Category: The Early B-Sides

What Would Baby Blore Write?

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Argentina Does it Better: Medical Care

NOTE: Scroll down to the last three paragraphs if you’re pressed for time and want to know why Argentina does medical care better than the United States. If you’re interested in the arresting tale of this bloody shirt, enjoy the ride.

Last Saturday, Jon and I went to El Catedral de Almagro, a dimly-lit warehouse with antique furniture, high ceilings, and abstract artwork. The corrugated tin walls, barrel tables, and huge papier-mâché human heart suspended above the bar lent the space a unique vibe, and the tango-savvy crowd felt right at home. Every night, El Catedral invites people for lessons in the national dance of Argentina. Jon had promised that we’d learn before leaving Buenos Aires, and we’d loosened up our limbs with a couple of cheap bottles of wine before hitting the dance floor.

A live band complete with an upright bass, a cello, an accordion, several guitars, and a piano took the stage just after 1:00 am. Parties in Argentina don’t get going until the early hours of the morning, as people are prone to eating dinner around 10:00 or 11:00 pm. Jon and I conversed with travelers from Switzerland and Germany, and the crowd began to thin out after the band finished around 2:15.

We were across town from our apartment in Belgrano, but we had our bikes for us waiting outside. Traffic was sparse at this late hour and it was a balmy 80 degrees.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but we started heading out in the wrong direction, and before long, Jon had gotten too far ahead of me on Rivadavia Avenue, a relatively busy thoroughfare with no bike lanes. I accepted that I was completely lost and figured I’d just meet Jon at home, asking passersby the general direction of Palermo, a neighborhood with which I was more familiar and felt confident I could navigate. After about 25 minutes of following the advice of these kind, inebriated strangers, I’d found a familiar path which I took all the way northwest, back to our Belgrano apartment.

I walked in expecting to see Jon with his feet propped up on the table, maybe enjoying an episode of M*A*S*H* or a TED Talk on paranormal activity. To my surprise, the apartment was dark and empty. It was 3:15 am.

I took a quick shower as relief from the heat and sticky exercise, and when I emerged, there was still no sign of Jon. The clock hit 3:45. I walked out onto our balcony to look up the street, and checked on a baby pigeon in a nest to the left of our bike storage area. As usual, the neighbor’s cat was eyeing the little bird, but had never mustered the courage to jump the gap which was two stories above the sidewalks below. I tried to read, but my mind kept drifting as I looked up and down the streets. By 4:30, I decided to check out the route from El Catedral on Google Maps. I’d figured he’d probably gotten a flat tire and had to walk the rest of the way. Once I determined that the entire journey was projected to take less than two hours on foot—and this was by the hypothetical “Google walker” who was no match for Jon’s rapid ambulation—I began to get worried. Ok, not just worried. I panicked. It was 5:15 and the sky was starting to get light, and there was still no sign of Jon.

I ran downstairs to speak with the security guard of our building who tried to assuage my fears. We jointly made a plan to call the police at 7:00 am if Jon still hadn’t turned up.

It was 6:10 and the sky was brightening. My imagination visited all of the usual dark places of an ambiguously bereaved (and hysterical) girlfriend. Accident. Robbery. Kidnapping. Senseless beating or murder. Leaning over the banister, I finally spotted a figure making haste toward our building. He was tall, wearing a blood-spattered white shirt, and walking a bike. I ran downstairs to meet him.

Here’s what happened: after we’d gotten separated on the journey home, Jon had hit a pothole on his bike which threw him over the handlebars. His chin, taking the brunt of the impact, had split open as he hit the ground, and he also sprained his right wrist. His arms were covered with nasty cuts and contusions. Two witnesses called an ambulance which drove him to the hospital. When he arrived, medical staff asked for only two things: his name and his age. They stitched up his chin and treated his wounds for free. In the United States, this treatment could have cost him over $3,000. According to the New York Times, it can be over $2,000 for three stitches and around $1,000 for a short ambulance trip, a ride that was free 30 years ago, even when wounds aren’t life-threatening. In fact, if we were at home, I would have considered taking a needle and thread to him myself, or calling one of my friends who’s a doctor.

The thing is that medical treatment is free in many countries, developed and developing. A friend shared with me recently that in his home country of Brazil, medical staff won’t allow people to leave before they receive the treatment they need, free of charge. It’s a proactive view of health that makes people more likely to get the care that keeps them healthy and productive. Many Americans can attest that in any medical situation, emergency or not, even the case of the insured, the first question isn’t, “How can we get this person the treatment they need immediately?” The first question is often, “What will this cost and will my insurance cover it?”

That is not the kind of country we should be.

Solution: This is a no-brainer. Medical care is something that everyone needs in their lives and shouldn’t be performed for outrageous profits. If a hospital in Argentina can give a man an ambulance ride and medical treatment for free, emergency rooms in the U.S. should be able to do the same. This isn’t a radical idea. It’s the humane thing to do.

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Japan Does it Better: Respect for Public Space

Take a stroll through any urban district in the United States and you’ll find abundant evidence of a mass disrespect for shared, public facilities and areas.

  • Our subways, busses, and building facades are often covered with graffiti and filth.
  • Gutters are clogged with trash and refuse.
  • Public libraries are sometimes the only option for the homeless seeking a place to bathe.
  • Many children view public school as an obnoxious necessity rather than a privilege and disrespect the classrooms, books, and teachers that serve them for low pay.
  • Public institutions have a reputation for being inefficient and the officials are often characterized by malaise rather than pride in one’s community.

Everywhere you turn there are examples of Americans simply not treating their public, shared space with any measure of care or reverence.

In my opinion, there is a fervent individuality, a “me-first” mentality that pervades the American conscience and makes it difficult for us to think in terms of the collective good. My mother told me that littering used to be an even bigger problem in the 1970s and 80s, and at least by that measure, Americans have improved. It’s generally condemned to throw one’s trash on the ground, but there are many other ways we can refine the cleanliness and care of public space and institutions.

I found that a communal mentality is endemic to the Japanese people, both in their personal groups and with respect to public space. They are continually aware of what is best for the larger good, what is best for the group. It is uncouth and unusual for people to act selfishly or without regard for the rights of others. As a result, the streets and public transportation are efficient and clean; graffiti is rarely a problem sparing a few non-conformists; there’s a generalized respect for education and the role of public school teachers; and public services are carried out with care and pride in one’s community.

I lived in Japan for two-and-a-half years, and there were several instances where this communal consciousness became readily apparent. The most obvious example, of course, is the Japanese tradition of removing one’s shoes before entering another person’s home. There are some restaurants, dressing rooms, and temples which also have this policy, and the message is the same: I will remove my shoes out of respect for this space to keep it clean for others. Japanese schoolchildren contribute to the cleaning of their classrooms and take up chores collectively. This ritual not only promotes a communal attitude in the completion of a shared task, but also teaches children that shared space is to be kept clean and respected. There is no better illustration of this public-mindedness than sharing a meal with Japanese people. First of all, it is a custom for someone else to always fill your cup. If you are eating with Japanese people and are sharing a pot of tea or a carafe of sake, your dining companion will ensure that your cup remains full. Also, when the food is eaten family style, nobody will take the last bite of anything.

The most heartwarming (and heartbreaking) of these instances, however, was with the Japanese homeless. I should note that homelessness is not nearly as big of a problem in Japan as it is in the United States, and most people who do live outside have some form of mental illness. In Niigata City where I lived, there were a few homeless people who took up residence in the train station walkway elevated from the road and protected from the rain. Each person had a clean, well-constructed cardboard box home with a sliding door. These people would always leave their shoes outside of their box before entering, and would never disturb anyone passing through the train station. It was amazing that even the most destitute of people constructed their living quarters so as to not impose on the public, as if anything less would be undignified, unseemly, and collectively irresponsible. Despite their poverty, there was respect for shared space and an awareness of others.

Solution for the U.S.: We need to get our children more involved in the consciousness and maintenance of public space. Whether it’s a park or beach cleanup, repainting graffitied walls, tracking one’s carbon footprint, or spending more time at centers of communal activity (e.g., libraries, civic organizations, universities), there are many ways to ensure that future generations exercise a greater respect for our shared facilities.

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Foreign Lands of Opportunity

Did American society hit its apex before we were born, or have we been force-fed a moderately skewed version of our greatness? Where is this fabled Land of Opportunity when over one-third of our children live in poverty? Something isn’t quite right in the United States. While no country or society is perfect, I’ve observed that some countries simply do things better than we do. The central purpose of this thread is to present some alternate systems from around the world to serve as examples for how effective we could be.

First, a caveat: in the argument that follows, some would say that I’m being unfair to the good ol’ U.S. of A. It’s true that as an American, I’ve enjoyed opportunities that will never be afforded to the vast majority of people in the world. I recognize this and concede that I am eternally grateful for the medical, economic, educational, and other infrastructural blessings which have allowed me to become who I am. It would be a disservice to future generations, however, if I were to sit idly by after traveling the world for several years and rest on the laurels of these privileges.

I believe that the United States has a moral responsibility to be an even better country given its vast wealth, technology, diversity, and above all, the character of most Americans. We strive to be good people. We want to work hard. We want to have careers in which we can help those in need. For all these reasons and more, we have a moral obligation to be a better country. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but we have a recent history of being a short-sighted, self-serving aggressor who nearly eliminated the Native Americans; enslaved Africans in the name of economic progress and false racial inferiority; installed countless dictatorships in the Americas and the Middle East; and continues to be ruled by a corporate- and politically-minded oligarchy rather than a true democracy. The darker side of our past (and present) is beyond the scope of this essay, but I highly recommend Howard Zinn’s bestseller “A People’s History of the United States” for those who are interested.

Here’s what I’ve observed to be the greatest disparities between what I was taught to believe and what I’ve since learned about our country:

  • We pay lip service to the importance of education while our children are placed in crumbling public schools or luxurious private facilities depending on the income level of their parents.
  • We drum up patriotism for international conflicts despite mass international condemnation of our aggression.
  • We hold military bases in over 130 countries despite our declining influence around the world, the dying gasps of our propagandizing megaphone of democracy, freedom, and the oft-repeated obligation to “protect American interests.”
  • We assert that we favor women’s rights despite the underrepresentation of the Second Sex in business and government, and their overrepresentation in the media’s voyeuristic eye and sexualized exploitation.
  • We pretend to value the health of our citizens while we skewer the Affordable Care Act either as not going far enough to help the needy and uninsured or as a socialist abomination riddled with illusory “death panels” and anti-American values.
  • We express a vehement anti-drug attitude while American doctors prescribe enough opiates (e.g., Vicodin) to keep every single American medicated 24-hours per day.
  • We profess that we are an economic example to the world when there are Americans working full-time who struggle to escape poverty and have to rely on a shrinking number of public services.
  • We publicly maintain that we have a fair justice system when people are given different legal fates for the same crimes based on the color of their skin and the price of their lawyers.
  • We pay our educators, artists, and social workers a tiny fraction of what we pay our most shameless lawyers, investment bankers, and entertainers.
  • We assert to protect the mothers of our children and yet we are the only developed country in the world without paid maternity leave or a viable system of childcare.
  • We continually stress the importance of the economy and paying down the national debt while our garages swell with electronics, furniture, and other perfectly good items we throw into storage after upgrading to keep up with the Joneses.
  • We are brought up believing in the importance of individuality, and yet we constantly judge ourselves according to a flawed social barometer.
  • We are raised with an assumption in a meritocracy, and yet those with the wealth and preexisting social connections are continually rewarded.

In sum, we masquerade as a Land of Opportunity despite the fact that some countries do things much better than we do.

I’d like to make two more notes before I begin: I advise you to travel, and to travel widely. Once you learn to approach people on a platform of human commonality rather than difference, the world becomes a better place. Sure, there are a few assholes everywhere, but after living long-term on four different continents and traveling to 40+ counties, I’ve truly begun to appreciate this shared fate we have as humans, despite the manufactured conflicts and petty xenophobia we have pumped into us based on largely arbitrary national boundaries. Traveling is the absolute best thing a person can do to truly educate oneself. In my opinion, the top-tier universities have nothing on a person who observes the world voraciously first-hand with an open heart and an open mind.

Lastly, who am I to give an entire country advice on how to run things more effectively? You’ve got me there. I’m simply a concerned citizen trying to open people’s eyes. I derived these ideas from my own observations, and I’m thankful for those countless researchers, policy-makers, and formidable intellects I’ll be summoning to support my ideas.

Thank you for being so interested.

 

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The Case for Reading Real Books

Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

Last fall, I attended the 50th Annual Big Book Sale at the Fort Mason Center, and I realized why I’ve always been drawn to libraries and bookstores more than online writing.

First, the content contained between book or magazine covers is finite. We’re a captive audience in those pages and must move through the material in the image of the author’s intent rather than hopping between hyperlinks.

Second, there’s a significant cost to producing a book. While there are good books and not-so-good ones (e.g., Hillary Clinton’s recent autobiography), we can rest assured that some thought and meticulous editing went into the pieces due to the barriers to publication. There are exceptions, but I believe that most internet content is soulless pulp designed to garner attention. And by the way, the irony of presenting this argument online isn’t lost on me.

It costs virtually nothing to broadcast one’s thoughts across the web, and even though the ease of publication can hasten the spread of important news and assist social activism, it also enables people to publish a lot of crap at very little cost. It fits what George Saunders calls the “Braindead Microphone:” the meaner, louder, better-advertised material will make it to readers, regardless of the quality. Hence the success of sensationalist click-bait and listicles. Of course, hyperbolical headlines existed before the internet, but competition for people’s 140-character attention spans has made entertainment—rather than informing people—the primary objective in today’s media climate. There are entire companies that traffic in “content creation,” employing non-experts to chew up and spit out information from other sources, finally stamping the resulting detritus with a click-worthy title. These companies value efficiency, quantity, and readability above well-researched arguments or intellectual integrity. Believe me, I’ve worked for one of these companies.

Lastly, what better fodder for conversation than a beautiful, tangible collection of ideas through the ages? When I enter someone’s house, I’m immediately drawn to their bookshelves, which often tell more about a person’s constitution than an evening of conversation.

It is with these thoughts that I enjoyed perusing the scores of used books that were once loved by people, many likely had been lying fallow in garages for decades. I bought several 19th and 20th century classics, some editions published before the birth of my parents.

One gem I picked up for $3 was “Adventures of the Mind” from 1959. It contains several essays from the Saturday Evening Post by renowned thinkers such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Aldous Huxley, Edith Hamilton, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Bertrand Russell. You might think that these ideas were dated, but I was struck by the timelessness of their arguments and how concepts I’d once considered to be modern phenomena were the talk of the day fifty-six years ago.

For example, anthropologist Dr. Loren Eiseley wrote an essay titled “An Evolutionist Looks at Modern Man.” He discussed people’s obsession with technological progress at the expense of our humanity:

There are times when it appears man is so occupied with the world he is now creating that he has already lost a sense for what may be missing in his society.

In the 1950s, he expressed a sentiment which pervades our current fear of the diminishing human connection that accompanies sweeping technological change, particularly in the Bay Area.

In a similar vein, people today bemoan the loss of the humanities. Dr. Eiseley, again, had already taken note (and he likely wasn’t the first):

The humane tradition—arts, letters, philosophy, the social sciences—threatens to be ignored as unrealistic in what has become a technological race for survival.

I had believed naively that the erosion of the “humane tradition” was ushered in by computers more than anything else.

I wouldn’t have stumbled across this essay if I hadn’t gone to that Annual Big Book Sale. I propose that everyone give books and print media a shot. It’s easy to succumb to the allure of digital distractions, but there’s a comfort between the covers of a tried-and-true, physical read. All indicators show that reading actual books is on the decline, but then again, we’ve always been “in crisis” according to intelligent essayists throughout the ages. It’s appropriate to close with what I considered to be Dr. Eiseley’s most profound statement:

For a society without deep historical memory, the future ceases to exist and the present becomes a meaningless cacophony.

Doesn’t that mimic the frenetic feeling of our tech-driven lives echoed throughout countless modern publications? It certainly does for me.

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Life’s Little Checklist

Some People Crave the Big City and Bright Lights
Some People Crave the Big City and Bright Lights (Antonio Berni painting, MALBA)

The day I turned 30, my wall calendar came into clearer focus. The monthly New Yorker cartoon stared back at me as always, but the angles seemed more acute and a sudden restlessness shook my soul. If I’m lucky, I thought, I might buy another 45 to 50 of these. I imagined the themes changing through the years according to my evolving tastes. I saw my wrinkled hand turning the page from October to November 2054, revealing a photo of my unborn grandchildren tossing leaves cavalierly in my unborn child’s front yard. Or perhaps by that point I’ll have turned to daily sudoku puzzles or obscure vocabulary words, to Bernese mountain puppies or gardening techniques. The point was that time suddenly seemed finite, and all the presences in my life, material or immaterial, were telling me to grow up. To chose a path. To complete Life’s Little Checklist of career, family, and property ownership obligations to ensure that my progeny could someday go through the same motions, on into perpetuity. Such is our sociobiological imperative, right? To make sure that our seed spreads and to leave some sort of legacy? Well I’m not taking the bait, and I urge others to question these assumptions as well.

What I realized is that so many of us are rushed hastily into careers, relationships, and other commitments which mean little to us. I’m a Millennial, and my generation is grappling with the disjunction between what we were taught and reality as it is. With respect to career prospects, my generation has the highest rates of student loan debt of any that preceded it. Part of that is the explosion in tuition rates, but I would argue that the greater problem is the belief that more education will necessary guarantee commensurate career opportunities. In this age of ever-increasing specialization, it’s difficult to find a perfect career for the over-educated doctoral candidate who knows everything about late 18th century spice trades or a single, obscure element of electromagnetic phenomena. There simply aren’t enough job opportunities for the most educated specialists, and many, often deeply in graduate debt, end up taking jobs only loosely related to their expertise, and many below their qualifications. A corresponding problem has risen with law school graduates, most of whom incurred tremendous debt with the promises of a handsome salary and are now wallowing in a market glut with their unemployed colleagues. The worst part is that many of my peers who attended graduate school did so in hopes of expanding their career prospects, but they weren’t necessarily in love with their disciplines.

In a similar vein, I’m witnessing the first round of divorces among my 30-something peers, many of whom entered into relationships for the wrong reasons. Some of them had been dating the same person for years and marriage simply seemed like the next logical step. Others married as a result of pressure from their families or religions who sought to make the arrangement more “stable.” Still others married for wealth or beauty, qualities that are mutable and provide shaky foundations for lifelong commitments. I’ve witnessed how some people seemed so eager to mark off this box on Life’s Little Checklist in the race against time. I know that I’ve been guilty of drawing out relationships longer than they needed to be, either out of consideration for the other person’s feelings or out of an ignorance of how much compromise is reasonable for two people to be together. Many have suffered (or are suffering) these relationships of convenience, of sex, of habit, of status, all to the detriment of individual lives and society as a whole. One day, the condom’s going to break (literally or figuratively), and I for one don’t want to be fucked.

Finally, I think there are countless dreams deferred which evaporate in the ether of time. People’s regrets on their deathbeds contain more inaction than action, more risk-aversion than risk-failure. What could be more important than living one’s life in the image of one’s dreams, removed from the confines of Life’s Little Checklist?

I was valedictorian of my high school class and graduated summa cum laude from Berkeley. Many of my peers went to graduate school or took high-paying positions in consulting or investment banking. By contrast, one week after graduation in 2006, I found myself buying a one-way ticket to London and landing a job as a waitress at Hard Rock Cafe. I later lived in Japan, Brazil, and traveled all over Southeast Asia, and I finally returned to live in San Francisco in 2010. I had very little money after traveling and living abroad for so long, so I secured yet another waitressing job, this time at a fancy restaurant, to pay my rent. Four months later, I took a pay cut to become an addiction specialist at a non-profit methadone clinic , believing this was in-line with my former aspirations and education as a double-major in psychology and sociology. After two years, I was on the brink of a mental breakdown due to the low pay, the high client caseload, and the concurrent collapse of my third failed romantic relationship since moving back to the Bay Area. I gathered my strength to make a dramatic career change: I’d wanted to become a professional writer, and the closest occupation I found was in SEO. Overnight, I doubled my salary, and for nearly two years, I was a managing editor at an online marketing company. I was relieved that I’d “caught up” to my peers who had been pursuing their careers while I’d been traveling the world, but the problem was that the life really wasn’t for me. I strayed, I resisted, I asked to work from home as many days as possible, and I was relieved to be laid off in July of this year. I’ve since relocated to Buenos Aires where I feel at peace with myself, and back on track with respect to what’s really important to me: writing, reading, and traveling.

That’s my story professionally in a paragraph. Now, whatever your spiritual predilections, we all know we’re going to be worm food someday. In the meantime, I urge everyone, young and old, to seek the space outside of social expectations so you don’t wake up one day and realize you’ve wasted your life chasing someone else’s dreams.

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Little Green Man’s Guide to Human Civilization

CASENOTE #1: ENHANCEMENT OF THE FEMALE’S FEEDING VESICLES AND OTHER CURIOUS ASPECTS OF HUMAN ATTRACTION

Before establishing contact with the Humans, it is imperative that we gather as much information as possible about their social relations, leaders, recreational activities, and other characteristics we deem necessary to prepare ourselves for a range of outcomes as we strive to develop interplanetary relations and forge a peaceful exchange of knowledge, culture, and cookie recipes.

One of the most puzzling phenomena to date has been the methods by which Humans attract one another for mating purposes. The following observations are derived from a representative sample of 5 metropolises over the course of 1 Terra hour:

1A. Enhancements and reductions

The Smaller Sex (“Female”) sometimes sustains surgery to expand the size of its natural feeding vesicles (“breasts”). While the results may draw moderate attention from members of the Larger Sex (“Male”), I’m unable to determine a useful medical function for the cumbersome, dual sacks of saline solution. Some practicable purposes include:

  • To improve buoyancy in large bodies of water
  • To guarantee entry into exclusive nighttime gatherings (“clubs”)
  • To prop up objects such as gossip magazines while in a position of repose
  • To safeguard the Human from rolling off the bed in its sleep
  • To create a counterweight to titanic buttocks for balance purposes
  • To produce a convenient, fleshy slot for the safekeeping of cell phones and other valuables

Motivations notwithstanding, it is assumed that the inflation of these pendulous globules puts undue strain on the back and may impede the performance of daily activities such as driving, typing, and carrying one’s yoga mat. While further observation is needed to determine the utility of surgical procedures, other common, non-essential modifications were observed including changes to the nose (reduction), lips (enhancement), abdomen (reduction), and buttocks (results may vary).

1B. Hair

The Male displays ornamental tresses around the cheeks, upper lip, chin, neck, and chest. By contrast, the Female typically avoids growth in these areas and others, and may even trim or rip the hair from the upper lip, eyebrow, underarm, leg, and genital areas using blistering wax in established centers of torture (“beauty salons”). While redness, swelling, and discomfort are common, these practices are nearly universal for those of a breeding age. For the Male, the facial hair styles vary from wild and unkempt to a clean, naked visage.  Without proper grooming, it’s been observed that the eating process can be impeded. It is unclear which style of presentation the Female prefers, although excessive hair along the upper lip (“mustache”) tends to incite either social admiration or tacit ridicule. Generally, the Female spends a significant amount of time maintaining its head-hair and displays a dizzying array of styles and colors. It is presumed that these decorative configurations attract the Male and vary in shape from a tidy, spherical gathering atop the head (“bun”) to an untamed arrangement resembling a toxic gas cloud (“frizz”).

1C. Teeth exposure

In the presence of other Humans, it is common to draw back the lips and reveal the teeth (“smile”). The appearance ranges from a glowing assembly of polished moonrocks to a rotting cacophony of sulfurous shards, the former being deemed considerably more attractive and associated with affluence. Teeth exposure is done with differing degrees of wrinkling around the eyes, and is often accompanied by short bursts of sound (“laughter”). The Female and the youth seem to engage in these practices more frequently, while the Male is more inclined to grunt, bellow, or scratch itself when engaged. It should be noted that the Male can be rewarded for eliciting teeth exposure in the Female with further contact, both social (“dates”) and physical (“sexy time”). Furthermore, the Female may extend its lips into a nursing position to increase their prominence and the subject’s purported sex appeal (“duckface”).

1D. Clothing

Humans generally cover parts of their bodies with clothing as it is deemed legally inappropriate to go without. While the amount of coverage has a -0.721 correlation with temperature, exceptions are noted. The Female in particular may opt for tight-fitting, cylindrical garments (“dresses”) exposing the extremities to the elements, and may rely on the extra clothing of the Male in times of need. Additionally, the Female frequently wears stilted footwear (“heels”) which hinders movement, but increases height considerably. I surmise that this is done to ward off predators, or perhaps to drum out unique mating calls on hard floors. The Female possesses the greatest abundance and variety of clothing, and is more likely than the Male to seek further acquisitions (“go shopping”). The Male, by contrast, sometimes wears decorative neck objects which require some assembly and range in shape from dangling, elongated diamonds (“ties”) to neater throat arrangements which resemble the silhouettes of distant satellites (“bowties”).

1E. Coupling

For short-term mating relations, the Female takes an array of variables into account such as conspicuous wealth, musical ability, or level of intoxication at time of first meeting. For long-term relations, the Female may create a list (mental or literal) of traits it holds to be relevant to finding a partner for life. Several conversations about said lists are observed and include words such as kind, perceptive, intelligent, intuitive, funny (i.e., ability to elicit teeth exposure), tall, strong, stylish, polite, independent, handsome, caring, clean, successful, sensitive, generous, etc. The length of these lists is inversely proportional to the age of the list-maker. I am unable to find evidence for similar lists on the part of the Male, who in considering both short- and long-term mating relations, appear to be relatively indiscriminate. As part of the initial stages of courtship, it is common for Humans to engage in a series of bodily contortions to the rhythm of music (“dancing”). The styles range from delicately refined avian movements (“ballet”) to sweaty, simulated acts of sexuality (‘freaking”). While the diversity of techniques is beyond the scope of this guide, a correlation is noted between a Human’s dancing ability and alcohol intake. Also, while it seems most common for the Male to pair with the Female, this is by no means the only arrangement. Either sex can pair with one of its own, although Humans from some areas frown upon this practice for unclear reasons. Other rarer mating phenomena of note include group gatherings (“orgies”) and interspecies relations (“beast-love”), particularly in agricultural regions.

ADDENDUM: While this is by no means a comprehensive analysis of attraction and mating in human civilization, it should suffice as a useful overview in preparation for establishing first contact. The more we understand in advance of our scheduled landing, the more likely we’ll be to enjoy a fruitful, mutually respectful relationship with the inhabitants of the Blue Planet, Home of the Best Cookies in the Galaxy.

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Reaching For the Impossible: My Quest to Enter a Buenos Aires Public Library

Biblioteca Nacional, Buenos Aires
Biblioteca Nacional, Recoleta, Buenos Aires

I’m staring out of a filthy window of one of the top public libraries in Buenos Aires. The surrounding buildings and parks would be lovely, if only I could see them clearly. Years of industrial development and city pollution have created a greasy haze on the glass’s exterior, and it makes me nauseous if I look at this sadly distorted skyline for too long. Here I sit, resting my weary feet atop this grimy castle, and reflecting on how bleakly difficult it was to get in here.

It’s late spring, and the air is lushly humid. Puddles of refuse commingle with the thick scent of jasmine, and riding my bike for 20 minutes from my apartment in Belgrano feels like a triathlon. I’m thankful that the cheap chain on my secondhand “bici” only unhinges once on my journey to the southeast, although smears of black lubricant cover my inner right calve after my ancient steed leans against my sweaty leg at a traffic light.

Jon and I finally arrive at a tall, seemingly top-heavy that reminds me of the Geisel library on the UCSD campus, if that building had an older, dilapidated aunt that had smoked from birth. We get into the first floor and wait for the elevator for five minutes. Although I keep mopping up the moisture from my face, I feel like it’s dripping onto the cracked tiles beneath my feet, and it makes me self-conscious among the well-dressed students and young adults who seem unmiffed by the stifling heat.

Geisel Library, UCSD
Geisel Library, UCSD

We finally get to the 6th floor and are told that it’s only for students. Unfortunately I’d left my decade-old Berkeley ID in the states, so entrance to this floor was looking unlikely. The 5th floor, we were told, is where the gen pop (I use a prison term purposely) congregates.

We try to walk in, and are told that we must show our passports and register on the 1st floor before gaining admittance into this fortress of learning. I told the woman we didn’t have our passports, but I could show them copies if they had wireless internet, a feature common to even the lowliest cafes all over the city. “No señora, lo siento. No es posible. No tenemos internet aqui.” I used my intermediate Spanish to convince the woman to let us use our passport numbers and dates of birth which I did have handy, and 20 minutes after arrival we were ready to start working. Not so fast. We needed to empty our backpacks and put them into a locker before passing through security.  We grabbed our laptops, locked up our empty backpacks, and took our registration slips to security to finally be let into the space. The guard stopped us, took our passport information, and asked for the type of computers we were using. She recorded all of this information, and finally we had gained entrance to… the library. We looked around this grim testament to the broken nature of Argentinian public facilities and noticed that there were no books, just rows and rows of students pouring over notebooks. It turns out that people can’t even check out books here. They are solely for use in the library, although Jon and I had trouble locating any books at all.

For me, this experience reflects a deep distrust of the Argentinian people on the part of the government. How can a nation expect economic, social, and other types of progress when all of the citizens are treated like children who can’t control their baser instincts? Who would want to go to the library to better oneself when the whole process is such a demeaning pain in the ass? Sure, there are a couple of thieves here and in every country across the globe, but does that fact trump the primary importance of access to an education?

This distrust of the citizens is reflected in other ways as well. It’s nearly impossible to receive packages from foreign countries. I’ve had to tell my friends and family not to send anything for Christmas because those boxes will get held up indefinitely in customs, a notoriously corrupt system where people are sometimes charged more than a package is worth in bullshit “import charges,” even for gifts.

Another example is the public statues and historical sites. There are some gorgeous fountains and other types of monuments which are surrounded by imposing, unfriendly fences, sometimes with security guards, and people are not allowed to get close to them. I can understand a fear of graffiti (and in Buenos Aires, there’s a lot of it), but letting the juvenile misgivings of a few egocentric teenagers ruin the accessibility for everyone is incomprehensible to me. Buildings can be repainted; statues can be scrubbed; sidewalks can be hosed down. A cage won’t stop the most nefarious people who have unshakable designs on defacing public property. So why make everyone else in a largely respectful, compassionate public feel like common criminals?

These systems and more are long broken in Argentina. Without an environment of stability, mutual trust, and communalism, the country will continue to sputter along in abysmal malfunction  with a frustrated, fractured population.

What I’d like to imagine is the small but important step of treating public libraries as well as other facilities such as the city-owned Museum of Decorative Arts.  It’s housed in the mansion of some early 20th century aristocrats. It’s well-kept and people are allowed to bring their backpacks inside without a prohibitive registration process, and this place houses works of art by Rodin, El Greco, Manet, Corbot, and others. If the lavish excesses of past generations are open to the public, surely we can ease up on (and even improve) the common person’s sanctuary of self-edification. I’d like to see more of these ancient, luxurious structures turned into libraries for the public. My guess is that the first asshole to pull out a can of spray paint would be stopped by citizens grateful for and protective of their beautiful bastion of learning. That’s the type of relationship we should have with our public institutions, if only the governments would give us a chance.

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Letters to My Favorite Urban Stereotypes: Dear Granola Mom

Dear Granola Mom,

I saw you today.

You came into Café du S_____ around the corner from my house and I admired how well you hid the baby weight beneath your brightly patterned tunic.

I’m sorry that the twenty- and thirty-somethings looked scornfully at your son. He seemed harmless enough swaddled in that fair trade carrier and continued his slumber as you scrambled to get the bulk of your two reusable bags around the mess of chairs. By now you must be used to that chorus of exaggerated sighs that accompanies your arrival in a public place. That day in the café, however, it all seemed especially unfair since these people had warmly welcomed the “service” dogs who were busy nosing around the corners of the floor for croissant flakes.

At first I thought you’d come in for herbal tea, but I quickly realized you were there to raise awareness. You stopped at my table brandishing a bamboo clipboard with a petition reading STOP MALE GENITAL MUTILATION! and beneath it, a short description of your objective:

Millions of babies annually are subjected to a painful, barbaric and unnecessary procedure. Female circumcision is banned under Title 18, so why are we partially dismembering America’s precious boys?

You offered me some pamphlets for further reading and mentioned that you needed 9,702 signatures to get the initiative on the November ballot.

You took your clipboard to one café-goer oozing compassion, the Intoxicated Artist, who was busy stealing glances of fellow patrons to inform the scribbles in his tattered sketchbook. Your earnest pitch was cut short by a soft cry. “Oh shit,” you exclaimed. It appeared that your son Lark had wet right through his cloth diaper. The mess had penetrated his soft carrier and was pooling on the floor. This spectacle inspired no sympathy from onlookers.

Your first move was to drape a woven burp rag over the puddle. It was decorated with bands of neon patterns and wooly stripes. I imagined that you’d purchased the cloth during one of your countless international travels, perhaps from a vendor in Peru where you took pause to enjoy a flute band. I bet you even had the courtesy to lean with interest over their pile of dusty CDs and shoebox littered with coins. In my mind, you smiled and graciously pulled diez nuevos soles from your hemp handbag.

I was roused from my daydream when you asked the busser if you could purchase one of his clean kitchen rags. You even inquired as to whether or not it had been washed in detergent containing phenols, optical brighteners or any carcinogenic contaminants. The man laughed, shrugged his shoulders and uttered something in Spanish.

Before Lark’s accident, I’d overheard some snippets of your conversation with the sympathetic Intoxicated Artist that roused my curiosity. Did you really have breast feeding parties with your Occupy friends? And why did you choose red wine, garlic and fresh rosemary for your placenta marinade?

I had wanted to ask you these questions and more in person even if I was annoyed with the petition, but you realized that you were late for the toddler meditation session you’d scheduled for your older daughter Sierra. I only wonder where you get the money to pay for such extravagances. Then again, they say this City invented the rich liberal. For all I know, you may manage a wildly successful blog on the wonders of juicing, the bitches who refuse to co-sleep with their babies, the dangers of dairy, and how your children’s astrological affiliations were predestined.

That was when you walked into your sky blue Prius and out of my life.

You’re probably wondering why I’m reaching out. It’s because I’d like to tell you something: I’m grateful for your existence. If it weren’t for your ruthless environmentalism, dogmatic belief in homeopathy, and unwavering support of the Farmer’s Markets, this City would be missing an important facet. Besides, our mix of people is a little like granola, right? We have our various grains, our fruits, and of course, our nuts.

I hope all is well and your smiles are many.

With a shared love for this place we call home,

Jocelyn

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Blore’s Razor Primer for the 2012 Presidential Smackdown

* On Community Organizer, Constitutional Law Professor and Author, President Barack Obama: “There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.” (Vaclav Havel)
* On Bu$ine$$ $uper$tar, Mitt Romney: “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power?” (Aneurin Bevan)
* On Legendary Gaffe Artist, Joe Biden: “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” (Gustave Flaubert)
* On Personal Responsibility Enthusiast, Paul Ryan: “A maximum of comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue. Poverty is earned and deserved.” (Adaptation of Patrice Lumumba)

* On Political Promises: “Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.” (George Carlin)
* On Political Scandals: “To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight in the blood.” (George Santayana)
* On Political Outcomes: “Before enlightenment—chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment—chop wood, carry water.” (Zen proverb)

* On Bill Murray: “You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.” (Thomas Pynchon)