perpetual memory loss

Not it!!

This week I have been fairly obsessed with the Penn State story. I even spent some time today reading through the Grand Jury report, which is worth the read–if you can stomach it. I have been floored by the absolutely tone deaf responses from so many people.  Students rioting at Penn State to support JoePa? Pundits worrying about how this will affect the football program? What about his legacy? People rushing to protect and defend those in high places, the very people who don’t need defenders. Here’s a sampling of some tweets from members of the team via deadspin:

Sick. Just sick.

I’m honestly sick to my stomach

This is almost like a modern day crucifixion

Smh all he has done for this program and then they turn on him

Disgusting

It’s good to see these football players have their priorities…wait what? Fuck, you mean, they’re not upset that the institution they are part of covered up for one of their own when he raped a child in the showers? or forced children to give him bj’s also in said shower? Nope, amazingly they are upset because the glorious leader JoePa was fired over the phone. A man who was praised far and wide by the sporting world for him commitment to leadership and honor turned out to be a fucking coward and fraud. In all this people keep forgetting that a child of 10 years old was raped by a man 5x his age. And that’s just one of a few that we actually know about.

The fact that people can witness or know about this or even suspect that children are being taken advantage of and not do anything is tragic beyond words. Throughout the Grand Jury report you can see time after time how people see or know something bad is going on and do nothing. They pass the buck to someone else (like that soulless ginger, shit heel McQueary, or the false idol JoePa, or any of the other assholes involved in this) and think their job is done or they do nothing. It takes a special kind of spineless, gutless, fucking coward to not stick up for a child in situations like this; sweeping it all under the rug–nothing to see here folks move along.

This is what happens when people think that the rules don’t apply to them, when they have gotten comfortable with their elevated positions and think that nothing can take them down. All too often these days we see the so called elites of our society engage in behavior that is reprehensible and all too often they end up not facing any consequences. I could give a shit about Penn State or their athletics. If I had graduated from there I would be immensely embarrassed right now. A pox on JoePa and his fucking legacy. If there is any justice his, and all those who were complicit, will have their remaining years filled with as much sadness, anguish, and regret as their prior years were filled with happiness and hero worship. They will all get their day in court to explain how and why they didn’t feel the need to do anything, but I will always condemn them as spineless cowards. You can say well you don’t know how you would act in that situation if that was you. But I can tell you absolutely that I do know. There is no way in fucking hell I would not act in a situation like that. None whatsoever.

Bystanderism infects our world. Too often people stand idly by, silent, as people around them–in their schools, workplaces, and communities–are bullied, sexually harassed, degraded, abused etc. Instances like this should be a clarion call for those of us who are willing to stand for those that are voiceless. To help remind us that remaining silent is not an option. None of us by ourselves can stop a genocide or change the world. We can, however, make lives better one by one by standing up and speaking out for those who need help or support.

One last point. For those of you praying for the victims. Stop it. They don’t need your prayers, they need people who aren’t apathetic. Besides if you believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipotent, personal loving god who will allow this like this to happen, then you’re a fool. This god who is master of the universe but somehow gets his ass handed to him daily by satan is a pretty shitty god. Quit praying and start acting. Be a better person and don’t be a bystander, that’s the one thing we can all work on and endeavor to be better at.

–

(photo via firstthings.com)

Apparently, this is the thing to do now with the anniversary so close. So I will jump in and add my two-cents to the cacophony of 9/11 essays (two particularly good ones are Andrew Sullivan’s and Christopher Hitchens‘ love ‘em or hate ‘em they will make you think). However, in order to properly formulate 9/11 I have to go back a few more years to set the stage for where I was personally at that time. In 1999 I was working at a television studio, doing something that I thought I liked. I hoped that it would turn into something more. Well surprise, surprise things didn’t quite go as a I wanted. Being that I was young and dumb I only exacerbated the situation and proceeded to burn some of the first bridges in my young professional career. I didn’t give a fuck though. I was young and feeling cooped up and I badly needed a change–or so I told myself. So towards the end of 1999 I moved on to a construction supplies delivery job which I half-heartedly worked at (sometimes when I was tired I’d just pull over in a housing community and take a nap). When I got bored with that job I quit. Then my brother started talking about going into the Marine Corps. As he discussed it with me it planted the idea in my head which over the course of the next few months sat dormant in my head but just percolated subconsciously biding its time. About mid-2000 my brother was accepted to Naval flight school in Pensacola, Fl. A fairly difficult school to get into especially when your grades aren’t the best and you’re not a legacy kid. It was about that time that he decided he didn’t want to join up anymore. It was also about that time when I decided I did and I voiced my desire to my family.

I think it’s too harsh to say it was met with outright derision but there was a large amount of skepticism from my father and brother. I mean I was the less athletic brother, I was lazier, and avoided hard work like the plague. But their jokes just strengthened my resolve. I wanted to join not only to prove them wrong (and my ‘friends’ weren’t any more supportive, their mockery was even more infuriating) but because this burgeoning desire to serve my country. I’m not exactly sure where this all came from but I have my suspicions, and I think a large portion of this desire came from my reading list as an adolescent, which ran heavy on titles with Epic poems like Beowulf, The Illiad, The Odyssey and with a different kind of epic like The  Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. It was definitely a confluence of events though as all these ideas and feelings came together at the same time. Add to that the mockery from a lot of the people close to me and my resolution was set. If there is anything about me that’s true it’s that I a stubborn son of a b.

So I quit my job and went to work at UPS part-time and the rest of my time was spent running and working out. I quit drinking (seriously I’m not lying) and even though I didn’t eat a lot of junk food I quit eating the little that I did. My singular focus was to continue my regiment throughout the winter and go to boot camp in March. But alas, the best laid plans…, as it turned out I never made it to March. Instead, after some poking and prodding from my recruiter, and finally being given some more financial incentives I left at the end of January 2001.

Continue reading

The analog side of an online exhibit

I’ve been super busy these last few months working on a project for work, but now that it’s done I am finding I have more time to blog, read, and play video games. To celebrate being done with my project (mostly) I figured I’d write about what has been occupying my time these last 7 months. Thankfully I got a new job in January with the Nixon Library. Immediately upon being hired I was told that my main focus for the first 6-7 months was to create an online exhibit. As someone who has never curated an exhibit before I was necessarily a bit worried. How the hell was I going to accomplish this? Where do I start? Will I be able to even complete this in the time frame that was allotted to me? Those are the types of questions that swirled and twittered around my brain for pretty much the entire 7 months. Some how I did complete it and somehow I managed to exceed expectations, even my own, and produce something that has now been deemed “The first of many”.

So what exactly goes into an online exhibit?

Well good thing you asked because here are the ingredients for this particular exhibit:

1. 15+ Books (monographs, memoirs, biographies, and US History)
2. Countless hours of reading and note taking.
3. Hundreds of post-its
4. Countless hours researching primary source documents
5. 15 page narrative
6. 10+ revisions to said narrative
7. 100+ hours of listening to the White House Tapes
8. A Darth Vaderesque “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
9. 30 pages of notes on the White House Tapes
10. 36 audio clips created
11. 32 primary source documents scanned
12. Researching photo negatives in cold storage
13. 36 photos scanned
14. 50+ hours of design, photo editing, entering metadata etc.
15. 8 videos digitized and then edited
16. Learning how to code a website
17. 8, 000+ lines of HTML & CSS code
18. Many hours of work at home at night and on the weekends
19. Checking
20. Rechecking
21. Obsessing
22. Rechecking again
23. Too many new gray hairs to count
24. Write a Tumblr teaser
25. Create a Tumblr graphic
26. Stress & wrinkles galore
27. One last revision
28. One more rechecking

And when you put that all together it comes out as an online exhibit that 5 people may click through–hopefully more though. Anyways stay tuned as Memoirs v. Tapes: President Nixon & the December Bombing goes live on Thursday.

The next crazy, ridiculous conspiracy I’ve had to hear too much about this week. Seriously, wtf is wrong with people?

(picture via animalspictures1)

These last few weeks have had an absolutely ridiculous amount of people spewing all kinds of hateful speech and conspiracies. It’s actually been kind of depressing to hear about all this shit. Unfortunately it seems like the people that have a platform to speak have lost their fucking minds and have used their platform to spew garbage. As such, I have decided to post these wild statements etc.  accompanied by a nice, cute representative animal. Today’s animal is the Mockingbird, which is Arkansas state-bird. Me thinks this won’t be the last time we see this one.

(photo via SodaHead)

Interconnectivity. Social media. Social networking. It’s all the rage these days. I was, like most people, enamored with all  the possibilities that these mediums presented. Until about six months ago I used many of these services in an endeavor to stay connected to virtually everyone I had a  nominal relationship with.

Then I realized that I was putting a lot of effort in trying to maintain relationships or connections that honestly I didn’t even really care that much about. That’s when my relationship with social media changed. I decided that it was time to start stripping all these extraneous forms of communication and connectivity down to the absolute most basic and necessary. Facebook,  Myspace, foursquare, twitter, and all the rest went by the wayside.  Once I had deleted those accounts I started to look for other ways to simplify communications and reduce and protect my online profile.

First I started to beefed up my passwords and I created a new system for maintaining my online passwords.  Hopefully this will ensure that my accounts are even harder to break into than they were before.  I also looked for ways to protect my online browsing. Unfortunately, it’s just a matter of life these days that corporations like Facebook and Google will be data mining me.  I know this but I want to reduce the amount of information that they can extract from me.  That means using simple browser extensions to help block advertisers and data miners (extensions like ghostery for example).  It also means using using extensions like force https to make sure that as often as possible my browser is secure. Furthermore, I want to ensure that my network is protected so that means making my wifi network private and using a VPN when necessary just for an added layer of security.  All this to make sure that my online profile and footprint stays as small and private as possible.

Deleting all my social networking profiles also helps to keep my private life private. It may mean that I miss out on events here and there because I didn’t get the Facebook invite.  That’s ok though as I would much rather not have all the extraneous contact with people who in the long run I don’t really want to stay in touch with.

One last way I have been simplifying is through my email.  Every time you buy something or sign up or download anything online you have to enter an email address.  So in an attempt to clean up my inbox I have begun a concerted effort to unsubscribe from all the lists I am on.  Sometimes I spend way to much time deleting emails that I’m not going to read, but I end up getting multiple emails a day from these places (I’m looking at you iTunes). I hate spending time doing this so the easiest way is just to delete myself from their lists. It’s not like those emails every tell me anything important anyways. Although creating a dummy email address just for entering into these websites is not out of the question.

So where does this leave me?

It leaves me with email, this blog, and my phone. Everyone I know and want to keep in touch with is either on my phone or gchat. If I can’t contact you that way then I probably don’t need to contact you to begin with.  My life already feels less cluttered and as I continue this process of simplification I expect it to get even better. My online footprint is becoming smaller and I feel my privacy is being better protected.  As time goes on I will continue to simplify and refine my online actions in the hopes of keeping a barrier between my private and my online life.

So if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the interconnectivity these days, maybe it’s time to simplify your life and unplug from the plethora of social networking sites that are out there that are constantly vying for your attention. You might miss it initially but in the long run you will enjoy the feeling of not being constantly connected.

I have to say 2011 so far has been much better than 2010. I started out this new year with a brand new job–which I will be writing about soon–and today I took the next step into making 2011 the best year yet. As of today I am the proud owner of Nationals season tickets (yes the plural is correct as I own not one but two seats).

Many of you may be saying “pssshhh who cares it’s the fucking Nationals.”

To which I would reply, “It’s baseball season tickets!!! Are you fucking kidding me you can’t go wrong!! Plus owning season tickets is totally on my bucket list!!!”

I think any way you slice it season tickets are great. You may disagree but I won’t be able to hear you over the roar of fans screaming and cheering for whoever is playing the Nats.  But still it’ll totally be worth it. Two weeks until pitchers and catchers report and then after that six weeks until opening day.

Take a look at the view from Section 108 Row HH Seat 23.

We were also given a tour of the stadium and we were allowed to go down on the field and into the dugout, which was something else I had on my bucket list.  Check and check.

Continue reading

Most people that know me upon seeing the title for this blog post would probably respond by saying,

“Ummm pretty much everyone.”

To which they would be mostly right.  Last night, however, I saw a particularly ingratiating type i.e. the person who thinks they are too fucking cool for cold weather.  You know the type and they are always smarmy about how cold weather doesn’t affect them.  For instance last night there was this douchebag eating a ginormous ice cream cone whilst walking around DC pretending that it wasn’t balls ass cold outside.  It was about 30° last night (maybe) and that’s before you factor in the at least 10° wind chill.  Of course that isn’t the only incarnation of these types of people.  There is also the douchebag (or baguette) who wakes up in the morning, looks at the weather report, sees the snow outside, and then decides that it’d be a good idea to wear shorts a t-shirt and flip-flops (or for the baguette mini-skirt, open-toed shoes, and, of course, no stockings of any kind).

For whatever reason these people infuriate me and I really sincerely hope they catch pneumonia.  Some people might say I’m just a grumpy old man.  And maybe I am,  if that’s the case “Get off my lawn!” and “Get a haircut you hippie!”  While you’re at it it’s cold outside throw on some goddamn clothes.  No one thinks you’re cool because your freezing.

Exhibit A

(Photo via SAWS)

Yesterday I spent a good part of my afternoon watching the coverage of the assassination attempt of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  Obviously a ridiculously awful event that as it gets sorted out of the next few weeks I am sure will get even worse.  (Hopefully the fact that she’s Jewish didn’t factor into her being a target.  Although the fact that the kid was a fan of Mein Kampf and Hitler doesn’t bode well.)  This kid has serious problems and as time goes on the missed warning signs are going to become even more blatant with hindsight.  However, I want to talk about something that happened at the beginning of the event right as media and individuals were trying to deal with the events that had just occurred.  One of Rep. Giffords friends was on the phone with CNN and stated that she heard the shooter was “an Afghan Veteran.”  The commentator corrected here saying, “you mean, a Afghanistan War Veteran?”  To which she replied “Yes,” and it was left at that.  The shooter was a veteran.

Of course that was speculation and hearsay and it has come forward that the shooter is not a veteran or even someone with military training.  He’s someone who looks to have mental problems and is probably not affiliated with either party.  My problem is that the speculation that this person was a veteran of Afghanistan (or Iraq) was seen as totally plausible.  CNN and the interviewee did not mind blatantly throwing veterans under the bus by inferring that only a deranged veteran would do something like this.

The problem as I see it is that we have this meme that veterans are crazy, unstable people.  We venerate them out of one side of our mouth and out of the other we infer that they are not mentally stable and are prone to flipping out and going crazy.  This is something that I have been personally affected by and it is one of the reas0ns why when I meet people for the first time I don’t tell them I am a veteran.  People automatically assume that you are a bit off if you are a veteran.  It’s an unfair assumption and one that does further damage by perpetuating the stigma that is attached to PTSD.  This stigma only means that those with it are less likely to seek out help, increasing the likelihood that they are going to have to struggle through life by themselves without seeking help.  This in part explains why suicide is so high among veterans.

This idea of veterans being highly unstable is further perpetrated by Hollywood and their portrayal of veterans, which in many situations is unfavorable.  Movies like Rambo, Brothers, The Hurt Locker, and others show veterans that are detached, unprofessional, and on the verge of going completely insane at any time, for any reason.  Also to blame is the lack of care that veterans of the Vietnam War were given, and the fact that many veterans from that war are still struggling to come to grips with what has happened to them.  It is over 30 years since that war has ended and many of those veterans have been struggling with these issues on their own without the help of medical professionals, family, or friends because of the stigma that is attached to PTSD.

People tend to think that people with PTSD are unsettled and incapable of taking care of themselves.  It’s like we sit around in a pile of our own feces throwing it at people all day long.  The reality of PTSD is that the things that most people take for granted we struggle with e.g. sleep.  Day in, day out certain parts of life that most people have no trouble with we have to work a little harder (and sometimes a lot harder) at.  However, everyday we get up go to our jobs or school and work just as well–and many times better–than others.  We take care of and look out for our loved ones more than others because we understand the fragility of life and how fortunate we are to still be around.  For every one veteran that has a problem and gets in trouble there are thousands who–even though they have problems–are working through them and still are contributing to society at the highest levels.  It’s unfortunate that we think that the one is normal and to be expected whilst the thousands are thought to be rare.  Maybe that is why while gay jokes and racial jokes are not acceptable in many arenas–like workplaces–it still is completely acceptable to make these kind of statements about veterans (and don’t think that this is a random statement not based in fact.  This is a statement I make knowing that it is true because of the experiences I and others I know have had).

So the next time you meet a veteran instead of treating them like a rabid monkey try treating them like a normal person because that is what we are.  While you are at it instead of watching some ridiculous movie take the time to watch something like Restrepo.  There you are going to see that veterans are not crazy, but just regular people who performed extraordinary acts in extreme conditions; people who are just looking to restart their life and keep doing the things that many people take for granted.  If you’re feeling particularly gracious or pro-active support organizations like IAVA and The Wounded Warrior Project.  Those organizations are working to ensure that the politicians that sent us to war keep their promises and give us the care we need now that we are home.  They also help veterans out on a more personal level.  Hopefully, in time as people become more educated we will begin to see these issues in a new light and the stigma that is now attached to them will start to fade away, and also, let’s try not to jump to conclusions so quick–especially in situations like this.

The year 2010 was a good year for me, but it was also not without its share of problems.  However, a lot of those difficulties over the last year look to be resolved now with my new job.  On the whole though this second decade of the century is starting off much better than the first.  Despite that, this year is looking to be even better.  I have landed a new job, which is more of a career than a job.  (I will get into the new job and the spectacular possibilities that it will presents for me in a subsequent post.)  I need to say good-bye to the Holocaust Museum.  Here’s some pics I took on my last day.

P.S.  It’s kind of weird walking out of work and not feeling the overwhelming urge to drink away the days worth of experiences.