Freedom of Jeans

I think there is unjust discrimination against jeans. Where I work now calls for business casual, that being, not jeans. So, I have a pair of black pants and a pair of khaki pants and I hate them. They're straight-legged and formal-looking and... well, I dislike khaki. It's like daring me to spill something.

And work had this really smart idea to market a United Way campaign called "Dollars For Denim." Basically, you buy their $35 pin or their $45 shirt, you get to wear them with suitable "denim" on Fridays in October, November, December. So we're forking over money for the privilege of casual Friday. And that shirt is so worth it for the happiness I get from wearing jeans every Friday. Unfortunately, it's already halfway through November.

David's job has an office party, which declares "Business casual (no jeans)." I'm miffed. I normally wouldn't bother to change clothes after work, but I hate wearing non-jean pants so much that I do change, especially if I have another reason to leave the house.

I think jeans can be sharp. I think jeans can be classy. And they fit me better than stupid khakis. Well, they did. Now my jeans are a little baggy. But while I love jeans, I hate jean shopping. Or pants shopping, really.

But anyway.

Why this arbitrary jean hatred? Why are they considered so informal when they are the pant choice for a majority of Americans in a majority of situations?

In fact, I think most of current fashion guidelines are arbitrary. Why do we think suits are the only option for males in politics? Why do we think skirt suits look good? People say a guy in a tux is hot... I think a guy in jeans is hot.

Maybe I should have been country. 'Cept I don't like the bling.

And I think the people running for president should wear jeans. I hate suits.

Do you not know the honored history of jeans and Levi Strauss?

From Wikipedia:

A young man named Levi Strauss emigrated in 1851 from Germany to New York to be with his older brothers, who ran a dry goods store. In 1853 he moved to San Francisco to establish his own dry goods business.

In 1872, Jacob Davis, a tailor who frequently purchased bolts of cloth from the Levi Strauss & Co. wholesale house, wrote to Levi asking to partner with him to patent and sell clothing reinforced with rivets. Davis' idea was to use copper rivets to reinforce the points of stress, such as on the pocket corners and at the bottom of the button fly. After Levi accepted Davis's offer, the two men received U.S. Patent 139,121, for an "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings," on May 20, 1873. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeans]

American history, right there. And jeans just look better on everyone.


What about hats? Used to be you couldn't go outside without a hat. Now you can't wear them for business casual. And fedoras even look classy.

If I ever became a dictator, my first act would be to declare jeans as valid for business casual. Viva la revolution!

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow

Normally I keep my opinions on books to Goodreads. However, I've had a bit of a problem recently: Goodreads is linked to my Facebook and for some reason, I cannot get things that connect through Facebook to, well, connect.

So Ender's Game came out recently. I decided to reread the book as a precursor to actually continuing the series and before watching the movie. Ender's Game, if you missed it, is a sci-fi book by Orson Scott Card, who is an excellent author. Ender's Game is the story of a young boy (six, when the book starts) who get accepted into battle school to prepare the smartest kids of the next generation to defend the world against a threat that has attacked twice in the past: the Formics, better known as "buggers." Ender is their best hope for the next commander of their forces, but to be able to get him to the point of leadership, they feel the need to manipulate his training and force him to understand he stands alone.

So we watched Ender's Game, the movie. And the idea behind the climax, the game, was the same. But I just read the book, and so I noticed everything different.

Some changes I don't mind, some I understand. Ender was six when he first went to battle school, but the actor who was playing him already had his voice starting to change. I think it loses some of it's impact. It's not just a pre-teen or teenager we're talking about, it's a six-year-old. However, the book spans years. It's a bit harder to do that in a movie. Anderson, one of the teachers who discusses Ender frequently with Graff, was changed to being female. And black, but I guess I never really knew Anderson wasn't. What bugs me more is that Dap, who calls himself the kids' "mom" in the is rude and mean. And Bonzo, who is supposed to be almost beautiful for a boy, a boy Ender looks at and thinks, "I can follow that face..." Bonzo is SHORT. Like half Ender's height. That also bugs me.

The movie was too rushed, I think. You don't get the sense of development, manipulation, psychological growth, and so on. David pointed out it would be better as a mini-series.

And then I read Ender's Shadow, which is about Bean. In Ender's Game, Bean is another smart kid who is small, just like Ender, but some time later, and he has more of an attitude. In Ender's Shadow, it's almost like a fan-fiction rewriting, even though it was Orson Scott Card who did it. What I mean by that is that it's taking the story from the first book, and trying to fit a different story in, one that didn't exist prior. I think Bean was just a normal, albeit smart, kid in the first book. And this book turned him into something else. Some of his dialogue was already written, and the second book added slants. Something like "Nobody goes to Command school until they're sixteen!" he said, grabbing hold of Colonel Graff's hand. Graff shook him off. In Ender's Shadow, it adds something along the lines of how he wasn't sure if Graff caught his sarcasm. I'm still trying to figure out how that motion and phrase can be sarcastic. It undermines Ender. It says they try to transfer command to Bean in the end, thinking Ender had frozen.

And on the other hand, it builds Ender up. Bean still follows him, even though he might be smarter. Bean respects him.

But it's still one of those things I think about at night when I'm trying to sleep and I think, "That's not how it was originally!"

Scheduling: My Bane

Maybe it's the winter. I don't usually realize how much I get SAD until the summer hits and I wake up one morning thinking, "Life is good!" when the sun is shining and it's warm and green and the whole world seems open. I woke up this morning at seven and it was dark and cold. The sun was just rising around seven-thirty. And it's going to get worse and colder and darker. I tried to think of what one of those annoying optimists would say: "Well, now everyone gets to enjoy the sunrise because it's later in the day!"

Makes me want to throw a shoe at the nearest optimist.

But the winter depresses me. I start seeing a cold, gray world of continuing inevitability. The rat-race, people walking walking walking with umbrellas, the same roads they've walked every day and will continue to walk, seeing the same tired faces they've seen every day, eating the same lunch at the dingy diner or in stained Tupperware in a florescent-lit office break room.

Last winter I had a freak-out moment with the house. Like it was a ball on the end of the chain that held me here, down to earth. This winter, I have a job and in thinking of my schedule, see it repeating Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, over and over and over, living for the weekend just to have it end and start over again. Some people like schedules and reliability and predictability. I think I kind of hate it.

Back to that Myers Briggs personality test. I'm an ISTP. The P at the end means perceiver. One place asks, "would you rather things in your life to be decided and set, or do you like to stay open to whatever options might come along?" Truity defines it as "responsive, spontaneous, flexible, and active."

Oddly Developed Types says "Now that school is permanently out and the 8 to 5 workday is abolished for good, the Artisans will be free to roam the radioactive wastelands hunting mutants, fighting zombies, and generally having the time of their lives."

My fall wanderlust is kicking it and I want to throw off everything that's holding me down and go live the life I imagine!

Then reality kicks in and I don't know where I'd go. To the Halloween event at Worlds of Fun? Just kick off and go. England. South for the winter. But what sort of lifestyle supports my imagination?

David thinks it is writing, after I described my perfect job as having short-term events that I could do when I wanted and not take any more assignments when I didn't.

I don't know. Both of us are perceivers. We both live in the moment, procrastinate, and like the idea of just picking up and going somewhere spontaneously.

We need to get rich.

Post-Apocalyptic Thoughts

My current fad is post-apocalyptic fiction. Well, not even fiction. Maybe just more the idea of fiction. Unless someone has some good post-apocalyptic fiction they want to recommend?

Currently I'm making due with cyberpunk, defined by the Reddit page as, "High-tech, low-life." I describe it as the seedy criminal side of sci-fi. Reading the second book in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. So far, it doesn't flow as well and isn't as artistic as Neuromancer, the first book.

But anyway.

To get in the mood, here is a cover of Imagine Dragons' radioactive by Lindsey Stirling. In post-apocalyptic theme.

I can't ever decide if I like this better than the original or not. Original has bass drum. Cover has...well...awesome. And no weird puppet arena.

I have had Radioactive play in my head for the last three months. Still cool with it.

To continue on the theme, I got into the Myers-Briggs personality test. I like personality tests. I am an ISTP (introverted, sensing, thinking, perceiving). Which means I'm Harry Potter on the Harry Potter chart. And a cat on one of the animal ones (no, I did not try and manipulate the results to get a cat).

But the best thing I've found so far is called Oddly Developed Types. It starts off with the basics, not a whole lot more information than the Truity. Thing about the Myers Briggs is that they say people are better at understanding themselves than the test is, so you can probably figure out what you are by just reading about it. I match ISTP pretty well. However, Oddly Developed Types decides to have some fun and they come up with all these different scenarios for what happens to your type after the apocalypse.

I am a Vigilante. I spend the first year of nuclear winter in a basement playing video games that hone my reflexes so I can kick mutant and zombie butt once I get out. Then me and the other Artisans (SPs) wander merrily about doing our own thing, like we've always wanted to. The SJs (Guardians) have bunkers, cities, and caves. The NFs (Idealists) mostly become self-actualized and turn into beings of radiant light and go to another plane, where they will fight shadowy beings of darkness. And the NTs (Rationals) will mostly abandon the planet before it happens, but you know they probably caused it too. I read my page. And then the page for the Artisans. And then David's page (ENFP). And then the page for all the Idealists. And then all the main group pages. And then I started at the top and read all of it. It was like reading a story in second person. It was funny and clever and makes me wish I thought of it first.

I'm still trying to figure out what I want from this phase, which is really an extension of the zombie phase (which I partially abandoned after finding the first two episodes of Walking Dead to be more gory than I liked). And maybe it's because so many people talk doom and gloom with all the Syria and government shutdown and so on, it starts to feel a little bit like the end of the world. And I cope with things by making fun of them.

And I'd be a monster hunter. How cool is that?

I am a Jedi, like my father before me...

Jedi's just happen to get their hoods from Aeropostale these days.

Notes

I came home today to discover this on my kitchen counter:

It basically says,
To whom it may concern:
Ames Fire Department responded to this address around 10:30 am for an audible smoke detector going off. We found no smoke or fire and gained entry.

We walked through quickly and found no problems. We attempted to silence the audible detector and change the battery, but the detector continued to go off... so here it sits for you. It is most likely in need of replacement.

We closed the home up as we found it.

If you have any questions, please call fire station #3.

Thank you.
-Firefighters Bleeker and Doyle

I found it interesting. I called David and read it to him. It actually probably corresponded to the alarms I heard earlier in the day. We have a fire station just down the street.

Also, my kitchen was a mess from breakfast, as I hadn't had time to clean before work. So I wanted to make excuses for it. And thank the firefighters for coming in for a false alarm. And maybe leave them a note as well.

So I did. I wrote them a note saying just that. And bought two packets of dark chocolate M&Ms (in lieu of buying drinks). And I bound it up with a rubberband and walked over to the fire station and gave it to a man with a nice smile who said he'd get it to them.

I'm sorry they came out for nothing. But then, I'd rather it be nothing.

Interventionism and Helping

I wrote last time about Syria. The whole issue actually makes me want to throw my hands up in the air and scream and yell, "How do you think a missile strike will be an isolated event? How do you think the rebels are any better than the government? How do you think this incident is the one that deserves your wrath but have let so many other killings and abuses pass unnoticed? Why do you think you have the authority to draw 'red lines' without Congress and that you can order strikes without Congress?"

I have never hated Obama. I never liked him, but I don't hate him. I do not like Obamacare, but this, this thing with Syria, really really bugs me. It's the first time that I've been like, "It's only 2013? We have a ways to go."

That said, I'd like to talk a little bit about interventionism, which is our foreign policy. Oh, not the the discussion between if we should sanction or not, invade or not, police the world or not. I'm solidly on the "or not" bit. We shouldn't be the police. Nobody appointed America is governor of the world and I don't think God said, "This is my country, they are the bestest and get to say what's what." Americans are a little on the self-centered side. We see only Americans as being important when it comes to world matters, like everyone else is somehow less of a human than we are. Doesn't really matter to us if others die unless Americans die, in which case it's a tragedy. I'm not saying it isn't, just that our standards of tragedy don't tend to involve anybody else's death, and then it's only a tragedy if we have to look at it or the government tells us so. Like these chemical weapon deaths.

I read this morning by Ron Paul, "I agree that any chemical attack, particularly one that kills civilians, is horrible and horrendous. All deaths in war and violence are terrible and should be condemned. But why are a few hundred killed by chemical attack any worse or more deserving of US bombs than the 100,000 already killed in the conflict? Why do these few hundred allegedly killed by Assad count any more than the estimated 1,000 Christians in Syria killed by US allies on the other side? Why is it any worse to be killed by poison gas than to have your head chopped off by the US allied radical Islamists, as has happened to a number of Christian priests and bishops in Syria? For that matter, why are the few hundred civilians killed in Syria by a chemical weapon any worse than the 2000-3000 who have been killed by Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan? Does it really make a difference whether a civilian is killed by poison gas or by drone missile or dull knife?"

It's a good question.

Anyway.

Basically, I came to say that I think we are very single-minded when it comes to intervention. Is there any way we can help people in other countries without initiating an unprovoked attack? Can we help people peacefully? I've read, and I don't have the links for this, that Jordan is taking in refugees from Syria. They are helping, probably more than we ever will in this situation.

And I think America should do that. Not necessarily Syrian refugees, but be that open place we used to be.

My dad has an interesting take on immigration. No guns, no fences, no border police. Let 'em come in. But we're not going to give them anything. No free schooling, no Social Security, no welfare, nothing. And end law of the land. So the people who want to come would just be coming for what they get of freedom, not for any handouts. You want to make it here, you have to earn it. And that's kind of cool. Rather historic-sounding.

For example, we should be open to allowing in people leaving their own countries for lack of freedom. Take the case of Germans who want to homeschool their children. Homeschooling was banned in 1938 by Hitler, "all the better to indoctrinate you, my dear." And, oddly, that rule is still in effect and still being enforced. We've had a case where a German family is asking for asylum to homeschool their children as they want to raise them Christian. Makes sense to me. However, so far, our government has said, "You don't face religious persecution because the law applies to everyone, not just Christians." Which seems to be a somewhat silly way to defend that.

Also, in Germany, a family's house was stormed by police and social workers wielding a battering ram, who then took their children away by force.

I think we should let these people come into America. And if people in other countries need help, let our private, non-government aid groups could go and help them. Not our shooting missiles into their country with the chance that it will spread the targeted chemical weapons. That doesn't seem like much help.

Of course, America isn't as much the bastion of freedom that people used to immigrate to. Maybe we'll be looking for somewhere to claim asylum.