Eccentric Flower:201003/Excreta
From Eccentric Flower
Excreta
Disclaimer: I am in a mighty nasty mood. Try some of our previous entries instead, they're still fresh.
Second Disclaimer: I have rethought and clarified some of this first part, and my thoughts and corrections are in the next entry.
OK, first off, something for Ysabel, who passed along this item from Known Internet Suspect theferrett. [If you do not understand some of the references below, just smile and move on to the second half of this entry, which is unrelated.]
I lost faith in theferrett around the time of the Open Source Breasts controversy. I don't think he deserved the pigpiling he got for his really stupid idea, and he apologized reasonably well, but two side observations occurred to me at the time:
1) Even once it was over, he showed no signs of recognizing why his really stupid idea was a really stupid idea. He apologized, but it was a cargo-cult apology; he knew he had offended some mysterious gods but he didn't know why or for what, so all he could do was kneel and hope for mercy. The whole thing was a complete mystery to him.
2) Worse, he showed, then and now, no signs of wanting to understand.
That he has not learned any better is evident in this essay. Bringing in the hysterically ridiculous straw-man example about the fingernails is evidence that he still approaches the Standards of Society in a cargo-cult manner; it doesn't seem like a hideously ridiculous example to him, because to him many of society's rules of behavior seem just as ridiculous.
And yet, when a person cannot see any differences of scale between "suddenly some arbitrary normal activity is unspeakably rude" and "try to wear clean clothes and take a shower occasionally," that person is not trying nearly hard enough.
I think there's a part of his personality that wants more societal acceptance, that wants to be able to walk around like a Normal. But he's not trying to meet society halfway. If he weren't being disingenuous, if he actually bothered to give the matter a moment's thought, the answer to his impassioned, "why, oh, why, must people judge me by whether I'm wearing clean clothes?" whine would become apparent even to him.
He wants into the Normal club, but also wants to hang onto his "I stubbornly refuse to accept even the slightest move toward assimilation!" freak flag. Well, you can't have it both ways. Learn to behave and make compromises; subsume a little. Or relish your implacable nerdiness in the company of other implacable nerds, and shut up about the other group. Either is fine with me. But don't pretend that being well-behaved is some set of utterly incomprehensible rules oh woe is me i will never fit in because to nerd-brain these things just make no sense at all and it's hopeless because that is, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit.
So, according to the Globe, it's entirely likely that in 2011 there will be a massive pro football stoppage. Hooray! I love strikes in professional athletics. Professional athletics is the one place where the intransigence and obstructionism of organized labor works in a direction I approve of.
I figure every time a pro sport goes off the air, they lose some viewers and fans who will never come back. If they do this enough times, goes the dream, eventually professional sports will be washed up as an obscenely profitable form of popular entertainment in America, which would be just fine with me.
In this particular case there is also the schadenfreude of watching badly-behaved, too-wealthy owners coming nearly to blows with badly-behaved, too-wealthy players. It's a contest of obscene money and horrible behavior on both sides, and the correct answer is "a pox on both their houses," which is what we may see in 2011. Justice is so rarely done these days.
Matt Taibbi is occasionally overrated as a writer, but his best work is consistently underrated, and that work is the "Sports Blotter" column he turns in every week for our own beloved Boston Phoenix. Every time some idiot writes about "Could you please drop the useless Sports Blotter?" I feel like I have to write a countering letter. Often the Sports Blotter is the best thing in the paper.
All it does is track criminal activity for athletes and ex-athletes, and good golly, there is a lot of it. One day people will realize the extent to which we have an immensely rich industry based on the backs of, let's face it, thugs - people who are trained from a tender age that education is unimportant, encouraged to drop out of school to go pro, and dropped in a big vat of entitlement and bling - and then we wonder why they act like they can do anything they want, why they mistreat anyone and anything around them, or why they can't adjust to the real world when they retire - which they also do at a tender age, leaving a nice long period after their sports career to accumulate a nice long arrest record.
It would be absolutely grim reading if Taibbi weren't so meanly funny. And if there were ever a target where you could get your mean out without feeling guilty, it would be professional athletes. Of course, some of you will not share my idea that, when it comes to pro athletes, it's no-holds-barred on bile and hatred. Some of you may even actually like some pro athletes. That's fine. I hope the ones you like never show up in a police blotter. I mean that sincerely.
(But remember, even if they don't, they're probably still money-grubbing bastards.)
Meanwhile, here is a Taibbi item from this week which is extremely lightweight and which I thought was hilarious. Since it doesn't involve any capital crimes, it is likely that even the faint of heart will be able to read it and smile:
Iain:
I am in a mighty nasty mood.
You know ... actually not that nasty a mood, as these things go.
(...What? What? You think I have something of substance to say about the rest of it? Not really. I do think Taibbi is perhaps a bit too hard on college players committing minor infractions that nobody would notice except that they are college players, but I suppose that comes with the territory. Although, seriously, what the hell is going on at Oregon? Their football team has been getting into major trouble for months on end now. You'd think one or two of them might learn from horrendous example, but no, apparently not. But I digress. I think.)
-- 19:42, 5 March 2010 (GMT)
The fingernails analogy was a bit of a stretch, but I could sort of see what he was getting at. Maybe it will make more sense if you think of it as "acceptable" gender behaviors, arbitrary and unnatural rules of behavior that you have to constantly force yourself to follow. Yes, washing your damn shirt doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but if he's as baffled about keeping his shirt clean as I am about keeping my voice low and colorless so I don't sound too much like a teenage girl trapped in a middle-aged male body, I can sort of relate.
-- 21:20, 5 March 2010 (GMT)
Wow, what bullshit. Not you, theferrett.
Here's the thing: if nerds of this type were realio trulio incapable of dealing with arbitrary social constructs because they were above that sort of thing, irregular verbs would be just as much of a problem to them as figuring out when it's rude to interrupt and when it's taken as a sign of enthusiasm.
Instead, this type of nerd will be the first to correct someone else in conversation: "ACTually, the proper usage is...." Why? Because they have learned the arbitrary social construct that is grammar. But it sounds a great deal less self-righteous to say, "I'm pretty good at picking up some kinds of arbitrary social construct and pretty bad at others. I'd appreciate it if you could give me a hint if you notice that I've missed something that's important to you," than to say, "I just want YOU PEOPLE to be CONSISTENT with your STUPID ARIBTRARY RULES IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK NO IT IS NOT. OKAY. Now I will correct you for not following a different arbitrary rule, which means I win and you lose."
I also saw in the comments the bullshit canard that nerds welcome pronunciation correction and will thank you if you correct it. This is not generally true. Some nerds will mildly discuss it, others will flat-out argue even if they are flat-out wrong. No, they don't look at you like you're a freak for caring how a word is pronounced, but a great, great many of them are not fond of being corrected on a point of that type unless there is something larger and interesting going on with the correction, and I get sick of people claiming that they do as a point of How Nerds Are Morally Superior.
And I am myself pretty damn geeky, so this is me being frustrated with my own people, not with some external group.
-- 21:33, 5 March 2010 (GMT)
As I have added in a note at the top, I have rethought some of the first part of this entry, and another longish bit emerged - which is now the next entry. I personally am happy for the insights thus arrived at; I do not make any guarantees whether this will make things more lucid or less for those who have the good fortune to not be inside my brain.
-- 22:35, 5 March 2010 (GMT)
I was going to disagree with theferrett about adding "I think" to a sentence as a qualifier, because it's always been a pet peeve of mine. Without the qualification, it seems to me that a value judgment has been stated as fact, not leaving any room for another opinion. However, after asking Uber-geek Sean about this, I must acquiesce and realize that it's entirely possible that some people take "I think" as a given, and all statements are inherently open to discussion, with or without qualification. I'll have to remember that and consider the situation, not the statement. I guess "Everyone's entitled to my opinion" could be an unfair assumption, eh? Maybe I'm too sensitive.
-- 22:56, 5 March 2010 (GMT)
Jweader:
Not everyone thinks the NFL lockout is actually going to happen. There's are some analytic legal reasons (see this item (sadly on HuffPost); there's also the "Goodell and the owners aren't batshit crazy" camp (one of FOX Sports' writer's thoughts here). I'm definitely in the latter camp. No way does the NFL stop playing games, and no way do the owners keep the superstars out. No replacement players this time. Too much money at stake. Remember Chris Rock's line about the difference between being rich and being wealthy: Shaquille O'Neal is rich; the man who signs his paychecks is wealthy.
The more interesting sports-labor issue to watch right now is in Major League Soccer (yes, yes, I know, but it's soccer). The CBA between the league and the players union expired at the end of January. Training camp started in February, and the first games are in March. Right now everything's operating without an agreement, but I think the terms of the old CBA are still in effect.
One of the major issues in the MLS talks has to do with player movement. MLS operates as a "single entity" structure, meaning that the league actually owns all of the teams. Folks like Kraft don't "own" the Revolution; they're investors in the league who have the responsibility of operating the franchise. Single entity also means that players don't have a contract with a particular team, they have a contract with the league. The league assigns the "rights" of a player to a particular team. Under league rules, when a player's contract expires or is terminated, the player's rights remain with the team he played for last.
So you wind up with some really nasty situations - like that of Kevin Hartman, one of the league's top goalkeepers. He played for Kansas City last year, but he and the club couldn't come to terms on a contract extension. However, even without a contract, KC still owns his "rights" within the league, and they have no plans to give his rights to another team, or let Hartman basically have his own rights and negotiate with another team. So Hartman basically has two options - try to go overseas to another league (never easy for an American soccer player), or retire.
The players contend that this lack of freedom in movement goes against FIFA rules. The league contends that true free agency would quickly lead to financial ruin for the league. (And those two arguments are both likely to be true.)
Some soccer writers on the MLS situation here (including some more info on Hartman's situation), here, and here.
-- 18:34, 5 March 2010 (GMT)