Near Death Experience

So I can now empathize beyond any doubt with 3 things that people say about near death experiences. I had an out of body experience on the day that I fractured my skull jumping off a trampoline and into a hammock half suspended over a concrete patio, but that is old news by now. Today presented me with two new experiences that everyone talks about: the world slowing down to slow motion and your whole life flashing before your eyes. Suffice to say today has been weird.

I never really figured I’d ever be involved in anything that even closely resembled an action movie unless I somehow managed to land a role as an extra who dies early on. Today I learned how wrong I was to ever desire that role. I was wrong wrong wrong. When action movie shit goes down it is not cool. It is not badass. It is not fun. It is fucking scary. When the shit hits the fan it isn’t the kind of thing that you turn away from and look badass as you walk away. When the dust settles, sometimes it’s all you can do to just stare at your hands and wonder how the hell you’re still alive.

It all happened in maybe about a minute, probably less. Probably much less, but it felt like it took forever. Slow motion and all… The army vehicles were heading north to do their usual thing at the big gun camp place in my home town and I was part of the line moving in the opposite direction. Out of nowhere the nose of a blue car drifts over the center line and gets crushed by one of the biggest trucks ever driven. The sickening crunch cuts through the audio book I’d been listening to for the last hour. The car behind the little blue pancake slams into it and lets out another sickening crack. The two spin and the military truck goes up onto two wheels trying to not flatten the already spinning mess of steel and plastic. The break lights of the Mustang blink on lazily but I’m too close. The spin-art of cars slows to a halt and the military truck is sliding on its side through the lawn of the nice farmer. The Mustang’s bright red break lights are closer now. Too close. It’s all I can do to spin my wheel to the right as fast and as far as I can and all of the sudden I’m airborne.

5 seconds, maybe 10, but it felt like so much longer.

As I was airborne, everything slowed to a full halt. It starts from the end, getting my fancy new job, learning to tie ties, exams, theater productions, faces of new friends and family, long hour on night shift, meeting new people drinking new things, graduating high school, senior year, junior year, sophomore, freshman, the period that shalt not be named, childhood… All at once. 2 seconds.

I opened my eyes and I was in the middle of an un-planted field  My car was in park and for a moment I had no clue what had happened.I climbed out of my seat and dialed 911 without any real comprehension of the situation at hand. The police, paramedics and fire fighters all asked me the same questions over and over. They were most especially interested in how I managed to ramp a 5 foot ditch into the field without my nose dropping and sending me into flips. I couldn’t remember landing or putting the car in park. All I could say was that I saw the accident then drove to the right as hard as I could, but the forefront of my mind was full of those two experiences. Time dilating and memories replaying.

I eventually got back on the road headed toward my house in Athens, but every break light in front of me slowed time down. Every too-fast lane change by some schmuck in an SUV took me straight to another moment of my past. I’d like to reassure my concerned readers that I am fine despite the trauma visited upon me, but it has definitely been a surreal day.

This is Water

David Foster Wallace. I like the man’s essays, I’m liking Infinite Jest (at least as far as I’ve gotten into it), and I like this commencement speech. Everyone is always concerned with what the real world will be and Wallace lays it out plain for any youth who cares to give it a listen. Life will have its patterns and repeat them over and over and over again, but it doesn’t have to be dull if you have the imagination and will power to step outside your own head and into the realm of possibility.

Using your imagination, but stepping out of your own head?? Is that a thing?? I’m going to say it anyway.

So I make no grand illusions about what my life will be after I leave college. I have quite a simple plan and I will explain it in descending order of fantasy. First off, we have the pipe dream: getting published and becoming fabulously popular, enough so that I can live off my royalties. Probably not going to happen, but a man can hope. Next would be working in the publishing industry somewhere/anywhere. I’d learn the system from the inside out despite the mundanity (this is the more fun version of mundaneness)  and use that knowledge to get my books out there.

Next comes the part more relevant to this video. Recent events have opened my eyes to the very real possibility of making a living for myself in the hotel industry. Recently I have come into a job as a front desk agent at a sprawling vacation resort just outside my home town. This is a respectable job that will look good on every resume and application I submit from this day forward. In the industry there is loads of data input and general administrative work that all meshes into one long stream of names, numbers, dates and faces either satisfied or irate. Day in and day out you take down numbers, say the same greetings, and deal with other people’s problems. It can get overwhelming but in general it is a steady job in a business that will never really die as long as there are people who live somewhere else.

This is my name-tag, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

The weird thing is, I wouldn’t mind supporting myself as an agent or concierge at hotels as long as they don’t suuuuuck. I’d even go as far as to say I like to work the front desk. Do not mistake my acceptance of the role as resignation to complacency. I will always be trying to get published, but I’ve found drudgery that I don’t mind and that I’m good at.

And finally, this job gives me the opportunity to choose how I experience the world, as Wallace expressed in his speech. Each customer is unique and has led an entire life up to the point that I hand them a key and will continue as such in a way no one else can fully comprehend. It’s kind of mind-blowing to think about. One experience I had of this type of situation sticks out particularly vividly in my mind, the man with the pierced nips…

So this is a story from the campground, people who know me know where I’m talking about and those of you who don’t suffice to say it isn’t real camping at all. But I digress. I pulled a morning shift seeing as it was my first season and I had yet to prove the competency to be left at the desk completely alone. It was a day just like any other until this big man comes through the door soaking wet and being trailed by three kids. Now I can’t remember his name or question, but I can remember his obscenely large nipples with thick piercings and his long and bound together near his chin mustache. His image screamed “Big mean biker man” but the three kids tugging at his trunks to get him back to the pool screamed family man. I spent the rest of my free time that day outside my own head exploring this man’s back story. As Wallace said, it doesn’t matter if it was true or not. It let me explore another possibility and a whole new set of motivations that I never would have before.

That’s the thing about the hotel industry. You meet so many people for such a short time that you can climb across the jungle gym of human experience over and over again whenever the slog gets you down.

Oh, and I suppose the step down in job aspirations from hotels would be any data entry job, then any mindless tasks, and then the food service industry.

Abercrombie & Fitch

Oh watch out, this guy is blogging about current events like he knows what he’s talking about!

So Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO, Mike Jeffries, has come out and stated plainly that they do not carry the larger sizes for a reason. Their reason being that they do not want larger “unattractive people” wearing their clothing. Does this guy really have the right (and I know no one has this right) to make a call on what constitutes attractiveness?? I mean look at him! As a person on the internet so succinctly put it “He looks like an albino orc”.  Putting that aside for now (we will get back to it later), I have some issues to express my opinion on.

First and foremost, I have no issues with a company taking a stand on an issue, even if the issue is against my own philosophy. Examples of this include Oreo’s support of gay marriage, the JCPenny ads featuring same sex couples, or even Chic-Fil-A’s stance on gay marriage (NOTE: as I said I do not agree with the stance, but they are free to take a stance (being a company run by Christians who hold to these beliefs (I do know they are not representative as Christians as a whole)) even if I feel it’s wrong as long as they do not start to discriminate). Company CEO’s should be allowed to take a stance on matters that they feel warrant a stance. That being said, they damn well better be prepared to deal with the backlash from their stance. Every coin has two sides, equal and opposite reaction, other common saying pertaining to this situation.

I want to eat this. I have wanted to eat this since the day I first saw it.

I hang out on a site where plenty of people condemn Mike Jeffries decision, but I have been seeing some support of his company’s right to take a stand on these matters. Again, as previously stated, I have no issues with people having something the believe in. I do take issue with the forthright statement that it is specifically because he doesn’t like fat people and is, in a way, refusing their patronage. Those in support of the company’s stance have also expressed that it is a company that is refusing to support America’s obesity problem. That is just not true. A company not supporting the obesity problem is donating to programs for fitness or running ad campaigns that advocate striving for an active lifestyle, even if you think you don’t fit the caste. That is helping, not what Abercrombie & Fitch is doing.

Sadly, I am willing to conceded a bit because it is the point of clothing retailers like that to cater to a style. My favorite name brand retail store is Guess and they do mostly trendy but not preppy clothes. They do not carry sizes larger than a large and use ridiculously over sexed models in their ad campaigns. It is their style, they have earned my patronage, and if it were different I would not shop there. The difference being that they have not publicly condemned a whole portion of the population. That’s just an asshole move that is bound to stir up conflict and can only be a play to gain publicity. As they say, there is no bad publicity (it looks like this is shifting in the modern world, but it has yet to truly change).

I believe I have made it clear up to this point that I dislike statements, not stances. Here are a few things the CEO has said publicly about his company:

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids.”

“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong”

“Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard stomachs who look like they’re about to jump on a surfboard”

“I don’t want our core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing our clothing.”

“I think that what we represent sexually is healthy. It’s playful. It’s not dark. It’s not degrading! And it’s not gay, and it’s not straight, and it’s not black, and it’s not white. It’s not about any labels. That would be cynical, and we’re not cynical! It’s all depicting this wonderful camaraderie, friendship, and playfulness that exist in this generation and, candidly, does not exist in the older generation.”

“Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.”

STATEMENTS THAT PISS ME OFF!! All of these are high school age thinking and I’m an adult now (??) and they sound fucking stupid. Lets start from the top, a simple truth. It is true that popularity in high school is not evenly distributed, but Jeffries would have it thought that popularity is a measure of worth. This is damaging to the whole world of kids in their developmental stages and is a slippery step for some toward the big issue that ALWAYS concerns me, self-harm.

The second statement is just as bad. It outright states that if you do not fit their mold of attractiveness you must not be American, you must be negative, you must be lonely, and you must be an outcast.  The final part actually makes my soul hurt. If you do not belong in Abercrombie clothing, there is nothing you can do. It is hopeless and you cannot improve your lot in life if it is already bad.

Cannibalized Out-of-Context Source: http://xkcd.com/137/

Back to his other statements. If he wants ridiculously toned people likely to make use of a surfboard, the company should definitely stop selling in Ohio. They better not have any outlets in North Dakota. The Rockies are out. Most of Texas gone. Indiana?? Forget about it. Where does he expect these states to have enough regular surfing to warrant the whole customer base owning surfboards?? Am I being too literal?? Yes, but if you’re going to make bigoted and discriminatory statements, stick to your guns or go the fuck home because your argument is full of holes at that point. Another issue I take with this, small medium and large people overall lack washboard stomachs. I work out regularly and my tummy could hardly qualify as toned. That statement should really offend everyone.

I suppose ND could have some surfers.

Up next: Not wanting to see ugly people! Mike Jeffries, you should probably get yourself fitted for a face bag or a placard that says hypocrite. Two issues here: 1. It implies that the body is the source of attractiveness and the face nor the personality (as I’ve expressed I find strong women sexy as hell) nor anything else is any source of hotness. 2. In general wanting to either sweep people under the rug or get rid of them because they do not fit your model of what is good has historically turned out to be a pretty bad move.Now I’m not putting this on the same level as historical atrocities, but the parallel is pretty plain to see.

Is he really saying their ad campaigns are not very white and very heterosexual?? Is he really saying it’s not about labels when he has created two very iron clad labels into which his statements have sorted the entirety of people?? Is he really saying that all attractive people are nice and have lots of strong friendships?? Is he really saying our sexuality, as a whole, is in a healthy state?? Is he really saying, having lived through the 60′s, that no older generation has had fun??

The rhetorical question portion of this post is done now…

Finally, we arrive at a fundamentally flawed self image that may in fact be the root of all of the shit I’ve been complaining about this whole time. He still sees himself as a kid. He never left high school where the entire world is black and white, so he doesn’t see the purples, blues, oranges, and greens that mature folks see every day of their lives. And for this, I pity him. He’s a sad 68 year old little boy who still thinks the world should be as he wants it and anything else is unacceptable.

Also, does anyone else think he looks like Ron White??

P.S. I have just been informed that they burn unsold stock?? What shit is this??

Feminism and the Internet

What’s this?? Time for another Jeff Koch rant??

Yes.

Because I am PISSED OFF!!

I am a giant squid of anger!!

I believe I’ve made my stance on feminism very clear. It’s the radical notion that women are people too. I’ll give that a moment to sink in… Women… Are people too. Yet the gap between the sexes is still undeniably there. Anyone who says otherwise needs to open their eyes. Being a feminist and an ally are really two of the few things about myself that I see as black and white. They are just and morally right and anyone who would go against them is in the wrong! Don’t go calling that reverse discrimination because it IS NOT!

I certainly hope I have made the strength of my convictions in relation to issues of social abundantly plain to see. Because if I’ve made it clear, then you can understand why I’m so riotously pissed off when I see the smallest expression of feminism on the internet met by sexist backlash. The following are quotes I read tonight in two separate posts:

“If girls want guys to quit looking at their boobs they should eat a banana.”

“Whats with feminist imgur tonight? I don’t like it.”

“As a society we’re told females should get everything handed to them but men need to work for everything and make something of themselves.”

First thing, first quote: that is blatant objectification and overt dehumanizing sexualization. If you look at a woman and all you see are boobs or fellatio/copulation, leave. As a society, we do not need that mindset. It only serves to inhibit social progress. It’s this kind of thinking that feels like a remnant left over from the period where women were basically property to be shown off and used. Are we still in the era where farmers sell their daughters for a couple of pigs, a cow, and a foal?? No, that is in our past now, but thinking along the lines of the first statement harkens right back to the eras of human ownership!

Point number two, if feminism shows up in a place and by default you don’t like it, go somewhere else. The resistance to considering an idea to the point where you make an active move against it tells me that said person is happy in ignorance and any kind of controversial idea scares them. I pity these people. I am not a brave person by any means, but I don’t cower away from an idea because I don’t understand it. That is dark ages thinking. Why do I keep relating these things back to the medieval ages?? Because they are medieval ideas that should’ve died way back then. To the people who like the second statement, go ahead and hide in whatever hole you want, but one day the world will come knocking and I don’t think you’ll be able to handle it!

Number three. A comment on socialization and education. I was NEVER taught that women should have everything handed to them. Maybe that’s because my mother got what she did because she worked hard to achieve a career in a field she’s passionate about. Or something along those lines. You know what else, my aunt worked hard to to become a neurologist as well. Want to know what they had handed to them?? Nothing. They had nothing handed to them any more than any man has had handed to him. Do I open doors for girls?? Do I buy meals for girls?? Would I help a girl fix her car (if I knew jack shit about cars)?? Yes. But the crazy part is that I do that for everyone. I’ll buy a meal for anyone who I feel like or if they need the money. I hold doors open for anyone withing quick shuffling distance. I helped my friend with their car for 3 hours one day. Here’s the kicker, he’s a he. All of these are common courtesy that should be extended to women because they are people much in the same way they should be extended to men and everyone on the whole scale of gender expression and identification. The idea that woman should be taken care of because they’re too dainty, again, reminds me of the times when men wanted to keep their maiden daughters pristine for beneficial marriage.

All the medieval ideals!!

I will now present my conceptualization of the guys who make these kinds of statements. I see an angry teenager in his mothers basement. He claims to be in love with his best friend who also happens to be a hot girl (but also claims it’s irrelevant). The reality is he is nice to her because he believes it will lead to her having gratitude sex with him. But she isn’t attracted to him and has relationships that end badly. Speaking from experience, bad endings happen all the time, to guys and girls, but this kid at his computer doesn’t see it. All he sees is the girl he wants to bang going out with guys he perceives as dicks because they hold the girl’s affection. But the guy would never admit that he’s mad at the girl for not wanting to wing-wong his schwing-schwong. No, no nice guy would ever get mad at his best friend for this thing.

Instead, this child displaces his anger at his “best friend”‘s reluctance to copulate onto women in general. He begins to believe they are all self entitled sluts who always choose douchebags over soft and sensitive souls like him. This boiling bottle of rampant misconceptions cooks and cooks until finally he sees a woman campaigning to be equal. THE AUDACITY. The self entitled slut who already has it easy is trying to take more while still withholding the sex he so rightly deserves?? Well, he figures, I’m anonymous right now so I’ll take all those bitches down a peg, when in reality he couldn’t bring himself to say a word of this because that would be counter to his quest to “nice” his way to sex.

Le sighhhh

To put it simply, if you cut on feminism I pity you. My mind is fucked up, but I can see it. I pity the people who wallow in ignorance of their own ignorance. If you are mad at women or if strong women scare you…

I… Pity… You.

Dressing Up For Myself

So, as many of my friends can tell you, I am full of shit on many many things. I say things and promise things and there are plenty of these that never get followed through on. It frustrates me to learn when I have committed one of these transgressions, but the realization is difficult to act on quite often. I understand that this is a common problem (or at least I hope it is)and realize that it is me getting in my own way, but sometimes that kind of thing is hard to overcome..

Always a relevant XKCD
(Source: http://xkcd.com/1027/)

Okay, so that particular comic is a little harsh, but it doesn’t change the truth. However a recent series of events has set me forward in my path to correcting this. Awhile ago, I expressed an interest in dressing up more often just for the sake of dressing up. The issue was that every time a donned my finery I would look at myself in the mirror and get stuck on how a sleeve didn’t look right or how a pattern doesn’t match my vest or how the only pants I own are jeans. The worst are the times when I try to dress up, but all I see in the mirror is a kid trying on clothes in a desperate attempt to show the world that he is grown up and mature. All of these concerns ring and ring in my head as I try to tie my tie repeatedly and fail 6-7 times. By the time I have my tie correct, the thoughts have warped the image in the mirror so badly it’s a clown staring back at me, not a dapper someone.

That’s when I hurl the clothes in the hamper and pull on a black t-shirt.

This week, however, events have conspired to slap my insecurities in the face and not apologize about it. On Monday I attended a banquet for Sigma Tau Delta (the English honors fraternity (it’s funny to call it a fraternity because there are only 3 guys)), so of course I had to dress up. The insecurities welled up almost instantly and struck with such intensity that I couldn’t find my vest on the hanger I keep it on all the time. I tried on 4 different outfits, dealing a blow to gender stereotypes, but none of them did anything to make the clown in the mirror look less like a clown, so I settled for what looked least horrendous on me and set out.

It turned out even worse than I imagined…

Check out this handsome bastard. Dapper?? Holy hell yes. Is that an almost perfectly not screwed up half-windsor?? Damn straight! Do those jeans actually kinda work there?? I certainly hope so. Okay, done being arrogant. This picture is, in my opinion, the best picture taken of me since coming to college. This documented proof combined with the compliments received in the three-hour span in which I was dressed this way gave me cause to look long and hard at my self-image dysmorphic issues again. Seriously, I got more compliments than I can really process in my brain pan. Even I think I look good, which isn’t a thing that’s happened since the Halloween picture where I’m wearing my army jacket (for the curious). It turned out to be a great success and shot my self-esteem through the roof so far that I’ve been able to ride those warm fuzzies all the way through a very stressful week. Hell, these fuzzies are toasty enough that they gave me the chutzpah to actually commit to doing the highly experimental piece of performance art I concocted. Being confident is such a nice feeling. It’s like being drunk without the cloudy thoughts and the embarrassing admittance of deeply personal information to those who would rather not know them. Oh, and it also lacks that clarity that comes from sobering up that makes you realize how much of an ass you made of yourself. So… Yeah… Confidence: Fuck Yeah!

Of course, this whole looking good thing might have been a one time deal.

So I tried it again. I put on some nifty duds, ignored the screaming wombats in my brain, and set out to fulfill the class obligations of my shortest work day. The crazy part is that people just handed me compliments again. I didn’t have to pay them. I didn’t have to beg. I didn’t have to have a friend brief people that I needed the ups. People just handed out the compliments like it was Christmas time and I was the only decorated tree for miles. Okay, so maybe that is hyperbole, but it still shocked me again what a haircut, collared shirt, and tie/vest combo did for my image and presentation. Guess I found a thing to follow through on. Step one.

Oh, and I guess I promised to post a picture of my birch tree arm??

I swear it looked like a birch tree in real life.

Mortality and Indifference

So I had a moment tonight that felt like a profound philosophical moment, but it’s probably going to come off as stupid and trite. But I’m posting it anyway because I drank a large cup of Seattle’s Best Piss from the library cafe while working on my paper.

I can’t sleep so here we go.

I haven’t made it any kind of secret that I’m watching the VlogBrothers archives. In fact, I’m probably talking about it too much here but it’s a thing that’s currently inspiring me with many new ideas and I love to listen to authors talk about being authors because it gives me hope. So anyway, I find these videos massively interesting and I’m very impressed with the society that emerged out of this project and what they’re doing for the world and nerds in general. But tonight I came across a video that had a really profound moment for me.

It was the video that introduced this girl:

So this is Esther. She was a NerdFighter who organized many many a thing to decrease world suck. Oh, and also, she had cancer. Go figure. Now I hate inspiration porn (I dunno if I’ve talked about that) because what she did was amazing regardless of any kind of thing, but when I heard she had already passed away, I had this weird moment.

Awesome people die. Awesome people die every day.

And regular people die and bad people die and all the rest of them too. I have a hard time shutting off my empathy, so the weigth of the reminder that we’re all mortal locked me up for a few minutes before I managed to pull myself back up. The weird part is that I felt guilty for telling myself that I had to stop caring about the people who’d akready died. And that led me to the thought that we, as people, need to be able to be indifferent/apathetic/uncaring so as not to be crushed under the weight of the world. I’m not advocating these on a large scale nor any kind of frequent occurrence, but thinking about a world without a way to shut off total empathy scared the crap out of me. Sometimes being self-centered is what you need to do.

This might seem obvious or stupid or whatnot, but mortality has been on my mind as of late. As a consolation for reading, I’ll post a picture of my birch tree arm tomorrow. Have a nice night/morning/evening/afternoon internet.

A Bar in Amsterdam

I OWN NO PART OF THIS! I just like this video/song/giant cat guitar combo and figured I’d share it with the people of the internet who otherwise might not have seen it (or at least the folks of that group who also coincide with the people who might pay attention to my blog). As many people may or may not know I like female singers a lot and that combined with their interesting mixture of instruments has enamored me for awhile now. If you like this song, check out more of them and call me if you ever want to rock out to the music. Statistically speaking, I’ll be free whenever you decide to get around to that. Or not.