by LA Powell
Tools to Tommy
Whenever I invite females over to my place (it does happen), I seem to always run into a few shaky scenarios. Like when one of them unwittingly opens the refrigerator to see what goodies my roommates and I have stocked up on, only to be surprised by large amounts of alcohol. Another such situation is when they invariably get curious and run their snoopy eyes through my closet. The dorm rooms’ university students are confined to ensure that this calamity always happens. As they say, this is the high price of low living. Regardless, I am always able to look at this as one of those glass-half-full scenarios. My mind has been opened to viewing life differently after a few semesters of school (and drugs). Filtering life through a sociological lens I’m able to find some amusement when women go through my clothes and chitchat about this and that fashion, squeal in excitement over the fact that they love the color teal, or talk about their inevitable love for Tommy Hilfiger.
I would love to blame the misplace priorities of American collegiate kids on apathy, drugs, or money. But making those kinds of statements would be both wrong and lazy of me. Instead, a more outlandish scapegoat has to be Tommy Hilfiger. But not just Tommy; Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren and all the brands young adults spend all their money on purchasing. For the trouble of keeping up with the Joneses haunts every individual well into adulthood, and this anxiety causes us to place the simple act of showing off our status well above school, work or any other impeding priorities we have.
Here is a quick lesson in the humanities: speaking historically, women have always found it best to find a partner with the greatest amount of power. Momentarily, throughout human history, the only way for men to do this was through the collection of status symbols. In a grossly simplified human inventory these have been things like collarbones from a successful hunt, the largest farm in the state, and the highest degree of education. These trophies have been on display for women to see, in the one sided process of mate selection. Now the fastest way for a woman to assess status of a guy they are interacting with, is to take a look at their left breast pocket.
This is where modern status symbols are regularly displayed. Individuals have their own sentiments toward different brands, but they are all generally similar. Ralph Lauren is better than Old Navy and those French boots with a weird obscure name from Urban Outfitters are classier than anything from Kohls. Essentially, by engaging in this sort of status hierarchy we are acting like our ancestors collecting a bone after a successful hunt. Bringing trophies home for the sake of our own vanity makes us no more civilized than our hunter-gatherer predecessors.
Females are the worst offenders of this. A day wasted at the mall to collect the best assortment of “high status” clothes from expensive boutiques, is simply a day preparing to affirm your own prowess. To women, nothing is more essential than showing your importance to other women. The time spent proving how classy they are and how important they are is completely undermined by the irony of the fact they are behaving just like cavemen.
-Rise above it.
Murder in the elevator
Try engaging in an average American while calling soccer futball and see how awkward it is. We don’t like soccer; moreover we don’t like it when people engage in the behavior of benevolizing it by giving it the name “football.” That is the case with most things. If you try to go against social norms in our culture you will be sure to experience some harsh backlash. There are so many complicated things we take for granted simply because we grew up with them.
Walk a mile in a newly immigrated Frenchman’s pretentiously large size 6 wingtips. So many things that seemed normal to you would instantly become foul as soon as you entered customs. (read: being uncircumcised) These differences could be extrapolated to an even larger extreme simply by changing the region of the country you arrived in. Personal space norms, sociability and individualistic mindset changes dramatically from area to area, often within a single state.
Knowledge of normal behavior in the United States is widespread. And these customs are often very specific. An early episode of candid camera showed participants entering an elevator where everyone aboard was facing backwards. The already discomfited situation of getting on an elevator was made tremendously more odd by a collection of individuals breaking cultural norms. Standing backwards isn’t normal behavior, standing backwards in an elevator may even be on par with burping, farting or talking to oneself in a similarly enclosed space.
As if led by magnets, people’s eyes are conventionally led to one of three places on an elevator: their shoes, the buttons/floor indicator, or the door. With the recent emergence of cell phones in everyday life, more people turn to pulling these out during awkward elevator rides.
You’re not the only one who uses your cell phone to remedy awkward situations. I do it all the time outside of the elevator. When I’m waiting in a public area I often pull my phone out simply to scroll through the contacts so I don’t look like a lonely loser. Walking through crowded areas makes me engage in a similarly weird but comforting (this comfort->5?) behavior. Possibly more nefarious is the use of my phone to avoid confrontations with individuals I have absolutely no interest in talking to. These people may even be my friends, but I often catch myself completely ignoring them by pretending to be too immersed writing an important to talk.
These are all valid situations to pull out a cell phone to diffuse an awkward situation. But why do you try to pretend to make a phone call while immersed in a half ton metal bullet encased in cinderblock? Its not sneaky, and you aren’t fooling anybody, except possibly yourself. That may be okay because often, to feel comfortable, the only person we need to fool is ourselves.
In the late 90’s two psychologist found from a study that humans lie to themselves in three fundamental ways: they view themselves in implausibly positive ways, ------and they believe the future will undoubtedly be better than the present they are experiencing. The latter point is most interesting to me, as it seems that everybody does this. Not just you or me, but lady gaga, lebron james, and even Donald trump as evident in his eagerness to run for the presidency this fall. We all believe we will continue living our lives in earnest, building up wealth and reaching the American dream eventually. Even people in middle age still believe they have time to live this happy fantasy. We cling to this belief because of what we see on television and in the news and what we were taught when we were young. The future must be better than whatever the hell I’m doing right now. If it weren’t, then what would be the point of trying? Knocking humanity down by saying we’re all dirty little fibbers isn’t as farfetched as I am willing to go. “Society’s lowest common denominators” think this way too; alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts all feel as if tomorrow will be a better day than today. Even after experience tells them otherwise. Multiple bottoms are often required before one of these individuals may even think about kicking their habit.
Addicts feel comfort in their specific vice. It soothes the wounds they get from constantly being deflated by everyday life. It isn’t a secret that life can sometimes become a grind, countless things can spring up in the day that would cause enough stress to kill the average nursing home patient. Bills, homework, work, stepping on a Lego, stepping in a pool of water with just your socks on, stepping into dog shit, or a myriad of other events that exist solely to ruin your day. For alcoholics, their device takes the edge off and chunks the weeks in to bearable bite size portions they can handle. More specifically, for every 12 ounces of beer, life gets 5.5% number. The act of drinking is ironically a lie in itself. Insofar, as nobody I have met immediately enjoyed the taste of a cold brew or harsh liquor. Like alcoholics love to lie to themselves about the reasons they drink, so do we about our use of Cell phones in elevators to relieve anxiety in everyday situations. I mean, who really believes that your shitty sprint phone gets service inside the elevator anyways?
Meat the Commies
-L.Powell<
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5-4-12
According to urban legend, during the Independence Day celebrations of 1916 four immigrants got into a mild dispute over who was the most patriotic of the group. Upon each declaring they owned the largest collection of American Flags or drove the newest Model T ford these four decided to settle their differences of opinion over a competition of the most urbane yet idiotic variety: seeing who could consume the most hot dogs at a Nathan’s street vendor cart. Legend is lost in who won the quarrel but that day marked the birth of one of the most reckless traditions in American culture: Competitive hot dog eating competitions.
Every Fourth of July weekend thousands of spectators flock to Coney Island to witness the silly sport of competitive eating. But in America, home of the free land of the foolish, what sport better epitomizes the insatiable, irrational culture we call our own? The rules are simple, a field of twenty contestants is allotted twelve minutes to consume as many hot dugs and buns as possible. The winner is simply whichever contestant chomped down (and kept down) the most at the end of the time limit. I have been informed that condiments are allowed, but not usually used and dipping food into beverages to soften them up is fair game.
American Superstar Joey Chestnutt is the current (and five time) defender of the title, whose reign began in 2007 after defeating former powerhouse Takeru Kobayashi. A Japanese native, Kobayashi has a gluttonous steel trap of a stomach who has sleeved devastating accomplishments like crushing a whopping 69 hot dogs in the allotted twelve minutes and consuming a devastating thirteen hamburgers in one minute. Kobayashi had been the reigning champion for a few years, which to say the least, is pathetic for us Americans. In a country where 34% of its citizens are overweight, it would seem that the one thing we do well is eat. Sadly, this is not the case, because between 2001 and 2006 the lone Japanese eating machine has beaten out Americans year after year for the crown of Nathan’s competitive eating champion.
The interesting contest between these two rivals came in the 2009 Nathan’s competition wherein Chestnutt out-ate Kobayashi by 3 and a half hot dogs, becoming champion with an incredible 68 hot dogs in ten minutes. After the crazed ten minutes of competition while Chestnutt celebrated his victory over his archenemy something magical happened. The crowd erupted into a synchronous U-S-A chant. A glorious celebration to the reclaiming of the throne to an indigenous American citizen. At least for a day, Chestnut became a martyr for everything America embodies: greed, imperialism, prestige, and success. He was the champion of a wholesome, made in America activity. The drunken chants of the crowd are somewhat bothersome if you take a step back from the glory.
In America, there is a view of the American dream. We have norms and deviants of these. Until recently, there was essentially a collective agreement about what the normative American male should be: a white male, in young adulthood, married, with a child, a career, and a white picket fence surrounding his home in suburbia. Any male who did not embody the entirety of these characteristics was essentially a deviant in American culture. Throughout the 60’s and 70’s this ideal of the perfect life began dissolution. Women entered the workforce, minorities became educated, and all of a sudden the American dream changed while through media and culture, the view of the perfect household became relatively unchanged.. This produced more deviants and nonconformist marching to the beat of their own drummer, where now this reductionist view of the white picket fenced majority fell to be an essential non-entity. As far as I can tell, Joey Chestnut embodied most of the characteristics of your parent’s fantasy. Chestnuts victory over the foreign Kobayashi was nothing short of spectacular. But if Joey had been a woman, or black or an elder would the crowd response be anything similar to what it was? Year after year people herd to the Nathan’s competition to commemorate the American tradition. They are reminded how great our country is by being individualistic, granting freedom, and allowing anyone to have a flourishing opportunity of success through capitalism. However, this majestic traditional view of the Nathan’s competition needs to be challenged, it seems that the values they promote are anything but American. The entire feel of the competition seems contrarian to the very ideals they seem to represent.
Greed is probably one of the first qualities foreign citizens would cite if asked to explain American culture. We are a greedy culture. But this greed was supposed to be the basis for an equal application to Adam Smith capitalism. Currently, the corporate capitalism America favors looks nothing like this original view for equal opportunity. In 2004 ESPN (knowing this event would soon be a goldmine) bought the broadcast rights to air the event exclusively on their networks, driving out competitive networks like FOX, NBC and Versus. Millions of people view the event every year, yet no other channel is allowed to compete with ESPN to cover it. An unjust market theft typical to companies like Duke Energy and the Bell phone service. Kobayashi, the superstar, was even granted a special visiting permit on the basis for the fact that he had special “talents” that were worthy of him becoming a citizen. The fact that an individual can gain equal access to American privilege that a natural born citizen is ascribed solely on the fact that he can eat a few hot dogs is definitely an odd one. I assume this was done to bring in viewers people who have heard of Kobayashi in order to increase revenue of the event. The entire expedition of the immigration process to Kobayashi seems silly to me. The fact that the United States government provided special attention to an individual so he could get a normally 3-5 year process reduced to a few weeks seems as if they are simply playing favorites.
The immigration policies in America can be considered loose when compared to other countries. For other societies of the world, membership is not even required to participate in activities they hold. But in the land we hold dear, America, Immigration is a touchy subject. From people who claim to have their job taken by someone foreign, to the couple who can’t get a marriage license because one is not a citizen, everybody has some critique of how we regulate our borders. The United States government’s authoritarian tactic of providing an exception to Kobayashi is ridiculous. For societies to function properly, institutions must be set up to supervise the attainment of common goals. Our government does this with creation and revision of laws. But if we have these laws, but apply or make exceptions to them when we feel like it; what is the point in having them? When the state is allowed to adjust its needs and wants as if what it wishes overrides the public interest, I have a problem. The fascist nature of this move by this organization does not only implicate the Nathan’s competition, but it seems as if some more individuals in power took notes from The Communist Manifesto. Strike two Nathan’s.
The 2010 and 2011 competitions unfortunately did not see Kobayashi as an attendant. The program coordinators attempted to force him to sign an exclusive contract that would allow him to only compete in certain events. The blinding greed of the organization became remiss, as they had officially lost Kobayashi as a competitor. Essentially, the program’s control extending to the system of the competition forced the withdrawal of one of its best participants, opening the field for literally anybody to win now. In typical Marxist form, it is as if the competition is a system that responded to error when one individual reached too much power. Kobayashi, behind Chestnutt, was controlling the field like a typical successful capitalist. He jumped on his opportunity to consume hot dogs and found out that he was quite good at it. Out performing everyone else, he became the sole leader while everyone else struggled for their break. Like the predicted uprising of the underclass, Nathan’s own “industrial reserve army” as an abstract entity, ended his reign of stardom from the competition. A weirdly similar parallel I feel obliged to chalk up as strike three for the now clearly nefarious eating competition.
If Joey Chestnutt were black, maybe the reaction of the crowd to his victory wouldn’t have been so salient. Crowd mentality is a tough cookie to crack, especially in the heat of an event. Especially if said even
t, typically embodies a weird socialist movement that not a soul is aware of. (Maybe a closer examination upon Nathan’s should be conducted, which is why I could train all spring, raise money in the summer, and attend the event on Independence Day.) Nathan’s is a typical event, that millions of people enjoy to watch. It has hundreds of sponsors and thousands of people look forward to the event every year. The innocent political issue underlying Nathan’s drifts over the heads of us all, but like any person who pretends to be smart, I want to be immune to it. The private lens I see the world through is composed of my past experiences, values, and genetics. And in this lens I don’t see socialism and communism as big scary political ideologies, but on the far end of the spectrum of society. Our culture borrows things from communism, as they borrow things from ours, the final results produce the best of both worlds for a smooth runny society. The Hot Dog Eating Championship isn’t a big red monster we should fear, just a well-oiled system who responds to his environment just like any organ in our body. Ultimately, I like Nathan’s, it provides quality entertainment on a beautiful summer celebration, but it may have a lot more like my heart than I ever knew - Just one functioning system within a world of others just like it.
Failed expectations
Writing is hard. You know that, I know that, every college student in America knows that. And I try to follow a few rules when I write, like always preceding a conjunction with a comma. Another rule is to try not to badmouth any part of an industry that has contributed to my livelihood this summer. However, several secrets have to be revealed to the public because, quite frankly, some of this is ridiculous. Understanding my background a little bit will help you see the full problem. I’m a twenty year old student in the south studying social science. I have knowledge of things outside my own field, but nothing that could be considered an expert opinion. When I started writing articles for hire, topics were simple; something in the health niche or a technology post for a blog. However, as time went by I kept getting recruited for projects that seemed like it would require an expert opinion. Yet, I was still the author. If you knew me, you would see that this is a problem.
I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’m a fairly intelligent guy. No stranger to the dean’s list you could say I do my homework (okay maybe I like to toot my horn). However, an employer from Utah’s Department of Transportation recently contacted me to provide a press release explaining a new method of mixing concrete they plan to implement later this year and this struck me as odd. An official state organization putting me in charge of producing an informational press release that would probably be read by hundreds dozens of individuals. I had no idea of anything involved in the field of construction management, yet after a few short hours of researching and writing I turned in a fluffed out three page press release to a very grateful client.
I am an individual who forgets where I put my keys. It took me a year to memorize my own telephone number, and drink large amounts of alcohol daily. I don’t believe I’m currently capable of providing quality, educational writing. But I guess I’m wrong, right? I often have trouble spelling the words weird, restaurant, and Wednesday. I have no idea what an adverb is and until last week thought the American Civil War was fought in the early 20th century. Low self esteem and arrogance are two sides to my coin of self-concept though, because I know that I can write well. I don’t need to stroke my ego with this fact, it’s simply that I thought the field of writing would be a lot more official. Like teams of editors came to the authors bedside and went through his first, second, third and forth drafts in red pen until the finished product was nothing short of perfect. Needless to say, journalism, you have disappointed me.
The emperor has no clothes.
The Collapse of Class
