I have a Klout account I don't check very often, but I occasionally log on for the lulz to see which topics I've been labeled "influential" in.
This week's list:
• Beer
• Cake
• Running
• Crossfit
Yep, Klout is pretty terrible. Except for maybe "beer," I influence absolutely no one on any of those topics, unless no one's had the heart to tell me I've been furiously tweeting about bundts and babkas after taking an occasional Ambien. I hate cake, if you must know (except for ice cream cake). I love pie, though. Especially Briermere Farms pie, which you should try if you ever find yourself on Long Island's East End. And it's on Long Island, not in Long Island. I recommend the raspberry-cherry.
What's also terrible is that I haven't shared enough of my rage online. Especially since angry tweets have been deemed the most influential of all the types of tweets. I struggle regularly between publicly sharing all the feels and not showing my hand, because (as my friend Diane pointed out in her excellent essay about being fired) Hobbes might have been onto something in his assertion that life is nasty, brutish, and short and you should look out for yourself and trust nothing and no one and keep everything close to the chest.
But, according to those who know social media better than I, I've been remiss. So today I go the rage-sharing route and react to this week's Internet affronts. These are simply excerpts of my umbrage. Expansion pack ----> coming soon!
Let's start with the worst show on TV* that's posing as the best show.
I rarely base my assessment of an entire TV series on the pilot alone. If I regularly did that, I would never have have gotten sucked into Game of Thrones or Mad Men, whose premiere episodes didn't speak to me in a way that demanded repeat viewing. Portlandia and Orange Is the New Black, on the other hand — you had me at "hello" (said in your best Pacific-Northwest prison accent).
I admit, my expectations for Netflix's House of Cards were high — partly based on what I had heard from friends/those in the know who had seen it, partly because of Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, partly because of the critical hype. So I plummeted particularly hard and fast to that cold, dead place that is Earth when I watched the first episode last night.
Not only did I feel that the show wasn't deserving of that hype. I was convinced it just had to be a parody of ... something. Because nothing could purposely be this bad. I scrolled all the way to page 5 of my "House of Cards, is this a joke?!" Google search before I became convinced that it was not, in fact, a joke. Some have given it credit for being a somewhat satirical sendup of the Machiavellian machinations in our nation's capital, complete with camp, but I get the impression that the show takes itself very seriously in its supposedly deep commentary on the DC underworld.
I wasn't put off by the dog mercy killing or the politician-wife power haircuts or the breaking of the fourth wall (a technique that worked here to sometimes amusing, mostly irritating effect). My problem was the hackneyed, awful dialogue, the treacly piano score, the one-dimensional characters, the agonizingly drawn-out direction that reminded me of those excruciating early Seinfeld episodes when it would take forever for the laugh track to kick in, the eye-rolling cliches: the office affairs, the fancy cigarette holders (this is Washington, remember!), the go-getter blogger who just wants to blog and pound wine out of a coffee mug and blog and keep Saltines on her bookshelf and blog and sit criss-cross applesauce on her apartment floor because she can't afford chairs because SHE'S A BLOGGER. Nailed it, producers!
Robin Wright said she heard from a reliable DC source that the show is 99 percent spot-on. I'm not discounting its accuracy, but I'm also not sure any of the real DC intrigue (or anything of interest at all) has translated to the small screen, because it's hokey and — with the exception of the sumptuous cinematography— just isn't done well. Everything is so earnestly slick that anything of substance David Fincher and crew are trying to relay just slides out of frame. I wish I could give the show more of a chance, but I don't know if I can sit through another episode, even in Hate-Watch Mode. It's one more instance of Brits Do It Best.
Next we segue to the phenomenon known as the midlife crisis. Because it's apparently going to happen. To all of us.
If you're between the ages of 35 and 55, science says at some point you're going to suffer from a definite "dip in well-being" (i.e., the midlife crisis), but no one has any clue why, and you should only feel OK about succumbing to it if your pocketbook can afford it. That the midlife crisis is going to happen doesn't anger me. That this article told me absolutely nothing useful does.
Shall we continue the choler with these two items that actually just made me really fucking sad?
First, a North Carolina school district decided to ban Ralph Ellison's classic Invisible Man from the district's approved reading list. Even worse than the bizarre 12-page complaint that got this whole thing going was one school board member's assessment that he didn't find "any literary value" in the National Book Award winner. Maybe things aren't totally hopeless here: The board is going to meet again on Wednesday to reconsider the ban. This was only after tons of negative media attention (even from Russia!), but take it or leave it, people.
On the more local front: this brouhaha in Hauppauge, L.I., the next town over from my own. Parents in that school district raised a ruckus at a recent board meeting because 10 children from a nearby homeless shelter have been placed in one of the district's elementary schools. The potentially valid concerns (burgeoning class sizes and the district's apparent lack of transparency) that could have been rationally considered and discussed were nullified by thinly veiled NIMBYism/classism that included such questions such as whether these kids were required to be vaccinated (it's a state law, barring religious exemption), why current students should have to put up with such a "disruptive" learning environment, and whether the "transients" would have to follow the same code of conduct as the other
Getting back to the burgeoning class size issue: It's 10 students, meaning there would be maybe one or two extra students per classroom, assuming they're going to be spread out among the different classrooms (if they're all being placed in the same classroom, let me know ASAP — I'll immediately retract all my misplaced outrage). If a dozen new families had moved into The Hamlet (a country-club community in Commack, not in Hauppauge, but I'm not sure of the Hauppauge equivalent) over the summer, would any of these concerned parents be saying boo about this?
One highly publicized success can't necessarily be simplified and generalized to apply to an entire demographic, but Samantha Garvey's story should at least give everyone pause to consider what the real reservations are about this. Based on many of the Patch and Newsday comments, I know that deep introspection is probably not going to happen, but I'm hopeful enough to think that there will be enough people on the human being side to enable all of the 7-year-olds (not just the ones with a stable roof over their head) to get back to learning their sight words and multiplication tables.
We can wrap it up now by expressing my ire about living in New York, women's struggles in the workplace, and a really dumb comment someone I know made.
There was a little bit of back-and-forth going on this week about living in New York City and its environs. On the one hand, no one can afford to live here and everyone is bitter and sad about it. No, wait: New York is wonderful, bitter and sad people — you just haven't found the right way to live here. (For the record, I agree with many of the points made in both articles. I float somewhere in the middle, unable to afford to live here but not willing to throw in the towel quite yet and head for Wichita.)
What really struck me about Cari Luna's article (the first link) was this:
"But always in the back of my mind lies the thought that we failed. That we could have made it [in New York] if only we'd fought harder to stay, struggled more."
How can women be shoppin' if they're trying so hard all the time to achieve perfection and live up to impossible expectations? Because we keep striving for that. We keep trying to improve the quality of life for ourselves and our families. But it's not going to happen in the current climate. As Tracy Moore points out, "Until childcare is more affordable, until the pay gap is closed, as long as women are doubling the workload by striving and mothering simultaneously while men are not pitching in equally, we're stuck."
I'd add to that that employers need to start recognizing the dynamics of today's challenging work-life balance and not only tolerate it, but embrace it. That means more recruiting of dedicated workers who actually want to work, and more flexible situations (telecommuting, flex time, job sharing) for those people. I kind of get what Marissa Mayer is saying about her telecommuting ban at Yahoo!, but I think it's a short-sighted effort that will only have short-term benefits. Excellent employees who feel respected and valued will give you 150 percent (or some other significant percentage that's more than 100). The real task should be weeding out the slackers, the hangers-on who abuse company time and resources whether they're in the office or working from their hot tub.
But looping back to the whole woman thing: We keep hearing women are making inroads in the workforce. That the gender-pay disparity is decreasing. That maybe that whole glass ceiling thing is just a bunch of hoo-ha.
Then I saw this.
And realized that awareness alone about the pay gap won't necessarily help close it (women's expectations are so low to begin with that we have to fight that before we can fight the gap itself).
And remembered the comment I recently found out someone I know made (I have my pipelines) that he resented being edited by "middle-aged moms." I know. We're the worst.
And then I called it a night, because wow. That's a lot of anger for one day. I hope when I tweet this, you'll be duly influenced!
But first, a final thought...
Despite my — and probably most people's — occasional tendency to steep in this anger and frustration, and to brood about the "forever empty" that Louis C.K. poignantly describes in his observations about smartphones, I'm not angry all the time (though my overuse of all caps suggests otherwise). There's another Hobbes whose world view I ultimately subscribe to — one that's realistic, but also focused on the present and appreciative of the simple, pleasant things in life.
Happy first day of fall.
If you want to see my tweets (angry or otherwise), @WarriorHauswife is where you should go.
Credit: Jenn Gidman; Bill Watterson
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