Still May the Dark Brandon Come

Still May the Dark Brandon Come

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“Who is this gray patriarch?” asked the young men of their sires.

“Who is this venerable brother?” asked the old men among themselves.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Gray Champion,” 1835

Who, I ask, is this Dark Brandon?

I know you know of him. He arose from the meme wars on social media like some dark avenger, deflecting attacks from the MAGA armies. They tried to stop him, to undermine him with mockery. “Let’s go Brandon,” they cried, meaning it as an insult, but he just turned it around on them.

Wearing his cool sunglasses, he is unflappable. When he removes them, he reveals laser eyes, like some superpowered X man. Somehow, even though we live in such contentious times, he is able to get shit done.

Dark Brandon is this fascinating Internet construct, an alt-persona of the sitting President, Joe Biden. Biden has been in the U.S. government for decades, as a Senator for over thirty years, and then as President Obama’s VP for eight more, before being elected President in 2020. Over the course of his long career, he has never really stood out, just sort of always been there, part of the background, but also an important player in much negotiation and passing of legislation. This fits the archetype of his generation, the Silent Generation (Biden was born in 1942, and is the oldest President in U.S. history).

But how did he become Dark Brandon, a much more impressive and ominous figure than career Joe Biden?

In the U.S. domestic partisan conflict, fought primarily through memes in media and by gaming the political system, each side needs solidarity and consensus to prevail. I’ve blogged about this before, describing the polarization between a conservative red zone and a liberal blue zone. To maintain solidarity, each side needs to rally around their leaders, to support them no matter the circumstances. That is why it is so hard today to take a leader down by pointing out their moral failings; no one cares any more in the raw struggle for power.

The red zone has done very well mobilizing around their main leader, The Former Guy. This red zone leader is so fearsome that blue zoners like me can’t even say his name, as though he were a corrupt wizard from a fantasy universe. The blue zone needs someone to mobilize around like that, but in 2020 they chose the safe path of electing the Vice President from their last administration, who is kind of a holdover from the old neoliberal regime and a representative of the status quo. He was a strange choice for an inspiring leader.

Granted, as an old school neoliberal politician, Biden is effective. He is willing to negotiate with anyone in good faith, and while he does participate in the partisan conflict (warning against MAGA Republicans, for example) he doesn’t seem to take it personally. He doesn’t seek the limelight, and why would he? He’s been in the room where it happens throughout his whole long career. In a way, he’s fulfilling the archetypal role of his generation, tempering the passions of the younger generations and working out compromises between them, even if the end result is to delay an inevitable reckoning by continuing the endless mortgaging of the future (I refer to the debt ceiling crisis, of course).

But, as I already mentioned, the blue zone needs an awe inspiring leader, to sustain their morale in the ongoing sociopolitical conflict. And so they’ve crafted one out of the materials at hand. They’ve taken Joe Biden and memed him into a larger than life superhero they call Dark Brandon, a truly impressive guy you can really get behind.

In their theory of generational cycles, William Strauss and Neil Howe invoked the idea of the “Gray Champion,” based on a character from a nineteenth-century story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This archetypal figure is a mysterious old man who appears when a society is in crisis, to rally the people and restore their sense of national pride and purpose.

According to generational theory, the Gray Champion is of the Prophet archetype. The examples from history that are usually used are Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Today the Prophet archetype is embodied in the elder Baby Boomer generation. Thus, Trump actually fits the bill, and if you think about it, in his own ham-handed way he is indeed trying to restore national purpose, or at least “greatness.” Here’s Neil Howe considering the matter back in 2017:

So what about Joe Biden? He was born just a bit too early to be a Baby Boomer, being instead a member of the Silent Generation. Wrong archetype. That explains his cool demeanor and his skill at negotiation. He’s so good at negotiating, in fact, that he outsmarted the House GOP in the budget process, or at least that’s what the blue zoners claim. But negotiating is not what the Gray Champion does. The Gray Champion rallies the people behind a cause, and you fight for that cause, come hell or high water. There is no negotiating involved.

So could Biden possibly be America’s Gray Champion, like Lincoln or FDR? There are some causes that Biden has championed, notable the defense of Ukraine, to which purpose he can be credited with rallying NATO, after the alliance was called into question by the previous administration. And he stands up for the values of the blue zone faction in the Culture Wars, arguably rallying his people to uphold the establishment of a diverse, inclusive version of the American nation (in contrast to what MAGA represents).

If in his demeanor or his personality Biden doesn’t quite fit the archetype of the Gray Champion, could he possibly grow into the role? There is a danger here of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some theory predicts that a persona will arise, so we go looking for it. We see it where we want it to be.

But consider that the Dark Brandon meme arose on its own. Almost certainly, it did not originate with people who were familiar with generational theory and trying to revive a particular generational archetype. Rather, the meme came about naturally because of a deep-seated need by a political faction to have a leader who is strong and resolute. One they can have faith in and follow confidently into a dark and foreboding future.

In other words, today’s living generations are primed for the return of the archetypal Gray Champion. When you need one, you need one, even if you have to invent one in the form of Dark Brandon.

His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader’s step pollute our soil, still may the Dark Brandon come…

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, perhaps

Hawthorne quotes are from his short story “The Gray Champion,” which can be found here: https://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/gray.html

Some Gave All

Some Gave All

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This Memorial Day, I’d like to take a moment to honor the many, many Americans who have lost their lives to mass shootings over the years.

Does it make sense to think of the victims of domestic mass shootings as casualties of war? Well, it might, depending on how you define “war.” Let me make an argument.

In the aftermath of the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was a proctacted period of low-level violence perpetrated by enemies of the U.S. regime who were trying to thwart its efforts to maintain order. I mean “low-level” in contrast to the “shock and awe” that had just come before, when U.S. forces admitted themselves into the country. The long insurgency that followed the invasion was the “mission not accomplished” phase of the Iraq War, and became known as “post-conflict stabilization” in the prominent strategic theories of the time, which imagined the U.S. toppling evil dictatorships and spreading democracy around the globe. Those were the heady “sole superpower” days when neoconservatives dominated U.S. foreign policy.

This gist of these theories was that governments which controlled powerful militaries needed to become adept at fighting much more poorly equipped enemies who used “asymmetric warfare,” which used to simply be called guerilla warfare. Great Power war was out, because of U.S. hegemony and/or strategic nuclear weapons, but now there were these new “small wars” where the battlefield wasn’t strictly defined and encompassed civilian spaces. “Superempowered individuals” exploited open networks to wreak havoc on civilians and undermine the authority of governments, as happened in the U.S. in the September 11 terrorist attacks, and then happened over and over again in Baghdad, outside of the “green zone” where the occupying forces maintained their headquarters.

In those days there was this sense that such violence and instability were only a problem “over there,” which we lucky First World Americans witnessed from a distance, except in rare moments such as 9/11. Somehow, terrorist attacks on our nation were the result of malcontents who hated our freedom, which is why we were obligated to go deal with them on their territory. This poem by Alicia Ostriker expresses the sentiment brilliantly.

The Window, at the Moment of Flame

And all this while I have been playing with toys
A toy power station a toy automobile a house of blocks

And all this while far off in other lands
Thousands and thousands, millions and millions—

You know—you see the pictures
Women carrying their bony infants

Men sobbing over graves
Buildings sculpted by explosion

Earth wasted bare and rotten—
And all this while I have been shopping, I have

Been let us say free
And do they hate me for it

Do they hate me

-Alicia Ostriker

We gave up on all that, and now it seems that our own government is suffering from stability issues right here at home. The partisan divide is so deep that many Americans fear there could be another civil war. We almost didn’t have a successful transition of power in the last Presdiential election.

After January 6, I wrote a blog post suggesting that the United States now faced the thorny problems of small wars and post-conflict stabilization on the domestic front. National guardsmen holding down the Capitol building just looked so much like there was a green zone in Washington, D.C. itself.

What does this have to do with mass shootings? Mass shooters have many motivations, sometimes completely inscrutable, sometimes plainly laid out in manifestos or evident from their background and social media posts. Undeniably, one motivation is hatred and anger stirred up by interactions in online networks and by the spreading of divisive messages and misinformation.

Mass shooters, even teenaged ones, also have ready access to powerful firearms, despite majority support for stricter gun control. This is because we do not have a functional democracy, in which the majority viewpoint can prevail in law.

This takes me to another strategic theory, the concept of a “hybrid war,” which combines conventional military means with cyberwarfare and with social network attacks spreading “fake news,” inciting “stochastic terrorism,” and interfering with democratic elections. This is a kind of warfare favored by Russia; in fact, Putin’s infamous Wagner Group of mercenaries is headed by the same guy who ran the Internet Research Agency that interfered with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. It’s not really a stretch to say that the U.S. has been in a hybrid war with Russia (with Ukraine as a proxy) since the late 2010s.

In this “informational market state” in which we live (pardon me for dredging up more theories), security threats come primarily from individuals exploiting open networks. Clearly, young men who are radicalized on the Internet and can easily acquire an AR-15 at the corner gun shop are just such individuals. So long as government remains paralyzed and individual rights are triumphant, the threat of mass shootings will remain.

To whatever extent these factors are tied up in a global market state conflict pitting alternate ideological camps against one another, you could say we are in a state of war. Call it World War III, the hybrid version. Call it Cold Civil War II. It hardly matters. Perhaps it makes more sense simply to consider that, through our choices, we have made our society into an active war zone.

And so the victims of mass shootings are casualties of war.

So let us pause on this Memorial Day and reflect on the lives of the many Americans who have been gunned down going about their daily business, as our government flounders, unable to gain any traction on control over access to deadly weapons, even as firearms have now become the leading cause of death for children. Let us remember their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the many more schoolchildren, shoppers, concertgoers, church and synagogue attendees, and other ordinary men, women and children, going about their ordinary business, who will give their lives in the years to come. They are paying the price of freedom.

I conclude this post with a thougthful poem by the late Muriel Rukeyser.

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

-Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)
R.I.P Sweet Princess Sashimi, the Light of Our Lives

R.I.P Sweet Princess Sashimi, the Light of Our Lives

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Our sweet sunshine kitty, Princess Sashimi McCulloch, reached her last midnight. It was sad to see her soul leave her body, where she struggled so hard to stay these past weeks. I’m glad her suffering is over, but I will miss her so very much. She was the most perfect of all cats, and the beating heart of our household.

She was such an integral part of our daily lives, especially since the pandemic began and I moved in with her family, that it will be hard to get along without her. It won’t be the same after this.

She used to fuss in the evenings, to get everyone together for TV time. It was her favorite time, I believe – when the whole family was in the living room, including Gavin who lives next door, and she would sleep contentedly on the reclining couch at Aileen’s feet while we sat mesmerized by the flashing box. She did not approve of us scattering about with our own agendas, especially if it meant she was alone in the house. The end of lockdown may have been a blow for her.

Sashimi came into Aileen’s life as a Mother’s Day gift from the Universe. Aileen was wanting a cat in her life, since her previous cat had recently died. On Mother’s Day 2010, while she was rehearsing at her theater, there was a thump at the door. Someone left a box there, which contained two kittens. One of them was badly hurt, with a broken hip and, as it turned out, a dead tail.

The vet recommended putting her down, but Aileen refused. With her son Tiernan’s help she nursed the kitten back to health. Her tail fell off, and for her whole life Sashimi had no tail, and a bit of a crooked back which gave her an awkward gait. She had a little bald patch on her lower back too. She was so beautiful and so precious.

She outlived her brother, who died around 2015 from a perforated stomach. Once I moved to Pennsylvania in 2018, and then into Aileen’s house in 2020, Sashimi became much more a part of my everyday life. She would keep Tiernan company while he did his schoolwork, and once Aileen started leaving for work again, Sashimi would rush to greet her at the door every day when she came home.

She had a way of requesting affection where she would go to the floor mat in front of the door and scratch it. If she did that, it meant she wanted to be petted. It was a habit Aileen had trained into her using a scratching post when she was a kitten. She also had this super-adorable thing she did where she would fall to her side to be stroked and petted. We called it “flumphing” when she did it. She would even let you rub her tummy.

At the end of the day she needed everyone upstairs before she would come up too. When I was the only one still up, puttering with last minute chores, she would come downstairs and pace about until I finally went up to the bedroom where I belonged. She would sit at the top of the stairs like a sphinx, guarding us. In the morning, she would be back downstairs to supervise the making of the coffee and request her cream. It was like she ran the household.

She was pure love and I know it was love that kept her with us for as long as she could manage after her cancer diagnosis. Aileen asked her to please stay at least until Mother’s Day, her foundling day. It was a struggle and it was so sad to watch her grow weak as she lost her ability to eat. When she managed a flumph on occasion it was a thrill for the family, a victory for life. She was so brave and so dignified to the end.

On her last day, the Monday after Mother’s Day, she could barely move, but she held out until Aileen came home from tech, and then let Aileen hold her on the couch, her frail body wrapped in a blanket. Aileen set her down in her usual spot and we all dozed with the TV on, keeping vigil. Sashimi had held out until she was in her favorite place, one last time. Shortly after midnight, she let go.

Goodbye, sweet Princess, and until we meet again, I will miss you so very, very much, and the huge service you did to our family, providing its emotional core.

Very Excited About Our Tulips This Year

Very Excited About Our Tulips This Year

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In front of our house there is a little round planter area which is full of tulip bulbs. They’ve done really well this year, as you can see from the picture to the right. They’ve created this lovely riot of pink blooms, with some red thrown in for highlight, which you can admire every time you step out front.

They reminded me of this book I read a while back, called Tulipomania, about the infamous tulip bulb market bubble in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The book starts with a history of the tulip, which originated in the steppes of Central Asia, coming to Europe via the Ottoman Empire. It’s a very hardy plant, able to tolerate extreme cold and dry weather. We certainly don’t put any effort into caring for ours; it’s like they just obligingly come up every spring to give us a show.

As for the tulip mania of the 1630s, well, it’s possibly the best known example of a market bubble in economic history, though there have certainly been others. As the book explains, a market bubble occurs when a good is artificially priced much higher than its actual worth. Supposedly, according to economic theorists, markets will naturally adjust prices based on supply and demand. These theorists are assuming that people behave rationally, and pay for stuff based on its worth to them, relative to other options. However, it might not be correct to assume that people are always rational, as a survey of history will reveal.

A rare tulip of the sort that set off tulip mania.

The story of tulip mania is an interesting one. It seems that before the bubble, and after it as well, there was a market for rare bulbs that produce exquisitely beautiful, multicolored tulips. The variegated patterns on these flowers are the result of a virus, which can be preserved in a bulb when it is propagated by division. So it was possible, though very difficult, to breed these rare tulips, and tulip connoisseurs were very interested in acquiring these bulbs; hence their high prices. They were like luxury tulips.

Somehow, when the general public got wind of how much these bulbs were selling for, they decided they wanted in on the racket. Of course, they couldn’t all buy these rare bulbs, since by definition there aren’t many of a rare thing, so they just bid up the prices of the common tulip bulbs. You know, the boring red and yellow and purple ones that you can see filling fields in the Netherlands if you do a quick image search. These shouldn’t be worth a whole lot of money; they’re a basic commodity, like potatoes. But somehow the Dutch masses convinced themselves they were all tulip bulb brokers and these common items soared in price. It was a classic case of “irrational exuberance.”

The bubble didn’t last too long, because the fundamental value of the ordinary tulip varieties simply did not justify the high prices. That’s what makes an asset price bubble a bubble; sooner or later the exuberance wears off, and the holders of the asset who bought it for its inflated price can’t offload it for a profit. Demand for the asset drops sharply, and pop! goes the bubble. The asset owners are stuck “holding the bag,” as they say. They get wiped out.

What stands out about tulip mania is how plainly it is an example of a price bubble, since it involves a basic commodity, and the price inflation was so disproportionate to what one would think was a rational expectation. I mean, surely the farmers who were selling their bulbs at these inflated prices knew they were ripping off the speculators, right? Were they being immoral? Arguably, they were being rational – any given farmer would know that if they didn’t sell their bulbs to someone willing to pay so much, some other farmer would. Any given speculator knew that if they didn’t buy and flip some bulbs, some other speculator would, and reap the profits. It was a case of herd psychology, everyone just playing along with the madness.

A similar herd psychology is at work in the kinds of bubbles that most commonly affect our lives, which are in the stock market, such as the dot-com bubble, or in real estate, such as the 2000s housing bubble. When credit is easy and exuberance is high, everyone just kind of goes along with the trend of rising valuations and carefree spending. No one wants to spoil the party. If you’ve seen the movie The Big Short, you know that the guys who saw that the housing bubble was going to burst were going against conventional thought. When the bubble did burst, it was hard to pin the blame on anyone. I mean, you could single out obvious actors, like the credit rating agencies in the case of the 2000s housing bubble, but can you prove they were guilty of fraud, and not just of herd mentality? No, you can’t.

I think this kind of mania is possible because, ultimately, money and the value of stuff is a fiction in our collective heads. If we all agree that a digital coin is worth ten thousand bucks, that’s what it’s worth. If later on we all agree that it’s worth a hundred bucks, it becomes worth that much, and too bad for you if that’s all you’re invested in. We could even all agree that the tulip bulbs in our front yard are worth ten thousand bucks apiece! Just venmo me and they’re yours.

The Time of Our Lives

The Time of Our Lives

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One of our patterns at home is that later in the evening, the rest of the family has retired and it’s just Aileen and I in the living area, and we would like to watch a little more TV before bedtime. As I explained in another post years ago, when you are watching streaming video with your family, you need different shows for different subsets of people, since you can’t continue watching any particular show without everyone you started watching it with being around. The latest show that we’ve picked for when it’s just Aileen and I has been Downton Abbey. This is a show which Aileen had watched some of in the past, but I had never seen. I am typically about ten years behind pop culture trends, but that’s OK because everything is conveniently saved on the Internet now.

This show is a delightful historical drama, set in a country estate in the 1910s and 1920s, and depicts the lives of both the aristocratic family that lives there, and of their domestic servants. There was a similar show in the 1970s (remade in the 2010s) called Upstairs, Downstairs that was set in London in the same time period, but we haven’t watched that one.

Period elegance on the set of Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey, as far as I can tell, is historically accurate, and I enjoy recognizing historical moments and trends as they come up. I absolutely love the period costumes, especially the 1920s dresses – and, oh my, the automobiles – which are just gorgeous. The show is also quite sentimental, rather a bit of a soap opera, but that suits our late night viewing needs just fine. We’ve become very invested in the characters and their stories as we’ve blazed through the episodes (we’ve finished the last season already – good thing there are two movies to watch, too).

The show gives equal time to the aristocrats and to their servants, and focuses a lot on daily life. Yes, there are big differences in how characters live, depending on their economic class, but since we are binging the show so fast, I can’t help but notice how everyone, well – they just have their routines. Whatever their station in life, everyone just repeats the same behavioral patterns from episode to episode, only shifting into a new pattern if they experience a major life change, like a new position or a marriage.

Kind of like me, I think, as I go through my own routines. In my head I can hear the show’s opening theme, a stirring symphonic piece titled “Did I Make the Most of Loving You?” I’m not a servant getting breakfast ready for the household, or a countess being dressed properly by a lady’s maid before emerging from my chambers, but nonetheless I have my allotted role to play. Work from home computer guy, starts the day with coffee and the daily Quordle. Since the pandemic began, I am very much in the same pattern day to day, week to week. Not even switching jobs meant much of a change for me. Each week repeats the same cycle, another sweep of the second hand on the clock of life, ticking away to the last midnight.

It’s hard to believe it, but we’re already a third of the way through 2023. Did we binge the year too fast? Should we have tried to pace it better? The summer is almost upon us, though you wouldn’t know it from the cold rainy weather. I know it from the way some of our work is winding down. High school theater season has come to an end; there’s nothing left for the Philadelphia Independence Awards except for the awards ceremony itself. My work on Neil’s book is done. We need to get our garden planted – it’s a bit late, even for us. Did you know the kitchen gardens at Downton Abbey are quite impressive?

Our sweet sunshine kitty is holding on. Aileen is proud of her for staying with us, though it’s so hard for her to eat. We just keep giving her as much of the soft, pureed food as we can find. It’s clear that she wants to be with us, that she’s staying for love, and that we must make the most of it. What else is there to life? We’re just pushing through time, from one moment to the next, each inflection point marking out our story, until we get to the finale. How many seasons are left, and will we make the most of them?

The Rise and Fall of Drinking Culture

The Rise and Fall of Drinking Culture

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We’ve recently been watching Mad Men (available on Amazon Prime with our AMC+ subscription), a TV show about New Yorkers in the advertising business in the 1960s. It clearly is attempting to paint a portrait of what life was like in that bygone era, and how social mores were so much different back then. For example, everyone is constantly lighting up cigarettes, in any context, even in front of kids. The men unabashedly treat women like sex objects, and the women just accept it and learn to navigate what today would be considered a hostile work environment.

I know that a major premise of the TV show is to highlight these social differences between then and now. How accurate this portrayal of the period is, I can’t be sure, since I wasn’t there, but it seems plausibly realistic to me. And the show certainly has high production values, beautiful art design, and fine performances, making it a delight to watch.

What truly amazes me about the lifestyle of these advertising guys (as depicted on this TV show) is their capacity for consuming alcoholic beverages. They keep liquor in their offices, and take any opportunity to have a finger or two of scotch. If one of your coworkers comes into your office at, say, 10:30AM, well – it would be rude not to offer them a drink! It’s a much different experience than I’ve had in my work life, which has occurred since our society moved on from the casual alcoholism of these Madison Avenue men.

For the duration of my young adult life, it would have been unthinkable to have alcohol in the workplace, or even to have a drink during the work day. It’s possible that this is because I spent those years living in the South of the United States, which while certainly known for its hard-drinkers, is also known for puritanical restrictions on public life. Maybe up in the big cities in the North, people were still having three martini lunches. But I suspect the real reason my work life was so different is my generational placement in history.

I do recall one early work experience which was like a glimpse of the last vestiges of the older generation’s casual work drinking. When I was a college student in the mid-1980s, I was in a work-study program, and worked at a major government agency in the DC area. The director of our department had an office suite that was behind a frosted glass window, so I never saw inside. One holiday season he opened up his suite for a company party, and lo and behold, he had a fully stocked dry bar in there. I even had a glass or two of something strong (I was 19 at the time, so I believe this was technically illegal), feeling a little bit guilty since I had to drive home afterwards. I was already internalizing the safety messages about drinking alcohol that were becoming predominant in the culture.

Logically, the director who presided over this dry bar would have been from the same generation as the “mad men” on the TV show, just twenty years older (since it was the 80s instead of the 60s). The way generations work, a cohort of people born about the same time tends to retain the same attitudes and behavioral patterns throughout the lives, bringing those patterns with them to older and older age brackets as time passes. This old timey office executive wasn’t going to give up his liquor, unless they pried it from his trembling fingers.

By the 90s and 00s, the tenor of public life had changed. America was in a social era in which the Baby Boomer generation – a profoundly moralistic generation – was entering midlife; while my generation, Generation X – an opportunistic but disorganized generation – was entering adulthood. Society became safety-obsessed and health-obsessed, and drinking on the job was counter to this new values focus. While my generation may have chafed under the emerging neo-Puritanical values regime, we weren’t about to collectively do anything about it. We would just deal with it.

A similar dynamic occurred in an earlier era: the Roaring ’20s, when Prohibition under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment was in place. In that time the midlife generation was the moralistic Missionary generation, while the young adults were the free-wheeling Lost generation. Prohibition didn’t exactly stop drinking, but it did drive it underground.

The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed around the same time that the Great Depression started. In the new social era that emerged, the generation that came of age – the Greatest Generation – developed a reputation for collegial drinking and smoking. These behaviors became associated with recreational pleasure in a context of sociability and solidarity, never mind all the health problems they were destined to lead to down the road.

This pattern of casual drinking and smoking in public continued into the postwar era in which the Mad Men live(d), until further generational change led to a more health-conscious society, and those habits fell out of favor. So the cycle goes. The era of the executive with a ready a supply of liquor at the office came to an end.

During my young adulthood, drinking on the job became an underground activity, as during the Prohibition era. I say that because I do recall having a boss who was a bit emotionally unstable, in my opinion, and heard through the grapevine that he drank during the day. One time I found an empty bottle in a staircase, and took it at as sign that the rumors were true.

At a different job I had, there was a programmer who reputedly came to work drunk. His fate was to be sent to rehab; the company actually gave him a month off to clean up his act. I think they might have even paid for the rehab. He was really good at programming so I guess they couldn’t let him go. It just goes to show how much attitudes had shifted, and how drinking alcohol had become understood to be more of a pathology than a pastime.

Time has continued to pass, and I am no longer a young adult. Our society has recently gone through a financial crisis which can be likened to the 1929 stock market crash that was followed by the Great Depression. Has there also been a shift in attitudes towards drinking alcohol in the workplace, where it is now more acceptable as a social lubricant and source of conviviality, rather than being perceived as a personal moral failing?

I think so, at least to a limited degree, based on my experience in the workplace. In my recent positions, it has been common for the company to host parties where alcohol is served, sometimes but not always with a cap on the number of drinks per person. I’m not sure if age limits are enforced; it’s not impossible that an intern under the age of 21 has been able to sneak some drinks in. It isn’t exactly Mad Men, but it is an acceptance of drinking in the workplace, at least under controlled circumstances.

Media reports from the past decade or so have also suggested that this is happening, with the emergence a new kind of startup culture where drinks are a perk, available in the break room. Not that I’ve ever had the luck to work at a place like that, but then my startup days were during the dot com era, long ago.

That drinking at work may be on the rise makes sense in this social era. Instead of having moralizing Boomers in middle age, we now have practical Gen Xers, who will do whatever it takes to boost productivity and retain employees. Instead of having lone wolf Gen Xers in young adulthood, we now have sociable Millennials, who favor group activities, for which alcohol – since it lowers inhibitions and elevates mood, albeit temporarily – is a natural fit.

It must be noted, though, that the long term trend is that younger generations are drinking less than us oldsters did at the same age. The party days of my Gen X youth are in the past, and today’s youth are more cautious, and more conscious of their future. In fact, it’s those crazy Boomers who are drinking the most these days. That is the real story behind the controversy over the “woke” marketing campaign by Anheuser-Busch: a major corporation is desperately trying to generate sales among the young demographic, and finding that their only customers are uptight old farts. “Anti-woke” alcoholism is for a generation that is currently in its sunset years.

It’s probably for the best that, in the long term, we are drinking less as a society. The harmful effects of alcohol, such as the health problems it creates, and its contribution to car accidents and to domestic violence, outweigh its benefits. Prohibition might not have worked (no one likes to be told what and what not to do), but behavior can still change with time as beliefs and priorities change from generation to generation.

The question is, will this trend eventually reverse for future generations, in a future social era in which living for the present and taking chances with one’s health become fashionable once more? It’s hard to envision a completely alcohol-free future, given humanity’s long relationship with the pleasures and perils of consuming fermented beverages.

And Just Like That, He Was Overemployed Again

And Just Like That, He Was Overemployed Again

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I hope the dear reader will excuse me for bragging, but I have to say that I am proud of myself for finding work again so quickly. My last day at my previous company was February 28th; I had an interview with my new company on March 1st, during which they made an offer. I accepted the position, which is 100% remote, with a start date of March 20.

There was a little tension as I waited for the background check to clear, as well as the drug test (!), which I haven’t had to take for a job in a long time. Meanwhile, I was “funemployed” for a couple of weeks, including a week which coincided with Aileen’s spring break from her University job. You would think I would have gotten a lot done, been super chill and relaxed all the time, but it didn’t seem to turn out that way. Aileen says I was a very cranky bear! All play and no work makes Steve a dull boy, I guess.

Once I was cleared and they shipped my equipment, it felt more like a sure thing, and I think my mood improved. It was kind of exciting to be doing a 100% remote onboarding, as this is my first time. I was feeling like I had mastered this new mode of remote work that has come with the 2020s, by proving I was able to switch jobs and stay remote. I was told to expect an email (to my personal account) early on Monday morning with login instructions for the work laptop. All I could do was set it up and wait over the weekend, which was filled with shows for the Independence Awards anyway.

Aileen made sure I got up early on Monday (thank you!) and sure enough, an email came just before 8 AM. I was able to log in, get oriented, and start meeting my colleagues and learning about the project(s) I will be on. In some ways, it’s the same as it ever was; it’s much the same kind of work, just with a different organization. This org, I will say, has embraced the remote work paradigm (as was explained to me during the interview), which partly explains how this all come together.

So now my days are filled with work once more, and then again my evenings, as high school theatre season is in full swing. When will I have time for books, games, and TV? (Aileen is laughing right now, because she knows how much of all those pastimes I squeeze into my waking moments). I’m very lucky, of course, that I have an email laptop job, which makes 100% remote work possible, and that I am able to work at this stage of my life, when I most need to be saving for retirement. Overemployed I may be, but life treats me well.

PS: Sashimi the cat is doing OK, eating well but she is very drooly.

2023 Update

2023 Update

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The cat is eating much better, presumably thanks to the anti-inflammatory medicine she is taking. It must reduce the pain and irritation in her mouth. She still is eating mostly mushy food, though we have found that she has a fondness for ham, so she sometimes gets pieces of that to eat. She really likes ham, reminding me of Ponyo the way she tears into it.

Thanks to eating more, Sashimi has gained weight. But she still drools a lot, meaning she must still have that growth on her tongue. It is comforting, at least, to know she is not in danger of starvation.

Nor, it seems, are we in danger of income starvation, as I have been offered, and accepted, a new position. It is the same kind of work I always do (software testing), and it is a 100% remote position with a company in Minneapolis. Pretty excited to be onboarding 100% remote; that will be a new experience for me. Right now I feel like a remote till COVID champion.

Sweet Sunshine Kitty

Sweet Sunshine Kitty

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Our sweet kitty, Princess Sashimi, pictured here basking in the sunshine, has been diagnosed with cancer. She had been drooling a lot, and having difficulty eating, and when we took her to the vet we found out she had something on her tongue. Antibiotics didn’t take care of it, and a biopsy revealed that it was indeed cancerous. 🙁

The vet says it’s just a matter of time, and we are giving her all the love we have. She has an anti-inflammatory which seems to be helping a lot, as she has been able to eat. We’ve been giving her baby food (chicken is her fav) and also pureeing meats that we prepare for ourselves. For example, she ate an entire fish stick once it was stripped of its breading and mashed up real good. She’s been regaining her appetite and her energy, which are good signs.

It’s just a matter of time for all of us, of course, but this sweet girl is pure love and we want to keep her with us for as long she’ll allow. So we keep sending her the good reiki energy and letting her know how much we love her. She really is the center of our domestic bliss.

Our new cat care routine, plus the fact that I am now jobless (I fell off the “overemployed” wagon pretty hard), means a big shift in 2023. Since things always happen in threes, and it’s still early in the year, I can’t help but wonder what new shock is coming. Best to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Sufjan Stevens’ Songs of Gen X Neglect

Sufjan Stevens’ Songs of Gen X Neglect

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One of my favorite indie singer/songwriters is Sufjan Stevens (b. 1975). He is a multi-instrumentalist who often plays multiple parts in his recordings, as well as vocals. His style ranges from acoustic folk to symphonic to electronic, often blended in one piece. It’s very unique and creative, and I love most of his albums and have listened to them over and over. His songs tend to be very downtempo, often sad and depressing (as another singer put it, sad songs say so much), but also lyrically brilliant, each song a miniature story rich with historical, cultural and spiritual references.

Stevens was born in Detroit, and grew up in Michigan, raised by his father and stepmother. His mother moved to Oregon and remarried when he was very young, though he still kept in touch and eventually ended up working with his stepfather. Now I don’t know him, and can’t speak for him, but I have noticed that he has written quite a few songs about growing up with divorce and about children feeling abandoned by their parents. It’s hard not to conclude that he has some resentments about his mother leaving, and has expressed those resentments through his music.

A childhood raised in neglect is a hallmark of the Generation X experience, which is why I gave this post its title. I wanted to showcase some of my favorite Sufjan Stevens songs which have this neglected childrearing theme.

The first song is “Romulus,” off of the 2003 album “Michigan,” presumably named after the Detroit suburb of Romulus, Michigan. In this song, children who are being raised by their grandfather are eager for the rare moments of interaction they have with their mother, who has moved away to Oregon. Notably, the narrator is ashamed of her. This song has a memorable line about kids being raised by being left alone to watch TV all night. A plaintive banjo melody runs through it.

Here are the full lyrics to “Romulus”:

Once when our mother called
She had a voice of last year’s cough
We passed around the phone
Sharing a word about Oregon
When my turn came, I was ashamed
When my turn came, I was ashamed

Once when we moved away
She came to Romulus for a day
Her Chevrolet broke down
We prayed it’d never be fixed or be found
We touched her hair, we touched her hair
We touched her hair, we touched her hair

When she had her last child
Once when she had some boyfriends, some wild
She moved away, quite far
Our grandpa bought us a new VCR
We watched it all night, we grew up in spite of it
We watched it all night, we grew up in spite of it

We saw her once last fall
Our grandpa died in a hospital gown
She didn’t seem to care
She smoked in her room and colored her hair

I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her
I was ashamed, I was ashamed of her

The next two songs are from the album “Avalanche,” which features outtakes from what is probably Stevens’ most famous work, “Illinois.” The first song has the unwieldy title “The Mistress Witch from McClure (or, the Mind That knows itself).” In it, a family’s children are exposed to their father’s affair with a woman who is apparently a convicted criminal (“the ankle brace she wore”). When one of them has a seizure and the others come to his aid, they are made painfully and shockingly aware that no one is looking out for them. Interwoven voices sing these haunting lyrics:

(Oh my God)
A mind that knows itself is a mind that knows much more
(No one came to our side)
So we run back, scrambling for cover
(To carry us away from danger)

The next song, “Pittsfield,” is less melancholy and more defiant. Alright, it’s still pretty melancholy, but also defiant. The lyrics invoke a story of children learning to take care of themselves while their parent works all the time. It’s not clear, though, if the parent has to work to make ends meet and so is actually sacrificing on behalf of the children. It’s not explicitly stated in the lyrics, but to me it sounds like the parent is probably a single mother. The child from whose perspective these lyrics are sung might not be aware of the constraints of keeping a house. Instead, they are aware of being put down (“Stand there, tell me that I’m of no use”). They are afraid of their parent, and becoming self-sufficient is how they respond, how they learn to free themself from this fear. To me, this strikes me as a particularly Gen X childhood experience, though it could conceivably happen to a child of any generation. Life is always hard for working class single moms, assuming that’s who the parent in this song is.

Here are the full lyrics to “Pittsfield”:

I’m not afraid of you now, I know
So I climbed down from the bunk beds this low

I can talk back to you now, I know
From a few things that I learned from this TV show

You can work late till midnight, we don’t care
We can fix our own meals, we can wash our own hair

I go to school before sunrise, in the cold
And I pulled the alarm, and I kicked up the salad bowls

Since the time we meant to say much more
Unsaid things begin to take their toll
After school we shovel through the snow
Drive upstate in silence in the cold

You can remind me of it
That I was lazy and tired
You can work all your life as
I’m not afraid of you anymore

If I loved you a long time, I don’t know
If I can’t recall the last time you told me so

Here in this house in Pittsfield
The ghost of our grandmother works at the sewing machine post
Hiding the bills in the kitchen on the floor
And my sister lost her best friend in the Persian Gulf War
There was a flood in the bathroom last May
And you kicked at the pipes when it rattled oh the river it made

Stand there, tell me that I’m of no use
Things unspoken break us if we share
There’s still time to wash the kitchen floor
On your knees, at the sink once more
You can remind me that I was tired
You can work late and give yourself up
Now that I’m older, wiser, and working less
I don’t regret having left the place a mess

You can remind me that I was lazy and tired
You can recall your life as
I’m not afraid of you, anymore
Anymore

In 2012, Stevens’ mother died from cancer. In the next few years he worked on an album to help with grieving and to process his relationship with his mother. It was released in 2015, titled “Carrie and Lowell” after his mother and stepfather. It is quite possibly the most depressing album you will ever hear. Stevens combines melancholy songs about death with childhood reminiscences which speak to many of the same themes discussed previously. Did his mother really leave him at a video store? Maybe so based on these lyrics from the second song on the album.

When I was three, three maybe four
She left us at that video store
Oh, be my rest, be my fantasy
Oh, be my rest, be my fantasy

I’ve linked to the entire album below (on the artist’s official channel) and you can judge it for yourself. We can’t know exactly how Stevens was able to reconcile his feelings regarding his mother, but from his repertoire of sad songs about childhood neglect we must surmise that her abandonment of him left deep scars. I know many Gen Xers for whom something like this is the case.

If you’ve listened to the songs and perused the lyrics I posted here, I hope you appreciate Stevens as much as I do, and how wistfully and painfully his music portrays Generation X in childhood. We were tough, we were resilient, but the feeling of being left on our own haunts us to this day. Through his music – introspective, maudlin, often resentful – Sufjan Stevens perfectly captures this generational experience.