
(Multnomah Falls, Oregon)
Even the mountains of the Northwest, the Cascades, are not the dead stones of some countless-millennial tectonic movements, but active volcanoes--that's right, even our mountains live! And the Ocean to our West, the largest in the world, is not static, not flat, not oppressive sameness, but ever flowing, ever waving, ever changing, mysterious, beyond comprehension, profound, teeming with life, alive, free!Where there is so much abundance of life, your mind is liberated, for you begin to think less in terms of scarcity, but surplus. A number of Socialist experiments were run in the Seattle-area and Olympic Peninsula in the late-19th century, and it's easy to see why: for when you no longer worry about chronic lack, when there is enough and to spare, it is easier to contemplate an economy without competition, without rivalry, without oppression. Even the Conservatives of the region are of decidedly the more libertarian variety--for how can you not feel free amidst such abundance of life?
For this reason too, there is a warmth to Northwesterners--this is no mere politeness or suppressed anger, but a genuine friendliness, for when you no longer have a scarcity mindset wherine every human being around you is your potential rival for scant resources, it is far easier to relax around each other; and without extremes of hostile weather, it is easier to avoid extremes in behavior, too. Here, we are only angry when we have been wronged--there is far less suppressed rage bubbling beneath the surface.
"But Seattle sports fans are insufferable!" I can hear you protest--and indeed, I rush to agree with you. And you know why we can be such poor sports a-times? Why our tempers can get the best of us? Because we have so little real experience with being constantly angry! Seriously, who can stay mad in paradise? You rarely see Hawaiians angry either--something has to be genuinely enraging to fire our blood.
For Northwesterners are not in a constant state of suppressed anger, carefully controlling our passions for the sake of civility in an existentially-exasperating environment, no--we get so little practice controlling our passions that we let them all out when we are impassioned. Our civility is not practiced; our passion is not an affectation; here we let life flow through us, for here we do not wrestle with the climate, but flourish with it. Our souls move with the Oceans, our gazes rise with the trees--the Pacific Northwest is a living thing.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
A Defense of Community College: Theory vs Praxus
Admittedly, when I first started ajduncting at Salt Lake Community College a few years back, it was just a job: we were still smack dab in the middle of the worst recession in 70 years, and I had just finished an MA in English--a barely employable degree even in a good economy! At the time, I was just happy to pay the rent. I treated the whole experience as the first step on some ladder, as though I were starting at the bottom.
But the community college atmosphere quickly grew on me, and not just because I love teaching--there's just this refreshing lack of pretentiousness about the student body. These are not the privileged out partying on their parent's tuition money you see--no, these students are often of the genuinely poor, first-generation college students, immigrants, UN refugees, recovering drug addicts, single mothers, working adults reinventing themselves, military veterans adjusting to civilian life, escapees from abusive relationships, and high-school flame-outs pulling their lives together.
There is a genuineness about them, an urgency, a sense of actual life-or-death stakes involved in these peoples' educations. You can drop the formalities with them; they aren't there to show off but to learn, and you aren't there to impress but help them. In CC instruction, you feel like you are actually helping people in actual need.
In a sense, NBC's genius sitcom Community, although it reifies the worst stereotypes of community college administration, is spot-on about the student body: these are strikingly intelligent people with more life experience than your average university freshman, folks with legit problems who are taking action to get their lives in order. These students are merely inexperienced, not dumb; they are neither intimidated nor impressed by your doctorates and fellowships--they are there to learn, so you better actually have something, because they have more important things to worry about.
I'm concerned with these "non-traditional" (whatever that means) student bodies because I'm an aspiring Post-Colonial scholar in my PhD program you see, wherein my whole research orientation is geared towards studying the literatures of the marginalized, the colonized, the subaltern and the silenced. It's fun, fascinating stuff. But while Post-Colonial theorists merely discuss the struggles of minority populations navigating the Anglo-centrism of the academy, community colleges are on the front lines of that dilemma!
Should the focus be on helping these students gain access to the mainstream American workforce (which, let's be brutally honest, means "acting white"), or do we help give voice to those denied a voice (for if we don't, who will)? Can't we do both? Should we? How do we do that? What's the right balance? Are we selling them out when we teach them how to "assimilate," or are we segregating them out when we don't? Again, at community colleges, with their disproportionately high minority populations, these aren't mere theoretical quandaries, but real world concerns!
Here there is no theory, but actual marginalized populations performing the very navigations that Post-Colonial theory discusses. Here, we encounter not theory, but praxus! I'm not discounting theory, theory is important for recognizing, learning about, and acknowledging the concerns of the marginalized; but although it can be rewarding for a professor to compliment my Post-Colonial reading of some obscure text, what was always more rewarding was when students came up to me after the semester and thanked me for helping them finally understand how to write a convincing paper, which was almost compensation enough for my poor pay. For I hadn't just helped someone in theory, but in practice.
But when you're at a major research institution, the theory remains largely that, theory. The Ivory Tower becomes less a figure of speech than a fact; the needs of the oppressed become more abstract, which is ironic, given that de-humanization is exactly what Post-Colonial theory is supposed to combat. The self-proclaimed "liberal" professors and grad students at such institutions are in danger of becoming like what (I believe) Orwell called "those Marxists who have never had a cup of coffee inside a working-class home," those who possess theory but no experience. Reading all the Baudrillard and Althusser in the world will not help you discuss reform with the laid-off dock workers; a thorough command of Spivak and Bhaba will not help you connect with the children of undocumented Mexican immigrants, or with the Sudanese Lost Boys sitting quietly in the back.
Again, all this is not to discount Baudrillad and Althusser and Spivak and Bhaba; high theory is necessary to change the tenor of discussion among the elite, to influence the policy makers. But change, reform, and revolution is never just a top-down affair; far more important is the work from the bottom up, of helping the marginalized and impoverished to gain the skills and self-confidence necessary to improve their own situations and the world around them. And again, the front-lines of these populations are not at the university but community college level. You feel like you're actually closer to the streets effecting change there--shoot, some of your students have just barely came from the streets themselves.
Everything the elite professors theorize about? It's occurring in real time at our nation's community colleges--and I often think that if we English scholars were truly serious about all of our theory, then far more of us would quit turning up our noses at community colleges as being somehow beneath us, and instead roll up our sleeves and do the real work of helping fellow human beings. It is not enough to theorize; we must be able to apply our theories, and community colleges are the first, best places to do that.
Quite frankly, for all of our world-class research universities, community colleges are what the American education system should be most proud of. I'm not aware of any thing even remotely similar to them in any other nation on Earth. In other countries, especially in Western Europe and East Asia, standardized tests are filing students off to either working-class trade schools or elite-college tracks by the age of 14. In Germany, if you fail just 3 college courses, you are not only flunked out of college, but out of all colleges in the country, with no possibility of re-entry or redemption. There are no second chances, no hope of breaking out of the rigid class structures.
But America, despite all of its other problems, is still the second-chance nation! The "American Dream," the real possibility of a clean start, of upward mobility, of a fresh break from the past, in spite of all our institutionalized racism and manifest destiny and slavery and exploitation of the third world and bloody foreign policy that has near tarnished our reputation beyond repair, this dream is still alive at our community colleges! Again, these places are not about the theory of American idealism, but the praxus. If America is worth saving, it's for institutions like the community college system.
These colleges need our support, but not in a condescending, patronizing, pat-on-the-head sort of way. For those of us in Post-Colonialism or Neo-Marxism or Gender Studies or what have you, I have often pondered that perhaps the place where we could be doing the most good is not cloistered in some distinguished Professorship on Fellowship writing a book-length treatment of Foucault and Berardi and Deleuze and Guattari or whatever for tenure, but by turning from the vanities of prestige and honors of man to instead work among the nonprivileged, with those students most trying to pull themselves up.
Perhaps it would be helpful to remember that the first universities in old Europe were founded by religious orders, by those seeking not after power and wealth, but knowledge and service. Maybe now is the time for us scholars to return to our roots.
Friday, January 17, 2014
A Report on an Experiment: Flying Out of Chicago Instead of Cedar Rapids
Hypothesis:
It is ultimately cheaper and worth the hassle to take the Megabus to Chicago and fly direct out of O'Hare, instead of flying out of Cedar Rapids?
Conclusion:
No.
Experiment Background:
The nearest airport to Iowa City is Cedar Rapids, which is a half-hour drive away, so you better hope you have friends available to pick you up or drop you off--it's either that, or pony up the $40-odd to take an airport shuttle. But even then, all that tiny airport does is put you on a little region-hopper to a major airport. Thus, if you ever want to fly further away than Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Denver, you're never looking at a direct flight out of Iowa to anywhere.
Methodologies:
My roommate suggested a different approach--compared to the airport shuttle, it costs a mere $25 (less if you book in advance) to ride the Megabus direct from downtown Iowa City to downtown Chicago. Also, since Chicago O'Hare is a major hub, tickets are often cheaper out of there than out of Cedar Rapids. So, for my flight to Washington for Christmas break, I decided to test this hypothesis.
Results:
My first problem was when I found that the only Megabus that would get me to Chicago on time left at roughly 3am. December at night in Iowa is not exactly amenable to standing outside waiting for a late bus.
The bus takes 4 hours to reach downtown Chicago. Since my actual flight didn't leave till 3pm, I thought I'd maybe do a little sight-seeing...however, as the bus pulled pass the Willis Tower at 7am and I gazed up with only 3 hours sleep, I knew that that wasn't going to happen. Instead, I hunted down the subway, and in my sleep deprivation rode the Metro ($5 for a single-trip pass) for the next 45 minutes to O'Hare. I slept fitfully at the terminal.
Now, the goal in flying out of Chicago had been to fly as cheaply as possible, so I naturally booked the cheapest tickets I could find, which were on Spirit Airlines (AKA "The Worst"). The booking on-line said "Chicago to Portland," so it wasn't till I printed the booking passes that I learned of my layovers in Las Vegas and San Diego. Way to give me a heads up there, Spirit (serious, Spirit is the worst).
Other terrible things that Spirit isn't forthright about: they charge you for your carry-on, they charge for drinks and snacks (exorbitantly, I might add), they'll charge to print boarding passes at the kiosk, and they'll charge you if you want something other than a middle seat. All told, accounting for all these extra charges, even settling for middle seat and no water, it would've been cheaper to fly, say, Delta or AA out of Cedar Rapids--and I would've had more leg-room, too (again--and not to belabor the point--Spirit is the worst).
Spirit also had a long, inexplicable delay at Vegas, so on my return trip (which had 3 layovers, not just 2), I decided that, to be safe, I better take the Megabus the next morning, in case I was delayed again. Thus, I booked a hostel in downtown Chicago for the night. In addition to adding still more to my overall travel costs, this meant it took 2 solid days to travel from Washington back to Iowa.
To put that into perspective: it took about the same amount of time for me to take a train across central China and fly over the Pacific back to America.
Recommendations:
Denizens of Iowa City and environs! Learn from my fail! Stick to Cedar Rapids airport! What you don't pay in money you instead pay in time and hassle...and you don't actually save any money, either!
Conclusions:
Iowa really doesn't like it when you try to leave; like a clingy bad date who knows you're not going to call back, or an incompetent company that adds cancellation fees to try and keep your business, or a Soviet dictatorship trying to prevent mass defection, Iowa likes to make it as hard as possible to get out. I've seen t-shirts around campus that read "Iowa, Love It or Leave It!" Oh, if only it were that easy...
Also: At the risk of sounding repetitive, Spirit Airlines is the worst. That is all.
It is ultimately cheaper and worth the hassle to take the Megabus to Chicago and fly direct out of O'Hare, instead of flying out of Cedar Rapids?
Conclusion:
No.
Experiment Background:
The nearest airport to Iowa City is Cedar Rapids, which is a half-hour drive away, so you better hope you have friends available to pick you up or drop you off--it's either that, or pony up the $40-odd to take an airport shuttle. But even then, all that tiny airport does is put you on a little region-hopper to a major airport. Thus, if you ever want to fly further away than Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, or Denver, you're never looking at a direct flight out of Iowa to anywhere.
Methodologies:
My roommate suggested a different approach--compared to the airport shuttle, it costs a mere $25 (less if you book in advance) to ride the Megabus direct from downtown Iowa City to downtown Chicago. Also, since Chicago O'Hare is a major hub, tickets are often cheaper out of there than out of Cedar Rapids. So, for my flight to Washington for Christmas break, I decided to test this hypothesis.
Results:
My first problem was when I found that the only Megabus that would get me to Chicago on time left at roughly 3am. December at night in Iowa is not exactly amenable to standing outside waiting for a late bus.
The bus takes 4 hours to reach downtown Chicago. Since my actual flight didn't leave till 3pm, I thought I'd maybe do a little sight-seeing...however, as the bus pulled pass the Willis Tower at 7am and I gazed up with only 3 hours sleep, I knew that that wasn't going to happen. Instead, I hunted down the subway, and in my sleep deprivation rode the Metro ($5 for a single-trip pass) for the next 45 minutes to O'Hare. I slept fitfully at the terminal.
Now, the goal in flying out of Chicago had been to fly as cheaply as possible, so I naturally booked the cheapest tickets I could find, which were on Spirit Airlines (AKA "The Worst"). The booking on-line said "Chicago to Portland," so it wasn't till I printed the booking passes that I learned of my layovers in Las Vegas and San Diego. Way to give me a heads up there, Spirit (serious, Spirit is the worst).
Other terrible things that Spirit isn't forthright about: they charge you for your carry-on, they charge for drinks and snacks (exorbitantly, I might add), they'll charge to print boarding passes at the kiosk, and they'll charge you if you want something other than a middle seat. All told, accounting for all these extra charges, even settling for middle seat and no water, it would've been cheaper to fly, say, Delta or AA out of Cedar Rapids--and I would've had more leg-room, too (again--and not to belabor the point--Spirit is the worst).
Spirit also had a long, inexplicable delay at Vegas, so on my return trip (which had 3 layovers, not just 2), I decided that, to be safe, I better take the Megabus the next morning, in case I was delayed again. Thus, I booked a hostel in downtown Chicago for the night. In addition to adding still more to my overall travel costs, this meant it took 2 solid days to travel from Washington back to Iowa.
To put that into perspective: it took about the same amount of time for me to take a train across central China and fly over the Pacific back to America.
Recommendations:
Denizens of Iowa City and environs! Learn from my fail! Stick to Cedar Rapids airport! What you don't pay in money you instead pay in time and hassle...and you don't actually save any money, either!
Conclusions:
Iowa really doesn't like it when you try to leave; like a clingy bad date who knows you're not going to call back, or an incompetent company that adds cancellation fees to try and keep your business, or a Soviet dictatorship trying to prevent mass defection, Iowa likes to make it as hard as possible to get out. I've seen t-shirts around campus that read "Iowa, Love It or Leave It!" Oh, if only it were that easy...
Also: At the risk of sounding repetitive, Spirit Airlines is the worst. That is all.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
On Aspergers and Abstraction
As you might imagine, having a brother with Aspergers has given me some unique perspective into the human condition. Though I'm no expert (at least not in the academic sense) of Asbergers, I have observed that my brother struggles most with Abstract thought, which disrupts his ability to pick up social cues, make decisions, and process information, among other things.
In fact, I dare say that impaired abstract thought is not just a symptom, but the core characterstic of his condition. Thus, it has been because of my brother that I have come to understand the critical importance of abstract thought--which in turn illustrates the dire necessity of imagination.
For example: My brother naturally gravitates towards the concrete and literal for want of abstract thought. He is terrible at Apples to Apples, because he always picks the most literal card to correspond with the prompt, both for himself and for others. He does not abstract how other people might respond to a card--that is, his impaired abstract thought also impairs his ability to get inside other peoples' heads. He cannot imagine what it must be like to be other people.
A more specific example: Whenever Dad treats him out to lunch, he'll always without fail order the most expensive item. I've tried pulling him aside and explaining to him that when someone buys lunch, you should generally try to not order something more expensive than the person paying (something most folks understand intuitively), but it never takes.
One time, he ordered a steak, and Dad asked for a bite. "Hey, you could've ordered your own steak you know!" he protested. "I did," Dad retorted; and my brother got this flustered, for it had honestly never occurred to him how Dad might feel about him ordering the most expensive thing on the menu.
Abstract thought, in fact, is necessary for imagining how other people think or feel--that is, you need to be able to abstract to empathize. Lack of empathy, in fact, is a sign of impaired abstract thought I've realized. Now, my brother is no sociopath (he's the friendliest guy you'll ever meet), but he can often be tactless, and struggles with genuine empathy, due to his abstract impairment. Thus, whenever I meet someone who is rude or ego-centric or entitled or unsympathetic, then I assume they are lacking in advanced abstract thinking ability, and perhaps has a learning disability.
Beyond empathy, abstraction is necessary for identity: my brother prefers clothing with concrete expressions of his identity, e.g. he like jerseys that list both his name and birth year, he has a cap for near every Seattle sports franchise (even the minor-league hockey team), and he once for a stretch wore a large, brass "S" (for "Samuel") on his jacket zipper, the same way a rapper might wear a giant platinum necklace with his name across the chest (which I bet my Samuel would wear if someone bought him one). The existential concept that his identity is somehow other than his name, stats, or regional affiliations, is just too abstract for him to grasp.
Thus, it's from my brother that I learned that identity is an abstract concept, one that requires a deep well of imagination to construct a self-image that is free from externalaties. That is, to be free to define yourself, instead of letting other things define you, requires abstract thought. To act, and not be acted upon, requires imagination. Hence, whenever I see someone who lets themselves be defined by, say, brand-name clothing, or sports fandom, or political party affiliation or what have you, then I assume they lack advanced abstract thinking ability.
None of this is to denigrate my brother, who is the soul of innocence; my brother just has a mental impairment, what's your excuse?
But abstract thought isn't just necessary for empathy or identity--it also influences very physical concerns. He often has cracked hands for example, because though he washes his hands out of habit, he sometimes forget to wash off all the soap, further exasperating his dry skin. That's because, though he understands the mechanical act of washing his hands, he has difficulty abstracting the actual purpose behind it. So again, take note: if you are a "letter-of-the-law" type who only cares about keeping the rules, not why the rules exist, or if they even should exist, then you may have impaired abstract thinking.
This isn't to say that my brother is incapable of thinking or problem-solving--only that his problem-solving is impaired by his lack of abstract thought. Another Example: once upon a time (in the days before ipods and CD-Rs), my brother asked Dad what he wanted for Christmas. Dad told him of a pair of scratched CDs he'd like replaced. So my brother got him a CD/DVD scratch-repair-kit instead.
Dad and I laughed about it, for my brother's logic was flawless, impeccable even! Dad had scratched CDs, he wanted them un-scratched! Why not just help him repair them instead? Moreover, this gift will allow him to repair other scratched discs he may have in the future! But what Samuel failed to abstract is that my Dad did not want to go to the trouble of cleaning old discs, that part of the gift was in sparing him the effort of having to fix or replace the CDs himself. My brothers chain of logic was perfect, except for his base premises. And premises must be abstracted.
Thus, I've learned from my brother that logic matters less than one's base value system. Please don't mistake, I love logic, and hate when logic is violated; but to go to the extreme example, Hitler hated Jews. Logically, therefore, he should kill them all, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hitler took anti-semitism to its logical conclusion. Hitler's logic was perfect, but his basic premises were monstrous. The most perfect logic in the world doesn't matter an ounce without an abstract moral code to ground it out. Now, my brother is the exact opposite of Hitler; nevertheless, from my brother I realize that the root of madness isn't in one's logic, but in one's premises, which again, must be abstracted to be correct.
Please don't mistake me, my brother is no monster or basket case, far from it: he simply misses out on the unspoken, which can often be delightful. For example, once in Boy Scouts, our troop was going over the map, and my brother noted of the squiggly rivers flowing into lakes, "Hey, those look like little sperms!" And of course all us immature boys burst out laughing.
Now, there was absolutely nothing crude or vulgar about my brother's intentions: he was simply making a concrete observation! The innuendo flew right over his head, because innuendo is implicit, the implicit is unspoken, and the unspoken must be abstracted to be conceptualized.
For these same reasons, my brother struggles with math. Not numbers, math. For he can remember birthdates and ages and phone numbers and so forth like nobody's business; but he can't calculate them easily--in computer terms, he is a massive hard drive but a slow processor. It's not hard to see why: numbers, after all, are metaphors, and you must use your imagination to imagine that they represent something!
What does x or n mean? What do these Greek letters or Arabic numerals signify? What are the rules by which they interact? It was from my brother that I finally, begrudgingly acknowledged that mathematicians, far from being dull, soul-less number-crunchers, are actually minds of profound imagination! Math is not cold and concrete, no, math is deeply abstract!
In fact, you know what my brother doesn't struggle with? Words. That's right, the words on the page that we so often idealize as drenched in imagination and abstraction, are actually the most concrete of all! Example: my brother studied Spanish in High School, so my parents got him a children's Lion King book in Spanish...and he found two grammatical errors in it.
Once when I was driving him somewhere, he said casually: "Since karoke means 'empty symphony, and karate means 'empty hand,' then in Japanese, kara must mean empty, and ke mean symphony, and te mean hand." I absently said, "Oh," but then snapped my head and said, "Wait, did you just decipher Japanese etymology?!" Despite all of what the Post-Structuralists may argue, words are not abstract, but concrete representations, so he excels at deciphering them. I say this to both my fellow English majors and to our critics: perhaps the problem isn't our discipline's abstraction, but its lack of it!
My brother loves puns, wordplay, and syntax--the very same things that abstract poets and English professors love, such that I now suspect that these poets and professor aren't so abstract after all! Now when I read Finnegans Wake, I'm less impressed by Joyce's endlessly inventive wordplay, and wonder instead why Joyce has abandoned abstraction in his story telling; and when a Professor focuses solely on a text's wordplay, I now wonder why the Professor is so fixated on the concrete at the expense of any abstract thought.
Not that there is no abstraction in English; for in order to tell a story, you must be able to imagine--that is, you must abstract--a mental model of a story that doesn't exist. Likewise, to analyze a story, you must psycho-analyze, historicize, and otherwise infer implicit meanings that are not concretely obvious in the text. My field of English is thus not so far away from Math as might appear, for both require profound abstract thought--as does life itself!
For what I've learned most from my brother, is the great importance of not only abstraction, but of imagination: you need imagination for empathy, sympathy, social cues, math, problem-solving, anticipation, and innovation. Thus, whenever I hear folks denigrate Fiction, Literary Studies, or other disciplines necessary for stimulating and strengthening imagination, dismissing it all as "too abstract" to be "relevant," I fear these folks do not understand the grave importance of abstraction itself!
To disparage the abstract and the imagination is to impair our society's ability to function properly, to think clearly, to empathize compassionately, to problem-solve correctly, to understand the unspoken, all of which in effect is to give our society Aspergers, just like my brother. So, read more fiction, improve your imagination, let your abstract thought soar! (There are even scientific studies to prove that reading novels improve your empathy, i.e. your abstract thought! The humanities really do make us more humane.) My brother, bless his pure heart and good humor, didn't get to choose his condition, so let us be wary of voluntarily inflicting his same condition upon ourselves.
Update: As if to reinforce all of my points, my brother gave me the following facebook feedback on my blogpost!
"I read your blog about me. I noticed some things wrong: the primary one is that it's spelled As[p]erger's Syndrome, not Asbergers Syndrome. Second is that I don't have an WNBA Seattle Storm cap; only an NBA SuperSonics visor, an NFL Seahawks visor, an MLB Mariners visor, an MLB Mariners cap with the former logo and a Western Hockey League Thunderbirds cap. Third regarding the Spanish book on "The Lion King", I don't recall having one; I recall getting the Spanish dub VHS, but never a book. Finally, I don't know if it's wrong, but the "S" key chain is actually on my missionary rain coat."
In fact, I dare say that impaired abstract thought is not just a symptom, but the core characterstic of his condition. Thus, it has been because of my brother that I have come to understand the critical importance of abstract thought--which in turn illustrates the dire necessity of imagination.
For example: My brother naturally gravitates towards the concrete and literal for want of abstract thought. He is terrible at Apples to Apples, because he always picks the most literal card to correspond with the prompt, both for himself and for others. He does not abstract how other people might respond to a card--that is, his impaired abstract thought also impairs his ability to get inside other peoples' heads. He cannot imagine what it must be like to be other people.
A more specific example: Whenever Dad treats him out to lunch, he'll always without fail order the most expensive item. I've tried pulling him aside and explaining to him that when someone buys lunch, you should generally try to not order something more expensive than the person paying (something most folks understand intuitively), but it never takes.
One time, he ordered a steak, and Dad asked for a bite. "Hey, you could've ordered your own steak you know!" he protested. "I did," Dad retorted; and my brother got this flustered, for it had honestly never occurred to him how Dad might feel about him ordering the most expensive thing on the menu.
Abstract thought, in fact, is necessary for imagining how other people think or feel--that is, you need to be able to abstract to empathize. Lack of empathy, in fact, is a sign of impaired abstract thought I've realized. Now, my brother is no sociopath (he's the friendliest guy you'll ever meet), but he can often be tactless, and struggles with genuine empathy, due to his abstract impairment. Thus, whenever I meet someone who is rude or ego-centric or entitled or unsympathetic, then I assume they are lacking in advanced abstract thinking ability, and perhaps has a learning disability.
Beyond empathy, abstraction is necessary for identity: my brother prefers clothing with concrete expressions of his identity, e.g. he like jerseys that list both his name and birth year, he has a cap for near every Seattle sports franchise (even the minor-league hockey team), and he once for a stretch wore a large, brass "S" (for "Samuel") on his jacket zipper, the same way a rapper might wear a giant platinum necklace with his name across the chest (which I bet my Samuel would wear if someone bought him one). The existential concept that his identity is somehow other than his name, stats, or regional affiliations, is just too abstract for him to grasp.
Thus, it's from my brother that I learned that identity is an abstract concept, one that requires a deep well of imagination to construct a self-image that is free from externalaties. That is, to be free to define yourself, instead of letting other things define you, requires abstract thought. To act, and not be acted upon, requires imagination. Hence, whenever I see someone who lets themselves be defined by, say, brand-name clothing, or sports fandom, or political party affiliation or what have you, then I assume they lack advanced abstract thinking ability.
None of this is to denigrate my brother, who is the soul of innocence; my brother just has a mental impairment, what's your excuse?
But abstract thought isn't just necessary for empathy or identity--it also influences very physical concerns. He often has cracked hands for example, because though he washes his hands out of habit, he sometimes forget to wash off all the soap, further exasperating his dry skin. That's because, though he understands the mechanical act of washing his hands, he has difficulty abstracting the actual purpose behind it. So again, take note: if you are a "letter-of-the-law" type who only cares about keeping the rules, not why the rules exist, or if they even should exist, then you may have impaired abstract thinking.
This isn't to say that my brother is incapable of thinking or problem-solving--only that his problem-solving is impaired by his lack of abstract thought. Another Example: once upon a time (in the days before ipods and CD-Rs), my brother asked Dad what he wanted for Christmas. Dad told him of a pair of scratched CDs he'd like replaced. So my brother got him a CD/DVD scratch-repair-kit instead.
Dad and I laughed about it, for my brother's logic was flawless, impeccable even! Dad had scratched CDs, he wanted them un-scratched! Why not just help him repair them instead? Moreover, this gift will allow him to repair other scratched discs he may have in the future! But what Samuel failed to abstract is that my Dad did not want to go to the trouble of cleaning old discs, that part of the gift was in sparing him the effort of having to fix or replace the CDs himself. My brothers chain of logic was perfect, except for his base premises. And premises must be abstracted.
Thus, I've learned from my brother that logic matters less than one's base value system. Please don't mistake, I love logic, and hate when logic is violated; but to go to the extreme example, Hitler hated Jews. Logically, therefore, he should kill them all, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hitler took anti-semitism to its logical conclusion. Hitler's logic was perfect, but his basic premises were monstrous. The most perfect logic in the world doesn't matter an ounce without an abstract moral code to ground it out. Now, my brother is the exact opposite of Hitler; nevertheless, from my brother I realize that the root of madness isn't in one's logic, but in one's premises, which again, must be abstracted to be correct.
Please don't mistake me, my brother is no monster or basket case, far from it: he simply misses out on the unspoken, which can often be delightful. For example, once in Boy Scouts, our troop was going over the map, and my brother noted of the squiggly rivers flowing into lakes, "Hey, those look like little sperms!" And of course all us immature boys burst out laughing.
Now, there was absolutely nothing crude or vulgar about my brother's intentions: he was simply making a concrete observation! The innuendo flew right over his head, because innuendo is implicit, the implicit is unspoken, and the unspoken must be abstracted to be conceptualized.
For these same reasons, my brother struggles with math. Not numbers, math. For he can remember birthdates and ages and phone numbers and so forth like nobody's business; but he can't calculate them easily--in computer terms, he is a massive hard drive but a slow processor. It's not hard to see why: numbers, after all, are metaphors, and you must use your imagination to imagine that they represent something!
What does x or n mean? What do these Greek letters or Arabic numerals signify? What are the rules by which they interact? It was from my brother that I finally, begrudgingly acknowledged that mathematicians, far from being dull, soul-less number-crunchers, are actually minds of profound imagination! Math is not cold and concrete, no, math is deeply abstract!
In fact, you know what my brother doesn't struggle with? Words. That's right, the words on the page that we so often idealize as drenched in imagination and abstraction, are actually the most concrete of all! Example: my brother studied Spanish in High School, so my parents got him a children's Lion King book in Spanish...and he found two grammatical errors in it.
Once when I was driving him somewhere, he said casually: "Since karoke means 'empty symphony, and karate means 'empty hand,' then in Japanese, kara must mean empty, and ke mean symphony, and te mean hand." I absently said, "Oh," but then snapped my head and said, "Wait, did you just decipher Japanese etymology?!" Despite all of what the Post-Structuralists may argue, words are not abstract, but concrete representations, so he excels at deciphering them. I say this to both my fellow English majors and to our critics: perhaps the problem isn't our discipline's abstraction, but its lack of it!
My brother loves puns, wordplay, and syntax--the very same things that abstract poets and English professors love, such that I now suspect that these poets and professor aren't so abstract after all! Now when I read Finnegans Wake, I'm less impressed by Joyce's endlessly inventive wordplay, and wonder instead why Joyce has abandoned abstraction in his story telling; and when a Professor focuses solely on a text's wordplay, I now wonder why the Professor is so fixated on the concrete at the expense of any abstract thought.
Not that there is no abstraction in English; for in order to tell a story, you must be able to imagine--that is, you must abstract--a mental model of a story that doesn't exist. Likewise, to analyze a story, you must psycho-analyze, historicize, and otherwise infer implicit meanings that are not concretely obvious in the text. My field of English is thus not so far away from Math as might appear, for both require profound abstract thought--as does life itself!
For what I've learned most from my brother, is the great importance of not only abstraction, but of imagination: you need imagination for empathy, sympathy, social cues, math, problem-solving, anticipation, and innovation. Thus, whenever I hear folks denigrate Fiction, Literary Studies, or other disciplines necessary for stimulating and strengthening imagination, dismissing it all as "too abstract" to be "relevant," I fear these folks do not understand the grave importance of abstraction itself!
To disparage the abstract and the imagination is to impair our society's ability to function properly, to think clearly, to empathize compassionately, to problem-solve correctly, to understand the unspoken, all of which in effect is to give our society Aspergers, just like my brother. So, read more fiction, improve your imagination, let your abstract thought soar! (There are even scientific studies to prove that reading novels improve your empathy, i.e. your abstract thought! The humanities really do make us more humane.) My brother, bless his pure heart and good humor, didn't get to choose his condition, so let us be wary of voluntarily inflicting his same condition upon ourselves.
Update: As if to reinforce all of my points, my brother gave me the following facebook feedback on my blogpost!
"I read your blog about me. I noticed some things wrong: the primary one is that it's spelled As[p]erger's Syndrome, not Asbergers Syndrome. Second is that I don't have an WNBA Seattle Storm cap; only an NBA SuperSonics visor, an NFL Seahawks visor, an MLB Mariners visor, an MLB Mariners cap with the former logo and a Western Hockey League Thunderbirds cap. Third regarding the Spanish book on "The Lion King", I don't recall having one; I recall getting the Spanish dub VHS, but never a book. Finally, I don't know if it's wrong, but the "S" key chain is actually on my missionary rain coat."
Friday, January 10, 2014
Jonathan Franzen and the Fear of the '90s
Compared to our contemporary America of terrorist threats, torture, PATRIOT ACTS, and interminable Mid-Eastern wars; of chronic insecurity, poor health-care coverage, unemployment and underemployment; of ballooning Federal deficits, student loan debt, and gas prices; of repeated environmental cataclysms, and polarizing politics, the '90s must seem downright idealic.
Except it wasn't, it really wasn't! The moment you begin to remember the '90s as something other than the decade of Jurassic Park, Nickelodeon, and Gigapets, you remember how there was this great cultural dread of some coming "New World Order" entangled in vast governmental conspiracies, as shown by the immense popularity of The X-Files; you remember the exploding AIDS epidemic and how the alarm bells for Global Warming were already tolling; you remember the ascension of Nirvana and "Grunge" and "Alternative" and other music genres notable for their bubbling anxieties; and you remember how at the end of the '90s, Jonathan Franzen had a best-seller called The Corrections that mined deep wells of anxiety out of the collapse of the first tech bubble, of all things!
When I finally got around to reading The Corrections over a year ago, that's what most struck me: the ever-pervading sense of sheer dread contained in the pages of a book that was written pre-9/11! The book famously (or infamously, depending on who you ask) became a best-seller in part because it was released just 10 days before 9/11, and the standard narrative is that Americans rushed to buy this book that could remind them of the very recent "good times" they had just barely lost so irrevocably.
Which narrative has always confused me, because The Corrections is just such an unbearably anxious book! Right on the first page, we are assured that "something terrible is about to happen." Franzen of course didn't know that 9/11 was going to be it, but he still nevertheless nails the zeitgeist just right! Franzen remembers correctly how in 2001, just barely past the '90s, there was just this all pervading fear that something terrible would happen, there was just an inevitability about it. That's what the '90s were, one vast feeling of dread, of dancing in the eye of the hurricane, of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Much has been made about how much more divided America has been since 9/11. But as The Corrections demonstrate, 9/11 didn't cause the breaks in America, no, it revealed them!
Saturday, January 4, 2014
The Midwest on the Actual West
We grad students at Iowa were going round the table for some visiting professor; we were bidden to give our names, research interests, and that vague "something interesting about yourself." Before we were half done, it became clear that we were each jumping in and saying what we thought was interesting about our classmate for them, such that by the time it was my turn, I said simply, "Well, what's interesting about me, guys?"
One classmate immediately said, "Well, Jacob's lived in Idaho before, I think that's super interesting," and she wasn't even being sarcastic! That neighboring state I relentlessly mocked growing up in Washington, and still did when I went to college in Idaho myself, and continued to so mock whilst a Utah grad student, was here in Iowa perceived as some exotic, wild frontier by my Midwestern classmates.
Nor was it just Idaho: My time in Utah, and origins in Washington, were likewise cited as intrinsically fascinating by classmates, more so even than my time in Puerto Rico, Mexico, or China. Of course not everyone around the table thought these western states worthy of note; others were as baffled by the Idaho comment as I. No, it was not all but only specifically the Midwesterners who cited my farther-Western status as fascinating. Because for Midwesterners, who apparently already have this edge-of-civilization identity from living just west of the Mississippi, any states even further west apparently have this strange, Shangri-La exoticism and romance about them.
Corroborating anecdote: At a Halloween party, I was chatting with a classmate from Indiana who, upon learning my Pacific Northwest origin, waxed wistful on his one summer working in Wyoming, as though some place 3 states from where I grew up was part of some larger, unified "Northwest" (in the loosest sense of the word) region of wonder and wilderness. He spoke glowingly of "the Western states" (his phrase, not mine) as some place impossibly distant and beautiful and foreign, that he might want to finally "end up" in one day, the way some people also half-dream of moving to Hawaii or Australia, as though we weren't all part of the same nation, as though he couldn't just drive there himself in a couple days tops.
But then, Midwesterners, with their endless flat expanses, never-ending strings of homogeneous communities, and corn fields stretching into infinity, would experience a uniformity of existence that could be mistaken for normalcy. In the midst of such overwhelming sameness, where minute changes in landscape are all that can differentiate one state from a next, anything non-same must appear positively other-worldly. Hence, any region with such variety and beauty of mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, wildlife and forests as "the Western states" must seem strange and exotic to them indeed.
It perhaps does not often occur to Midwesterners that they might live in the Western states as easily as they do the Midwest--it maybe requires a great reserve of strength and resolve to risk abnormality, to willingly pull one's self away from such self-evident normalcy.
Perhaps East Coast snobbery is in part to blame--the majority of Americans still, for the time being, live east of the Mississippi, and hence the East Coast still gets to define itself as the center of America. The Midwest, then, is just close enough to the East to feel pulled into its orbits and definitions, but still just far enough away, just a tad too west of the Mississippi, to feel like they are on the outside looking in. That is, the Midwest is still looking East, secretly pining to join the big-boys club of that coast, and consoling themselves by calling themselves "the Heartland," the very definition of normalcy--such that only in their most self-aware moments do they look over their shoulders and realize in awe that there is a whole other farther-West looming behind them, exotic, strange, dark.
This is all hyperbole of course. Mostly, anyways. For it has been my experience that, though I myself have always just casually considered the East Coast and Midwest as but other parts of the same country, yet still I've noted how the eyes of East Coasters and Midwesterners widen a little when they realize that my "I'm from Washington" does not refer to Maryland or Virginia. For to them, even that other Washington, the one home to such ubiquitous mega-corporations as Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing, is still seen as someplace too far away to comprehend.
More samples: a friend of mine from Idaho once rolled his eyes at an East Coaster who asked in all sincerity if Idaho had paved roads; another from Utah who went to college in Detroit was asked the same of her classmates as recently as the '70s. But then, the grandeur, variety, and sublimity of the West must just seem so un-tameable to the Midwest. Now of course, these flat, empty expanses of open country, sure, these we can pave roads on, these we can build houses and safely settle down on! But the true West...these are places that are conceptually beyond civilization to them.
To which, all I can say is: Come, my Midwest friends, join us. We are not that far away at all. We are not even all that different. Fear not. A far more beautiful and wonderful world awaits you. Life is too short to stare at the same scenes endlessly, over and over, worlds without end. You are welcome here. Just face up towards Canada and hang a left, don't stop till you reach the Rockies, then spend the rest of your days exploring everything in them and West of them. It will soon feel normal to you, I promise, and you'll soon wonder why you thought endless corn fields ever felt so normal to you in the first place.
One classmate immediately said, "Well, Jacob's lived in Idaho before, I think that's super interesting," and she wasn't even being sarcastic! That neighboring state I relentlessly mocked growing up in Washington, and still did when I went to college in Idaho myself, and continued to so mock whilst a Utah grad student, was here in Iowa perceived as some exotic, wild frontier by my Midwestern classmates.
Nor was it just Idaho: My time in Utah, and origins in Washington, were likewise cited as intrinsically fascinating by classmates, more so even than my time in Puerto Rico, Mexico, or China. Of course not everyone around the table thought these western states worthy of note; others were as baffled by the Idaho comment as I. No, it was not all but only specifically the Midwesterners who cited my farther-Western status as fascinating. Because for Midwesterners, who apparently already have this edge-of-civilization identity from living just west of the Mississippi, any states even further west apparently have this strange, Shangri-La exoticism and romance about them.
Corroborating anecdote: At a Halloween party, I was chatting with a classmate from Indiana who, upon learning my Pacific Northwest origin, waxed wistful on his one summer working in Wyoming, as though some place 3 states from where I grew up was part of some larger, unified "Northwest" (in the loosest sense of the word) region of wonder and wilderness. He spoke glowingly of "the Western states" (his phrase, not mine) as some place impossibly distant and beautiful and foreign, that he might want to finally "end up" in one day, the way some people also half-dream of moving to Hawaii or Australia, as though we weren't all part of the same nation, as though he couldn't just drive there himself in a couple days tops.
But then, Midwesterners, with their endless flat expanses, never-ending strings of homogeneous communities, and corn fields stretching into infinity, would experience a uniformity of existence that could be mistaken for normalcy. In the midst of such overwhelming sameness, where minute changes in landscape are all that can differentiate one state from a next, anything non-same must appear positively other-worldly. Hence, any region with such variety and beauty of mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, wildlife and forests as "the Western states" must seem strange and exotic to them indeed.
It perhaps does not often occur to Midwesterners that they might live in the Western states as easily as they do the Midwest--it maybe requires a great reserve of strength and resolve to risk abnormality, to willingly pull one's self away from such self-evident normalcy.
Perhaps East Coast snobbery is in part to blame--the majority of Americans still, for the time being, live east of the Mississippi, and hence the East Coast still gets to define itself as the center of America. The Midwest, then, is just close enough to the East to feel pulled into its orbits and definitions, but still just far enough away, just a tad too west of the Mississippi, to feel like they are on the outside looking in. That is, the Midwest is still looking East, secretly pining to join the big-boys club of that coast, and consoling themselves by calling themselves "the Heartland," the very definition of normalcy--such that only in their most self-aware moments do they look over their shoulders and realize in awe that there is a whole other farther-West looming behind them, exotic, strange, dark.
This is all hyperbole of course. Mostly, anyways. For it has been my experience that, though I myself have always just casually considered the East Coast and Midwest as but other parts of the same country, yet still I've noted how the eyes of East Coasters and Midwesterners widen a little when they realize that my "I'm from Washington" does not refer to Maryland or Virginia. For to them, even that other Washington, the one home to such ubiquitous mega-corporations as Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing, is still seen as someplace too far away to comprehend.
More samples: a friend of mine from Idaho once rolled his eyes at an East Coaster who asked in all sincerity if Idaho had paved roads; another from Utah who went to college in Detroit was asked the same of her classmates as recently as the '70s. But then, the grandeur, variety, and sublimity of the West must just seem so un-tameable to the Midwest. Now of course, these flat, empty expanses of open country, sure, these we can pave roads on, these we can build houses and safely settle down on! But the true West...these are places that are conceptually beyond civilization to them.
To which, all I can say is: Come, my Midwest friends, join us. We are not that far away at all. We are not even all that different. Fear not. A far more beautiful and wonderful world awaits you. Life is too short to stare at the same scenes endlessly, over and over, worlds without end. You are welcome here. Just face up towards Canada and hang a left, don't stop till you reach the Rockies, then spend the rest of your days exploring everything in them and West of them. It will soon feel normal to you, I promise, and you'll soon wonder why you thought endless corn fields ever felt so normal to you in the first place.
Friday, January 3, 2014
Spirit Airlines is the Absolute Worst
Guys, I have totally found the worst airline ever! It's Spirit. Listen up:
They suck you in by having the cheapest tickets...except they totally don't! They charge for carry-ons (serious, what kind of dirtbag charges for carry-ons?! Their fellow scoundrels at Frontier and Allegiance do the same, take note!), and then they have the audacity to cheerfully advertise "no hidden bag charges" on their website! I guess, to be fair, they're honest, for their charges aren't hidden at all--they are brazen and open in their dastardly highway robbery! Honesty doesn't excuse your awfulness, Spirit.
Other terrible things that Spirit isn't forthright about: they charge you for your carry-on, they charge for drinks and snacks (exorbitantly, I might add), they'll charge to print boarding passes at the kiosk, and they'll charge you if you want something other than a middle seat. All told, accounting for all these extra charges, even settling for middle seat and no water, it would've been cheaper to fly, say, Delta or AA out of Cedar Rapids--and I would've had more leg-room, too (again--and not to belabor the point--Spirit is the worst).
But what's worst is you don't just pay in money (money can be replaced), you pay in irrecoverable time: for Spirit rarely has direct flights, and they are rarely on time anyways. I myself had what was supposed to be a milk-run from Chicago to Portland by way of Las Vegas and San Diego, which is in and of itself the most bizarrely circumlocutious route ever.
But not only was the route terrible, but these incompetents couldn't even commit to it! They failed at their own pathetic flight plans! For I was just supposed to ride the same crappy middle-seat on the same cramped airplane through both layovers, but as I disembarked at Vegas, we were delayed 2 hours. Why? Who knows, who cares, I won't fly them again. And if you don't either, then I will have fulfilled my mission. They gave me one of my longest, worst days of flying ever, and I care for them with the same contempt as they did for me. May they go bankrupt, hopefully investigated by the Feds.
They suck you in by having the cheapest tickets...except they totally don't! They charge for carry-ons (serious, what kind of dirtbag charges for carry-ons?! Their fellow scoundrels at Frontier and Allegiance do the same, take note!), and then they have the audacity to cheerfully advertise "no hidden bag charges" on their website! I guess, to be fair, they're honest, for their charges aren't hidden at all--they are brazen and open in their dastardly highway robbery! Honesty doesn't excuse your awfulness, Spirit.
Other terrible things that Spirit isn't forthright about: they charge you for your carry-on, they charge for drinks and snacks (exorbitantly, I might add), they'll charge to print boarding passes at the kiosk, and they'll charge you if you want something other than a middle seat. All told, accounting for all these extra charges, even settling for middle seat and no water, it would've been cheaper to fly, say, Delta or AA out of Cedar Rapids--and I would've had more leg-room, too (again--and not to belabor the point--Spirit is the worst).
But what's worst is you don't just pay in money (money can be replaced), you pay in irrecoverable time: for Spirit rarely has direct flights, and they are rarely on time anyways. I myself had what was supposed to be a milk-run from Chicago to Portland by way of Las Vegas and San Diego, which is in and of itself the most bizarrely circumlocutious route ever.
But not only was the route terrible, but these incompetents couldn't even commit to it! They failed at their own pathetic flight plans! For I was just supposed to ride the same crappy middle-seat on the same cramped airplane through both layovers, but as I disembarked at Vegas, we were delayed 2 hours. Why? Who knows, who cares, I won't fly them again. And if you don't either, then I will have fulfilled my mission. They gave me one of my longest, worst days of flying ever, and I care for them with the same contempt as they did for me. May they go bankrupt, hopefully investigated by the Feds.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Ring Out Wild Bells
Alfred Tennyson published in 1849:
"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
That line "Ring out wild bells" also serves as the title and chorus of an old U2 tune, "Like a Song":
Which track appears on the same 1983 album as "New Years Day":
"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."
That line "Ring out wild bells" also serves as the title and chorus of an old U2 tune, "Like a Song":
Which track appears on the same 1983 album as "New Years Day":
All of which is just a round about way of saying:
Happy New Year!
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