Category: Excuses
The Voting Booth: (Also) Where Excuses Go to Die
I don’t hear excuses at polling places, do you? (Visit one to find out!) People tend to be nice to one another and there’s a sense of pride in the air. Maybe it’s just me, but standing in line at, say, a movie theater I overhear all sorts of moaning and groaning, griping and complaining, excuses and bullshit. Not so at polling places. Could it be because they quite literally host groups of people looking to follow through on a civic duty? Does that participatory feeling – our basic right to vote – somehow reduce a person’s desire to hear themselves rationalize and bitch?
I enjoy walking to my elementary school polling place with neighbors of many years, getting all those sour grapes out of our system as we go. We clam up at the door, each of us growing reverent and and willing to follow instructions. There are usually about six of us; it’s a tradition and a community I cherish.
Sunday Afternoon Cocaine Hangover
Each weekend, Gawker contributing editor Kiese Laymon posts an essay from readers. I usually enjoy ’em, but this week’s, not so much. Now I’m no Hunter Thompson, but I do feel qualified to comment on writer Ruth Fowler’s treatment of French cocaine and dirt-sex since they relate to personal responsibility, the consequences of one’s actions, and, of course, justifications and excuses — my daily obsessions.
I can’t post Gawker’s content, so I’ll just have to hope you return to see how I weigh in.
Ruth Is Heartless, But the World Breaks Everyone
Making Room for Goosebumps
Following its goodbye aerial tour of the Southland we gathered to watch a Space Shuttle fight LA traffic.
My nominal cynicism was extinguished when friends started callin’ with reports of a Space Shuttle on the 405. For months, we’ve known about Endeavour being hauled from LAX to the California Science Center, but it wasn’t ’til it jumped into the mosh pit of Los Angeles and became “one of us” that my heart started racing. Forgive us, but we don’t have a football team and we’re too busy acting all been there, done that to feel “a part of” something very often. So when Angelenos do come together, particularly in celebration of a worthy contribution to the world, I get happy for my hometown.
I wish Americans had more reasons to look at each other with goosebumps on our arms and say, “Damn! That’s fuckin’ COOL!” But for everyone right now braving the schlep, the crowds, the cops, and the unfamiliar neighbors, that’s just what’s happening: folks are sharing the sidewalk and making room for goosebumps. For what it’s worth (and cursing aside), God bless the parents who’re bringing their kids. They may not understand it now, but later they’ll feel lucky and proud that their parents made the effort to share in something bigger. Right there is where excuses go to die: at the point of getting over your reasons for not trying.
If there’s one thing our country doesn’t need, it’s people claiming to be more patriotic than the next guy, and that’s so abundant now it can be difficult to stomach having “USA! USA!” screamed into my ear. This event is opposite of that. This is for those us who are proud of where country can go when it wants to, not in how much we’re entitled to get.
“I Told You So” Level 8
On September 28, 2012, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence released its official report on what the L.A. Times called, “a lack of meaningful oversight” within the County jail system, as well as “an institutional culture of arrogance and impunity” with regards to the L.A. Sheriff’s Department.
‘Course, when you’re one of the “bad guys,” you think twice about mentioning crappy accommodations and the uppity desk clerk. In part, that’s how things in L.A. got so bad – some people needed to forget, others questioned their right to say anything, and most doubted the likelihood of their being listened to. Read more
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Worry List
From one of my favorites, Shaun Usher and his site, Lists of Note
In 1933, author F. Scott Fitzgerald ended a letter to his 11-year-old daughter, Scottie, with a list of things to worry about, not worry about, and simply think about. It read as follows.
Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,
Daddy
Check out Where Excuses Go to Die on Facebook!
Where Excuses Go to Die will be available in print and in all device formats January 2013.
Meanwhile, a Where Excuses Go to Die Facebook page lets me share what it’s like trying to get this story told; from the disappointed looks I get when I claim to have better hooks than rape, riots, and rotten food to rejection letters and go-for-its I’ve received along the way. There’ve been loonies attracted in the process, constant smoke being blown up my ass, and the dread of asking others to read pages. What a whole separate pathology that is! (Worse than issuing or accepting a personal loan.) And such fun, dealing with those who assume I’m a profit-hungry offender out for a payoff! Finally, there’s being along for the ride as the publishing world makes an ass of itself as it tries not to go out like the record industry. It’s all a completely separate journey from having paid my debt to society for robbing, um, bookstores. Read more
Who’s at Fault when Insensitivity Is Learned Behavior?
Last week, Annie Karni reported for the New York Post that victims’ families feel tourists treat Manhattan’s 9/11 Memorial disrespectfully. It’s being leaned against and climbed on; kids are being perched atop its inscriptions by careless, camera-wielding parents; and gabby sightseers are posing for pictures while spilling their Starbucks. Anyone adding to the boisterous atmosphere is on the shit list. Given that far more respectful behavior can be found, for instance, at Pearl Harbor’s USS Arizona Memorial, first responders and victims’ families may be onto something.
On the other hand, might not some of these complaints be an excuse for extending one’s grief or reaffirming one’s precious victimhood? Besides, when society encourages digital aggrandizement of one menial personal experience after the next – and thus contempt for everything outside of ourselves – who’s to blame when insensitivity becomes just another a learned behavior?
I’m just saying, 9/11 Memorial site or not, the presence of loud, sloppy people who can’t distinguish between hallowed ground and Disney’s California Adventure shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, not even World Trade Center families. Read more
Home Depot’s Excuse for Data Mining – A Labor Day Special
Home Depot’s profits are on the rise, after the company fired up its low-wage turnover meat to come out of hiding and help those intent on spending money. On the surface, it’s a new day and a new fiscal quarter for the home improvement giant. But the company’s government-like “Customers First Initiative,” the sensitivity training at the center of a renewed interest in customer satisfaction, is a both a clever exploitation of all things superhighway and a shotgun wedding for employees and customers.
Having coddled the big spenders and contractors of a bygone building boom, Home Depot has now begun to capitalize on the socioeconomic similarities between its employees and its more typical patrons. Its new Customers First Initiative is a product of regime change at the company and includes action items like “Power Hours,” where employees drop what they’re doing and seek out wanderers who may need help. Read more
Apocalypse Hoosegow 5: L.A. Sheriff Face-palm Edition
The Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) says reforms designed to address violence in county jails have worsened morale, calling recent reports of abuse “exaggerated.” L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, who on the one hand claims to have implemented those reforms, now says his beleaguered Deputies can’t do their jobs ‘cause they’re being picked on. The “Teflon Sheriff” blames jail inmates for increasing violence instead, saying they’ve grown “significantly more hostile toward Deputies and resistant to their directives.”