"News travels fast in a little place like this. Besides, an untimely death,
a psychic and a black man. All in one day...that's epic."
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Twin Psychs
I find the antics of Sean and Gus on Psych still worth viewing. Occasionally a zinger comes through. In "Dual Spires", --homage to "Twin Peaks"--they stumble on a possible murder in a quirky and very isolated rural town where they have gone because of an email invitation to its Cinnamon Festival. Yeah. Anyway, once the investigation section begins, they go to see the town librarian, Maudette. When they begin to introduce themselves, she interrupts that she knows who they are.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Distractions
Been a day with a lot of irritation in it. So I look for distractions. Spatchcocked a chicken, roasted it --really juicy-- and made gravy with giblets, and rice, with cold Pinot Grigio. Felt better.
Moving thru the TV dials, The Graham Norton Show on BBC America, usually a silly waste of time, had Bette Midler, whom I like and then this very eye-pleasing self-possessed and charming black man with cornrows and a working class British accent. Didn't recognize him. Checked out who he was. Turns out he is the WBA World Champion, David Haye. Distracting.
PS. Late night irksomeness. Presentation of church and clergy on TV and movies. Just the factual and visual mistakes are legion. Tonight some cops visit an independent church and ask the pastor for a list of all the men in his congregation. He says that he cannot because it would be "breaking the confessional seal." First of all, not a Catholic church, hence no "confessional seal." And it's just a list of members. Ditto. A script written either by illiterates or people who don't care about any kind of accuracy. Legion.
Moving thru the TV dials, The Graham Norton Show on BBC America, usually a silly waste of time, had Bette Midler, whom I like and then this very eye-pleasing self-possessed and charming black man with cornrows and a working class British accent. Didn't recognize him. Checked out who he was. Turns out he is the WBA World Champion, David Haye. Distracting.
PS. Late night irksomeness. Presentation of church and clergy on TV and movies. Just the factual and visual mistakes are legion. Tonight some cops visit an independent church and ask the pastor for a list of all the men in his congregation. He says that he cannot because it would be "breaking the confessional seal." First of all, not a Catholic church, hence no "confessional seal." And it's just a list of members. Ditto. A script written either by illiterates or people who don't care about any kind of accuracy. Legion.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Degrees of Beghe
Had lunch with a fella I reconnected with, at the GayPatriot lunch last Saturday. Turns out he is involved in anti-Scientology stuff and has met Jason Beghe. Two degrees of separation now.
Swerves
The DADT issue continues to bubble. The chiefs of both Marines and Army are not happy with the idea. The Navy chief thinks it would be ok. I would love it if homosexual men who wanted to be part of the very traditional institution of the military could sign up and serve as themselves. And I cannot foresee a time when the issue will not be contentious for some; it's in the nature of classical masculinity. But the mission of the armed services comes first.
Re: swerving on the personal front, it's disconcerting --and not happy in the stomach-- to start up a friendly and playful conversation with someone you care about and then to have a hot-button item come up and, in a nanosecond, find yourself lost in the land of Drek. I have worked hard to balance out the natural distance and detachment that my Fiveness exhibits, to wade in deep into the world of experience and feeling and connection. And I have done a pretty good job. But at moments like that, where light-hearted joy turns sour and confusing so fast, I kinda wish I had stayed where I started out.
Re: swerving on the personal front, it's disconcerting --and not happy in the stomach-- to start up a friendly and playful conversation with someone you care about and then to have a hot-button item come up and, in a nanosecond, find yourself lost in the land of Drek. I have worked hard to balance out the natural distance and detachment that my Fiveness exhibits, to wade in deep into the world of experience and feeling and connection. And I have done a pretty good job. But at moments like that, where light-hearted joy turns sour and confusing so fast, I kinda wish I had stayed where I started out.
UnBlack Friday
The new freecreditreport.com commercial is even more annoying than the old ones. A new musical group of nerdy white guys sings a jingle which is ghetto-rappy-hiphop-ebonic. Pathetic.
I hate hip hop. Always have. It seems to me a break with a long tradition of wonderful, melodic and inventive Black music in America*, one which was eloquent about both sorrow and joy, and replaced it with mechanical victimist resentment which models the very behavior that creates the bad conditions it complains about. And it encapsulates most of what I hate about current Black culture. Yet it is immensely popular with young whites, male and female both.
I am sure there are a host of reasons why, but one that intrigues me is related to the decline of white masculinity after feminism. Like it or not, blacks play the role of the primitive in American culture: the shadow of "soul" --which blacks are supposedly endowed with-- is primitivity: emotional volatility, irrationality, diminished intellect, religiosity, and a kind of physicality which is both very powerful (sports) and attractive (sex) and which indicates a lower stage of development. In the case of black males, they are the carriers of a raw pre-feminist masculinity. This must account for a huge part of their attraction for white males, with the consequent --and to me, embarrassing-- adoption by younger white men of styles of speech and dress which scream black ghetto.
Being given covert cultural permission, and encouragement, to remain the primitives that they are, young black males retain an archetypal stage of manhood that is now hard for white males to claim. But is it an archetypal stage: it is adolescent. One of the tragedies of American blacks' catastrophically high rate of out-of-wedlock births (70%) is that the dominant image of maleness for them is fatherless; it is adolescent, and angrily adolescent at that. Thuggish and barbarian.
And the saintly and struggling black mother --the cooingly titled "single mom"--only achieves her victim status by being abandoned by her lover(s). (And the gender role expectations of young blacks are as opposite as you can imagine, except when it comes to sexual activity. Talk about heteronormative!) As I have said before, the message sent to generations of young blacks, male and female, is that they were not worth enough for their fathers to hang around for. Blacks in Oakland rage angrily in the streets when a white officer shoots a young black man. But how often, and for long, have their own young males murdered one another on the streets, in their homes? For that ongoing crime we get weepy memorials in churches, not rioting. And what about the self-destructive male-female collusion which keeps females getting themselves pregnant by men whom they know will not stay around to make a family, just furthering the cycle?
But thuggish and immature though hiphop maleness be, it is nevertheless real masculinity, something that white feminism has severely damaged in the currently majority demographic. No matter how ridiculous it looks and sounds for a chubby, curly-haired, four-eyed Caucasian boy in a bowtie to sing words like "stank" and "drop some knowledge on ya" or "check the legal, y'all." So it is not only the band that is pathetic, it is our cultural situation.
*Just one example, at 2:32 in this video.
I hate hip hop. Always have. It seems to me a break with a long tradition of wonderful, melodic and inventive Black music in America*, one which was eloquent about both sorrow and joy, and replaced it with mechanical victimist resentment which models the very behavior that creates the bad conditions it complains about. And it encapsulates most of what I hate about current Black culture. Yet it is immensely popular with young whites, male and female both.
I am sure there are a host of reasons why, but one that intrigues me is related to the decline of white masculinity after feminism. Like it or not, blacks play the role of the primitive in American culture: the shadow of "soul" --which blacks are supposedly endowed with-- is primitivity: emotional volatility, irrationality, diminished intellect, religiosity, and a kind of physicality which is both very powerful (sports) and attractive (sex) and which indicates a lower stage of development. In the case of black males, they are the carriers of a raw pre-feminist masculinity. This must account for a huge part of their attraction for white males, with the consequent --and to me, embarrassing-- adoption by younger white men of styles of speech and dress which scream black ghetto.
Being given covert cultural permission, and encouragement, to remain the primitives that they are, young black males retain an archetypal stage of manhood that is now hard for white males to claim. But is it an archetypal stage: it is adolescent. One of the tragedies of American blacks' catastrophically high rate of out-of-wedlock births (70%) is that the dominant image of maleness for them is fatherless; it is adolescent, and angrily adolescent at that. Thuggish and barbarian.
And the saintly and struggling black mother --the cooingly titled "single mom"--only achieves her victim status by being abandoned by her lover(s). (And the gender role expectations of young blacks are as opposite as you can imagine, except when it comes to sexual activity. Talk about heteronormative!) As I have said before, the message sent to generations of young blacks, male and female, is that they were not worth enough for their fathers to hang around for. Blacks in Oakland rage angrily in the streets when a white officer shoots a young black man. But how often, and for long, have their own young males murdered one another on the streets, in their homes? For that ongoing crime we get weepy memorials in churches, not rioting. And what about the self-destructive male-female collusion which keeps females getting themselves pregnant by men whom they know will not stay around to make a family, just furthering the cycle?
But thuggish and immature though hiphop maleness be, it is nevertheless real masculinity, something that white feminism has severely damaged in the currently majority demographic. No matter how ridiculous it looks and sounds for a chubby, curly-haired, four-eyed Caucasian boy in a bowtie to sing words like "stank" and "drop some knowledge on ya" or "check the legal, y'all." So it is not only the band that is pathetic, it is our cultural situation.
*Just one example, at 2:32 in this video.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Color blind
Red-green color blindness is something I share with my three brothers, a genetic gift from our mother. I once told her that bad backs, bad knees, alcoholism and homosexuality only seemed to be present on her side of the family. (Not a wise choice on my part!)
I don't know if it has anything to do with this, but I can't understand why Asians are considered yellow and AmerIndians red. I get the white and black thing for Euros and Afros --light and dark, beige and brown, really. But I have never met a Chinese or Korean or Japanese or Thai who looked "yellow" to me. And the only American Indians I have met have been mixed, but nevertheless, no red.
Not sayin' it's incorrect. Just sayin' that I don't see it.
If you see 38, you have normal color perception.
If you see 88, like me, you have some color blindness
I don't know if it has anything to do with this, but I can't understand why Asians are considered yellow and AmerIndians red. I get the white and black thing for Euros and Afros --light and dark, beige and brown, really. But I have never met a Chinese or Korean or Japanese or Thai who looked "yellow" to me. And the only American Indians I have met have been mixed, but nevertheless, no red.
Not sayin' it's incorrect. Just sayin' that I don't see it.
Old Soviet days
Depressing, shopping at Delano's, as the shelves empty out. Reminds me of pix of Russian stores in the 80's. No more milk, no bread, most vegetables and fruits gone, no more Canada Dry Diet Ginger Ale! I feel bad for the staff, too. Inconvenience for me but rough times ahead for them.
Gonna invest in buying a back pack so I can hoof the mile trip to Safeway.
Gonna invest in buying a back pack so I can hoof the mile trip to Safeway.
The Two: Helpfulness & Manipulation
Three of my closest friends are Twos. And they all have a noticeable "wing" personality of the One, the Moralist. Makes it interesting to see how they shift from warm compassion to self-righteous wrath.
(I should note that these outlines are by Margaret Frings Keys, not by me.)
(I should note that these outlines are by Margaret Frings Keys, not by me.)
Special Gift: Warmth and ability to help people feel comfortable
Self-Definition: "I'm helpful."
Shadow Issue: Parasitic pride
Rejected Element: One's own needs
Addiction: Service/manipulation
Strength Needed: Appropriate self-value (Humility)
Defense Mechanism: Repression
Psychological Disturbance: Hysteria/dependent personality
Talk Style: Help and advice
Preoccupations Include:
Gaining approval and avoiding rejection, pride in the importance of oneself in relationships.
Submission to a powerful other, then identifying with the other to avoid feeling depressed.
Concern about limited personal freedom.
Altering oneself to meet the needs of others.
Empathy with others' feelings; adapting to their wishes as a way of assuring their love.
Submission to a powerful other, then identifying with the other to avoid feeling depressed.
Concern about limited personal freedom.
Altering oneself to meet the needs of others.
Empathy with others' feelings; adapting to their wishes as a way of assuring their love.
Focus:
Personal emphasis on privilege ("me first").
Couple emphasis on aggression/seduction.
Community emphasis on ambition.
Couple emphasis on aggression/seduction.
Community emphasis on ambition.
Life Task: To move from dependence on approval to knowledge of personal strength to meet one's own needs. This usually requires personal loss. The resulting depression can lead to a more accurate self-assessment and understanding of tasks.
The Five: Knowledge & Withdrawal
My home base. I have worked hard and found myself in different situations and relationships over the years that have balanced me out a bit --both my training and work as a psychotherapist and my connections to lovers and friends-- but I recognize these deep-seated tendencies in me. I might be a recovering Five, but I recognize myself here.
| Special Gift: | Knowing "what's so" |
| Self-Definition: | "I'm perceptive." |
| Shadow Issue: | Miserliness |
| Rejected Element: | Meaninglessness |
| Addiction: | Knowledge |
| Strength Needed: | Detachment |
| Defense Mechanism: | Isolation (compartmentalization) |
| Psychological Disturbance: | Avoidant personality |
| Talk Style: | Dissertations |
| Preoccupations Include: | Concern with privacy; withdrawal; social/antisocial dichotomy. Restricting and minimizing personal needs as a way of non-involvement. Need to control unpredictable feelings and reactions. Sectioning off emotionally charged experiences into predetermined time units; setting boundaries. Interest in using analytical knowledge as a substitute for emotional experience. Confusion between spiritual non-attachment and personal withdrawal from emotional pain. "Outside observer" point of view leading some to feel isolated from the events of one's own life and others to a point of view detached from the biases of personal fear or desire. |
| Focus: | Personal emphasis on "home as castle." Couple emphasis on confidence. Community emphasis on totems, identifying with "those who know." |
| Life Task: | Gaining knowledge of life by stepping into action from being an observer, taking in exactly what is needed and letting the rest go. |
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