Speak for Yourself

Has anyone else noticed an escalation in the use of "the second person" in common speech? It's starting to get ridiculous.

Usually, I hear it in interviews and I find it really annoying when people tell me what I would do in a given situation. For example, imagine an interview with a person who has escaped the attack of a mad gunman. Instead of :

"When it happened, I couldn't fight back. I was way too scared -- I hid."

...we often get:

"When the time comes, you just react by hiding. You don't think to fight back. All you can think about is getting away."

I don't? How the hell do you know? What a pathetic attempt head-off accusations this is. It's not that the speaker was too frightened to fight back; it is just he experienced what every human would under the same circumstances.

I understand "fight or flight" and the workings of the reptilian brain, but people do sometimes act heroically in these situations. And, by the way, it is perfectly okay if you were too scared to face down an armed maniac. Admit it, without shame, but do not insinuate what I would have done in your place. Neither one of us knows until the situation occurs.

I'll Just Read the List, Thanks

The Oscars are on tonight, you know. I love movies, but I can't watch the ego brigade. I'll just check the interweb tomorrow and see who won what. But I do have a few random movie thoughts for the occasion:

Thank God John Williams is up for two films for "best score," because he is the only real score writer left, since Jerry Goldsmith (god of all film composers) died, may he rest in peace. Howard Shore is okay. Michael Giacchino is the only score-writer who gives me any glimmer of hope for movie music's future. But the days of Goldsmith, Steiner, Hermann and their ilk are over. If I have to hear one more tom-tom-heavy, three-chord, French horn melodied film score, I might gnash my own teeth to dust. I have spoken.

Terry Pratchett's Cohen the Barbarian and You

Every day of my life is kind of a pursuit of a wish: the wish that my students will grab some of the wisdom that the great minds of literature have set down for them. The juicy apples just dangle there above them, but I can't do the picking and hand them out. It only works if the kids climb the ladder themselves. I can hold the ladder so it doesn't fall, but ... well, you get the tired metaphor.

In high school, I saw myself in Hamlet. I looked at him and I saw a guy who thinks too much,  but, more importantly, I saw that the definition of thinking too much includes thinking one's way straight through the time when one should have acted. That revelation made a big difference in my life. Many have survived various act fives as a result.

Moon Stone Philosophy

I have two "moon stones" on my desk. We got them in Disneyworld this summer -- they were for sale in "Future World" -- or whatever they call it. For a few dollars, you could stuff a bag with as many of them as you were able. My son got about twenty of them.

They are smooth, ebony-black and flat and they're surprisingly powerful magnets. (They are just magnets, by the way, not objects from the moon, in case you are having "one of those days" and you believed that Disney is selling lunar chunks, now. [Though, I suppose in light of Disney's -- as Gulliver often said -- bigness, it is not beyond the realm of possibility].)

That night, in our hotel room, I was watching my son play with them and I grabbed a few. I found myself instantly comforted by them. First, because they had that smooth rock effect. Did you ever carry a smooth river rock when you were kid? -- to rub with a thumb as you walked? That sort of thing.

But the real comfort is the feeling of a very real and invisible force in the palm of my hand.

In what other realm than magnetics can we, the earthbound, feel an invisible force that is undeniable?

Forgetting to Breathe

Yesterday night, around seven o'clock, I stopped breathing.

Don't worry -- it happens to me quite a bit. It's not a "condition" of any kind and my life is never in danger -- I just stop breathing once in awhile. It only takes a handful of seconds before my reptilian brain kicks in to interrupt the other brain departments and inform them that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. It's at that point that I take a deep breath, like a man emerging from a spear-fishing attempt. Once I'm properly oxygenated, I stop for a second to laugh at my silly self.

As I said, this happened last night. It always has to do with music.