Private individuals have more freedom, generally because their mistakes are often small-time, at best. On the domestic level, and when dealing with errors that result in nothing more than a minor inconvenience, a person has a lot of options when it comes to admitting fault. They could deny everything, or cover their tracks—thus the world will never know which family member left the toilet seat up, or tracked mud into the kitchen. Or, they could own up—knowing that the consequences will be light, or last only a short while. The most irritating response, however, is when a big, flashy admission of fault is brought to bear on the tiniest of offenses.

This usually has to do with the fact that the person making such a big deal about making a mistake is attempting to do it in such a self-aggrandizing way. “There’s no doubt about it, yup I made a mistake. I can admit when I’m wrong, you know—when I blow it, I’m not going to try to make excuses. I did it, and there’s no getting around it, yes indeed.” Yes, a Foghorn Leghorn rant is surely the appropriate response to forgetting to change the toilet paper roll and you certainly deserve a cookie for being so honest about your blunder!

There’s a particular personality type that seems especially prone to the occasional bombastic admission of meager mistakes. These folks tend to live in a constant, rotating circle of blame; a place where things keep going wrong all the time, and it’s always somebody’s fault, and it’s their job to remind those idiots that they really need to do better, next time.

When one of these Blamer makes a huge mistake, they desperately fling the responsibility outward. But of course, they know that nobody’s perfect, they know that a person who never seems to be responsible for anything that’s gone wrong is suspicious—and, of course they’re also highly motivated to prove that they’re not the sort of person who is always looking for scapegoats.

So, it becomes vitally important for them to prove that they can take responsibility for their own mistakes. Which is why they latch on to low-cost errors that nobody really cares about, and why they make such a huge deal about them, because–wow! If that’s how he reacts when he forgets to unload the dishwasher, imagine how sorry he’d be if he did something really bad!

The thing is though, the kind of person who owns up to tiny mistakes in such a grandiose way is a lot like the guy who does the least work when helping someone move: “You guys grab that sofa—don’t worry, I’ll get those cushions for you!” Instead of always somehow managing to avoid the heaviest physical burdens, the Blamer always manages to avoid the weightiest part of the responsibility when something goes wrong.

That’s not the problem, though.

The problem is that the Blamer only does the big-deal owning up in order to justify their efforts to assign blame to others, to find fault with others, to nail down once and for all why their plans are always failing, why their desires are always frustrated, and why they can’t seem to get anything important done. And things never ever just happen by themselves, in the Blamer’s world. There’s no such thing as an unavoidable error. They are the Quincy, M.E.’s of personal interactions: It’s never an accident—it’s always murder. In the confines of a private home, this kind of personality-type is destructive enough; but, in an office setting, people’s livelihoods are at stake.

So, let the grandiose mea culpa over nothing serve as a warning. If you encounter someone who makes a big deal about their own little mistakes, do yourself a favor and keep your distance.

I used to have really strong opinions about music, until I eventually realized that almost all of those opinions were negative. Like many blinkered indie music snobs, I found that lots and lots of songs just pissed me off for no clearly discernable reason. I don’t know exactly why I felt that way; it was automatic.

And that’s a little scary.

Oh sure, I had my arsenal of gripey adjectives: corporate, boring, cookie-cutter, bullshit. But, if I’m honest, when it came to me and music, the emotional response happened first, and the predictable critiques were drafted ex post facto. I didn’t know that I was doing this, of course; I thought I was coolly and dispassionately assessing artistic merit (or lack thereof).

Bullshit.

But the anger I lived with was real. When I eventually realized that I wasn’t Lester Bangs Jr., and that I lacked critical acumen—or even the basic vocabulary of a music critic—I abandoned my rationalizations. But the anger was still there; it just became unmoored from language.

I think we’ve all been blindsided by a particularly effective insult before. Rationally, logically, its content was probably trivial. But, sometimes, someone gets you with a shot that should bounce right off you, but actually really freaking hurts. And though the initial shock might wear off pretty quickly, you find yourself probing the wound for days afterward, because the disproportionate response it brought out of you points to a disturbing fact: You have a weak point that you didn’t know about. Anything that hits you harder than it should sends the same message: You are not as strong as you thought.

“Bad music” was one of the things that got me to consider some pretty uncomfortable truths about myself. For example: If I hated a song that millions of other people seemed to love, then either I knew something that those other people didn’t, or I was missing something blindingly obvious. After realizing that I was no informed connoisseur, the latter option seemed far more likely. In the end, it became clear that my attempts to dress up my emotional responses as thoughtful considerations had more to do with my fear of being thought of as a reactionary dummy than any real intellectual evaluation.

So, that’s why I’m posting Harry Nilsson’s “Jump Into The Fire.” I can’t say I’m a huge fan of his work, but my parents loved him, he died tragically, and he was kind of a fucking maniac. And, since I’ve talked so much about how I tend to like or dislike things without quite knowing why, I thought I might as well put up something that I actually have a reason for enjoying. I mean, the song has basically one verse that gets repeated over and over, but Harry’s vocals just get more and more histrionic until the whole song just breaks. I love vocal performances where the singer goes from just-about-to-completely-lose-it to just-fucking-losing-it. I value that more than any well-built technical performance—even though those can be great, too—it’s just the way I’m wired to respond, I guess.

Whoaaoooaoooao!

It has been so ridiculously busy at work lately that I haven’t been able to think of anything to put here. I mean, so busy that it follows you home at night and sits on your head, and ruins your ability to concentrate.

I’m sorry. I’ll try to be back real soon.

I had nearly forgotten why I had started reading the essay in the first place, which was this jaunty pull-quote:

Some argue, though, that it is actually beta men who are the greatest victims of the current mating chaos: the ones who work hard, act nice, and find themselves searching in vain for potential wives and girlfriends among the hordes of young women besotted by alphas.

I wanted some context for that. Because my first thought upon seeing it was, “Well, I bet the short, pudgy, homely boys who can’t get a date will be happy to know that it’s not all their fault that–wait a minute. Short. Pudgy. Homely. Oh no. No, no–hold on a minute!”

As you might have guessed, that’s a pretty (superficially) accurate description of yours truly here–the guy whose stubby fingers are even now tapping away on the keys of this here pre-war on terror iBook. Frankly, I was mortified.

It’s not for my vanity that I take offense. I may quibble over such reductive terms as “beta man”, but I freely confess the rest. I am fat and homely and short indeed, and much worse besides (I don’t work all that hard, and I am not particularly nice). But, fine: Call me a beta male, plaster a list of my flaws across the billboards of the town, brand me a loser, a loaner, an inadequate waste of protoplasm–I am all that, and less, if you please.

But don’t use me as an excuse for your sex-fearing, pro-early marriage, anti-feminist tracts, dammit.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I would really, really appreciate my “plight” not being used as a cudgel in any attempt to reassert the supposed superiority of 1950’s era sexual values. I happen to think that we’ve made some precious little progress since then, and I’d just as soon not be the putative rational behind rolling back what has been accomplished.

The idea that sexual freedom, even with all its complications and challenges, should be curtailed to create some kind of marriage-granting welfare program for the benefit of toads such as myself is, frankly, horrifying. I’d rather live alone in a cave with touch-sensitive explosives wired to my genitals, than live in the nightmare-world of the essay-writer’s description, where women aren’t allowed to associate with whomever they choose, where any partner I might find myself with is only putting up with me because she’s been shamed into a monogamy of last resort.

What is this, tee-ball? Where everybody gets a trophy no matter how badly they suck? Women are people, not prizes. And if guys like me are alone, it’s usually for one of two reasons: Either they want to be, or they deserve to be. (In some cases, it’s both.) We’re not entitled to anything. Liberty is a human right. Companionship is not.

I disagree with the point of view in this essay, period. And I am additionally disappointed that that point of view is allegedly being promoted for my benefit.

Of course, it’s not about little ol’ beta me; these screeds mostly claim to be fighting for women by wishing for a world where no choices–and, therefore, no bad choices–are possible. And that’s worse.

[Link via Jezebel]

When a plate of pancakes are put in front of me, I can’t not finish them. I don’t know why — I’ve abandoned other meals, why should pancakes be any different? Something about them represents a challenge, perhaps. Or, maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can’t take them home in a doggy-bag, because leftover, unfinished pancakes are disgusting.

This shit is going to kill me, eventually. It’s certainly not doing much for my social relationships, because nothing ruins a good time at breakfast quite like witnessing a man’s grueling struggle against a quick bread. I almost always manage to pack away the last few bites — but at what cost? The end result is a grim thing to witness. Also, bloating.

Of all the things to approach with grit and determination, pancakes are probably the stupidest. And yet, no matter how many times I tell myself, “next time I’ll just get some eggs,” I always blow it.

Maybe I need to take baby steps; perhaps I should just switch to waffles, at first.

Hey former teenagers, do you remember when you were totally into music? I do. It feels like my chest is full of hot burning coals of shame when I think back on those days, but I can’t stop the remembering.

Junior high is when people started asking what kind of music I liked. I said I didn’t know, which was the Wrong Answer. The right answer would have been either “rap” or “rock”, a sign of a cultural sore point that had developed in the face of hip-hop’s rise to the forefront of the popular consciousness. What could I say? I liked Weird Al, and all the stuff they played on America’s Top 40. I was twelve, for god’s sake.

That experience might have had something to do with my approach to music later in life, because I grew to hate the question. I hated the way it reduced the world to two broad categories. I hated the fact that it was not a question about taste, but a demand that one produce one’s cultural bona fides. I hated the racial implications of the question, couching it as an irreconcilable opposition.

A year later though, I started getting into a couple of metal bands, and I figured that was as good a genre as any to admit to enjoying. I was feeling beaten down, and I was willing to settle into an easy answer that I could give people. Then came that one magical detention, when the teacher I was stuck with decided to play Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s on his shitty little boombox.

Well, that was it. I learned it really is okay to pick and choose, that allegiance to categories is an obstacle to happiness. (Or deep depression – I got into The Smiths, at some point.) Unfortunately I got a bit carried away, enjoying the obscure chiefly for its unpopularity, the esoteric mostly for its inaccessibility.

I’ve gotten over that, thankfully. I’m beyond my irrational fear of the quotidian, which is good, but I’ve also lost much of my passion, which is probably not. I do remain mostly unapologetic about the music I like, a sometimes useful hold-over from the old snobby days.

That said, I’d be quite embarrassed if somebody were ever to get a hold of my iPod. If you clicked on the video at the top of this post, you might have an inkling as to why.

I have to admit, I’m a bit cool on Apple’s new wundertoy. And yet, I’m still looking forward to its launch because of the inevitable cavalcade of followers it’s bound to inspire. The serious contenders, the cheap knock-offs, the cynical attempts to cash-in – I can’t wait to see what people will come up with.

The main complaints that people seem to have about the iPad is that it might fall between two stools: It may be too big and clunky when compared to an iPhone, while also being not quite useful enough to supplant the netbook. Be that as it may, the fact that Apple is basically telling all the little consumers out there that tablets are a viable form-factor means that we’ll likely see more people embrace it. And that gets all the other hardware manufacturers dreaming of all the money they could be making selling their own tablets. (And a lot of hardware makers have such devices on the market, already.)

Which is a good thing, because the other big complaint about the iPad is the closed-off, proprietary nature of its software, which allows it to be elegant – but also makes it the best device yet for nickel and diming consumers to death, constantly dunning them for new apps, new content.

It’s a good thing that there’s going to be wave after wave of non-Apple clones of this thing, because at least a few of them will be so, so hackable. The word will get out about which ones are better than others, hobbyists will start cranking out code, prices will slowly start to fall, and then – maybe – it will happen. That dream shared by millions of geeks the world over, might actually come true.

I am referring, of course, to the mass adoption of hand-held, truly general purpose computing. In computer science, general purpose computing is strictly defined as any computer that can follow arbitrary, programmed instructions. (Technically, the iPhone is a general purpose computer, from that point of view.) However, while the chips in an iPhone might be capable of just about anything, the restrictions placed on it by its creators hamper its potential, and betray the spirit of General Purpose.

The iPad is yet another instance of Apple’s dictatorial approach to information technology. This has its advantages, and can lead to some incredibly elegant and reliable products. But, the iPad — its software will be closely monitored, and expanding its capabilities will be costly to the end-user, and ultimately, it still may not do all the things you want, the way you want. We might accept this for a mobile phone (the major carriers and phone manufacturers have trained us not to expect much), but the iPad is half computer; and maybe that’s too much like a computer for us to stand for that sort of thing.

Cheaper, more open knock-offs are bound to emerge. They may never be as popular as the iPad, nor will they ever be as cool, or as easy to use. But any company hoping to seriously compete (or siphon-off the people who can’t afford the “real deal”) will try their damnedest to build open, high-quality machines to face-off against Apple’s new marvel. True wide-spread, hand-held, general purpose computing might actually arise.

And so, the iPad really could change how we think about and use computers.

And it will be all Apple’s fault.