Content of my Wallet

I got a new wallet a few weeks ago. It replaces one that I've had for probably ten years. I never realized how attached I could get to a wallet, but it's probably the object that has spent more time with me than any other single object this decade.

So I'm trying to get acquainted with a new one. It has a different layout so I have to decide on new locations for all the things that go there. Which has made me assess the contents of my wallet.


I wonder what is says about me-- all the things I carry around in it. If someone fished my corpse out of a river, what could they discover about the person I was based on the contents of my wallet?

• They'd know I work in education because of my college staff ID card.
  
• They would know I'm not a big consumer, because I only have three credit cards (and two of them are actually debit cards.)
• My car insurance card would let them know I'm prudent and responsible.
• They might think I was a hypochondriac based on my health insurance card and my health clinic ID card.
  
• The library card shows that I like to read, at at least get videos, CDs, or recorded books for free.
• Membership card in the American Library Association shows that I'm a librarian. This would be confirmed by with several copies of my business card.
• Tennis center coupons and membership card would let them know I'm an avid tennis player.
• My local food co-op membership card would be evidence of my hippie granola tendencies.
  
• If someone paid enough attention, they would know that I'm anal about how my cash fits into my wallet: all bills facing the same way, with the denominations in order from smallest to largest.
  
• In fact, the overall organization of the wallet would belie someone with a very ordered and simple life. It's not bulging with stuff, everything seems to be in its logical place, and nothing is sticking out all higgledy-piggledy. It's the wallet of a man who has his shit together.
  

One piece of evidence that would probably throw off the homicide detectives is the Starbucks card. Someone seeing this would probably think that I drink coffee. I don't. The card was something I won in a raffle, but I carry it around thinking I can use it the next time I find myself at a Starbucks.

So, that's it. The truth and lies that my wallet tells.

Monkey Money

This story comes courtesy of the last chapter of Superfreakonomics, an interesting read that stirs up lots of unusual ideas about human behavior.

Scientists trained capuchin monkeys to use money. They gave them coins and slowly taught the monkeys that they could use those coins to buy food. After several months, the coins soon become just as important as food.

So it was pretty amazing when, one day, one of the monkeys made a break for the tray that held all the coins. In the first documented case of a capuchin monkey bank heist, he grabbed the whole tray and ran back into the cage, scattering coins all over. It was a monkey free-for-all as they all scrambled to grab the coins.

This in itself was pretty amazing, but even more amazing was what happened next. One of the monkeys, instead of keeping his coin so he could buy some food, ran over to another monkey and gave it the coin. Is this an example of pure altruism in the monkey world? A tribute to a monkey with higher status? Paying back a debt?

The answer became much more clear when, seconds after this transaction, the two monkeys were having sex.

The scientists had just witnessed the first-ever case of monkey prostitution!

Mere months after money was introduced to these primates, they had already discovered that you could pay for, or be paid for, sex.

I think this proves that it really is the oldest profession.

Bombastic

My local cable company, which I'll call "Bombast" for no other reason than I like pseudonyms (even when they're nonsensical), is pissing me off.

After a week in which I already lost power and sprained my ankle, I came home on Friday night, after visiting the doctor for x-rays of said ankle, to find that my cable was out. This not only affects my TV watching, but also my internet connection, which I get through cable, and my landline phone, which goes through my internet (VoiP.)

So, using my cell phone, I called Bombast's customer service and, navigating an annoying automated menu, finally talked to a live person. Unfortunately, the annoying automated menu made me choose between a cable TV issue and an internet issue, and I made the wrong choice. The guy at the cable TV service line was not listening to me when I told him my issue, or else he had no choice but to a follow a script that doesn't allow for my type of problem. He kept having me turn my cable box on and off, and I kept telling him that the problem wasn't that my cable box wasn't working, but that I wasn't getting any internet, either, so it was the CABLE LINE COMING INTO MY HOUSE that needed fixing.

While I was on hold with him, my cell phone died. You see, I hardly ever talk on my cell, and mostly use it just for texts. So I don't usually need much battery power, and I don't recharge it very often. Hence, the battery died while I was on the phone with the incompetent man from Bombast. Now I was really cut off from the outside electronic world: No cable, no internet, no landline, no cell. Since all of this was beyond my control (i.e. I didn't choose to take an offline vacation) it was terrifying and disorienting.

Finally I was able to recharge my phone enough to call Bombast back, navigate the annoying automated menu, and this time choose "internet connection problems." This guy was more competent than the last, and noted that he couldn't get any signal whatsoever into my house. EXACTLY!!!! Thanks for noticing. He determined that a technician would have to come out to my house to check the external lines.

Unfortunately, he said, the soonest he could schedule an appointment would be next Wednesday, five days away. But, he would "escalate" my issue so that someone would probably be able to come to my house this weekend. That sounded good, since I had no intention of taking time off work to stay home all day and wait for the cable guy. He asked for my phone number, because the technician would call before they would come. I gave him my cell number, since obviously my landline-- which goes through my internet, which goes through my cable-- was out of service. When he read back the last four digits of my cell number to me, he had it wrong, which did not instill confidence in me.

So all day Saturday I kept checking my phone to see if they'd call.

They never did.

By about 2:30 Sunday afternoon I was pretty sure I'd been lied to. Bombast was like a sleazy guy after a desperate one-night stand: they had no intention of calling me. I re-evaluated my options and called them back. Navigated the annoying automated menu, finally spoke to a human, who confirmed that, no, they would not be visiting me this weekend. My appointment was for Wednesday morning between 7:30 and 10:00 am.

So I figured I would have to take some of my precious little personal business time off work to wait for the damn cable guy.

On Monday I arrange to take Wednesday morning off work. Later I check my home voicemail from work and find that Bombast has left me a message (automated, of course). There was an issue in my area that they have resolved, so they've canceled my appointment for Wednesday. Huh? This pisses me off for two reasons. First, if there was an area-wide issue, why couldn't they have told me that on Friday and saved me a weekend of anxiety? And two, how do they know that fixed the issue at my house? Why did they go ahead and cancel my Wednesday appointment without confirming that it works?

So I get home Monday night and, sure enough, cable is still out. The lights on my cable modem, telephone modem, and cable box still blink red, nagging me to fix them. I restart everything, but no dice.

I call Bombast again. Navigate the annoying automated menu. Every time that I've done this, I've had to listen to an automated voice tell me helpful things like, "Make sure your modem is plugged in" and "You can chat with customer service representatives on our website at..." This infuriates me. If I could get on the fucking website, I wouldn't be calling you! I have no website access, because I have no internet access, because my fucking cable is broken! Every time I hear this message, I feel like I'm being mocked.

So then I get a live person. At this point I'm much less patient and tolerant than I was the first three fucking times I called them. I ask why they 1.) told me my cable was fixed when it wasn't, and 2.) canceled my Wednesday appointment. After waiting forever while the guy looks up my account, using my escalation number, my reference number, my name, address, and the names of my first dozen elementary teachers, he tells me that the problem in the area was not fixed. No kidding. They didn't cancel my appointment. Then why the fuck did they leave a message to that effect? What kind of incompetent miscommunication is going on at this stupid corporation?

(Whenever conservatives rail against the inefficiency of big government to provide services, I'd like to point them to examples like Bombast, a for-profit company that appears to be just as fucked up as any government agency. But at least the government agency isn't screwing you over to make someone else rich.)

So I guess I'm right back to where I thought I was before I heard the automated voicemail from Bombast. Of course, the tech support guy has no good answer as to why I received that message to begin with. He does, however, have the moxie to ask me if I'd like to try some other service that Bombast offers. Seriously? I'm frustrated and angry and showing it, because my current service doesn't work, and you want to shill more stuff? "Um, I'd like to get the things I pay for to work before I think about any new services," I said. Wow, that took some balls! I'd like to nominate this guy for Stephen Colbert's Alpha Dog of the Week.


You would think that would be the end of the story, at least until Wednesday morning. But later that night I get a call. From Bombast. The lady clearly has no idea what I've been through the past four days, because she's confirming my appointment on Wednesday. She asks me to explain what is wrong with my cable. "You're having a problem with your TiVo?" (I think I mentioned my TiVo in my very first phone call.) Are you fucking kidding me? I've talked to four people over four days about this problem, and you still don't know?

The cherry on top of this customer service shit sundae is that she verifies the phone number the technician is supposed to call before he comes. She lists my landline number. NO, NO, NO! I've given four people my cell number and told them to use that!! How can you still have it wrong?

My English teacher in high school used to tell us that millions of dollars are lost every day in the business world because of poor communication. He was trying to get us to see the value of English as a course of study, but I see much wider implications for that statement. I'm so angry at this breakdown in communication, I'm... I'm... I'm... well, I'm mad enough to write a letter.

And blog about it.

Atoning

Due to a confluence of reasons that I won't go into here, I decided to fast on Saturday in honor of Yom Kippur. Even though I'm not Jewish.

In keeping with the theme of "atonement" for the day, I did something that felt like a penance: cleaned my bathroom. While I did that I listened to This American Life, my favorite radio show. This week there was a story about a vet who returned from the Iraq war and was all messed up and violent because of it.

This story hit me at just the right time, because lately I'd been feeling uneasy for something I wrote on this here blog a while back. I wrote about an experience I had at an airport, where I witnessed the family of a serviceperson get all bent out of shape because they weren't given free drinks at a fast food place.

I still believe that their indignation at not getting free drinks was misplaced, but I do feel bad about some of the things I wrote about soldiers that post. I know that soldiers during wartime must have one of the most awful jobs imaginable. I tried to downplay that in my post and I was wrong. How many of us have to go to work every day worried that people are trying to kill you? And not just an isolated wacko, but an entire army of people who make it their job to kill you?

However you feel about the politics of war-- whether it's a necessary evil or an ineffective and dangerous way to settle disputes-- I think it's undeniable that the stress and trauma that individuals go through during war is uniquely horrifying. So I apologize for downplaying that.

Game Over

That's it.

I'm out.

No more NFL for me.

The game is no longer about the strategy of using different configurations of 11 men to either advance or stop a ball. It's not about running fast, or tackling well, or throwing a bullet pass, or making an amazing catch.

No, all of that has been overshadowed by the Rules. Now it's about yellow flags, conferences, reviews, and ponderous stoppages of play to interpret some stupid, inane rule that makes no sense.

It's to the point now that I can't actually enjoy a fantastic play any more because, more often than not, it will be negated by a flag. My appreciation of the game is on a 7-second delay.

A hard-earned, 25-yard run up the middle? Sorry, holding, let's do it over.

An incomplete pass on a crucial third or fourth down? Pass interference! When the flag is thrown, everyone cheers. I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy watching my team advance down the field without actually doing anything. It's like watching someone get a traffic ticket. It may be good for traffic, but how is that entertainment?


A 50-yard scramble on a kick return? Don't forget about "illegal block in the back," a penalty that gets called on 75% of kick returns. Why even bother to have a kick return anymore? Just give the receiving team the ball 10 yards behind where the ball lands.

And it's not just penalties that slow the game down. A close first down? Let's get out the measuring stick, even though the placement of the ball is largely arbitrary and I can see from my perch on the couch that the ball is over the chalk line.


Apparent touchdown? Not so fast. Let's spend the next five minutes reviewing every frame to make sure all the rules were followed. Seriously, how is this fun? Would NFL fans also pay hundreds of dollars to wait outside a courtroom while a jury convenes about a routine murder case?

My last straw was the ending of the Bears-Lions game last Sunday. Because of some stupid rule that somehow defines a catch in the end zone differently than a catch anywhere else on the field, a perfectly good touchdown was taken away from the Lions. I'm a Bears fan, mind you, and even I could see that the Lions got jobbed. Take away the jerseys, and there's not a fan around who wouldn't have called that a legitimate reception.



Although the Lions were able to defeat the Bears' defense on that play, they couldn't overcome the toughest defense in the league: the Rules.

And I didn't tune in to watch the Rules dominate.

I won't make that mistake again.

Fluid Sex

Cheryl and Ellen were good friends of my best friend. As a lesbian couple, they were in a monogamous relationship for many many years. So I was pretty shocked when my friend told me that they had broken up, and Ellen was now in a relationship with... a man. But... but... but... she's a lesbian, I thought. How could she be with a man?

I had no idea at the time, but that was my first exposure to a new way of looking at sexual orientation. Since then I have heard of several anecdotal cases of out lesbians, women who were clearly established and comfortable in their sexuality, who went on to date or marry a man.

The issue become much more personal to me when a good friend of mine, a lesbian, recently started dating a man. She herself was surprised to find herself with a man, because she's never been attracted to men, and although she's happy in her "straight" relationship, she knows that her orientation is still overwhelmingly homosexual. One relationship with one man is not enough to "turn" her straight. This has confused a lot of people. "How can she be happy with a man if she's gay?" "Why won't she call herself bisexual?" "Won't she ultimately crave women too much?" "Doesn't she think, 'Ewwww... penis!'?"

These are good questions, and the people who asked them are sincere supporters of gay rights who take sexual orientation very seriously.

A book that I've recently read helps to address this issue. It introduces a new way to think of sexual orientation, a way that challenges the old dichotomy between biological unchanging rigid determinism and environmental malleable lifestyle choice. (The book was so important to me that I actually waited til I was done with the whole thing to blog about it. No half-read review this time.)

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Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire by Lisa M. Diamond provides ample evidence that human sexuality, like so many other domains of scientific inquiry, is much more complicated than we thought. The old view of homosexuality-- that it's inborn and unchanging and it can't be "cured"-- has helped to give homosexuals much mainstream acceptance, but it's time for "more forward-thinking approaches to sexuality," as Diamond says. One that is more inclusive to the wide range of ways that people (particularly women) feel and express their sexuality.

Over the course of 10 years Diamond follows a hundred women, interviewing them every two years to track their sexual identity, orientation, and behavior (which are actually three distinct things.) At each interview she asks them to identify themselves as gay, straight, bisexual, or unlabeled.

What she found was that only about a third of the women keep the same identity label throughout the entire study. For the others, they tended to shift as circumstances changed-- from straight to lesbian, or lesbian to unlabeled, or bixexual to lesbian, or unlabeled to straight, and every possible combination. Some switched multiple times throughout the five interviews.

This "sexual fluidity" varies from individual to individual, but Diamond believes (and provides evidence) that women on the whole are much more "fluid" than men. Women are much likely to be attracted to "the person, not the gender." My personal anecdotal evidence bears this out: I know several cases of lesbians who ended up dating/marrying men, but I don't know of any personal cases of out gay men dating a woman. (I don't mean to imply that sexual fluidity only applies to lesbians. Many "straight" women find themselves in same-sex relationships, too.) Historically, most of the homosexual research done has focused on gay men, which would explain why the idea of fluidity has not been studied til now. Women's sexuality has been largely left out of the research.

One important idea that Diamond challenges is the assumption that if something is biological or inherent it cannot be changed, and if it is the result of environment or experience it can be. Both assumptions are wrong. Some biological traits can be changed, and some "learned" traits cannot. Rather than focus on whether homosexuality is natured or nurtured, she focuses on the varying degrees that one can be gay, straight, or bisexual, and how that can change as some women become attracted to "the person, not the gender." There is a lot of room between being 100% gay and 100% straight, and that percentage itself can change over time. As she quotes Kinsey, "The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats." (Which reminds me of the homoerotic scene from Spartacus where the skeevy old Roman patrician asks his bathing slave boy, "Do you prefer oysters or clams?")

As Diamond says,

...it is altogether false to assume that if a woman's sexual orientation is an essential trait, then her sexual attractions must be fundamentally rigid. Sexual orientation can have an inborn basis and yet still permit variation in desire over time. The amount of variation a woman experiences is determined by two factors: (1) her specific degree of fluidity, which varies from woman to woman, and (2) her exposure to the types of environmental, situational, and interpersonal factors that might trigger her fluidity. (p. 161)

Don't get me wrong. I love categories. I am a librarian, after all. Diamond is not advocating that we disregard labels altogether, but she is saying that a gay or straight identity doesn't always lead to the same orientation or behavior. She tells the story of visiting a school to give a lecture on providing support for gay students. One teacher asked her at what age you can be sure that kids will no longer question their sexuality. Diamond's answer was, there is no such age. There's no time in a person's life when you can say, "Okay, you're safe-- you won't turn gay now." (Or vice-versa.)

The last chapter, on biological processes, posits a fascinating idea that there is a demonstrable difference between sexual attraction and romantic love. For example, prepubescent children feel romantic love without sexual attraction. It turns out the two forces come from different parts of the brain. The theory is that romantic love actually happens to be a residual form of parent-child bonding. So when you fall in love, you're using the same part of the brain that infants use to bond with their caregiver. In our evoluationary development, this parent-child bonding impulse turned out to be useful for bonding mating couples, as well. I happen to thing that is amazing, and it's yet another reason why I love evolution.

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I can understand the confusion and consternation that many well-meaning supporters of gay rights have when they hear stories of perceived "flips" in sexual orientation. Most of the arguments in the gay rights movement have depended on the idea that homosexuality is inborn and unchangeable, not a lifestyle choice. For years and years anti-gay activists have maintained that "gay can be cured," and people who think they're gay are really just choosing an abhorrent and sinful lifestyle. So when a seemingly gay person takes up with someone of the "wrong" gender, it puts at risk the political gains made by gay rights advocates.

Diamond addresses these concerns in her book, and she doesn't take them lightly. She makes very clear that just because sexuality can shift (due to forces beyond our control) does not mean it can be manipulated or controlled. In the end, homophobes will always take whatever research is out there and try to twist it to their own agenda. We do homosexuals (and women in particular) no favors by sticking with obsolete ideas that, although well-intentioned, do just as much damage as good.

There is no longer any excuse for dismissing female sexual fluidity as an anomaly attributable to women's repression, disingenuousness, confusion, or immaturity. (p 234)

Plus, it's never a good idea to ignore the truth, even for a good cause.

If you want to expand your understanding of sexual orientation, I highly recommend you read the book yourself.

Eat'nLocal

Ever since I read the latest indictment of the abuses of big business, The Omnivore's Dilemma, I have been looking at my food a little differently. I've started playing a game where I read all the ingredients of the things I eat, and indeed corn-processed products are all up in them. It's like playing Where's Waldo with my food, only in this case Waldo is cut up into 17 different parts and spread all over the ingredients list. I was actually giddy a few weeks ago when I bought an upscale off-brand soft drink and it listed "cane sugar" as an ingredient-- and not "high fructose corn syrup."

I also have a new campaign to try to eat local whenever I can. This seems to be the best solution to our processed food problem. Local food solves most of the problems caused by the economies of scale that are necessary with large industrial farming. Eating locally grown food is better for the environment, better for our bodies, and better for farmers. (You know, the people who actually grow our food.)

This presents quite a dilemma for me, a lazy convenience-phile who rarely cooks and never buys produce. Probably 60% of my diet is frozen dinners and pizza. This is the same person who, when I lived in Germany, used to complain that my bread would go bad after a week. "Haven't these people ever heard of preservatives?!?" I would shout. So it's going to be a challenge for me to put my, uh, mouth where my mouth is. This new attitude has the potential to just add another heap of guilt on me when I eat, to go with all the other Catholic guilt I grew up with.


But I can start with small steps, like joining the local food co-op and trying to be on the lookout for better eating options. Just like you can't eat Rome in a day (I think Godzilla said that), neither will I be able to completely transform my bachelor eating habits overnight.

So it was with this mindset that I was looking for food on my latest road trip to Philadelphia. (My fifth visit there in the past eight months-- Boy, do I love history!) I often break the trip into two days, and my 800-mile, 14-hour journey always has me driving through the Washington, PA area around lunch time. The past few times I've stopped at Wendy's there, but it's been less than satisfying. In addition to my new social food conscience, I fear that I may be becoming a food snob. I blame it on the people I hang out with.

So, with fast food not appealing to me, and with this new attitude about eating local, non-processed food, I pulled off the highway and drove past Wendy's, McDonald's, and Taco Bell hoping to find some local restaurant that might have fresher options.

My eyes perked up when I saw a sign for a place called Eat'nPark. Not a great name (what the hell does "eat 'n park" mean? Shouldn't it be the other way around?) but it looked like a local greasy spoon that might at least be something different than the ubiquitous MickieDees. But it also looked like a sit-down restaurant, and I wanted something fast. I did have a schedule to keep, after all. I drove past Eat'nPark, but there were no other options closer to town. So I turned around. I was just about to give up and go back to Wendy's when I passed Eat'nPark again. And I noticed the marquee sign outside said, "Local produce in our salad bar." If I was looking for a sign from the Universe, that was it. With all my talk about eating local, how could I pass that up?

So I pulled off the road and parked. I was very apprehensive, because I never take chances like this when I travel. I'm not spontaneous, daring, or comfortable with unknown situations. But I took a chance.

It was like a higher quality Denny's. Clean and wholesome with fast friendly service and a glass case full of pies next to the register. I ordered a chicken mushroom sandwich with a side of cole slaw and felt very pleased with myself. Look at me, taking chances! Eating local and healthy! The food was great and it didn't take me much longer than a fast food place. I ate half my sandwich and took the other half with me, which made a great leftover lunch the next day. The rest of the afternoon I felt so smug and self-satisfied for my lunch choice that I could have burst. I can't wait for my next road trip to Philly so I can stop there again.

When I got home I looked up Eat'nPark. It turns out it's a Pittsburg-based chain of about 75 restaurants in PA, WV, and OH. I couldn't find any mention on their website about the local angle, but the one in Washington, PA, sure had a local feel to it.

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While in Philadelphia, I visited a local farmer's market in, of all places, a subway station. It was one local farm selling their products, and although I wasn't interested in any of the produce (my friend bought enough for the both of us), I did noticed that they had beef jerky. One of the things that I learned from my book is that grass-fed beef is way healthier (and better for the environment, etc.) than the corn-fed ones that live in crowded factories their whole life. The grass-fed lifestyle also appears to negate many of the (legitimate) objections that vegetarians have about eating beef. So I asked the guy if their cows were grass-fed, and he said yes. I couldn't pass this up, so I bought grass-fed beef jerky. I wonder if it's the first time I've ever had grass-fed beef, but there's really no way to know. I am enjoying my jerky as I type this. (I know that sounds dirty, but it's not. Unless you think eating beef is in itself pornographic.)

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On my return trip, I was driving through western Ohio at lunchtime and I had the same dilemma as before. How can I feed myself without stopping at fast food?

I couldn't hope to find another Eat'nPark with a local salad bar, but I decided to just pull off at an exit with lots of restaurants and hope to find at least a local business, if not local food. What I found instead was Tim Hortons. What the hell was a Tim Hortons doing in Dayton, OH?

I'd never seen a Tim Hortons before, but as I understand it, it's like the Canadian Starbucks. They are ubiquitous in Canada and serve coffee and pastries. Do they also serve lunch? I didn't know. But I was going to find out.
I realize that going to Tim Hortons is the opposite of eating local. It's a large international chain that probably buys all of its food in bulk from all over the world. But it's also Canadian, and I imagine that large evil corporations in Canada aren't nearly as large and evil as their American counterparts. Plus, it was at least a new experience.

The food was serviceable and the service friendly. My turkey club sandwich at least had the appearance of being fresh, like they advertise.

And now my Eat'nFresh souvenir cup has a companion.