Nothing Is New

The longer that a person lives, the nearer the probability that that person finds him or herself with a freezer full of mountain lion steaks creeps toward 1.

And when that day eventually comes, it has been my experience that such a person will shortly thereafter find himself annoyed that even Steve Rinella lacks an honest guide to preparing sirloin of puma. The internet suggests parboiling the meat before marinating. Good lord. Is nothing sacred?

It looks a bit like pork, this person may conclude, and at least that’s a place to start. And isn’t necessity the mother of innovation, after all? This person may brine it, pound it flat, dredge it in flour and egg and pretzel crumbs and fry it in oil until the trichinosis cysts are probably mostly pretty much zapped and then enjoy it over a bed of spaetzle and mushroom gravy.

“Triumph!” this person will say and celebrate this new regional curiosity before conceding at last that this really is just schnitzel.

Because after alcohol, weapons, and sandwiches, the next thing the various cultures of humanity have independently derived is the process of breading something and boiling it in fat. This is not a new concept at all, and smilodon steaks were probably some of the first delicacies enjoyed by humans. Go figure.

Which is reassuring as we look to our current political climate, that nothing, really, is unprecedented. We have a tendency, as Americans, to forget that our nation is a mere 250 years old, and that we are not special.

After all, who is more a modern day Don Quixote than Don Trump? The delusional megalomaniac who is inspired by fictions to joust windmills and abuse hotel staff? (Sancho Panza, in this analogy, is, of course, the Republican Party, biding its time and suffering indignity for the promise of a castle that will never come*). The tragic hero and patron saint to generations of dreamers has finally found a host.

And we should not be surprised that when, in 1939, Henry Miller was appalled by the spiritual decay of the American worker, he coined the minimalist movement: “Our world is a world of things. It is made up of comforts and luxuries, or else the desire for them. What we dread most, in facing the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gew-gaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts which have made us so uncomfortable.”

And spoke directly to Colin Caepernick and the BLM: “the flag has become a cloak to hide iniquity. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”

And could not possibly have known the prescience of his words, “We’ll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye – just wait and see. The capital of the new planet – the one, I mean, which will kill itself off – is of course Detroit.”

This is, of course, a step beyond the generational gripes about “kids these days,” as old as Socrates. It should be unnerving that Miller’s observations on the social landscape of the United States at the dawn of the second world war feel so relevant.

That his warnings that our “passions are easily mobilized by demagogues” feels written for the present, and “to-day when a man or woman succeeds in escaping from the horrors of Europe, when he finally stands before the bar under our glorious national emblem, the first question they put to him is: ‘how much money have you?’ If you have no money but only a love for freedom, only a prayer for mercy on your lips, you are debarred, returned the slaughter-house, shunned as a leper,” need only replace “Europe” with “Honduras” to represent perfectly our southern border.

C’mon.

It is right that we should wring our hands. But then we continue to read, if we wish, we can see a glimmer of optimism there. Because Miller reminds us that “a great scourge never appears unless there is a reason for it,” and Cervantes concludes that “neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand.”

We have the benefit of looking back to recognize that our missteps are not special. That as hopeless as it sometimes looks we have not blown it yet, and while, sure, the last time we all elected nationalistic demagogues 60 million people had to die, if we would like things can be different now.

 

*and clapped-out, in-too-deep, just-wants-a-nap Rocinante is Mike Pence, duh.

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Give the Gift of Pug

The surest way to know that a holiday is upon us is to take note of when Costco has moved on to the next one. Anymore, it seems like Christmas carols are the kind of thing we need to live with for longer and longer every year, like fire season and campaign ads, and so it can be easy to lose track of just how soon the winter holidays are.

Like, for instance, Costco is pushing heart-shaped chocolates and you already missed Hanukkah. It ended yesterday. You’ve still got eight presents to mail, and the post office is going to be crowded. Get with it. And if you celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa instead (or as well as) Hanukkah, you’ve got a little bit more time to make your holiday preparations. But not much. So listen up.

Last week we delved a bit into what to give that person in your life who seems to have it all. Some of those suggestions are pretty hard to find, though, and at this point it’s time to call in a hail mary. The mother of all gifts. The GOAT. The gift so extraordinary that forever more and into the future, all your friends and relations will say, “no really, you’ve already given so much, perhaps just a heartfelt sentiment on a card this year.”

You can still give your loved ones a pug.

#HolidaySpirit

It’s perfect. A pug is like new slippers and a lint-free chamois and a sassy gay best friend all rolled into one. A pug is there for you, whether you just lost your job or just lost a forkfull of manicotti. I don’t know a single person who watched “Uncle Buck” and didn’t think, “geez, that John Candy sure is great. I’d love to have a 10% scale model mouth-snoring on my pillow every night.”

There is no woe, no ailment a pug cannot fix. There is no joy a pug cannot make more grand. A pug wants simply to show love, to be near you, and to share your electric blanket. It is an ancient, noble breed, and has grown over thousands of years to be a human’s best companion.

And of course we should remember, that the pug as a breed is a crime against nature. They live nasty, short, brutish lives and suffer perpetually from labored breathing, infected rolls, leaking glands and prolapsed eyeballs. It would be morally indefensible to encourage humanity to continue breeding the poor souls. But there are still a few tried and true ways to get your hands on a pug, to improve both of your lives, and you should for goodness sake.

  • Contact a Pug Rescue – This is really your best bet to bring a pug into your life without supporting a breeder. Anyplace you live, there is a pug rescue near you. They’ll just give you one. And each spring, apparently, there is a thing called The March of the Pugs, but in my experience Googling that presents many, many more questions than it answers.
  • Steal One from a Yard – Also a tried and true method of getting yourself a pug on the cheap. This works better than a rescue if your meth scabs are still oozing or if the reason you need a pug is that you lost your soul betting on the Patriots this weekend.
  • Just Get a Mastiff Puppy Instead – This one works better as a gift for someone in a different town (far away), but for the first few weeks they’re pretty much indistinguishable.
  • Borrow One from a Friend Who’s Leaving for a While – You know, as great as they are, pugs aren’t for everyone. And you never really know if they’re for you until you’ve had one under the covers for a night or two, so if you’re at all pug-curious you probably ought to borrow one for a bit. Maybe while someone you know, who’s got one, hits the road for a while?

[feather-share]


 

 

Christmas Shopping for the Person Who Has Everything

You’ve done it. You’ve survived Thanksgiving, and the very last bites of your holiday turkey are slowly going rancid in the refrigerator. A few crumbs of pumpkin pie are brown and solid on the counter, half-covered by hastily replaced tinfoil since November 29th, and the wounds of clumsy dinnertime faux pas are slowly beginning to heal.

You have braved the wilds of Black Friday, presented alms of charity to booksellers and candle stores on Small Business Saturday, and delved back into the hedonistic nihilism of Cyber Monday Week. You gave heartily on #GivingTuesday, and are ready, now, to embrace the real Christmas shopping challenge of the season.

We each have, in our lives, that person for whom it is simply impossible to buy. That person so immersed in material wealth or anhedonic gloom that each year no matter how you toil over what might make them smile, you fall short. You are confronted by the overwrought grin (is it too toothy? not toothy enough?) and feigned surprise that are, quite simply, the hallmark of a gift falling flat. You know this. You are accustomed to this. You are ready for a change.

And so I present to you now the gift giving guide for the person who has it all. Christmas shopping made easy, for the impossible recipient.

A Second First Impression – We have all blown it at least once or twice. You know, when you were just a little too drunk when you met a girlfriend’s parents for the first time, or thought for sure that Jehovah’s Witness joke would land in a job interview. This year, give that person in your life the chance to make a second first impression. It’s one thing you can be sure they don’t already have.

A 25th Hour – One simply cannot get all the things done in a day that one must. 24 hours simply not enough. This year give the gift of opportunity – a 25th hour in each day with which to master an industry, triumph over an opponent, or veg out and watch reruns of Quantum Leap. The gift of time provides infinite possibilities.

The Souls of His Enemies – Or her enemies. You don’t have it all without also having a few enemies.

Delete One Voicemail – Bonus points if you can also un-send one email, obviously. Like the second first impression, but also useful for when you known someone well, but perhaps not as well as you thought. Whether it’s one e-mail forward too far, a joke you didn’t know was racist, or simply an accidental “reply all,” everyone could do with taking back an email now and again.

The Perfect Socks – This person has everything, but you can never have enough socks that are just right. You know, with a little bit of padding but not too much. The gentle embrace of the ideal amount of spandex. Merino wool, obviously, or Alpaca fiber. Soft, warm-but-not-cloying, snug-but-not-tight, perfect, really.

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Sustainability Isn’t

The environment is so hot right now.

Anymore it seems like most everyone is either going blue in the face as we connect the dots between natural disasters, a warming climate, and its anthropogenic nature (and the fact that we have been predicting this for decades), or passing the buck down the road a few more years until those coal industry checks clear.

The newly  minted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is hard at work  to build a caucus around a Green New Deal, right wing leadership is doubling down on being comically uninformed, and everyone else is pretty much drowning, burning, or sleeping peacefully at night now that they’ve bullied their city council into banning straws. Because that will fix all this, obviously.

And the straw thing is important. I’m serious. Not because a ban on plastic straws will fix anything, but because it is the most recent iteration of wildly misguided greenwashing from the left. It represents a failure to understand the scope, scale, and nature of the problem so profound that it is hard to take these people seriously as they mock our current president for suggesting that superfires could be prevented by raking leaves. It is the same.

(Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

And to be clear, there is a fundamental difference at play: the President of the United States is the single person on earth best-suited to make a meaningful difference on climate change. His failure not only to act, but to actively divest from the inadequate measures that were already in place is a disgrace. His smug refusal to acknowledge the consensus of the scientific community and the seriousness of the problem makes it easy to understand how the rest of us might grasp at straws* for any way to make a positive change, no matter how ineffective.

Unfortunately our best intentions, whether its banning straws, or giving up single-use cups, or switching to a more fuel-efficient car are nothing more than emotional palliatives to give us the sensation of control.

The premise is correct. Meaningful action on climate change is necessary to avoid catastrophic mass extinctions on earth in our lifetimes. This action needs to have grass roots at its base, but not in the way that we are seeing it. For instance, your new Clean Canteen looks cool clipped to your new Fjällräven backpack, sure, but you’ll need it to replace as much as 1,000 paper cups to offset the environmental impact of mining, manufacturing, transporting, cleaning, and eventually disposing, of that stainless steel cup. And that paper cup takes about 0.55 megajoules of energy to manufacture, while your Toyota Prius burns about two megajoules of gasoline per mile.

When we say that climate action requires meaningful, grassroots change, we mean that we have to make actual changes. The marginal feel-goods of sipping your chair from a designer mug are not it. It means a fundamental, catastrophic shift in how we operate, which can only happen in a broad way through financial incentive. Meaningful change does not mean forcing auto makers to average 22mpg rather than 16mpg; it means agreeing that gas should cost $15 a gallon and we should invest that tax revenue in livable cities and public transportation. It means “hopping on a plane” should cost $5,000 each way.

It means recognizing that the US Military is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels on earth, and the primary driver of US foreign policy is energy security. It means divesting from coal-fired power in favor of renewables, sure, (heating and domestic energy use account for 25% of fossil fuel emissions globally) but it also means that we’re going to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and that if you can’t stand the heat maybe you shouldn’t buy a house in Phoenix. It means, simply, using much, much less of everything.

And of course you may recognize themes here from some socialist hellscape. It’s un-American, you say. It will never happen.

And, unfortunately, you’re right, for the time being anyway. Because we, as humans, are not that good at looking far into the future. We are, however, excellent at engineering our way out of a pickle. And whether those engineered solutions are levees, or storm walls, or vast climate-controlled hydroponic factory farms (for when drought/fire/disease wipes out our agricultural hubs), they’ll probably do a fair job of keeping humanity around. We’re good at that, and will not effect meaningful change until we are forced to by real catastrophe.

So screw it. There’s a few cigarettes left in the pack. I wonder if we can smoke ’em all in one go.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

*pun very much intended. sorry not sorry.

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