Ah, Go Ahead, Say it All!

You used to think that it was so easy

You used to say that it was so easy

But you're trying, you're trying now

Another year and then you'd be happy

Just one more year and then you'd be happy

But you're crying, you're crying now

Baker Street, Gerry Rafferty

I see posts on Facebook of people who are in pain enough to shout it out, in words for all to see. Some posts are a mere “Meh” and others are a detailed daily diary of their personal misery. Call it courage to be that open or a lack of social awareness to know that parading your life on Facebook builds a certain perception of you. It's probably both, depending on who is reading you. But those who can post their inner most thoughts, have balls.

Do I judge those harshly who post these very open confessions? Not so much as everyone grapples with life and some of us will howl it out louder than others. Though it's the younger ones that do this with more ease as their lives are built around tele-com. My generation and others older than me are a bit reticent to advertise our deepest, personal thoughts. Or my Dad's generation, who ate every piece of bad luck, injustice and insult with a Stoic fortitude bordering on stupidity. Well, you can do that, but enjoy how it eats you from the inside out. Add to that, you get no medal for that kind of moxie either.

 

 

Hard Boiled, Pig Headed, Tough Guy Cartoon Hero From My Dad's Time, Though It Him Shot to Shit.

 

“There's no crying in life they'd say...or bitching, moaning, complaining. You better take-it-in-the-ass as those with more power than you screw you over.” You had better keep your rank, keep your place and SHUT UP. They call them the “Greatest Generation,” those of WW2. But I have some reservations on some aspects of how they viewed life. Do you know why officers carried side arms? It wasn't to shoot the enemy, it was to shoot their own troops who turned tailed and ran after making the correct assumption that charging a German machine gun nest wasn't in their best interests. Gotta love that dictatorship. There was an old marching ditty from then that went like this:

“Hut-two-three-four. Shut your mouth and say no more!”

Be a good worker bee and follow orders that do nothing for your benefit but everything for those above you.

Christ, no wonder I'm a Democrat.

Wait, I'm getting way off the subject here.

Facebook, where you can build a face for the public to see. It's highschool all over again and you can post your weekend's highlights of you face down in a puddle of puke, at the beach with a selfie shot that crops out your beer gut or say a pic of out of focus fireworks and your sometimes not so nice looking children, girlfriends, husbands and what not.  Just be sure to couch your posts showing what a fantastic life you have!  Leave the other posts about your fucked up kids, failing marriage or say your not-so-secret drug problems out, otherwise you'll knock your social standing down a few notches!

Wow, is this getting caustic!

By the way, I'm guilty as sin about this too, I'm not immune. I'm well aware of what I post on Facebook. I have a certain amount of courage to lift that public mask off my face but once again, since I'm part of the High School we call Life, I cave in to CONFORMITY at times.

Ah well, those of you who wish to post your life's complaints on Facebook, go right ahead, regardless of what other's may think. You have more courage than most.

Easily, Naturally at Their Best

And when she comes downtown

The boys all stop and stare

When she comes downtown

She walks like she just don't care

Female confidence. On a particular night, the planets can align for a girl who will feel she's nailed it. You know the look. It's a breezy, carefree with just the right amount of flirtation. What you see is the real girl that's inside there that's not hampered by any shaky timidity or insecurity. She shines forth. She knows the clothing is right, the hair is right and the poise is perfect. There's no “faking it till you make it” either. This is the innate self-esteem that was always been in her, beaming forth.

In truth, that can be prettier than her physical looks. In fact, it emboldens any guy near her. It's contagious. If I see it, it'll pull me in like gravity. I can't make another comparison, but it feels to me like the beautiful arc a meteor will describe as it is pulled in. Perfect, dazzling bright and genuinely natural. There's no second guessing myself at all or my decision to meet her. I am that meteor and I'm going in.

I know for sure. Of course I know. I'm male and know authentic confidence when I see it. Her confidence allows her to easily tempt that natural chase instinct guys and I posses. The girl's charm works because it is real and she's always had it in her. Though at times, it might have been buried under self doubt, but not tonight, not when she's feeling good.

I don't see it often, but it's great when I can.

And all this from her feeling good about herself that night.

 

 

Eye Strain

There are certain times of the year when it's best to read a book. Late summer nights work well. Late autumn nights too. I would add late winter nights and probably late spring ones to that list. Why do I read that late? The damn phone probably won't ring. There's little noise drifting in from the neighbor's and night with it's cloistered feeling helps a lot too. The chief reason is my genetics tends towards insomnia. All the males in my family, Dad, my brother and I, had this. So, why not make use of the time with something that doesn't obtrusively violate that near church-like stillness and quiet. It's the book and I and prayer time! I also like to have a jar of peanut butter between my legs with a spoon to eat it out of as I read.


I used to read actual books. Now I read PDF files stolen with the help of uTorrent, thereby skirting the payment I would've had to make to the rightful owners, the authors. Computer books aren't the same though. I stare onto a LCD screen that bathes this room in that eerie moon-glow at 1 AM. Add to that the constant whirr of the CPU fan one foot from me. Books on the other hand are smaller and when opened, have an organic smell to them. My computer smells of polyvinyl-chloride and gallium arsenide.


Still, with this advancement in technology and my Yankee stinginess, I will continue to read off this screen.


How many books have I read? To me the question is, “How many books have I re-read three times?”


A heaping a lot I can tell you.


Where did I get this bug? I'd have to say from my brother who did buy books and out of curiosity I picked one up. Our Dad, who started this late night reading habit, wasn't a huge eater of books but did read on occasion. I swear he also picked up my brother's books, out of his own curiosity as well.


My brother once watched, in horrified shock, my Dad finish a book. Decision at St Vith was about how the US 106^th Infantry Division was completely scratched from the Earth by von Mantueffel's Fifth Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge (Note: We Americans don't always win). When my Dad finished the last page, he turned around in his chair and chucked the book right into the kitchen garbage can. It wasn't a critique of the book mind you. My Dad treated books like consumables where you tossed them out after you ate it. My brother and I instead, had shrines to books called bookcases. Well, at least Dad read. He also at the age of 43, would go to toy stores and buy and build Monogram WW2 tank/plane/navy ship models. Go figure?


Anyway, I read a lot. Always have and will probably do so till I go blind. Then I can get into audio renditions of books.


Here's just a tiny, tiny sample of what's upstairs in the “book room” now.  All of them are good.

MIT, CalTech, Cornell and the Others

 

 

Not Your Typical Brainiac

 

 

 

I can be entranced by reading about the silly success some people achieve. It's those people who are born at the right moment with a decent amount of cleverness. You can be awed by Einstein, but he was a once in a 1,000 years freak of nature. Of course he was famous. To me, someone like Gates of Microsoft seem more approachable.

I read the financial news. Most of it is bullshit and you have to sift through that to find the diamonds. I read last week Cisco Systems, a computer company out of Silicon Valley, was laying off 4,000 people. That on top of a past 5,000 from a year earlier. Guess things aren't too happy at Cisco.

I never knew what Cisco was really, so I read up on them. I Googled it and read their story. It's amazing at how some people can rise to the top and not always morally either.

Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by two members of Stanford University computer support staff. Leonard Bosack who was in charge of the computer science department's computers, and Sandy Lerner, who managed the Graduate School of Business' computers.

What the two did was to quit Stanford and start their own company with the “intellectual property” of the networking system they built for the University. A few months later, Stanford found out and became batshit over the theft. They threatened lawsuits and fire and brimstone on those two. But, for some reason, Stanford just licensed the use of the networking idea.

In less than ten years, Cisco becomes a Megacorp and the two original entrepreneurs sold off Cisco for $170 million.

All I could think of was the luck, the brains and the absolute balls it took to just walk away from a company with “their” property, use it for a start-up company and then watch it lift off like a rocket.

These triumphs can happen, but it's rare. Not everyone with brains, standing in the right spot at the right moment and having the gumption always propels you to stardom. I swear it's still one hell of a Lottery.

*****

 

I told this story to Paul, an acquaintance, who then responds with a similar one. I never knew he worked for MIT up in Boston working their in-house video, commercials and other media. He alerted to a little known secret up there, the student's rather high suicide rate.  The competition between the students was severe enough to make some, who failed to make the grade, fling themselves off some tower on campus. Then again, look at these kids, they competed since seventh grade to be accepted at MIT long before they took their first orientation at that college.

“They all go there, knowing that there are only a few slots available in the science world to become a “star,” so many go balls to the wall studying, working to maintain a 4.00 GPA throughout their college career and then to even shine brighter than that” he tells me.

He adds, “Did you know, MIT will not grade their freshman students? It was adopted to help curtail the competition and suicides there. They wanted to remove any rating system that would entice the kids to compete any harder. If you don't know the score, you can't really know what's going on. It's when you hit your sophomore year you find out.”

He tells me a funny, though sick, story about MIT and suicides.

“MIT is like Brown, everything is brought to the kids there as they are fairly rich to begin with. Clothing, restaurants and entertainment, you name it. One night they brought this comedian in and I had to set up the stage, the lighting and such. I stayed behind, leaning against the back wall to hear this guy's routine. His first joke emptied half the auditorium!”

“The comedian said, 'I hear there are many suicides at these high pressure colleges. You'd think, with kids as smart as you...you would know better!'”

“I nearly guffawed when I heard that. True, it's sick but funny at the same time. A lot of kids walked out of the auditorium because of that joke ” Paul said.

Paul ends his story with this,

“You know where most of these kids end up, after graduating? There are a precious few who become stars, win the Nobel, but most, they end up working as very smart drudges, making some good money at defense plants. They are upper middle class worker bees.”



Making It

Some of the better parental conversations you can eavesdrop on were when you were riding in the backseat . I heard my father opine to our Mom about “success” once. He said, “If you don't make it by 40, you're never going to make it. If fact, you're a loser. As for women, the age 30 is the cutoff point.” This coming from a company man who threw himself into his work, did all the right things and was finally rewarded for his efforts at the age of 38 by being elected VP. Less than ten years later, he won the coveted CEO position. In less than a year after that, he dropped dead.


“...You're a loser.” My brother was with me in the car when we heard that. He and I brought it up a few years after Dad's death and shook our heads in a sense. We thought it superficial, shallow and a waste of one's life aiming only for power and money.


Add a few decades of experience to my life and I can see why Dad thought so. Being a child of the Depression, living under the rationing of WW2 and serving during the Korean war, he saw the world as a dangerous place and carving your space out in it, in whatever fashion, was necessary.


As for myself, success was far more personal than attaining an XO position at a corporation.


But, I have to add this, my Dad was right at times. I've seen this borne out a few times with people I've known.


I once watched one girl, who at 28 and one half, freak because she wasn't married, with child nor had the “house.” In the 18 months remaining, she gained all three before striking 30. After she accomplished all three, she could sit back and not count herself among the Old Maids out there.




It still occurs today. I know women in their 20's who give a worrying glance at that 30. They know, that by then, they cannot compete with girls in their 20's. As superficial as that sounds, it's not me saying this, it was them.


The guys I do know who put themselves on the career track, fought like dogs to win that position. Though today they are hired guns, looking for a bigger and better gig elsewhere. Still, the desire to “make it” is there. There are only so many slots on the governing board and not everyone who does have real talent, skills and luck can be fitted there. There's got to be many of these guys who nearly made it. Can you imagine, throwing your life's efforts into a “winner takes all” prize that's damned hard to attain..and not win it?


*****


As a kid, I didn't know how far my Dad went nor what it meant really. All I knew was that he worked at a bank in Providence.  One time when I was twelve, as my Dad sat at the kitchen table, on a working vacation dressed in a paint splattered golf shirt and really ugly shorts, called to me to see something. He pulled a good slug on his can of Narragansett beer and told me to hold out my hands. In it he dropped small piece of paper, the size and shape of a check.


“Read it.” he said with a nonchalance.


It read, “United States Federal Reserve Transfer/Boston District/Agents Only."


“So?” I say?


“Read the number.” he goes on.


I read the legal line which said, “$13,000,000.”


For a second, I though it was ours. My Dad interpreted my reaction and quickly said it wasn't ours at all. It was part of the business of the bank to transfer federal funds from here to there and whatnot.  Still, even though it wasn't our money, holding that amount of money amazed me.


My reaction had Dad beaming self-satisfaction,  I could see this clearly. He shone like the Sun.


Then I knew who he was. This was one of the guys who “made it.”

But that can come at a price...

Compete!

Facebook can be dull, repetitive, totally narcissistic and fun too. What it also is good for is digging up old memories of people that you haven't seen in decades. I tripped across a memory that was tangentially associated with me the other day.


Anyone can create a “group” with whatever subject they want. I belong to one from my neighborhood of Darlington. What's fun about this are the old memories of this town that came long before me. I never knew that my own street was once just a field at one time and there are people alive to attest to that. Add to that those little corner stores that were popular and torn down before I was born. I never knew!


As I was looking at the updates, I came across someone's question about my brother, who's been long since dead for ten years now.

And did this bring up memories. I'll admit this, there was competition between him and I, mostly over academics. If he was the A+ student, I was always the A- one. Sonaofabitch was he hard to catch up to at times!


What was worse, I had to follow in his footsteps through grammar school classes. The teachers, most of whom were decent, would invariably compare me to my older brother, who they fawned over.


“Oh, you're Ken's little brother? (Pause..) Oh, well...I'm sure you'll do just as well as he did.”


Even when you're nine years old, you can detect the adult's real messages in their back handed compliments. All I could think of at the moment was, “Lady...for God's Sake...I'm an A- student!”


This wasn't a fight to the death competition, more of a type where we could rib one another over our wins or losses. By the time I hit my early teen years, it didn't matter anymore as I was more than confident on my abilities. I had matured and caught up.