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Tag: Gen X and Other Generations
Dislocated Thoughts That Arose On Family Day
Thank God for Family Day. It was great. As we sat around in our pajamas, dilly dallying with unconsciousness, trying to kill of the last of our colds until mid-afternoon when we got to watch the mailman deliver the mail. How delicious to have a holiday that is not applicable to the Federal civil service. I do hope they have their own that provides them the analogous experience. Later, we walked out on the river as the sun set and listened to the grinding sound of ice boats way out on the St. Lawrence. They seem to be associated with the Kingston Yacht Club. Reason enough to try the family membership for a year. I did loads of laundry. We also watched more Doctor Who, reads some Doctor Who literature, checked out some Doctor Who web information and the cast from the Hill from Hell got a Dalek drawn upon it. I made veggie Parmesan with the stuff acquired after Saturday saw a trip to the town’s Italian grocery. It was all disorganized, lazy and relatively unproductive.
Is that what “family” means? Sure thing. I still have my copy of “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell from 1932:
I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth.
Magic. This could be an epistle to my generation, we louts raised on video arcades and nuclear fear – the two great pillars of relative valuation. How much plainer could a clever person be about being idle: “work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.” Wednesday morning at 10:37 am when a report is screaming to be done and the email is stacked high, you don’t think of such things. Family Day gets you to the point that you can remember such things. I wonder what postmen got paid in 1932.
February day-off reports past: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. That makes this the sixth. I could be fluent in Finnish and Urdu by now had I not decided to blog.
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El Predicto: MLB Playoffs 2007 Contest
It is a grand thing when your fantasies and solid factual reality coincide so that your predictions for the playoffs can be as good as mine are:
American League
1) Angels vs. Red Sox (Sox in 7)
2) Yankees (yeecht!!!) vs. Indians (Cleveland in six)
3) Red Sox vs. Indians (Red Sox in 6)National League
1) Rockies vs. Phillies (Phillies in 6)
2) Cubs vs. D-Backs (Cubs in 6)
3) Phillies vs. Cubs (Cubs in 6)World Series
Red Sox vs. Cubs. Sox in 7.
Update: error noted and fixed in coments.
Ry has submitted here but can change before the deadline.
Prize? A real 1970s baseball card. Not my 1971 Hank Aaron or anything. But a real one. Maybe I have a double Billy Martin or something. Scoring? Simple: most games won by teams predicted to win series, divided by deviation from actual multiplied by extra factoring for style. What could be easier?
Put in your best guess before Thursday at 9 pm. That is right. You actually get to see some games before the deadline closes. How fair is that?
Dreamy Yuffs
Some days it’s hard to find a story that will please and inform Hans. For all I know, he’s on vacation or in a white painted ward somewhere for people with internet addiction but my role here is clear: make sure Hans gets a story a day. But the dog days of summer can be tough in terms of fodder if you are not going to go on and on about something or other. So seeing as the well is pretty much dry, let’s looks at yuff today. Here is one example – some guy working at a job a week:
With many more jobs to go, he said he’s trying to help his generation deal with how to reconcile their views on personal success with their dreams of making a difference. “We’re more aware of how we impact others. It’s looking for a career situation that in which we can be happy and be passionate about, but also how we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves,” he said. “It’s totally cheesy. But I think cliches become cliches for a reason.”
“We’re more aware…” That statement is made every year by some guy doing something vaguely familiarly nutty, some difference-maker-in-training who will end up owning a business, hiring, firing and chalking it all up to “passion.” Dandy. Fabulous even. The world and developers of houses on slightly larger than normal up-scaleish suburbs need them. I was more aware once. Then I got older and blogging started. [You know who was aware as a youth? Harry Patch. Having a little too much awareness is not an impossibility.]
So, I was in the grocery store the other day and had a weird yuff related deja vu of sorts. Some Hall and Oates song was playing as I looked for some goat cheese or another bag of coffee beans. I am still unsure why the 2 am dance bar pick up music from when I was 19 is now the 11 am dairy aisle music of my forties. Anyway, I was thinking about what I was going to put together for supper and thought “I wonder what Bruce is drinking tonight” – whammo – in a total time shifted second I was in 1982 undergrad moment – not a reflection but a real mental blip – planning for a BBQ at 44 transformed in an instant to planning a party at 19. Very creepy. And then I thought it was creepy. There was something immersive in the moment that brought me back to the smell of a dorm, drifty anxiety, the perfect generation assuming it’s on the cusp of something we-are-more-aware-ish. Who needs that? I shook my head and the moment was gone. Whatever Bruce was drinking back then it was crap and there was far too much of it.
Which is all to say good luck to you, job a week kid, as some guy now dead or retired wished me good luck a quarter century ago. You will make something of yourself as most do. And, even better, good times and fine goat cheese and decent lawn chairs are just a couple of decades ahead, too.
Boomer Finger-pointery
Even though this place is named after Generation X, I really do not directly yap that much about demographics (as it is all so deeply implicit) but this piece in the BBC caught my attention with its accusations of bad boomery:
Baby boomers like to trumpet their generation’s achievements. But their fondness for conspicuous consumption and foreign travel has led to many a modern-day ill, from rising debt to environmental destruction. This week, former US President Bill Clinton – perhaps the archetypal baby boomer – turns 60.
Great. So they now are turning 60 and get all the attention never mind that they sucked it up at 30, 40 and 50 already. Sooner or later there will be the second Gen X headline floating around but it will be something like “Last Gen Xer Likely Dead At 103…Maybe”.