Vindication
“Rather than being frowned upon, doodling should be actively encouraged in meetings because it improves our ability to pay attention, a British psychologist claims. [...] ‘In everyday life, doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing.’”
[via]
Thank you.
So leave me alone about the fact that I am drawing during your boring-ass meeting.
Enhancing my brand: Let me show you my stimulus package
I don’t own an iPhone but boy howdy do I wish I had one now. Check it out:
“Hillbilly PickUp: Do you have a hard time talking to the ladies? Lack the courage to flirt with girls? Too lazy to open your mouth? Don’t worry, let Hillbilly Zeek do all the talking for you. Hillbilly Zeek is your best wingman and he’ll get you the ladies. All you have to do is select the pick up line that you want to say, hold the iphone to your mouth and watch the ladies swarm. It’s that easy! Hillbilly Pickup has 10 fully animated videos of hillbilly Zeek’s mouth.”
I bet you are asking yourself, “What does Hillbilly Zeek’s mouth look like?” Oh, who am I kidding? We all know, and it has been helpfully reinforced by Diane Sawyer herdamnself, that hillbillies ain’t got no teeth or if we do have them, they are in various advanced stages of decay.
Yeah.
Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps
It snows a little. It clears off and is bright, shiny. It snows a little more. It clears off again. The wind sends seed pods aloft. They float for a while before settling in cracks in the sidewalk, my hair, your birdbath, under the windshield wipers. Daffodils and forsythia are emboldened. Birds pad their nests and negotiate treaties with the cats, the squirrels, other birds. The days get a little longer. The trees stretch. I begin to think winter will actually end.
Subtitles not available for this post.
ABC’s Diane Sawyer reports on Appalachian poverty
Indeed.
I watched this last night. It could have been worse. A small group of us were doing the play-by-play at Twitter so there was a lot of this sort of commentary:
jagosaurus: If Sawyer mispronounces Appalachia, she is dead to me.
BlueRidgeblog: This is horrible. I don’t know how long I’m gonna last. I feel as though me and my kin are the scourge of American.
gnumoon: Amazingly, stereotypes like these don’t keep truckloads of foolios from up north and Florida from moving here.
jagosaurus: @gnumoon That’s because we’re sitting on such gorgeous land that only they can truly appreciate. NOT THAT I’M BITTER.
kbphotos: I’m going to put duct tape on the tv to hide the subtitles.
gnumoon: It’s a bit early in the hour for the river baptisin’ scene, ain’t it?
jagosaurus: @BlueRidgeblog I’m in for the long haul. I can’t look away. Also, I’m counting teeth.
gnumoon: Wow, they went right from Jesus to meth.
BlueRidgeblog: Kennedy=Appalachian Pride? What eva.
erikras: @jagosaurus Has she mentioned yet about hostility towards judgment from outsiders yet? Chill out and open that Mason jar of ’shine you keep.
jagosaurus: @erikras She immediately referenced the “now, we all know the stereotypes…” nugget.
jagosaurus: Woo-hoo! Scratchy archival footage of a hound dog. DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING.
BlueRidgeblog: I don’t know one freakin’ person who pulls their own teeth with pliers. And hatin’ on Mountain Dew is gonna get Diane killed.
jagosaurus: Heeeyyyy, how much you wanna bet they’ll only superficially touch on the whole mining thing?
christrahan @jagosaurus re mining the just brushed on a dramatic uptic we are seeing in black lung/pneumoconeosis right now. Those boys are dying.
BlueRidgeblog: Getting that high school diploma makes you $9-$10 hr. Getting a college degree in Appalachian scores you almost $5 bucks more an hour. Woot!
stephoknee: My grandmother grew up deep in the mountains during the depression and she was a vegetarian. Of course Mountain Dew ain’t got no meat in it.
gnumoon: INCEST. There it is!
jagosuarus: Aaaaaaaaaand the banjo finally appears.
gnumoon: According to this here scorecard, the only things they left out were racism, deep-fried Snickers bars and potato guns.
BlueRidgeblog: Oh yeah, the 2nd amendment was left out of the discussion, though there was huge imagery of the American flag…during a drug segment
~~~~~
Look, nobody’s perfect. We have a lot of problems in Appalachia, just like in any other impoverished part of the world. I’m not sure what ABC really intended with this program, and I don’t think they have any idea either.
Here are some suggestions for things to explore to make a more helpful documentary:
- The reasons behind the crippling poverty.
- Why the diets are so poor.
- The long and ugly history with mining.
- The very real and serious geographical challenges.
- The barriers between these folks and a decent education and health care.
Superficially touching on all of these almost certainly does more harm than good, because it reinforces the idea that whatever is going on is also superficial.
I’m the last person to tell you that the bad things that go on in Appalachia are okay. They’re not okay. They’re never okay. But it is complicated and cuts deeply.
I’ve ranted about the usefulness of the hillbilly stereotype before so I won’t repeat that here, except for this part: “By useful I mean that it give others something to feel superior to. Hillbillies, per the stereotype, are generally the feuding, inbred, unhygienic, ignorant, racist, hokey, sexist, superstitious, overly-religious, and completely unsophisticated fools the rest of us could never be. When presented with this representation of who my people are supposed to be, I marvel that we can manage to be all of those things at once. Surely that is some sort of superhuman accomplishment worthy of recognition or an award. A brand new jug for our moonshine perhaps, or a shiny new firearm.”
And I only recommend reading these if you are in the right frame of mind, whatever that may be for you. There is no right frame of mind for me when it comes to this sort of thing.
Becoming separate
“Neanderthals and modern humans can trace their ancestry back to a hominid population that lived about 706,000 years ago, said James Noonan of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute and colleagues.
Based on these dates, the two groups were on their way to becoming separate species long before anatomically modern humans appeared on the scene and dispersed from Africa to the rest of the world about 200,000 years ago, according to the researchers.”
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Set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance.
Ogre: I have to tell you a story.
Across the street at the bus stop was an old man walking a chihuahua on a leash. He was talking to an old lady who was talking to the dog. A young woman walking a tall whippet-type dog came along and stopped to talk. The chihuahua was very interested in the other dog and they were going through all the standard get-acquainted rituals.
AND THEN…
The chihuahua suddenly leaped into the air and landed like a ninja on the rearward portion of the big dog’s back. His intent was clear and his resolve was firm.
Predictably the leapee whirled around in shocked surprise and and continued to spin counter-clockwise very rapidly thereby braiding the leashes together. One of these spins of course looped one of the leashes around the leg of the young woman as she tried to intervene. As the big dog tried in vain to dislodge the rider, she (I’m assuming she) became more and more distressed and started to yelp piteously.
There was laughter and barking and struggling for balance until the old man plucked the ninja dog off the other one and detached the leash from his collar. The young woman then proceeded to unravel the leashes while laughing uncontrollably, The laughter also included me and a young man who had stopped on my side of the street to watch. We both applauded the performance.
Jagosaurus: Love! Exciting and New! Don’t come Aboard. We’re weren’t expecting you…bark bark bark bark yelp yelp yelp!
Ogre: The Love Dog…is making another run. The Loooooooooooooooooove Dog promises something for everyone.
Institutional inertia
Wow. I love this even though it depresses me. I saw this behavior at the Agency when I was there almost a decade ago.
