Social Scientist

I was trying to tell someone recently about the Five (+ 1) Tenets of Timicism, and I think I got most of them right.  I'm such a horrible timvangelist, I have trouble remembering the tenets of my very own cult.  (After a quick review I see that I forgot the third tenet, Humor. D'oh!)

Anyway, after my spiel my friend replied that Timicism sounds more like the rules of a social scientist than a religion.

Hm.  I kinda like that description.

Timicism: the "religion" for social scientists. 

Love and Mix Tapes

While browsing the audiobook shelves at my public library, I found this book in the Biography section: love is a mix tape: life and loss, one song at a time by Rob Sheffield.

The back of the case said:

It was... when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway.  They had nothing in common except that they both loved music... And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.

In [the book]... Rob uses the songs on fifteen mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Renee...This is Rob's tribute to music, to the decade that shaped him, but most of all to one unforgettable woman.  

Well, I had to check that out!  As someone who's a huge fan of the movie High Fidelity, I just naturally assumed that Rob and Renee had broken up.  (Rob even has the same name of John Cusack character in the movie.)

Rob from High Fidelity, not Rob from Love is a Mix Tape

So it came as quite a shock to me when, as I listened to the end of the introduction, Rob reveals that Renee died suddenly at age 31. She didn't dump him, she died on him.  Wow, I didn't see THAT coming. It was like a twist beginning.

The book took on a whole new meaning after that.  It wasn't High Fidelity, but Love Story, told from the point of view of a couple of hip music geeks who spend all their time listening to music, going to concerts, talking about music, and falling in love to music.  I thought I knew a lot about pop music, but I had to admit that only about one out of every ten songs Rob lists from his mix tapes were songs I knew.  And only about 50% of the musicians/bands were ones I'd heard of.  

+++++

It's funny that I ran into this book, because I was just talking to friends recently about the culture of mix tapes.  This is a culture I know well, since I grew up making mixes for friends, myself, and girls I was into.  I don't know what the kids do these days when they want to share songs.  Do they make ipod playlists?  Over the past 10 years I've moved on to making mix CDs.  I remember when I first heard the soundtrack to Avenue Q, in the mid-2000's, I thought that the story must be somewhat dated, since they have a song called "Mix Tape." That's sooooo 1990, I thought. 



Nevertheless, it's a great song that I now like to include on CD mixes.  As Sheffield points out, the technology might have changed, and even improved, but there's something special about a mix tape.   

+++++

There was also something special about Renee.  In a hundred different ways Rob writes about how special she was, how & why he loved her.  He tells the story of how they met, fell in love, got married.

According to the intarwebz, this is the happy couple.

When she literally dropped dead from a pulmonary embolism, she wasn't even sick. They'd only been married five years.  The ensuing account of Rob's shock, grief, and depression is heartbreaking. As he writes, "After Renee died, I assumed the rest of my life would be just a consolation prize."  It feels that way in the book, too, as he describes day after day of drudgery and pain.  He writes about being a young "widow" and what a strange role that was for him.  

It made me think about my divorce, and what a vastly different experience it must be to lose your spouse to death.  Sheffield addresses this in his book after people try to console him that at least Renee didn't choose to leave him: “Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.”

The book ends on a happier note, though, as Rob has learned to move on.  There is a quote about the fact that always looking back was preventing him from moving forward.  Or something more profound than that.  I don't have the book anymore so I can't look it up.  I did, however, find a whole webpage of great quotes from the book here:  http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45332-love-is-a-mix-tape-life-and-loss-one-song-at-a-time

It was there that I re-read this gem from the book, about how there are certain songs he can no longer listen to:

“Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you."

Funeral, Wedding, Lemurs, Tennis

It's been a hectic several weeks, readers.  I've been yanked from place to place, event to event, with the intensity of a tennis player running down shots from sideline to sideline.

Chicago skyline from the plane

It started when my mom's husband, Ken, went into the hospital with pneumonia.  While there, he had a stroke.  He already had diabetes, alzheimer's, high blood pressure, and a bucket of other ailments.  Just a month earlier he'd had a pacemaker put in.  And he was 86.  He was not doing well, and passed away surrounded by his family on August 4.

It all went down pretty fast, and since I live four hours away from them, I didn't make it to the hospital in time to be one of those surrounding his hospital bed when he expired.  But it sounds like it was a pretty crowded place to be, what with his three daughters, son-in-law, grandson, my mom, two of my siblings, and several of my mom's siblings there.

Luckily, I was able to spell my sisters, who had been keeping Mom company at the hospital for three days, during the next three days of funeral arrangements.  We had to work out all the details of a showing and funeral in Indiana, and a burial service and memorial service in Illinois.  We met with with the funeral director, the most patient and friendly man I've ever encountered, in a four-hour meeting on Sunday and another hour on Monday.  We met with the pastor who did the funeral in Indiana. We called the ministers who would do the memorial service in Illinois.  We coordinated with his daughters.  I've never written down so many phone numbers in my life, trying to get all these people in touch with each other.         

I spent four days at my mom's. One of the jobs I did during that time was to collect pictures from Ken's life to give to the funeral home for a memorial DVD (and to put on their memorial website.) This was a fascinating experience, since I was able to see a glimpse of his life before he came into my family.  He'd already lived a lifetime, 75 years, before I met him.  He was married to his first wife for 40 years, and they had three daughters together, but after she passed away, he met my mom and started over.  It's amazing to think that someone can experience new life & love in their 70's.  Imagine if the people who will be there when you die, the people who will speak at your funeral, only know the version of you when you're 75+ years old? Seeing old pictures of him as a young(er) man was fascinating.

Ken and my mom.  They were only married 10 years, but they made each other very happy.

+++++

It was an emotionally- and physically-draining couple of days, but I didn't have much time to decompress.  The day after the memorial service, I had to drive up to Chicago with my girlfriend, so we could fly to Raleigh, NC, for her cousin's wedding.  A funeral and a wedding in one week.  I think that ratchets up our relationship status, doesn't it?

The wedding ceremony was outside in a flower garden. In North Carolina.  In August.  The officiant (the bride's mother, who was very nervous and clearly hadn't done this sort of thing before) forgot to tell us all to sit down after the bride walked down the grassy aisle, so we had to stand during the entire service.  Mercifully it was a short service-- literally five minutes.  Then we went to an Irish pub in downtown Raleigh for a brunch reception.   

We stayed in Raleigh for a few days after that, visiting the scenic downtown, the historic statehouse, an old plantation, and making stops at the campuses of the three major research universities that make up the "research triangle": Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State.  We argued about whether the students at Duke are too isolated from their urban surroundings and whether the three tall buildings of downtown Raleigh can be called a "skyline."

My position: Yes, it's a skyline.  It's no Chicago, but it's still  a view that defines the city.

One treat of the week was that we discovered the Duke Lemur Center, a research sanctuary that has the world's largest collection of lemurs outside of Madagascar.  Well, we absolutely had to visit the lemurs!  Although you had to make an appointment to see them, as luck would have it, they could accommodate us that very morning.  So we took a tour and saw lots of different kinds of lemurs.  Apparently there are up to 70 different species.  I had no idea.

Ring-Tailed Lemurs: the most awesome of 70 different varieties!

+++++

I was only home from my trip to Raleigh for one day before I left again, this time for a road trip to Cincinnati.  My tennis friends and I had tickets to the Western & Southern Open in Mason, OH, for the second straight year. Since I already wrote about it last year, I won't go into detail about every match and player I saw. We saw a lot of great players: Federer, Djokovic, Murray, Del Potro, the Williams sisters and Bryan brothers, and many more.  It was a good time.

We got to see several lower-profile matches from the front row of an outer court.  Arguably the best seats in the house.  We were spitting distance from some of the best players in the world (but not household names like Federer or Venus.)  At one point, the TV camera pointed right at us, but when I got home I looked on my TiVo to see if they showed us, they hadn't. The closest we came to being on TV was after one of the matches I saw in the front row a green blob next to a red blob next to a black blob.  From knowing where we were sitting and what we were wearing, I could tell that was us.  Those blobs were us on TV!

Can you see us? (Not actual image.)

+++++

When I came home from the tennis tournament, the cats showed their displeasure at my frequent absences by leaving the largest collection of fur and vomit on my carpet I've ever seen.  Welcome home!

The fur and puke corridor

It was nice to have two days in a row at home this weekend to catch up on home stuff.  I'm still way behind on my Facebooking, blogging, emailing, and general intarwebz activity.

Next time I'll try not to schedule a funeral so close to other events.  ("I'm sorry, did my dying interfere with your schedule?")  Because, you know, it's all about me.

Up, Up, and Away

I was at Target the other day, perusing their healthcare aisles for a personal reason that I won't go into, and I noticed they had an enema brand called Up & Up.  Not only did this sound like a horrible name for a product you insert in your butt ("Put it Up & Up your ass!"), but the logo of an arrow pointing upward didn't help. 

It was only after I saw a bunch more products with the Up & Up logo that I realized they had a whole line of products: ibuprofen, baby diapers, nail polish remover, dryer sheets, spray cleaner, baby formula, and even feminine hygiene products.

It was frequently the cheapest brand on Target's shelves, and when I considered all this, the name Up & Up took on a whole new meaning.  What exactly are they trying to convey with a name like that?  That their products are on the up and up?  They might just as well name their brand "Legitimate" or "Not-A-Skam" or "Really, This Is a Real Product." 

Yeah, I don't think I want to buy a product (meant to go in my or my loved one's hoo-ha) that has a brand name reminiscent of a guy selling stuff out of the back of his van down by the river.

Never Happened

I don't have a strong opinion about the sanctions handed down to Penn State by the NCAA as a result of the boy-raping scandal by one of their assistant coaches, which was apparently covered-up by university officials, including famous coach Joe Paterno, in what appeared to be a pretty good impression of the Catholic Church.

"After Jesus loved the little children, did he have to go to jail?"

Obviously, I'm against boy raping and any cover-up of boy raping. I'm against rape of any kind.  I'm not afraid to come out against it publicly.  

As The Onion makes clear, it's a pretty simple call when you see something like that happening: Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police'. 

"under no circumstances is it ever okay for an adult to rape a 10-year-old boy, so you really can't go wrong by calling the police when something like that happens."

As a result of the scandal, the NCAA levied  unprecedented penalties against Penn State. They have to pay $60 million, they can't compete in bowl games for four years, and they've lost a good portion of their football scholarships.  (Also, for good measure, a statue of Joe Paterno was removed from the campus. But PSU did that on their own.)    

I don't know whether these penalties are too harsh, not harsh enough, or just right.  Again: I'm against boy rape and think anyone who had anything to do with it should be punished severely.  Whether or not that includes the entire football program is up for debate.

+++++

Here's the thing that I found weird.  One of the penalties the NCAA enacted against Penn State was that the football team's wins over the past 14 seasons (the period of time the molestation occurred) have been "vacated."  That means that 111 wins don't count anymore.

I didn't know you could do that.  Just pretend that 111 games never existed?  I understand you want to punish the program, but can you retroactively take away things that already happened?  If someone is sentenced to the death penalty, can you kill them retroactively?  Like, say that they've been dead for the past 15 years?  Does that really make it so?  If a man is convicted of rape, can you "take away" all the consensual sex he's already had?  If a banker is convicted of embezzlement, can you punish him by saying, "Your bank account was zero for the past 13 years. From now on, you were poor then."

These are rhetorical questions.  Obviously, I think "vacating" 111 wins is silly, not to mention logically impossible. They won those games.  This is not like a doping scandal in bicycling, where someone is disqualified from a race afterward for having broken the rules.  Unless you want to argue that raping boys gives you an unfair advantage in winning football games, I don't see how you can just expunge 111 games like that.  It's a wholesale denial of reality.

Once again, I'd like to reiterate my opposition to rape, molestation, sexual assault, or sexual harassment of any kind.

Billboard Fail

Two local billboards have caught my attention recently as I drive around town.

This woman's huge blue-toenailed feet greet me every time I drove out of my neighborhood toward downtown.  Which I do a lot.

It's an ad for some sort of spa.  Obviously they're trying to convey a sense of relaxation and pampering.  Only one problem: Those are NOT relaxed feet.  They look about as tense as feet in blue water could be.  I can hear the photographer yelling at the foot model as she tries to hold her feet up for optimum angle to capture her blue toenails.  Those feet look about as relaxed as an African American at a Tea Party rally. (Or really, anyone at a Tea Party rally. Those people need to chill out.) 

I don't really get it, because pictures of relaxed feet are everywhere.  On Facebook alone I could find two dozen of them among my friends' pics-- anytime someone goes on vacation to a beach or a pool they feel the need to show how relaxed their feet are.  Feet in repose are not elusive mythical creatures. Hell, my public library even has one on their homepage!

When the public library's feet look more relaxed than your spa's, you're doing it wrong. 

++++

The other billboard is one I've passed hundreds of times on my way to work.  For the longest time I'd pass it and think, "What the hell IS that?" 

It's not that I think it's weird or bizarre.  It's that I couldn't actually distinguish what was going on in the picture.  I knew the shapes meant something, but I couldn't make sense of them.  It's like my brain was unable to form any kind of pattern out of what my eyes were seeing, even though I knew one was there.

It's a small billboard, with tiny writing below it, and the writing was not big enough for me to read it as I drove by.  "What a horrible billboard," I thought.  "I have no idea what they are advertising."  Which is kinda the whole purpose of a billboard.

It was only after I stopped-- yes, I stopped on the side of the road-- to write down the words on the bottom, then googled them, that I figured out what it was about.  It turns out that they're not actually advertising anything.  It's a "Sky Gallery," some sort of community art project.  Oh.  It's art.

There are several other such billboards around town as part of the same series, although that was the only one that scrambled my brain.   I certainly appreciate community art in different places, and I don't mean to discourage local artists.  The picture on this billboard may very well be a good piece of art.

But it's a shitty billboard.

Customer Creep

On a recent flight my hackles were raised when, during the pre-flight training and announcements, the flight attendant referred to all the passengers on the plane as "customers."

I'd  never heard a plane-load of people referred to as such.  I might have been a customer when I purchased my ticket, but once I got on that plane, I was a passenger.  Just like at the doctor I'm a patient, at the ballpark I'm a fan, if I hire a lawyer I'm a client, and if I pay tuition I'm a student.  In none of those cases do I consider myself merely a "customer."

The reason this bugs me is that lots of libraries are starting to refer to the people who use their services as "customers," and as a librarian I find that misdirected.  Librarians have been having this debate for years.  We could call them patrons, users, members, students, the public, or assholes*, but please, let's not allow the odious title customers to enter libraries.

*courtesy of Parker Posey in Party Girl.

"That guy was being an asshole." "He's not an asshole, he's a patron!"

The argument goes like this: Businesses have customers and focus on customer service.  (The customer is always right!)  We should run libraries like that.  Therefore, we should treat our patrons as well as businesses treat the customer.

I don't want a bar that's that low.  I consider it an insult to call the people we serve customers.  Businesses exist to make money.  They're only interested in customers as far as they can get money from them.  This is a horrible model for libraries to base their service on.  Delivering information services to our patrons should be our ultimate goal, not making money.  To my ears, when I hear a librarian referring to the public as "customers," I think that they only see them as little dollar signs.  And I find that offensive.

Hi, where are your Stephen King books?

There's a lot libraries could learn from the business model.  It is good to treat our patrons at least as well as a (successful) business treats its customers.  But in general the business model is not appropriate for public service.  They have two different aims: in one case the aim is to maximize profit, in the other the aim is to provide the service itself.

I don't want teachers and police officers, for example, trying to maximize their profit.  When I see the term "customer" creeping into fields where it hadn't been, such as medicine and education and even airlines, it raises my hackles. It's a sign that more and more people are buying into the profit ethos: that running everything like a business is the best way.  I don't agree.