The Weekend of Foolish Attention

Bit and bytes of the week

Sounds like a serious party school.

Barbie is fun. I finally got around to watching one of the phenoms of 2023. It’s a fun movie but I think the perspective that it’s a feminist reimagining of the Barbie brand is just a little limited. It struck me as I watched it that this was a wealthy girl’s take on the idea of patriarchy. My guess is that the 383 million women and girls globally living in poverty have no shits to give about the doll or the movie so this is strictly a privileged woman’s fantasy. Contrary to the criticisms of the film being misandrist it feels more like coloring book version of feminist theory (foot stomp—“Men are just so dumb!”—giggle).

That said, it’s frequently funny, has some genuine heart, and, like Taylor Swift, demonstrates the power of young, liberal, white girls when it comes to consumer heft.

The annual Lessons of My Year. As an eighth grader, Mrs. Mayfield gave us all an assignment. Write down everything we learned since our last birthday. For some reason unfathomable this became my own annual ritual. I’ve written some sort of list of the important things I’ve learned for my birthday every year since then. I’ve found that it takes a bit longer to reflect so I start thinking about it at least a month out. This year, being the strange year of healing with my family in Wichita, I went back and reexamined all of the previous years as I contemplated. I’m only missing only Years 17, 28, 29, and 37—no ideas where they went but I’d say that out of forty-five birthdays, losing four isn’t tragic.

I find that I continue to relearn many of the same lessons in one way or another year after year.

Girls suck. Especially LaDale Walter. (Year 14)
Marriage is a trap from which no one escapes uninjured. (Year 25)
The difference between interest and obsession is obvious when you find yourself losing sight of yourself in the pursuit. (Year 19)
Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems at the time. (Year 32)
The person who needs to be chased and won over will always want to be chased and won over. (Year 27)
A transactional relationship will always be transactional. (Year 54)

A pattern emerges. When combined with historical record, it starts to look like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with the edges framing an obvious picture. My approach to romance doesn't really work for me, does it? Maybe it doesn’t work for anyone. Moving forward, I’m pretty sure I’ve learned this lesson so perhaps I’ll find a different approach.

My kind of woman…

The future is video. I’ve written about the reality vortex caused by watching the world through smartphone videos, how it limits the vision to a tiny window of moments that seem indicate that things are far, far worse than personal experience can dictate. A reel on IG that shows a woman freaking out over bad customer service is an isolated incident but when viewed millions of times takes on an unnecessarily larger problem that simply doesn’t exist in reality. Add that she is white and the counter girl is black and now it becomes referendum on racism (also not nearly as huge an issue in 2023 than it was in, say, 1960, or even 1980).

Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong.

Almost 80 percent of Americans, and 92 percent of Republicans, think crime has gone up. It actually fell in 2023. That doesn’t seem to matter when videos of crews ripping off stores are watched a billion times.

The chain you forge in life. For as long as I can remember hearing the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the three ghosts, and his determination to change his miserly ways (probably from a Bugs Bunny cartoon but soon thereafter one of the many film versions of the story) I have been fascinated by the concept of the ponderous chain of Marley.

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.

"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

— A Christmas Carol

While the concept of being shown, in no uncertain terms, that one will die and, if he is an unrepentant asshole in life, die alone and despised, is a motivator to not be such an asshole, it often pops into my head that if Scrooge simply didn't care about his legacy or was not afraid of death, the ghostly experiment wouldn't work.

Given the context of Dickens’s tale, it seems that each link in the spectral chain is forged by acts of selfishness, of greed, of self importance, of a specific lack of empathy and compassion when faced with other people in need of both. Again, it seems that for every act of kindness, selflessness, and compassion a link is unforged, like a spiritual balancing act. What is most appealing to me is that this version of hell has no Great Judge who looms over but the sum total of either the shit you pulled or the good you inspired without the additional fantasy of a god-like figure with bizarre and arbitrary rules on top of the ideas of just basic benevolence to others.

Every Christmas, I reflect on my own chain and see if I’ve come out even or am burdened with a few more links to lug around. I’m not terribly concerned with any legacy as I’m comfortable with the notion that I am not the center of anything as there is no center to anything. I’m also not anxious about thoughts of death as I see it as inevitable as divorce (which for me is just the consistent status quo). I am interested in that fucking chain, though.

Link by link and yard by yard. The chain we forge in life. I have a lingering suspicion that when we shuffle off, this is just one version of reality and that there is something beyond. Maybe it's the muiltiverse and other versions of me exist across dimensions. If so, I hope there's at least one version named Coupe DeVille Hall who made a ton of cash, stayed married to one person, and wasn’t a big jerk in the process.

Even if there isn't and when we kick we just become food for worms and particles of energy in the ever expanding cosmos, I think the idea that we forge a chain that we carry around with us in this life is helpful.

If there is something that resonates with me about the story of Jesus, it is the idea that anyone—anyone—could be Him. The homeless guy in the Dillons parking lot. That obnoxious woman who thinks that your job is contingent on her satisfaction. The old timer who sits on his porch and complains about fluoride in the water being a Communist plot. My mother’s MAGA neighbor.

I have my chain. Sometimes I wonder how long and how heavy it is. If Dickens is to be heeded, however, each person you go out of your way to assist, to support, to help in large and small ways, unforges one of those links.

At very the least, that's a goal to strive for.

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Merry Christmas, Gracious Readers! God (if you believe in that sort of thing) Bless Us, Everyone.