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.

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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. 

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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. 

Conservative Cognitive Dissonance

Lately I've been gathering more and more examples of cognitive dissonance-- the state of holding conflicting beliefs, values, or emotional reactions simultaneously-- among American conservatives.

One such example was during the GOP primaries when Mitt Romney kept trying to appeal to the NASCAR demographic by pretending to be just a regular guy, and not a Very Rich Man who had nothing in common with them.  (His efforts seemed painful to me, like watching a dog walk on its hind legs.) 

It was ironic that although Romney was trying to win the nomination of the party that openly serves the interests of the Very Rich, he had to pretend that he wasn't one himself. 

Another example was served up to me this morning when the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional.  Immediately a slew of conservatives tweeted that they were so mad about Obamacare they were moving to Canada.

Seriously?  

You do realize that Canada's nationalized health care system is way more comprehensive than anything Obama has ever proposed, right?  (And it's also very popular among Canadians, I add snarkily.)

In fact, I can't think of a single other country that offers less nationalized health care than the U.S.-- at least not one that conservative Americans would want to live in.

(Full disclosure: after some investigation, it appears that some of the people who tweeted about moving to Canada were joking.  Others, well, were just idiots.  It's probably not fair to use them as samples of conservative thought.  Still, it kinda shows you the stupid shit that Obama is up against.)   

    

  

My John Irving Story

I once wrote John Irving a letter. 

Young John Irving

Since he's one of my favorite novelists, I told him how much I've enjoyed his writing, then pointed out that three recurring themes in his books feature the unlikely combination of three passions I've had in my life: wrestling, German, and sex.  As I explained in my letter: I was a wrestler in high school, I have a Master's in German, and sex... well maybe my interest in that is not so unusual.  

I was impressed and flattered when he actually answered my letter, and said something like, "Well, if we ever met in a gym or a bar I'm sure we would have a lot to talk about!"  I don't know if he wrote that himself or a had an assistant do it, but it still made me feel warm and fuzzy that a talented famous person such as him paid some attention to me (or pretended to.) 

Old John Irving

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So this weekend I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and John Irving was their celebrity guest.  (I happened to be driving around running errands at the time, but during Irving's segment I had to sit in a parking lot in my car until it was over. Another celebrity guest on the show was Carl Hiaassen, another favorite author of mine. I happen to currently be in the middle of books by each writer, so that was a weird coincidence.)

When Peter Sagal, the host of WWDTM, interviewed Irving, he pointed out that on his Wikipedia page, there is a chart of all the themes in Irving's novels.  The themes were: New England, sex workers, wrestling, Vienna, bears, deadly accidents, absent parents, and writers.  

In the WWTDM interview, Irving calls these "superficial details," but I can't tell if he's being facetious or not.  He had a very dry sense of humor and a morose presence on the show.  

This chart is awesome, and shows that it's not just wrestling, German, and sex that occupies Irving's brain.  Although German is not listed, Vienna is, which is where I think most of his German comes from.  And although "sex workers" is a theme, one can't deny there's a whole lot of sex and sexual issues in his books.  In fact, another entire column in this table that I cropped out (for space) is one titled Sexual Variations, which lists such things as: adultery, swinging, menage a trois, asexuality, rape, pedophilia, transsexualism, incest, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality, buggery, cross-dressing, and "older woman/younger man."

It's nice to know that others have noticed some of the same themes that I have in Irving's books.  But it appears that I have underestimated my favorite novelist.  He's about much more than just German, wresting, and sex.  (Note to self: Never EVER do a Google image search with those three words again.)

Pusher

In tennis, a "pusher" is a pejorative term for someone who gets to everything and returns it, keeps the ball in play, but doesn't hit winners.  AKA a "human backboard."

I've been accused of being a pusher.  In some contexts I am.  I'm definitely a defensive player and I do get to everything.  But given the opportunity, I will come to the net and hit winners.  I just often don't get that opportunity against power hitters.

I'm a different kind of pusher: I push people to their limit.

Then I lose.

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It happened again this week.

In my first singles league match of the summer outdoor season, I played a young kid just out of college who was playing in his first adult league match.  He'd played in high school and hit the ball very hard, and it was all I could do to keep up with him.  But keep up with him I did, in a first close first set.  Although I had two chances to win it (I was up 5-4, 40-15), I blew it and he squeaked by me, 7-5.

The first set lasted longer than an hour on a hot humid summer night.  I could already tell that he was having problems.  He took a really long break between sets to stretch his legs.  Then, as the second set continued, with lots of long points and games, he took longer and longer breaks on the changeovers, always stretching his legs.  

We were tied at 3-3 in the second set when I finally was able to wear him down enough to win three straight games.  Near the end he had several instances of leg cramping. I won the set 6-3, so we'd have to play a third set.  By this time the guy was in real agony.  He spent the entire (long) break between sets sitting down and stretching his legs. I gave him much longer than he was entitled to.  He could barely walk and I thought there was no way he'd be able to compete in the third set. I asked him if he was okay to play and he said yes.  

In lieu of a full third set-- which I most surely would have won because his legs would have fallen off-- we played a 10-point tiebreak, which follows the rules of this league.  (Actually, the rules were not entirely clear.  During the indoor season we do play 10-point tiebreaks, but our league coordinator did not actually spell this out for the summer league, so it was up to our discretion.  Before the match even started, we both agreed to play a 10-point tiebreak if it came to that.)
  

He jumped out to a 5-1 lead and never looked back. He won 10-5, and I was so frustrated I threw my racket against the fence.  I was really annoyed during the tiebreak because he took so much time between points, then ran around and bashed these winners against me.  Every time we'd have a long point, he'd have to stop and stretch a long time after it.  My best chance at beating a power hitter is to make them work really hard early in a match so that they don't have enough energy later.  Early on he was really crushing the ball and I was getting everything back, so my strategy was working.

It doesn't seem fair that late in the match he can take all the time he needs between points without a penalty.  You're only allowed so much time between points/games/sets.  And fitness is part of the game.  But I didn't want to be a jerk.  The guy was in real pain.  

After the match he pretty much crumpled to the ground and could hardly walk.  I would feel bad for him, but fuck him-- he just beat me.  I was tired too, but I was a tired loser. If he was in so much pain he shouldn't have tried so hard to beat me.  He's almost half my age, I'm not going to feel guilty for being in better shape. 

I looked at my phone.  We had played for 2 hours and 45 minutes.  Final score: 7-5, 3-6, 1-0 (10-5)       

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I like to joke that my purpose in tennis is to push people to their limit and then lose to them.  But this isn't funny anymore.  I'm tired of losing.  

Similar incidents have happened several times before.  People cramp up against me, I give them more time than they're entitled to because I'm nice, and then they end up beating me.  I know it's my own fault for thinking they're done when they're not.  I let down my guard and let them back into the match.  I choke.


It's really frustrating, and I just don't know how to fix this.  If my strategy is to wear people down, but then I can't finish them off when they get wore down, what good is it? 

Somehow I have to push through this.  Then I can be another kind of pusher. 

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UPDATE: After thinking more about this phenomenon, I realize that the problem isn't that I always choke when I wear people down.  People often fade against me late in the match.  The problem is those rare instances when my opponent cramps up when he gets tired, instead of just missing shots.  That's how a tired opponent is supposed to act!  It's these stubborn people who don't show the normal symptoms of tiredness.  Still, I should be able to beat someone who's cramping up that bad.  In the end, it's still my fault.

UPDATE #2: I played another marathon match a week later.   Two and a half hours, pushed my opponent to the limit, but lost a close one in the end.  Final score: 7-5, 6-7(2), 1-0 (10-8). This opponent didn't cramp up on me, but also didn't fade like I wanted him to.  One interesting thing, though, is that he told me afterward that I hit more winners against him than most people do.  No one's ever told me THAT before.  A "pusher" definitely doesn't hit winners, so I must not be a very good one.