The Rough Draft of History

What a shitshow that Boston Marathon was. The actual bombing was of course a tragedy but the media coverage was for the most part just a huge ration of shit.

The worst was the New York Post, which ran a photo of two men carrying backpacks and the suggestive headline “Bag Men” on its front page. These people pictured were not suspects, just two guys at the marathon who were carrying backpacks. The paper will try to cry that the actual article did not identify these men as suspects and that the photo was sort of an illustration of the type of people the authorities were looking for, not the actual people.

This is bullshit. Any decent editor would have immediately flagged the photo for making it look like the Post was calling these uninvolved guys bombing suspects. You can say whatever you want in the fine print but people don’t read that and the effect of a screaming tabloid photo and headline would have been to accuse these guys in an emotionally charged situation. Any newspaper writer or editor understands this. They had to know what they were doing. I would sue them for libel.

CNN embarrassed itself with the false information it disseminated. Honestly, I wasn’t surprised by this. This is from the network that made a JFK assassination-level deal out of a cruise ship covered in poop so its credibility has been shot with me. That’s what happens when you hire the man who destroyed NBC.

You know, I can’t wait til Twitter dies just so I don’t have to look at a hashtag again. I was so frustrated last week when I would click on an article that had a timeline of events and it was just a bunch of Twitter feeds in reverse chronological order. It’s sheer laziness on the part of the writer. Just fucking edit those Twitter feeds into an actual, readable narrative that people can consume. No, it isn’t that hard and yes, that is your job as a member of the media. Twitter is good for some things but you can’t just slap a bunch of tweets together and call it journalism. Put things into full sentences.

That whole Reddit thing of having armchair Internet detectives track down the bombers turned out to be the equivalent of the drunken posse on The Simpsons stumbling around and trying to serve justice. It is beyond me that anyone thought “crowdsourcing” could be effective. People were posting photos of that guy on a roof on Facebook with comments like, “If we draw the FBI’s attention to it, maybe they’ll investigate this guy!!1!” Sure. There were hundreds of FBI and Boston law enforcement officials already hunting down every lead, but what it would really take is the Internet Hardy Boys to crack that case wide open.

It is also beyond me how (if I’m getting this right) some people on Reddit were listening to the police scanner and heard the name of that college kid who went missing awhile back and assumed he must be the culprit. Didn’t try to verify it. Didn’t think that maybe they could have mistaken something garbled on the scanner. Just put the accusation out there and made life a lot worse for the family of a missing kid. Great work, Internet Vigilantes.

A lot of people have been saying that you were better off waiting to get the news on the bombing manhunt the next day after things settled down and I think they were right. I spent Friday fascinated by the manhunt and lockdown of a city and I kept looking for news all day. But it occurred to me later that I didn’t need to know about it in real time. I could see the people in Boston needing instant information since they were directly involved and could have been in harm’s way, so they needed to pay attention to Tweets and such. But I was OK reading the account later, after the rough draft of history got edited more accurately.

Treat Yoself

As part of our effort to primp ourselves for the big day, Steve and I have undergone spa-type treatments. I have never had any of these things before. Some I would repeat and some I would not.

We had facials. They were OK. I’m not sure what I expected to get out of it but I wanted to look as close to poreless and airbrushed on the wedding day as possible. It was nice to have all those lotions and what not but I didn’t see some huge difference. They told us we both looked great but we pretty much looked the same (although maybe the experts see things that we can’t). It wasn’t like there was this big unveiling and we looked like movie stars.

The best way to describe the facial was that right afterwards, my face felt like your teeth do after a cleaning. It was analogous to that fresh feeling. Later it just felt … fine. I don’t know that I would do this again.

My better half highly recommended (read: required) the manicure and pedicure because my version of taking care of my nails is biting them. Well, not the toenails but definitely the fingernails. My nails and cuticles do look better and they dipped my hands in this paraffin that came off like some kind of movie special effects mold and left my hands feeling soft. The talons on my toes are no longer talons. The feeling of the emery board on my toenails was agonizing and weird but I coped somehow.

So I would do the mani-pedi again. My hands have to look good for the photos and any close-ups of the rings and handfasting and my toes need to look good as I lie around the pool on our honeymoon.

I had never before had a Swedish massage. It was relaxing. I don’t understand how people fall asleep during them, though, because I could never fall asleep while someone is prodding me. They got rid of a knot in my shoulder that I didn’t know I had.

The massage was fine and I’d do it again, perhaps as soon as our honeymoon.

Unsolicited Advice for Half the Earth

Can I ask a question of the fairer sex? Is it exhausting, as a woman, to read the onslaught of advice about how you should live your life when most of the advice involves things that are nobody else’s business?

I keep reading all these articles about when women should get married, whether they should work outside the home after having kids, how they should advance in their careers, etc. It’s exhausting for me to see all this blabber and I’m a man. I don’t understand how people can offer blanket advice to 3 billion people.

I recently read a point-counterpoint on whether women should marry young. Two women shared their own vantage points of marrying young or older and advised others on this. The answer to this conundrum is, “Get married when you find someone you want to settle down with and only marry if it’s what you want and you’re ready for it.” How obnoxious that people presume there’s an easy answer for women who want different things.

I can’t understand the whole debate on working outside the home after you become a mother. There has been so much commentary on whether mothers should be in the workforce and the answer is just to do what works for your life and your child. Who the hell is anyone else to advise you on that, especially in such a way that they throw a blanket over people they have never met? Some women make some choices and some make others. All these articles I read about women working or not working seem to ignore the obvious: Some mothers need jobs outside the home because they have to pay the mortgage. Nobody, parent or not, to punches a time clock for their health. Do whatever is right for your situation. I don’t really care what you choose.

Some people were saying the advice Sheryl Sandberg gave to women in her book Lean In was not applicable to all women, particularly those in the lower reaches of corporate life. Then, I guess, don’t follow her advice? It makes no sense to expect the writings of one woman to apply to hundreds of millions of other women but maybe there’s still a grain of truth for you in what Sandberg said. I just hear all this chatter about this book and I think, “Christ, either listen to her or move on to something else.”

I just have never understood the idea of lumping all women, the largest possible demographic group, into a monolith and assuming they all want the same thing.

Raising Awareness for Awareness

There are so many diseases and causes we must be aware of. We raise awareness for cures and all kinds of other noble things. Since these solutions can be hard to come by, I suggest we start advocating a different type of awareness: Raising awareness of awareness.

In other words, pay attention to what you’re doing, moron.

This came to mind last Saturday as Steve and took a jaunt to Ikea to buy some wedding favors and other things. Of course, as we moved through the aisles, we got stuck multiple people who were just poking along and browsing, being passed on both sides by snails. I even had a slight limp since I had woken up with a leg cramp that was bothering me, and I was still going faster than these people. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered me that much but I am in “not fucking around” mode due to wedding planning and knew just where I wanted to go and I wanted to scream “Can’t you go any faster for the SAKE OF CHRIIIIIIIST?!?!”

These people should be able to buy colored bracelets that urge them to be aware of awareness. Just take a look at your surroundings. There are people behind you who are on a mission and not a pleasure trip and you need to quiet the calliope music in your head and show some awareness of that. I’m not talking about people who are physically incapable of moving faster. I’m talking about the couple who just have to walk side by side and clog the aisle like wadded up tissue paper in a toilet. Please walk single file. It will not end your relationship if you cannot hold hands all the time.

And if you are driving a car and staring straight ahead with blinders on, completely oblivious to what’s going on behind you, you simply are not a skilled driver.

This comes into play daily in Elsmere, where drivers love to idle in the street while they wait for people to come out of houses. Just. Park. Your. Fucking. Car. It never takes “just a minute” like you say it will. There is always a delay while the person inside screws around and forgets things and has to find them before finally emerging.

Recently I was on a one-way street and a woman ahead of me was idled in the middle of the street waiting for someone. I honked my horn and she gave me that “I don’t know what you want me to do” shrug. What I want you to do, madam, is pull your goddamn car over so I can squeeze by. At least show some consideration and do that much if there are no spots on the street. I haaaate that shrug. Like she has no possible solution. Like it would be a herculean effort to turn the wheel 3 degrees and inch over. I finally did pass her, just barely not destroying our side-view mirrors. I should have pulled right in front of her and blocked her and shrugged.

I can’t emphasize this enough: Park your car. And if you can’t parallel park into that spot while you wait for someone, maybe you should learn how.

I had the most déjà vu dream

We’ve been here before. I had yet another dream about going back to my first apartment.

It was a palace compared to the real thing. The living room was in the back where the dining room was and it was pretty big. The bedroom was big enough that it fit two twin beds and a futon. I was moving some pillows from the living room to the bedroom. Ann, Bev, Deanna and our company’s president were sitting there chatting.

My old bedroom looked much like I left it. The box spring of my bed was missing so the mattress was sitting right on the floor. My old blanket and bed sheets were on it. I had left my old bureau there. It was decorated with these square wooden ape heads with huge blue eyes. I planned on taking this bureau back to my current house because it was so nice.

Best of all, I had left a bunch of wrapped Christmas presents in the closet and they were still there. I couldn’t remember what I bought so I really wanted to rip into them and use the presents myself. They had been in the closet for a decade so it was too late to return them anyway. I was annoyed when I woke up and there were no presents.

It was odd that the present residents of the apartment left my room the way it was. It was like I died and they were too heartbroken to rearrange anything.

Sex and the City and Cupcakes and Booze

Can we make an agreement as a society that we will stop using Sex and the City as any kind of reference to anything in our culture? Christ, that show has been off the air for almost a decade and yet we’re still referring to it as starting trends.

I was just reading an article that more women stay out late drinking and it’s causing problems in their marriages. The author refers to this as “Sex and the City drinking,” which I suppose is where a quartet of women down trendy cosmos while wearing trendy shoes. If you’re going to use a cultural touchstone to draw attention to a problem, at least use something recent. Say something like, “Women are drinking like the men on Mad Men.” Then your article won’t seem so stale.

I enjoyed the show but I have never forgiven Sex and the City for popularizing cupcakes. I like cupcakes OK but I have a small mouth and they are hard to eat without getting icing all over my face. Just serve me a piece of cake. I never understood the fascination with cupcakes because they’re just individual slices of cake in a round shape.

Yet for however many years it’s been, it’s been cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes and I’m sick of it. People always invoke that episode where the gang went to the Magnolia Bakery like it happened yesterday and that was, what, 12 years ago now? And the Food Network seemingly has three or four shows dedicated solely to cupcakes. Am I supposed to take seriously any show called Cupcake Wars? It’s not so much the fault of Sex and the City as much as writers who won’t let an ancient (by pop culture standards) episode of a TV show just fucking die already.

If Carrie and the gang were real people, they would have long ago moved on from cupcakes as passé and sought out the next fashionable thing.

Dress to Kill

I was watching an interview with Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago when something struck me. She was dressed to kill, as most high-level executives are, while Mark Zuckerberg looked like a schlub in a hoodie, as usual.

I have never liked the hoodie look for him as it is vastly inappropriate for a CEO. I don’t care that he started Facebook as a college kid or that his company is a sort of casual, fun, frivolous thing. If you are in charge of a company that is, despite its stock tumble, still ridiculously valuable, dress like an adult. I’m sure you can manage.

What bothers me about Zuckerberg’s hoodie is that it’s clearly a Look trying not to look like a Look. They had it right in The Social Network when one character called out Zuckerberg’s “fuck-you flip-flops.” It’s self-conscious but trying not to appear as such.

Anyhoo, the contrast between Sandberg’s professionalism and Zuckerberg’s slovenliness stuck out. I had to wonder if a woman at the top of a company would be taken seriously if she slouched into the office in a hoodie. Probably not.

Maybe it’s an age thing. Sandberg is in her early 40s while Zuckerberg is in his late 20s and while we can forgive the sweatpant aesthetic in a relative youth, we can’t forgive it in someone entering middle age. Then again, by the time I was Zuckerberg’s age, I already knew how to dress like an adult and go into work.

People have deeply inappropriate ideas of what to wear to their office jobs. You don’t have to be fashionable but it doesn’t take a fashion sense to realize that hoodies are a lower grade of clothing. You might not have the fashion sense to know a bad suit but you probably can still differentiate a suit from a sweatshirt.   

I know, I know: It takes a titanic effort to put on real pants and shoes every day and leave the house and sit at your desk all day. Unless you have physical issues preventing you from wearing these items of clothing, or work at some job where you’ll get dirty, suck it up and dress like an adult. A little discomfort won’t kill you for eight hours and then you can look like a slob when you get home.