Hobson's Choice (霍布森的选择, ホブソンの選択, 홉슨의 선택)

 I may have overstated my position in the last post. MJ pointed out to me that she was offended by my last post about who we elect as President not mattering that much, and that I'm only saying that because I'm a man and don't face the problems that women face. I won't say that I agree totally with this, but I do see it from her perspective: women's rights are highlighted more in this election than others, especially with abortion being a hot topic as well as IVF rights, a topic men like me have the prvilege not to talk about. Just like gun rights though (Harris has steered to the middle on gun control and says she owns a gun too and is not here to take away people's guns), Trump is actually pretty close on abortion issues as the Democratic candidate despite Republicans being traditionally against abortion and trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, which they did in 2022 with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, a decision that was caused mainly due to the Supreme Court being packed with Republicans who had held the majority and actively tried to overturn Roe v. Wade as a stated purpose, something that was attributed to Trump when he appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh during his presidential term. So I can see what MJ is upset about, but also on that particular issue, Trump in the future is not saying he's going to implement a national abortion ban. 

While definitely not meaning to offend anybody including my own wife (and the entire country of woman), I think my rant against the election was generated mostly by the Hobson's choice that I feel we're forced to choose between, a saying that's similar to choosing between a rock and a hard place: neither choice is appetizing. Never in my adult life have I felt less encouraged to vote for a candidate, neither of whom I feel is qualified to be president, for various reasons. (The first time I really got into an election was in high school Kerry v. Bush, then 2 Obama terms where Obama gave hope for the country and spoke eloquently and intelligently about ideas that he was undeniably a good candidate for president, even if political opponents disliked his plans). I think it's partly due to me getting older and realizing the intractability of the world and U.S. politics of being trapped in a loop and consequently becoming more skeptical of anything that goes on in the hunt for power, and partly it's due to elections just being fundamentally different now with the internet, social media, and attitude of the country and the world.The democratic process has now become solely a popularity contest, not a job interview between the candidates and the voting public, which is problematic because there are just too many uneducated voters in the country influenced by various news outlets, lack of knowledge about what's true anymore. In 2004 I used to go down a list of fundamental issues and the candidates' position on those: abortion, foreign policy, economy, the death penalty, gun control, free speech issues, assisted suicide, climate, human rights (use of torture, etc.), education, health care, all of which have become minor issues or not discussed at all because they'e been dethroned by the personality of the person and whether the person is a "threat to democracy." I have a very close knit group of highly educated lawyer friends who often comment on news issues, and even they just end up debating all of the flaws of Trump, everything he gets away with, how crazy he is, etc..... it's too tempting to just focus on all of this flaws, and thus the real issues get obscured). Which, I realize, is a reason itself to vote against Trump is that no matter how you feel about it, he makes it about him and not the issues. 

If during a job interview I realize both candidates interviewing for the job have fundamental flaws, I can reject both and reach out to a larger pool of candidates, but not in an election. I feel like someone else has culled the possible list of candidates to just 2 and then forced me to interview those 2 people and forcing me to choose one no matter how badly I don't want to. So I'm just hoping to survive the next 2 days, watch Jeopardy, go to work without fearing rioters will cause trouble, wait it out in my bunker, stock my freezer with enough supplies (apparently this week many people are bringing back early pandemic times and preparing for the worst) and hope America's collective Hobson's choice isn't as bad as we fear it will be. 

Politics and Prose (政治, 政治, 정치 and 散文, 산문

 I dislike politics. I don't like office politics, friend circle politics, home owner association politics, baseball franchise politics, anythign that has to do with certain people having power over other people, but I ESPECIALLY dislike politics now. And right now, 2 days before the Presidential election, is the epitome of all of dislike, when everything anyone does gets politicized, when all of Facebook (besides the Dodgers winning the World Series and the Dwayne Wade statue memes) is just people discussing all the benefits and downsides to either candidate for President; I think it's talked about so much for the same reason there are office politics: people love to gossip, and the race for the highest office in the country as well as arguably the most powerful position in the world is just an excuse for people to gossip on the grandest stage. It's a way for politicans to give ordinary citizens "a chance to participate" even though your one single vote has a statistical value of zero influence on the election results, but gives you the illusion of doing something, perhaps for a good cause. (I know a few co-workers who instead of working this weekend, spent it in Pennsylvania knocking on doors for the Harris campaign, believing it to be "much more important" than their jobs.) Is it though? Setting aside the fact that knocking on doors to solicit votes seems unlikely to change too many minds this late in the election, are you really doing it for a good cause, or just perpetuating an election process that's too long and too costly as it is? Especially this year with the 2 candidates that are available, the talk is much less about policy than what the 2 candidates stand for and personal issues, so it's taking time up from actual fixing anything, more just talking about 2 individual people. Election propaganda will make it sound like my life is going to be drastically different depending on who wins, that it will be a utopia if one candidate wins and a living hell if the other side wins. I don't think it's going to affect me myself that much if either one wins, personally. Eventually it will affect the United States and which direction we go with climate change, immgration policy, use of A.I., etc., but me personally in the next 4 years? I'm not going to be moving out of the country or anything if one candidates wins or the other. 

Politics and Prose is a witty name for a bookstore in the D.C. area; I just love bookstores. They have a veritable cornucopia of books I want to read, everything, everywhere, all at once. It's like they have the exact blueprint to my mind's desires of what to absorb, especially on an off day at work, and I could just sit there through a zombie apocalypse or something even if the world goes to hell or (even worse for some people) the Internet for some reason just stopped running. The only downside to a bookstore is that people don't talk each other necessarily, it's a place for reading, not conversations, but that's almost better: often conversations at restaurants, the mall, public places just involve people trying to get you to buy something you don't need (extra dessert, extra hand lotion, squeegees) that you have to politely refuse. Bookstores don't want anything; no obligation to buy, no sales pitch about what book they want you to buy (there are definitely books that bookstores make the most money off of, usually the hot new trendy fiction bestsellers by renowned authors that they can mark up higher instead of the bargain book section that they know hasn't sold for a while and that they need to get rid of before the next batch comes in), and importantly no need to pay tip. It's honestly one of the last public places I can go to and feel comfortable (maybe museums) and not feel gross for contributing to the American capitalistic ways. 

Politics and Prose has the right idea, but here's my re-naming based on my preferences: 

"Less politics and More Prose!" Have more people read more books rather than get engaged in politics, have an overload of information and noise through the election, and then it suddenly stops and society doesn't care about it anymore. Prose is forever; elections are temporary. (My sister Emily pointed out a similar flyer on the street advocating for tattoos using similar logic: Tattoos are permanent! Politicans are temporary). And what they have in common for me: I don't care for any of them! 

Mac Miller

 Recently there has been a disturbing in the music industry: substance abuse. It's nothing new; Elvis is the most famous example of death by substance abuse (I thought people were joking as a kid when they said Elvis died on the toilet, but he actually did......because of a heart attack caused by drugs). Mac Miller was a young rapper who died in 2018 because of a long history of substance abuse........at age 26. Really sad, just a kid and already exposed to so many different substances that affect your body, when your brain hasn't even fully developed or just finished developing. Recently one of the former members of One Direction, Liam Payne, died after taking too much drugs and jumping off the balcony to his death. It feels like something to do with the music industry that propels singers to substance abuse, or it's substance abuse that makes their music so great....kind of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. I'd like to see some studies done to see if the drugs do actually help creativity and artists come up with better songs (it anecdotally did help the Beatles create the White Album and especially songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds") or that's more of just an excuse to dabble in the nose candies/ succumb to temptation. It's sad.... a lot of the deaths that went unexplained in my youth can now be attriuted to drugs, especially those of younger people who didn't really have any chronic medical conditions or didn't have a tragic accident. A lot of the "drowning accidents" not just of celebrities but of people you hear about are often due to some drug-induced incident, like Whitney Houston dying in the bathtub due to drowning caused by a heart attach caused by cocaine use (I know, kind of a lot of steps to get to the drowning, but that's what happened to a relatively healthy 48-year-old. Mac Miller is just this generation's Jim Morrison, or Amy Winehouse. Take care of yourselves! Just like a famous Mac Miller song, "Stay," we want you to stay, and not just end up a Jeopardy clue about "this alliterative deceased rapper." 

I don't think my body could handle drugs. Heck, I could barely handle a few beers at the tailgate to the Chicago Bears- Washington Commanders game this past weekend. An epic ending to a pretty disappointing game: The Bears didn't score a point until late in the 3rd quarter, and Washington's offense wasn't much better. As a skeptical sports fan, it's become harder and harder for me to understand why the sports mania runs so deep, filling up stadiums across the country at a time when you can watch the games at home with better camera angles, don't have to be stuck at designated seats next to fans of the opposing team, for a team that is literally there to make money off of you. I understand the allegiance to a college team because your formative years made you remember all the great afternoons watching the game with college friends, but pro football teams are purely just of your own choosing. Why pay upwards of 200-300 dollars for a ticket to sit in traffic to get into a stadium, root for a team that doesn't care about you and only want your money, doesn't pay you dividends or anything (unless you own a share of the team, which no regular person does), just bragging rights, and you have to go out and spend $100+ on the latest jersey (I thought about shelling out on a Caleb Williams jersey to wear to the game but predictably cheaped out and got the $20 generic Bears shirt) and get the "privilege" of paying through the nose for beers and special "crab fries" that are extra salted and extra fatty to ruin your diet? I'm suddenly in the anti-sports camp I guess; I think a much better investment in Sunday afternoons, a precious time of not going to work and spending time with family, is personal investment, spending time with each other (just not at a football game). Like there were families who went there with their 3-year-olds or newborn babies! Is that necessary? Are you giving your kids memories of football games (unlikely) or just showing your allegiance to a fandom by even getting your kids indoctrinated to the religion of sports? Too harsh? 

Happy Halloween and Happy Election! The next week or so is going to be.... hectic. 

Rapid City

 Rapid City, South Dakota is not well known; I've never bought any products from companies based in Rapid City, I've never seen ads for jobs there, I've never met anyone from there, I've never read of anything significant in history happening there. No major political party will go there to campaign and gather votes. At 78,000 people, t's not even the largest city in South Dakota, a notoriously unpopulated state (first is Sioux Falls). And that's the exact type of city that Jeopardy loves.... just big enough to matter, and just close enough to an important landmark (it's called the Gateway to Mount Rushmore) to matter. Rapid City is also the city that my parents and I passed by on the way to Yellowstone from Chicago when I was really little, like before-my-sister-was-born little, one of many road trips, some to Boston, some to Disney World in Florida (from CHICAGO! Man my parents really enjoyed the freedom of driving around America after being confined in cities in China). That's probably why I developed such a love of road trips: looking at maps, going places I'd never been before, charting out a route, sometimes through obscure cities like Rapid City. Also the open road is really a nice feeling of freedom and possibilities as opposed to being stuck on the I-405 going back and forth on your commute feeling trapped in a little bubble. 

Sometimes I pass by Jehovah's Witnesses stationed outside the train station or other urban centers, looking friendly and ready to chat. To their credit, they've never approached me or yelled out at me with their message, they've been very polite and respectful of others' time, and not tried to guilt me into talking them as I walk by. That in itself is kind of a good marketing tool for the Watchtower magazine group..... that actually makes me interested (not interested to stop and talk with them, but I could see it being a good selling group for others). They always come as a group, showing solidarity (not just one guy yelling into the void), they seem well dressed especially if it's a cold day, indicating comfort and stability, and they always have literature, I'm always down to read. But do they have to stand outside all day? I mean these people are out there as early as 8AM or so and still there in the later afternoon....quite the dedicated pitch. 

Pro tip for future elections: vote in a swing state if you want daily messages from numbers you don't know telling you to vote in that election 4 years later, even though you haven't lived there for 3 years. This is why people dislike election season, but also if you want to avoid it go to a solidly red or blue state, where politicans don't spend any time. On the bright least I don't live in Pennsylvania, which has become the No. 1 swing state in America, and has a sharp contrast between the rural areas and the big cities.... someone recently told me between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh it's basically the Deep South. That's where the dichotomy comes from. 

MJ and I went to watch the 1993 Tim Burton "classic" Nightmare Before Christmas tonight with accompnaying musical score played by orchestra, and we..... didn't enjoy it that much. It's like that time we watched Kubo and the 2 Strings.... we didn't think a Disney-backed kids movie could possibly be bad...... it wasn't bad but it didn't make me feel good. Is it a comedy? A drama? A horror movie? Is it a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? Is it a musical? All of it is kinda garbled in there, that and some genuine scary things for little kids like vampires, zombies, and a guy walking around with an axe buried in his skull. What kind of audience was Tim Burton going for here? It's decent in the concept of a new type of cartoon/ visual effects, but I don't see how it gets a large following still 31 years later when it should have gone the way of movies like "Brave" or "Brother Bear" (aka not classic hits). Not everything can match my tastes, I guess. Some people like Nightmare Before Christmas and hate going on road trips; I am the opposite. 

Happy Halloween! 

DYFI

 TIL I learned about "DYFI," or a commonly asked phrase in California apparently that I was never privy to: "Did you feel it?" after earthquakes were reported. Either I got extremely lucky, or I just have very low sensitivity for sensing the ground beneath me shaking. I've never felt an earthquake, nor have I ever expereinced a tornado, a fire, or any other natural disaster that they trained us for in school; I guess I'm just a blessed person. There was even an earthquake inside Dodger Stadium one time, all the baseball players felt it, and I didn't feel it. I've never been part of a hurricane evacuation, or blizzard. Not that I'm asking for it, but if you lived my life you'd think the Earth was perfectly fine, nothing out of the usual or lifethreatening happening, ever. 

Hurricane season in America is apparently August- October, and this year is especially active with super-hurricanes Helene and Milton. Hurricanes are rated from Category 1 to Category 5 (5 being the strongest) on the Saffir-Simpson scale. There was talk of adding a "Category 6" hurricane due to the severity of Milton that just passed. MJ and I have only been on the residual end of hurricanes, but even hundreds of miles away, you can feel the rain and thunderstorm and the power of the weather. The weather taketh, and the weather giveth away. My parents are now in Maine during fall leaves season catching the beautiful orange and red of Acadian National park and all the foliage changing colors and lobsters and lighthouses, a nice peaceful trip for my mom who's been battling cancer all this year and last year. 

The last week or so I've been forced to put my phone away for work, and I realized how much of a load off it is, the days just feel completely different, my eyes feel different because they're not as strained looking at a rectangular screen in my hand all day, my ears feel different because they're not listening to incessant political ads and cell phone games or learning academies guaranteed to increase my score on the SATs (what??? why am I getting those ads 20 years too late?) and most importantly, my mind feels different, like I don't wander off and think about "who is fighting at the next UFC event?" every few seconds which leads to more inquires which branches off into more inquires, all of which are answered by using my phone to get the answers. It's no way to live life, just sitting at home every day on the phone. I imagine it's similar to what opium users in China did, never even leaving home anywhere due to everything they ever wanted being right around them at home, just living off of them and depending on them. I realized for the last few months slowly but surely I had been increasing my usage of the phone, my screen time was going up, and I was being less productive in other endeavors (like studying trivia, a better use of time, or studying languages) because I was so engaged with the phone. It's a silent time-killer.The downside of course is that I don't get to see all those trending hashtags like "DYFI" (Did you feel it) about in-the-moment stories like earthquakes, but the upside is, I don't really care and don't really need to care anyway. If I felt it I felt it, and if I felt the middle of it, I would be dead. I don't need to feel it. 

"Manic Monday" (躁狂星期一, マニックマンデー, 조증의 월요일)

 "Just another Manic Monday...." is an earworm that I've heard for many years now from the song "Manic Monday by the Bangles (from the duclet tones of Susanna Hoffs!) but I learned from Friday's Jeopardy episode (I bragged to MJ that it was a Bobby episode- meaning if I was on the show, I would have won the game because I knew FJ and all 3 Daily doubles- but who knows how I would have performed on stage with stage fright, I know it's probabaly easier at home) that the song I know and love was actually written by Prince, yes the artist known as Prince but full name Prince Nelson Rogers from Minnesota who wrote songs that became hits not only for himself but for other bands, like "Nothing Compares 2 U" for Sinead O'Connor, and "Stand Back" for Stevie Nicks.... he has quite the influence on other bands and singers, enouh hits that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire had a question with 4 possible choices of songs that were originally written by Prince... all seemed plausible. 

"Manic Monday" was a song about work on a Monday morning and wishing it was still a Sunday, lamenting the rat race lifestyle that a lot of everyday workers have....I haven't had that for awhile. Sure, like most people Monday is the return to the work week after the weekend, but I don't really feel the physical pressure of Monday, as I roll out of bed like every other day and have no heart pressure-raising bus or train to catch or need to be out the door by a certain time. This week, though, I gave myself a little stress test: commuting to work on a Thursday, by (gulp) train. Unlike the private confines of your own car, a train exposes you to the masses of humanity, to hundreds of others within 100 square feet of you all sharing the same space, breathing the same air..... some germaphobes swear they won't do it, some commuters swear by it. Me personally I can do without it, knowing how many people have sat in the seat I have, or that someone in my vicinity will suddenly open up a box of fried chicken and start eating while everyone else in the car has to smell the fried chicken while NOT being able to eat it, or someone will talk loudly on the phone about their root canal operation last night or what they thought of their dentist, or just general loud music, or people putting their feet in the aisle, all things that have happened to me. It's a crazy world, full of different variables, stressors, catalysts for anxiety, one could even call it.........manic. And don't get me started on the subway! I can't believe I spent a whole spring/summer in NYC commuting using the subway, and why are there always people who rush to get into the train, only to stop right at the doorway so they can be near it, but then everyone else trying to get on have to get around them to get into the middle. You really get to see some of the ills and shortcomings of people on a subway. 

The other "manic" nature of it is the time.....getting to work exactly on time, now that I've been able to spend 4 years without having to do so, seems like an impossible task bordering on trying to land an airplane onto a helipad during a thunderstorm with high winds.....how do people do it? I don't even know if I'm going to wake up at a certain time, even with an alarm I might sleep through it or ignore it, or take a bunch of time going to the bathroom, getting something to eat......trying to project when you're going to get into the door of your office from where you are in the morning when you get up (before you get dressed, get ready to leave the front door) is so difficult, especially knowing EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is also doing that same thing on Monday morning, so trains, buses, roads for vehicles, everything is crowded. For someone like me who values every second and every minute and tries not to waste any time, it's way too manic, way too unpredictable, raises my blood pressure way too high. So yea, Google and Amazon employees plus all the tech companies trying to get their employees into the office, you better negotatie all the perks you can, more than just free food, maybe parking validations, gyms at the office site, good coffee machine (MJ would love that) before committing to go to the office....before you settle for just another Manic Monday! 

The Overstory

 The Overstory, besides being a catchy title punning on a literary work and the top layer of a forest, is one of the few contemporary novels that Jeopardy contestants have to name the title, whereas other clues usually gave the name of the novel and ask for the author, or some other iteration, but The Overstory is its own level of importance, having won the Pulitzer Prize for author Richard Powers in 2018 and telling a powerstory about preservation of trees and the environment. The story is well-adapted for a movie already already with various story lines and character arcs including a paraplegic Indian computer coding mastermind (think maybe Karl Penn or Dev Patel) with a war veteran (think like Jake Gyllenhaal or Mark Wahlberg or something) with disavowed academic who is just on her own in the wilderness (think Reese Witherspoon) and a loving couple who are unable to conceive a baby but put their efforts instead into the environment (think any iteration of Ryan Gosling- Emma Stone types). I'm not a good writer, but I'm a decent reader, and even an unpolished boor like myself can discern what is exquisite writng with the prose and quality of plot, although not as much dialogue as I would like liked (remember I am a big stickler for dialogue in stories), but the trees and urgency of the global environmental crisis and deforestation drives the plot and gives plenty of impetus for the reader to keep going, as well as plenty of literary references to classic works (Powers is a writer, after all, and makes plenty of references through his characters reading certain books in their storyline like Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche). I also like that Powers probalby wrote from his own experiences, as he lives in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains according to the author bio flap, adhering to one of the earliest tips for writing I ever got: "write what you know." The energy and knowledge of the topic shines through in specific situations, not just about environmentalist tree huggers and geographical descriptions of the Pacific Northwest/ Santa Cruz Mountains near San Francisco but even in just the short one-page summary of the couple going through infertility problems and the pain and agony that couples face trying to decide whether they should continue trying to have a genetic baby or "settle" for adoption (the book characters ponder whether to move to Russia or China where there are ample babies who need parents). 

I also like reading about real (as real as characters in a novel can be) people with real problem, instead of all the narratives and social media narratives we are fed that provide a warped sense of the world nowadays. One can easily be manipulated just staying at home and being fed versions of the world through a screen without ever actually talking to real people anymore (especially with the 2024 US election just a month away now- gulp). I almost looked forward to jury duty this past Monday at my local courthouse, just to see what normal people look like. Instead of a self-selecting population of people I usually run into like at Costco (lots of Indian and Chinese/Korean Americans looking for good deals) or the crowd at Mom's (people taking their diet seriously with fresh veggies and usually vegans), jury duty is just a random group of people who live in the city who are U.S. citizens and have an address on file with the DMV. That's pretty much everybody over the age of 18 (and under the age of 70 for my particular county, it turns out who are exempt from jury duty). And the mix of people was about as ecletic as you could get: not supermodels, not social media influencers, not people whose stories have been curated by the media to get the type of spin that they want, just normal people living their lives, all a little irritated at having to report to jury duty at 8:00AM on a Monday morning (although the $30 in jury pay for the day might alleviate those compliants just a tad) A good portion of people were overweight, a big tell that we're not operating in TV land anymore, this is what America is now, and people reading books, waiting for instructions from a government entity. This is not "normal" in America now; people don't wait and people don't wait for instructions. So as much as I dislike jury duty as a concept and think it's a waste of time for a group of normal citizens to determine the guilt of a random person's incident, jury duty nowadays might be one of the only ways to get people like me to experience a gathering of real people, to be amongst my fellow citizens. And I guess the jury population doesn't include homeless people, so I'm not REALLY getting into certain areas of the population, but this level of working class, middle class, feel like real people to me. I don't care about the problems of the elite or the celebrity class or the manufactured problems of those who don't necessarily deserve all that attention; I care about those in the working class who are ignored and not heard from, like me. I want to hear their "overstory."