And that’s fine. I’m sure he’s sick and tired of defending his chosen genre against imputations that all examples of such writing are inescapably, axiomatically inferior to literary fiction; who could blame him for hitting back? But I don’t know if the best way to fight back against snobbish, pretentious, dismissive people is by basically calling them a bunch of pussies:

How certain are you, anyhow, that what you call “unpleasantness” is not a necessary, even crucial, part of our experience? Maybe you should lock yourself up in your heart long enough to work out your actual relationship to matters like shame, loss, envy, panic, brutality, greed, insecurity, loneliness, failure, whatever you find particularly unpleasant. Because that, dimwit, is where you live, especially if you really hate the whole idea of familiarity with such crappy, low-rent feeling states.

Never mind that your average Nine Inch Nails fan would say exactly this sort of thing. And never mind the fact that people who are removed from their own negative feelings are often only able to maintain their distance because their lives are fucking sweet, or that they rightly consider that distance a blessed luxury. That’s not the problem. The problem is that some of these same folks have no difficulty whatsoever in employing this quién es más macho tactic against others on their own, and therefore would assume that you’re not even talking about them in the first place. Because these literary mofos are tough.

Maybe you didn’t like The Road. Huh. You obviously lack the grit and the steely-eyed determination that’s required to crawl your way a through sewer, only to eventually realize just how wonderful the fetid muck you’re buried under actually is.

You might laugh—but I swear to god, I actually read an analysis of The Road that basically hurled that accusation at anyone who didn’t think the book was very good. (And here’s where I want to kick my own ass for not bookmarking that horseshit, but I assumed it was not worth linking to. Ah well.)

There’s plenty of misery in literary fiction—enough, anyway, that it seems a little odd to claim that its readers are a bunch of lily-livered pantywaists who would never embrace a novel that made them consider just how grueling, capricious, demeaning, or insignificant life is. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that there’s more than a few literary fiction fans who look for works that inspire those sorts of feelings.

What separates the genre fan on the make for gut-punching dread from the literary one, is that the latter requires a kind of intellectual imprimatur to be present before they are willing to give themselves over to a work; they need to be flattered, a little bit. Or, I suppose they might say instead that they have an aesthetic standard that must be met if they’re going to take a book seriously; they want artful writing, if they can get it.

Eh, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Then again, what the hell do I know? I just wrote an essay sticking up for the toughness of literary fiction readers—don’t ask me what I think.

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.