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I was really pretty shocked to have read that Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor extraordinaire of long standing at the venerable institution Hahr-Vahrd, was arrested two days ago.
But I wasn’t shocked to have read the context and circumstances of his arrest. Sure, there’s the easy explanation of racism in America (you really will never convince me a white professor would have been treated the same way), but then there’s the even easier explanation that no one seems to be talking about and it is this: the arresting “officer” in the affair is yet another example of a douchebag cop with a Napoleon Complex.
Sure, I have no doubt the cop behaved in a racist manner, but that is an action coupled with a personality trait and that trait being that the he is yet another douchebag cop with a Napoleon Complex.
A professor here at school is a retired cop and relayed to me the different types of people who become police officers:
1. The Fitness Nut: the guy or gal who somehow relives their high school athletic glory days by being a cop. They are all about how they look in the uniform. Being a good or bad cop is strictly a matter of happenstance.
2. The Gun Nut: I think this speaks for itself. The Gun Nut, who is almost always male, is also closely related to the Penis Insecurity Nut.
3. The Righteous Nut: this person has an overwhelming sense of self-importance and truly thinks that the worse they behave towards the general public, the better cop they are.
4. The Drunk Cop: who is actually a pretty okay person who took the job as a way of redemption but at the same time, does not know how to handle the stress better.
Now according to Professor Cop, a police officer can actually be a combination of these varying traits but one is always more dominant than the other. Like the thing about Elvis and the Beatles: you can like both, but you always like one more than the other.
With regards to incident involving Professor Gates, my money is on Cop #3. Then again, I’m not at all familiar with the inner workings of cop-hood and the public perception I have garnered of them over the years is really just boils down to the simplicity of the douchebag cop with the Napoleon Complex scenario.
My sister’s 3 year old Corgie passed away two days ago. Her name was Lucy, She had a cocked-ear, bright blue eyes, and a peppered coat. She was one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met.
The dog was usually in her crate when my sister left, but recently began experimenting, letting Lucy out to roam the house for periods of time. All was going well, so the trend continued.
Two days ago, knowing that she would be gone for an extended period of time, she left the crate open for Lucy. Somehow, and this is quite a feat for a small dog with nearly non-existent legs, she got into a closed garbage can, and fished out a small snack bag where she proceeded to get it caught on her face.
She suffocated underneath the living room table where my sister’s 11, 8, and 4 year old found her.
The family jumped bag into the van, rushed to vet, my older niece holding the dog all the way begging her not to die. The vet took the dog from them, consulted with my sister, and they decided to tell the kids that Lucy was “very ill” and that a she should be given a shot to put her to sleep.
I didn’t get it at first, but then it occurred to me: they were trying to give the kids some control back over a situation. The kids agreed, and Lucy, already a few hours passed, was “put to sleep”.
The kicker of it was that the bag Lucy caught on her face was random garbage someone left on my sister’s lawn. I’ve encountered this personally, where someone leaves a half-eaten chocolate bar on my grass where Puppy Dog gets at it requiring an emergency vet situation. The point being, this isn’t a random event. I am pressed to know any friends with pets who haven’t experienced a similar situation where one person’s garbage becomes another person’s pet killer.
And in the larger context, this happens every damn day. Someone can’t be bothered to carry their trash until such time it can be properly disposed of. It ends up in our streets, storm sewers, the ravine down alongside my house-holy crap there’s a lot down there, where it poisons fish, chokes birds, and pollutes our water.
And maybe we care less about the fish and birds because they don’t cuddle with us on the couch, but I am damned if I understand what possesses people to behave this way. Because at the end of the day, it comes back to us all, instant Karma style.
I’m pained for my sister. She feels terrifically guilty. She needs a hug but she’s on the side of the country. And as I listened to her on the phone, crying over her family’s loss, I can tell she is outside, keeping the conversation away from the kids…and probably still picking up more of someone else’s garbage.
Lessons Learned from a 24 hour trip to Maine and back:
1. US Airways sucks ass, per usual, but this abusive relationship is done. I am breaking up with them once and for all. They can find someone else to torture with their ineptitude.
2. The Philadelphia Airport sucks it even more, seriously, how much can a person hate one place on the planet?
3. #1 + #2 = 9 (as in Dante’s ninth circle of Hell)
4. Getting anywhere is usually more than half the battle anymore
5. Dark & Stormy’s are ass kickers
6. Given #5 I expect Turkish Prawn left a mighty big boot print somewhere on my booty
7. Holy Hell, does this chick have the most rockin’ voice ever! No kidding, I heard her at a party and she rocked Motown like a world class diva. Hear for yourself and if you don’t absolutely love her, you’re a tone-deaf Philistine who shall be dead to me.
8. #5 + #6 + #7 = a fabu going away party
9. Miss Portland, miss Maine, miss friends
10. Damn, I hated coming back here.
“Hello, this is Sailor Man. You might remember me from such productions as ‘Our Wedding’ or its mad-cap sequel: ‘Our Honeymoon’. If you are receiving this message, you might be my wife, although it has been a long time and I may require a photo identification to verify the veracity of this claim. Should you even remotely recall our relationship, no matter how vague, please do call me at…..”
I bit the bullet and turned off the land line months ago, during the elections, when I was being plagued by political robo-calls and collect calls from prison searching for some whackjob named Jason. And as much as I loathe cell phones, I appreciate their utility, not enough to remember to turn them on after having turned them off during class, mind you, but I appreciate them nonetheless.
I must have had the phone off since last Friday as when I turned it on this morning there were a dozen messages. Not all from Sailor, but the last one, printed for you above, was the most recent and biting.
Bad dog! Bad dog!
It’s what goes through my head when I know I’ve fucked up. Puppy dog, big as she is, cringes and shrinks magically before my eyes whenever I rebuke her. So that’s the image I have of myself when I screw up. Time is precious, any time with Sailor, even if it is on the phone, is precious too and I missed it. He’s at sea, must take advantage of any and all cell phone range. Missed him. Again. Damn.
It’s appropriate that the Sea of Tranquility is located on the Moon: within site but forever out of reach…like Michaelangelo trying to touch fingers with the Old Man “Dammit! Stretch! Reach!“
Life in general feels like that right now. In exactly 20 days I have 12 papers, 3 presentations and 3 final exams coming home to roost. You know, if it weren’t for all the damn busy work these professors load on me to justify their existence and make it appear like they’re doing something, I might actually learn something.
I’m screwing around tonight. I should be outlining a paper or four, performing analysis or some such crap, but I’m on strike, for the next 12 hours anyway. I ordered pizza, I’m drinking wine (I make it a rule not to drink the last month of term), and I just discovered my next Future-Mr-Inmate-If-I-Wasn’t-Happily-Married-Husband-Man in the form of Nathan Fillion in a crazy little show called Castle. And dammit, where has that been all my life?
Tomorrow it’s back to work. Crazy like a fox. Nose to the proverbial grindstone. The next couple weeks are going to be the most hellish I have seen yet. But it will pass, hopefully my GPA doesn’t take too hard a hit, and then I’ll settle back into my summer time bubble and try to enjoy a little down time.
For the next 12 hours I’m just trying to remember how to float. And breathe.
The cold I have been flirting with all week grew into a serious relationship last night and it now appears that I am married to this fucker. So I am settled in with 2 boxes of tissue (I went through an entire box last night alone), oj, and whiskey. I see a nasty and prolonged divorce in my future.
I’m not saying shoot me, but I doubt I would have the energy to slap the gun away.
So I am behaving like a dying dog who runs off into the woods and away from its society. Classmates have offered emergency drops of food and movies, but I prefer the solitary existence in my house of misery and disease.
Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me. Leavemealone…
…gonna curl up into a little ball and think of more pleasant things…like bathing in a bowl of chicken noodle soup…
Erie is the last place on this planet I ever expected to run into Former Colleague, but the world being as small as it is, I suppose I should have expected it sooner or later.
Former Colleague and I worked together under terrifically awful circumstances. We both had a boss from Hell within the same company whose sole purposes seemed only to either make us miserable or humiliate us as much as possible. Our jobs required extensive travel and since misery loves company, we were thrown together a lot. We had nearly identical passports.
FC and I are two people who really shouldn’t travel together for the fact that FC was a devil and I would fearlessly go along with anything. On more than one occasion, we would play “Business Spouses At War”, the end result being that we would gain such niceties as free hotel dry cleaning and room upgrades. Some hotels will do anything to shut a bickering couple up.
Our usual modus operandi revolved gambling. FC and I would bet on anything. The weather, the guy in the airplane seat behind us sneezing, how many times would the guy sneeze, or who make the weirdest faces at the little grandma and get her to laugh first. You get the idea.
Our winnings over such bets wasn’t money but a thing called ”Damn Glad to Be Here” status. Whomever lost the bet would, for the duration of the trip, have t0 introduce themselves as “Hi! I’m So-and-So, I’m American, and damn glad to be here!” to every single person they met on the trip. If our respective bosses got wind of this, they would make a point of introducing us to anyone they could find, including the homeless person on the street begging for change.
Needless to say, this sort of exchange does not go over well in most parts of the world. Except Australia. They effin loved that line in Australia. But as ridiculous as this game was, it got me through a lot rough business trips. If I was pissed off, tired, depressed, burnt-out, or just bleh, FC could always goad me into a bet, that resulted in a rousing adventure of “Damn Glad To Be Here”. I probably would have left that job a full year earlier had it not been for that game.
When we both had reached our limit, we left the company. I eventually lost my taste for the Corporate Theocracy that has become American business and changed paths. I did it the day I was called into the office and my boss offered me a promotion. I quit instead. FC left not long after I did. I lost track of FC who became little more than an amusing anecdote I told from time to time.
I was doing a favor for a friend and dropping off a visiting sister at the downtown Sheraton this past week. We were meeting my friend in the bar when I noticed a familiar face down at the other end.
FC. A little older, a little sadder, possibly even angry. He seemed to have lost all sense of humor. He bought me a drink and told me about his life in the 15 years that I last saw him. He left our company for another. Same company really only with a boss who was worse. He managed to stick it out until that boss retired, climbed the corporate ladder, escaped middle management, and carved a place out for himself.
He’s my age but I swear he looks 20 years older.
FC goes on to tell me all about his work which he is beginning to suspect he might actually hate. There is zero talk of a personal life. He hates his coworkers, he despises his staff, he is beginning to think he may even be worse than the two hellish bosses we had all those years ago.
This is too intense a conversation for someone I have not seen in over a decade. I call over my friend’s sister and introduce her to FC. I tell her he’s visiting, he’s from Chicago, and he’s damn glad to be here.
My friend arrives with a few other friends and I begin the old game anew. FC grudgingly and quietly goes along. He’s not into it. He doesn’t look like he’s much into anything anymore , not even this life. I let him slip away after an hour or so of my nonsense. We don’t even exchange email.
Earlier in the evening, FC sighed as he told me how he would put in another 15 years and retire with this company. It has a good retirement package. He seemed resigned to that fact, as if he had no other options left in life.
I wonder if he’ll last that long.
Saturday was spent entirely indoors doing homework and watching the snow fall. Sunday was spent partially digging out and the rest of the day enduring excruciating back pain.
Nothing says “ibuprofen-vicodin-heating-pad-lie-on-the-living-room-floor-repeat” like shovelling a 200 foot long driveway. It’s bad enough to live on a street in the winter with a 30 degree incline, it’s worse when your driveway runs perpendicular to said street at its own 30 degree incline. Only the sweet, sweet relief of pain medications makes this winter bearable right now.
Being the fantastic creatures they are, my neighbors down the hill saved the rest of the day by snow blowing my 125 foot sidewalk and driveway apron thus allowing for the car to escape its wintry prison and procure more drugs.
And where was Sailor Man during all this you ask? Well he spent Saturday on the couch drugged stupid with a special blend of anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers while developing an undying love of icy-hot patches. He messed up his shoulder having dug us out from the snow a few days before. Sunday he spent relearning basic motor skills.
Our lease is up in March and as much as I hate to move, again, a more level street with a shorter driveway is definitely in order.
Atheists have an interesting gig come holiday season. Thanksgiving is okay and obviously New Years doesn’t bother me, but it is exceptionally tough to navigate Christmas.
I didn’t believe in a god from a very young age and this carried over into any secular sense of Christmas as well. If I didn’t believe in an Almighty traffic cop in the sky, you sure as hell weren’t going to get me to believe in a red-suited fat man popping down the chimney. I remember my dad having a talk with me when I was six asking me to keep my opinions to myself so as not to ruin the holiday for my older siblings.
And so it has gone. I suffer in silence every year through the holiday I hate the most.
Not that there weren’t parts of it I enjoyed. We used to sit around the Christmas tree with my dad listening to the Mormon Tabernacle choir on the stereo with the all the lights off just talking about whatever. I really could have done without the presents. Receiving them has always embarassed me. Just sitting like that, around the tree, with the TV off, drinking mother’s lethal eggnog was enough and I looked forward to that every year.
I liked walking around the neighborhood at night looking at the lighted houses. The tackier the decorations, the better I say. Bring me back the 1970’s anytime. And I love Solstice. Always have. Something about celebrating the sun standing still and the longest night of the year has always appealed to me.
But as a married adult, I am more trapped by all this holiday hooplah than ever. Sailor and I don’t put up lights, we don’t have a tree, and we don’t send out cards. But Sailor’s family is all into this nonsense and they “tolerate” my atheism (although not a single damn one of them goes to church) so long as I play nice through what I believe is hipocritcal nonsense. I’m expected to give and receive the knick-knack junk I whole heartedly detest, to put in the time on Giftmas Eve and Day and to attend holiday parties with the same people I see week after week. And I do it. Every damn year. Because I love Sailor and these tribal rituals are deemed somehow necessary in his family’s life.
But here’s the thing, I would actually play ball and cease being so pissy about all of this any of them actually believed in any of this either.
Sailor’s family do what they do only because it has been so deeply programmed into them as the socially appropriate response to the season. And that’s crap. I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about wanting to ignore it all for simply enabling their bad habit.
I forgive it in my own parents because they do go to church. They do actually believe in all of this. Wholeheartedly. And despite our differences in philosophy, their staunch belief makes all this activity easier to deal with.
But, for better or worse, I also belong to Sailor’s tribe now and, per usual, I am making nice.
I try to focus on the one year where I got to do what I wanted. December 25th, 2004, Sailor and I, back in Maine, out on the island. We watched all 13 hours of the Lord of the Rings extended dvd’s along with a quite few appendices. We stopped only for soup, eggnog, and the brief run with the puppy dog through snow in the cemetery next door.
Best day ever. My happy place. You can be sure I’ll be focusing on that during the next holiday party.
An oldie but exceptional goodie from the brilliant mind at Indexed
