The Age of Stupidity and a Terrible Nightmare

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time, even though I'm not sure whether anyone will be interested in reading it. Oh well!

When the quarter started I was less excited to start a new school year than I have ever been. I realized it's probably because I'm now at a stage in life where I'd rather be out doing things than sitting in a classroom, or at a desk, thinking and writing. I have entered the life stage which as an adolescent I thought of as "the Age of Stupidity."

Don't ask me why exactly I thought people between the ages of 20 and 50 were so much more foolish than those younger and older. It just seemed like the people who run the world, who really have power to move and change things, are too close to the action, and too wrapped up in what they are doing to stop and gain perspective.

I had a dream last month--don't worry, I'll spare you the details. It started out as your typical nightmare--dark and stormy night, I open the front door, and there's this huge, crazy looking caucasian man with a rusty, three foot long machete. He clearly intends to murder me and my family (this is at my father's house), so I struggle with the guy and eventually get the knife blade up against his neck. I offer to let him go before the police arrive, but he refuses, continues to struggle, I cut his throat, and he drops dead, oozing blood all over the place.

As I'm trying to clean up the blood and everything, I think to myself "I guess I'll feel bad that I killed him now," but I don't feel bad about it at all
--it was in self defense, after all. As I'm wondering what the police will say and do when they show up, the alarm goes off and I wake up.

It was a very disturbing dream. Thinking about it afterward, I understood it in contrast to a couple nightmares I had as a teenager--where there was a murderous intruder in the house, and I tried calling the police but they weren't going to come, and I felt completely powerless. In this dream, I was very much in control of the situation. But that didn't make it less disturbing, because I ended up being the one who killed someone.

So anyway, feeling powerful can be just as terrible as feeling powerless. And perhaps that explains why this is the Age of Stupidity--because you have to make weighty decisions, and some of them will turn out badly, and you'll end up looking like a fool, or worse. But there's no avoiding it--or rather, avoiding it is a foolish choice, also.

For The Record

Brandon complains that my family was under the mistaken impression that our car was a hunk of junk that probably would have just fallen apart or spontaneously died of its own accord had we not crashed it. So for the record, let it be known that our little red Toyota Celica's only problems were as follows:

1. The front left fender was all smashed up, and the turn signal was broken, so Brandon had to stick his hand out the window to signal a left turn. It always made me a little nervous, since he was sticking his hand out into the oncoming traffic. Also, a couple drivers took the opportunity to slap him a high five!

2. A few months after having been fixed, the engine fan broke again. So we just left it broken and had the heater running full blast all the time (including when we drove across New Mexico and Arizona in late August ...)

3. There was an oil leak that would have cost more to fix than the car was worth. Now, our landlady in Massachussetts told us it's actually illegal to drive a car that has both an oil leak and an overheating problem because, as her husband found out through experience, it can lead to the engine catching fire. So we used to joke about how the engine was about to burst into flame--and wouldn't it be funny if we had just been joking about the engine catching on fire, and then it actually did? Ho ho ho hilarious!

The oil leak was probably also responsible for the destruction of the alternator, which may, in turn, have have been related to the death of the battery.

But aside from those things, the car was in perfectly good shape, reliable, with a long life ahead of it. Oh, and the radio antenna was broken, too. And there was a broken off piece of a key stuck in the passenger side door's keyhole. And the trunk couldn't be unlocked with a key, it had to be popped from the front of the car. And the windshield wiper fluid didn't squirt. But that's it. Otherwise, the car was virtually in mint condition.

Oh No! Not Again!

This past Sunday, we were driving home from Solvang, CA (which is a couple hours northwest of L.A.) and had reached Ventura (still at least an hour from home). We were cruising along on the 101, in the fast lane, and Brandon stepped on the brakes. I looked up and saw that traffic had slowed way down up ahead--wow! Traffic was really, really slow--no, actually, just the cars in our lane. Brandon slammed on the brakes, but (it seemed) the car in front of us was stopped, and we weren't decelerating rapidly enough. There was plenty of time to realize that (and, of course, to exclaim "OH MY GOD!") before we crashed into the silver SUV in front of us.

No one was injured, but both our cars were totalled. Why did the guy in front of us stop so fast? Because the guy in front of him had done the same thing. Why? We will never know, because his car was not hit and he drove away without telling us.

For me, the worst thing about the incident was that it took so very long to get home. It took over an hour just to get the cars off the freeway. Once they'd been towed to a yard, the towing guys called a cab to take us to the Amtrak station--said it would be 15-20 mins. The cab finally showed up about an hour later. And then, of course, the Amtrak train was 45 mins. late, and when we arrived in L.A., we had to take the light rail to Pasadena, and walk the remaining five blocks carrying a lot of heavy stuff. The accident happened about 4:15pm, and we didn't get home until about 11:30pm. It was an utterly miserable end to an otherwise wonderful three-day weekend.

Goodbye, old friend.

Martha Stewart, Richard Simmons

Speaking of Halloween (note: I am slightly disgusted with myself for giving in to my obsessional thoughts about Halloween celebrations and decorations before October 1, but, well, it's a relatively harmless obsession) ...

I was just remembering this video of Halloween crafts and recipes made by Martha Stewart that I watched last year. Of course I knew who Martha Stewart was, but it was the first time I'd seen her on video. I was surprised. The hosts of "how-to" shows--cooking shows, I'm thinking of--are usually positive sounding. And I expect a woman who is supposedly the ultimate homemaker, in a video on making crafts and recipes, to be perhaps a little over the top with positive affect, smiling fakely and so on. But Martha Stewart's affect sounded flat and dead most of the time--like she wasn't even trying to make it look like she was happy. In fact, I thought she looked very sad. Strange and interesting.

And speaking of cultural icons whom I recently saw on video ...

Brandon insisted that we purchase from the Salvation Army volumes one and two of Sweatin' To The Oldies. They're hosted by (the one and only) Richard Simmons. Of course I had some idea of who Richard Simmons was--a most memorable mockery of him being the Simpsons outtake in which, instead of telling Smithers to "release the hounds," Mr. Burns orders, "Smithers, release the talking Richard Simmons robot."

The amazing thing about Richard Simmons is he's way more over-the-top than the people who make fun of him. Perhaps its simply that his impersonators lack sincerity--they don't actually feel the apparent body-seizing joy which Mr. Simmons experiences every few seconds.

The only conclusion I have to draw from my meandering observations is that cultural icon status seems to wildly distort people's personalities. The caricatured lines we draw around and on top of the famous people we love to make fun of are often deceptive. But the real person underneath is so much more interesting ...

Halloween Hanging Creature

I found this little guy (a "Halloween Hanging Creature," according to the tag) at the dollar store the other day. It just makes me so happy--every time I look at it, I can't help but laugh.

So, I thought I'd give Brandon a fun surprise by letting him find it hanging from the shower head one morning. But alas! He said it was creepy. And he gave the most outlandish reason for saying so: it looks like the monsters from Mercer Mayer's There's a Nightmare in My Closet. Ironically, Brandon as a child was deeply disturbed by the monsters in that book. Go figure!

If I can get the "poll" feature working on this blog (I had trouble with it before) perhaps I'll find out how many of my blog readers think the thing is horrible or hilarious. Or I suppose you can just leave a comment saying what you think.

Making Jokes

Apart from the inside humor Brandon and I share all the time, it seems I rarely say anything funny. And of the infrequent times that I say something I think is funny, perhaps half the time no one else laughs.

I think this happens because I get the joke with only a minimum of setup, but other people expect more--more ... build up? More carefully constructed phrasing?--in order to see the irony, the ridiculousness, the funny side of something. And so I laugh at jokes before the punchline has been reached, and I tell the beginning of a joke, which sometimes Brandon or my brother Ben, if either of them happens to be present, may finish for me. And then people laugh.

But it seems my most effective jokes are the ones that I'm not even sure if they're jokes or not, and I don't know how other people will take them. I often get a good laugh by making ambiguous, or even cryptic statements. And apparently other people find some kind of amusing significance to it.

The only example I can think of right now is when I commented on the prices at the gas station, "Wow! Gas prices are still going down. Thank you, George W. Bush!" in a silly tone of voice. Brandon thought that was very funny. And I wondered why, exactly ...

An Infant Sartre?

For me at least, one reason infants are so fascinating is that no one really remembers what it was like to be an infant. What does preverbal thought look like? Is it the same as the kind of nonverbal thought that we do after having mastered a language? Or does learning a language so shape our brains that we can no longer think in the same manner as we did before language?

I wonder, do infants experience existential angst? Do they wonder, with some kind of preverbal, innate human impulse, "Why am I here? Who am I? What is it all about?" Perhaps that question goes on only at the completely subconscious level, driving the newly born person to search for patterns and connections, for meaning in the strange and mysterious phenomena he or she is constantly observing.

But when babies cry seemingly without reason--when neither nursing, nor burping, nor distraction, nor changing their diaper does any good--could it be that they are simply frustrated by their limitations? Do babies at times feel a primitive longing for transcendence, for "more," for that nameless something which drives all human individuals and societies forward?

Am I perfectly ridiculous for even asking? But even infants are human, after all. Isn't existential angst an innate property of human beings?