This is not a comics post. This is a current events post. As such, it requires a disclaimer. I do not speak for the US Air Force. I can not presume to speak for any other member of the armed forces except for myself. However, I've been in so long that it's impossible to speak from any other point of view than as a member. So take this as my personal experience, my personal speculation and not anyone else's opinion or the official line.
Like every other American old enough to remember the day, I have a September 11th story. It's one of those things that only ever seems to come up in military conversation, so I've related it to few civilians. To be honest, I'm not really comfortable relating it to civilians. That's not because it's such an intense, emotional experience that only another military member can understand it. It's because the story is humorous.
If that bothers you a lot because of your own experience, I won't be hurt if you stop reading now.
I'd been in the Air Force a full year by that point and was at my first duty station. It was my first permanent assignment, but the primary mission of the base was training. Because my first career field had been an extremely poor choice I was working in the dorms while I waited on my retraining paperwork. The week prior the Command Chief for the Wing had made a surprise visit and been shown the worst three rooms in the dorm by the dorm manager. So Tuesday, September 11th, we were scheduled to have the Command Chief and ALL of the First Sergeants come to the dorm to inspect.
I was making sure the common areas were neat when the second plane hit. There were three or four people watching television in the dayroom, transfixed by the sight. It didn't register as anything more than a very foolish pilot to me (and as the spectacularly poor career choice had been Air Traffic Control, this was easy to believe), and I couldn't do anything about it so I continued with my work. I had no idea how big this was until an ALS (Airman Leadership School, which was held on the first floor of this multipurpose building) student tapped me on the shoulder and told me the Pentagon had been hit. He took my ID (which he should not have done) and assigned me to guard the door to the dorms. For the rest of the day, the biggest worry on my mind was getting my ID back.
I spent most of that day in front of that door, checking identification and observing the first true military crisis since the beginning of my career. It remains the most absurd experience of my life. People ran in and out to get things, my instructions changed at least five times, I helped enact baffling security measures, I painstakingly examined the orders of hungry foreign officers, and I witnessed what may be the most mind-boggling decision ever made in military history.
The decision to inspect the dormitories, as scheduled, on Tuesday September 11th, 2001.
We were all sure this was canceled. Anyone with a command position would surely be involved in important decisions. Everyone was running in the dorms to grab their equipment before rushing back to work and the bay orderlies were all occupied by security, so all the cleaning done over the weekend was ruined. I was iron-clad certain of one thing when I started to guard the door, and that was that I would not see the Chief that day.
Then the First Sergeants started filing in. The First Sergeants from all the Squadrons that shared this dorm. One by one, they came. One by one, they cheerfully set their coffee cups down and showed me their IDs. Once by one they went past me into the common areas. I was incredulous. So were they, but they were expected to be there and no one had canceled. Even then I personally assumed the Chief had been so busy she didn't prioritize calling off the pointless nitpicking of our living quarters. It was the shock of my life when she showed up and asked what I'd do if someone didn't have any ID. The more important decisions had been made and now the highest ranking enlisted person on the base was smiling and ready to not only look at clean dorm rooms but grill unsuspecting door guards about security procedures.
I tell that story whenever I think an Airman is making too many assumptions about leadership. I always get a mixture of disbelief and laughter.
It really is one of the most amazing stories I have, but it feels weird to tell it. Most Americans have Sept. 11th stories that are deeply emotional. They describe horror, despair, unity, and hope. Our younger Airmen tell their stories like my mother's generation described JFK's death. Everyone remembers where they were, and everyone remembers feeling the same things.
I and a lot of the people who had begun their career by that point have different types of stories. The unity was there before, it's always been there because that's part of being in the military. We have stories with sadness, fear and hope like our civilian counterparts but a lot more of us tell those stories with wry humor and pride. Military culture cultivates an emotional distance that a lot of civilian culture doesn't seem too. It surfaces in that famous gallows humor where you joke equally about the deaths of your enemies, your friends and yourself.
It seems very cold and impersonal to the uninitiated. Many people may find it horrifying, but it's a necessity to the sort of work we do.
Today, we had a mass briefing for the squadron. We're doing a big training exercise, it's not a real mission but it's something we've been preparing for a long time. We went in early, and before the briefing I heard someone asking if anyone had heard Osama Bin Laden was dead. One row down there was a Captain who cynically interjected "allegedly dead."
I grinned at him. "He's been allegedly dead for years sir, we might as well take this one."
This weak joke got a chuckle out of him.
After the briefing, the Group Commander got up to give us a pre-exercise pep talk. As part of his icebreaker, he announced that Bin Laden was dead. We dutifully clapped and cheered. Then he went on with his business, and told us what he expected from us during this exercise. And we were on with our business, discussing this during breaks and while waiting in line like we discussed any piece of news.
I know some of you think we're monsters, and no doubt I'll get a few people in my comments anxious to discuss American policy and the worthlessness of this one deed, and the wickedness of revenge, and what a terrible person I am for making a joke about the rumor. And I also know some of you are troop-boosters, ready to give me some words of encouragement and talk about closure, and relief, and maybe some sense of joy from it.
Really, both sides make me cringe because I can see them both philosophically but I get the intense feeling neither side can see where my own reaction is coming from. Not only that, not many people seem to think too deeply about this group of SEALs. If they're like any other military office I've seem, they probably come from wildly different backgrounds and have opinions that cross the political spectrum. And they maintain that vital emotional distance in the face of the most intense circumstances I can imagine. They are almost certainly not perfect human beings, but rather a mixture of admirable and objectionable character traits. I have no way of knowing whether they did everything right or anything right at all.
The conversation in the office mostly revolved around them, and what might have happened that led to a death rather than a capture. It was mostly theoretical, reserved, and distanced despite the intensity of emotion below the surface. And it was done during moments of downtime, because just like on Sept. 11th and every day since we had work to do.
Showing posts with label culture shock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture shock. Show all posts
Monday, May 02, 2011
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Nostalgiapost 2009: I hardly considered myself a troublemaker at that age...
What's Wrong With 'Meep'?
What really got me thinking was the end of the article:
I was humming the tune to one of them as Danny and I were playing one afternoon, and he starts to sing "Oh my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." which took me by surprise. The song I'd been humming was about violently murdering your teacher in response to corporal punishment.
Danny, having been the homeschooled kid and not attending recess or summer camp (Indeed, his father was so strictly religious he didn't attend Vacation Bible Camp, which was the summer day camp in which I learned many sinful facts between scripture lessons. We didn't get up to anything naughty, but damned if we didn't talk about it when the teacher wasn't looking), was completely unaware of any other version of the song. I was one of few children who played with him, and I was also one of the last people I knew to find out the naughty version of anything so I was only too happy to enlighten him.
I'd learned the song myself on the sidelines of a dozen cub scout gatherings to which I'd been dragged because of my mother's commitment to an active role in raising her children. The loaded forty-four song, as I'd come to think of it, was just one of many nuggets of Dark Wisdom gleaned from my brother and his friends. I also learned that Little Girls are effectively invisible when they sit down and pretend to focus all of their attention on combing doll hair.
But I digress. As it happened, Danny was only too happy to sing the new song he learned near where his father could hear. The next thing I know Danny's father is talking to either me or my mother (it's not quite clear in my memory, though his face is) about the kind of violence his children can pick up from other children, and that that is why he homeschools.
I believe that was the last time I ever saw Danny outside of school until he went to college.
It was the first time I ever stopped to think about the other lyrics, and the first time I realized that what I'd been singing for a long time about a teacher beating one of her students, and the student plotting her murder as revenge. I was never a violent child (I just liked to sing and make the older children laugh) so this realization was like being splashed with cold water in the face. I don't think I sang it as much after thinking about it.
It would be years before I realized just how violent the actual Battle Hymn of the Republic lyrics were.
Just food for thought. Something I'd learned from eavesdropping on Boy Scouts, without touching the Internet, through channels monitored carefully by my puritanical mother, is still several hundred times more sinister than what is now cause for a forum on the dangers of Facebook. Maybe this is a sign kids really are getting less violent as we go on. Or adults are getting more skittish.
DANVERS — It's no surprise that using bad language in school can get you into hot water. But "meep"?Apparently, there was some sort planned disruption using the word so the reaction was to ban the word itself. Fair enough, a study hall full of teenagers repeating "Meep" over an over again would be quite annoying. They could do the same this with 'Yip if they liked, or any word that sounded sufficiently stupid so I don't see how banning a specific word works any better than simply punishing people for the actual annoyance once they get their disruption over with--but hey, I'm not an educator.
Danvers High parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word "meep" at school, they could face suspension.
What really got me thinking was the end of the article:
Murray said the matter should be a wake-up call to parents about how kids are using social networking sites.This whole thing made me think of an incident when I was in grade school. We had a kid in the class, Danny, who was there for gym/art/music and extracurricular events, but was homeschooled for all the academic subjects. He and I used to play after school, until roughly about the time I started teaching him joke songs. You remember the ones from elementary school? When little kids replaced the lyrics of traditional songs with silly, sometimes gross or even violent lyrics just to be bad. We'd sing them at recess and after school, whenever the adults were out of earshot, and giggle to each other about how bad we were. In many cases, I knew the bad lyrics before I ever learned the real lyrics or the name of the actual song.
"I'm not sure parents are aware of what students are getting into on the Facebook sites," Murray said.
In the near future, Murray is planning a student-and-parent forum on the pitfalls of Facebook.
I was humming the tune to one of them as Danny and I were playing one afternoon, and he starts to sing "Oh my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..." which took me by surprise. The song I'd been humming was about violently murdering your teacher in response to corporal punishment.
Danny, having been the homeschooled kid and not attending recess or summer camp (Indeed, his father was so strictly religious he didn't attend Vacation Bible Camp, which was the summer day camp in which I learned many sinful facts between scripture lessons. We didn't get up to anything naughty, but damned if we didn't talk about it when the teacher wasn't looking), was completely unaware of any other version of the song. I was one of few children who played with him, and I was also one of the last people I knew to find out the naughty version of anything so I was only too happy to enlighten him.
I'd learned the song myself on the sidelines of a dozen cub scout gatherings to which I'd been dragged because of my mother's commitment to an active role in raising her children. The loaded forty-four song, as I'd come to think of it, was just one of many nuggets of Dark Wisdom gleaned from my brother and his friends. I also learned that Little Girls are effectively invisible when they sit down and pretend to focus all of their attention on combing doll hair.
But I digress. As it happened, Danny was only too happy to sing the new song he learned near where his father could hear. The next thing I know Danny's father is talking to either me or my mother (it's not quite clear in my memory, though his face is) about the kind of violence his children can pick up from other children, and that that is why he homeschools.
I believe that was the last time I ever saw Danny outside of school until he went to college.
It was the first time I ever stopped to think about the other lyrics, and the first time I realized that what I'd been singing for a long time about a teacher beating one of her students, and the student plotting her murder as revenge. I was never a violent child (I just liked to sing and make the older children laugh) so this realization was like being splashed with cold water in the face. I don't think I sang it as much after thinking about it.
It would be years before I realized just how violent the actual Battle Hymn of the Republic lyrics were.
Just food for thought. Something I'd learned from eavesdropping on Boy Scouts, without touching the Internet, through channels monitored carefully by my puritanical mother, is still several hundred times more sinister than what is now cause for a forum on the dangers of Facebook. Maybe this is a sign kids really are getting less violent as we go on. Or adults are getting more skittish.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Ragnell finally has her "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE?!" moment.
When I told my friends that I was moving to Germany I got the near-universal response that I'd need to learn to be on time for once. "Germans are sticklers about puncuality" everyone from my boss to my aunt claimed, and I would have to be on the dot for once in my life if I was going to fit in with the culture.
What a load of bullshit.
Germans are not always on time. Germans are always on lunch.
Okay, I'm generalizing too much there. I haven't been to all of Germany. Maybe the legendary timeliness came from somewhere near Berlin, or Munich or somewhere further away from the border. Maybe it's a different Germany in the Eifel region. Maybe it's the proximity to France. Maybe there's something in the water. Maybe there's something in the land itself, something lazy and drowsy that seeps up from the roots of the grass and emanates from the trees. I've been told that this region used to be the setting of wars and political strife reaching back to Roman times (Trier was the capital of the freaking Empire for a bit) and leading up to World War II (seriously, in the neighboring village to mine you can see grooves in the archways that were made by Patton's tanks). Maybe the land itself just got sick of all the activity and it made a conscious decision to lull all these pesky humans into a constant state of midday relaxation.
Maybe the people have always been this way. Maybe they figure "We didn't rush our meal to take care of Constantine, we're not rushing it for you". It's not that people are rude, or unreliable. Everyone is very nice and polite. Just.. slow. And you don't want to rush them because it's rude so you sit there and tap your foot and smile and look like a complete spaz for several minutes waiting on them. Maybe there's some Lovecraftian turtle-race beneath the hills that's been hiding among the Germans and that's who I've been dealing with all this time.
Maybe it's just the wine.
Whatever it is, if you're going to the Rhinelamd-Pfalz state in Germany bear in mind it takes two weeks and a very fast car to get anything accomplished--and you can't do anything before 10 or after 6. And don't even think about running around between the hours of 11 and 4 because the entire state seems to be closed.
And the weirdest thing is that things do get done. If you manage by the grace of heaven to catch a tailor or a mechanic (you can try calling ahead, but appointments are theoretical here) and you leave them your uniform or your car overnight it will be finished (usually not too much later than they said it would be), even superbly finished in some places.
But I have no clue when they manage to do this work because they are always closed for the night, or until 10, or for lunch. (This is especially annoying for those of us who workour way into an early grave American hours.) Closing for lunch. Good god, who can do that?
I'm sorry, I though I was all for cultural acceptance but I've found my line. I will never be able to approve of the attitude Germans take towards lunch. Lunch is not supposed to be this way. Lunch is no time to take a break and relax. Lunch is time to get all of the stuff that you couldn't leave work to do done. Lunch is to be taken in shifts so that someone is there to take care of all the lunchtakers who come in while they have a break from the office. You don't just close up the whole fucking country for four hours a day so people can eat! That would be insane.
And who the hell closes on every federal holiday?
And I'm sure Germans consider this sort of behavior healthy or something, but when the hell am I supposed to get anything done?
As someone who spent the last 8 years of her life eating lunch in her car as she shuttled around supposedly lazy southwestern cities accomplishing all the little things one needs to accomplish in order to be a functioning adult this is way too much of an adjustment to make. I can't deal with lunch here. They actually sit down while they eat. My life is piling up while the rest of this country eats. I need a ticket for any US Timezone and I need it sent to me yesterday.
What a load of bullshit.
Germans are not always on time. Germans are always on lunch.
Okay, I'm generalizing too much there. I haven't been to all of Germany. Maybe the legendary timeliness came from somewhere near Berlin, or Munich or somewhere further away from the border. Maybe it's a different Germany in the Eifel region. Maybe it's the proximity to France. Maybe there's something in the water. Maybe there's something in the land itself, something lazy and drowsy that seeps up from the roots of the grass and emanates from the trees. I've been told that this region used to be the setting of wars and political strife reaching back to Roman times (Trier was the capital of the freaking Empire for a bit) and leading up to World War II (seriously, in the neighboring village to mine you can see grooves in the archways that were made by Patton's tanks). Maybe the land itself just got sick of all the activity and it made a conscious decision to lull all these pesky humans into a constant state of midday relaxation.
Maybe the people have always been this way. Maybe they figure "We didn't rush our meal to take care of Constantine, we're not rushing it for you". It's not that people are rude, or unreliable. Everyone is very nice and polite. Just.. slow. And you don't want to rush them because it's rude so you sit there and tap your foot and smile and look like a complete spaz for several minutes waiting on them. Maybe there's some Lovecraftian turtle-race beneath the hills that's been hiding among the Germans and that's who I've been dealing with all this time.
Maybe it's just the wine.
Whatever it is, if you're going to the Rhinelamd-Pfalz state in Germany bear in mind it takes two weeks and a very fast car to get anything accomplished--and you can't do anything before 10 or after 6. And don't even think about running around between the hours of 11 and 4 because the entire state seems to be closed.
And the weirdest thing is that things do get done. If you manage by the grace of heaven to catch a tailor or a mechanic (you can try calling ahead, but appointments are theoretical here) and you leave them your uniform or your car overnight it will be finished (usually not too much later than they said it would be), even superbly finished in some places.
But I have no clue when they manage to do this work because they are always closed for the night, or until 10, or for lunch. (This is especially annoying for those of us who work
I'm sorry, I though I was all for cultural acceptance but I've found my line. I will never be able to approve of the attitude Germans take towards lunch. Lunch is not supposed to be this way. Lunch is no time to take a break and relax. Lunch is time to get all of the stuff that you couldn't leave work to do done. Lunch is to be taken in shifts so that someone is there to take care of all the lunchtakers who come in while they have a break from the office. You don't just close up the whole fucking country for four hours a day so people can eat! That would be insane.
And who the hell closes on every federal holiday?
And I'm sure Germans consider this sort of behavior healthy or something, but when the hell am I supposed to get anything done?
As someone who spent the last 8 years of her life eating lunch in her car as she shuttled around supposedly lazy southwestern cities accomplishing all the little things one needs to accomplish in order to be a functioning adult this is way too much of an adjustment to make. I can't deal with lunch here. They actually sit down while they eat. My life is piling up while the rest of this country eats. I need a ticket for any US Timezone and I need it sent to me yesterday.
Monday, October 06, 2008
And now, a brief moment to lament my exile.
The further I get from tech school the more exhausting I find formal school to be. I had a five-day computer course last week (not counting spending all fucking day at the place on Saturday while those morons set up the network so they could do the test. Something they could've done--I don't know--Friday afternoon while we were all studying our books?!) and it really kicked my ass. Today, I get to work and get moved from my comfortable expected duty to another classroom. Yeesh.
I think not getting my weekly dose of comics is getting to me. I get them by mail and hearsay over the internet. It's not the same. I miss the talking Only one other comic geek in the office, and he only keeps track of Marvel through Wikipedia. And beyond Marvel continuity, he's not much for comics conversation. I can blog, but I'm even farther off timezone from all of you tan before so there's no realtime reaction.
I think I was addicted to Wednesday. It wasn't just reading the comics that was relieving the stress. It was the whole local comic shop experience! The real life social aspect of being a geek was just as important to my mental well being as the stimulation to my imagination. It was vital. Some weeks Wednesday afternoon was the only time I saw a humand being who wasn't a coworker. I relished it. I'm going through withdrawal here.
Every week I'd drive to the shop that afternoon no matter what's happened--tornados, snowstorms, elections--nothing could stop me! I'd rush in and Chris would have my stack in his hands along with some of his recommendations. Chris had the best taste in art. I'd spend anywhere from a few minutes to several hours chatting with a couple of certified geeks about writers and artists, politics, and who last slept with Nightwing. We'd resolve the personal problems of our favorite superheroes, come up with surefire plans that would make comics popular again, determine the best way to write a strong female character, and save the country from its leaders before we each wlked out with our little pamphletts of four-color joy.
I miss that.
I think not getting my weekly dose of comics is getting to me. I get them by mail and hearsay over the internet. It's not the same. I miss the talking Only one other comic geek in the office, and he only keeps track of Marvel through Wikipedia. And beyond Marvel continuity, he's not much for comics conversation. I can blog, but I'm even farther off timezone from all of you tan before so there's no realtime reaction.
I think I was addicted to Wednesday. It wasn't just reading the comics that was relieving the stress. It was the whole local comic shop experience! The real life social aspect of being a geek was just as important to my mental well being as the stimulation to my imagination. It was vital. Some weeks Wednesday afternoon was the only time I saw a humand being who wasn't a coworker. I relished it. I'm going through withdrawal here.
Every week I'd drive to the shop that afternoon no matter what's happened--tornados, snowstorms, elections--nothing could stop me! I'd rush in and Chris would have my stack in his hands along with some of his recommendations. Chris had the best taste in art. I'd spend anywhere from a few minutes to several hours chatting with a couple of certified geeks about writers and artists, politics, and who last slept with Nightwing. We'd resolve the personal problems of our favorite superheroes, come up with surefire plans that would make comics popular again, determine the best way to write a strong female character, and save the country from its leaders before we each wlked out with our little pamphletts of four-color joy.
I miss that.
Friday, August 29, 2008
August 29th
It's the little things that bring on the biggest culture shock sometimes. Like the windows over here. They are awesome and can be configured to be open at the top or opened by the side. They just seem neat until you see there are no screens, which is weird.
And the toilets. Rather than a latch there's a little paddle built into the wall or the back of the toilet that you press on. The toilet in the hotel flushes by way of pressing a little oval right above the seat. (It's perfectly situated to reach back and hit with your elbow while sitting on the toilet, so I suspect it was designed by a woman.) Still, it's just this odd little difference between here and the US.
And then there's the train station newstand. We took the train into Trier to see the Porta Nigra today, and the train station newstand had comic books. Not Archie comics mind you, but All-Star Superman and X-Men issues and Captain America trades. And the one in the Market Square had an entire rack of Manga, like you'd see at a bookstore.
Now, maybe I've just been unlucky but when was the last time you saw comics at a train station or airport newstand in US?
And the toilets. Rather than a latch there's a little paddle built into the wall or the back of the toilet that you press on. The toilet in the hotel flushes by way of pressing a little oval right above the seat. (It's perfectly situated to reach back and hit with your elbow while sitting on the toilet, so I suspect it was designed by a woman.) Still, it's just this odd little difference between here and the US.
And then there's the train station newstand. We took the train into Trier to see the Porta Nigra today, and the train station newstand had comic books. Not Archie comics mind you, but All-Star Superman and X-Men issues and Captain America trades. And the one in the Market Square had an entire rack of Manga, like you'd see at a bookstore.
Now, maybe I've just been unlucky but when was the last time you saw comics at a train station or airport newstand in US?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
This is going to take some adjustment.
It's been about a week since my last update, so let me fill you in on the move. Germany looks remarkably like Lackawanna County in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of trees and gentle mountains and the little living areas are very spaced out. Lots of farmland and wilderness too. My coworker told me this area is known as the "Black Forest." Yes, of Frau Totenkinder fame. I like the climate, it's cold and rainy. Haven't dealt with too many Germans yet--potential landladies excluded--but I can see my work's cut out with me in the new office with all the other transplanted Americans.
I am the only woman in the shop, which isn't too surprising. Depressingly few women go for my career field, I'm only accidentally in it myself. I'm actually one of four women in the building, which is a tad bit disconcerting. That my shop hasn't had a female technician assigned to it for almost three years prior to my arrival is downright infuriating. Something needs to be done about the lack of women in technical career fields.
In the meantime, a shop that is very set in its ways tries to adjust to mixed company. The ground rules about profanity have been laid, but two incidents display the difficulty that still exists here. Last week I found myself without anything to do and so I tried to sort a particularly annoying pile of junk. The boss was quickly disturbed by this and insisted that disorder and chaos were the proper way of the world. For my part I fell into the stereotypical role of the only woman in a small group and continued to arrange things as I saw fit. The rest of the shop was very amused, and started taking bets on what week I'd lose my sanity.
Today in the office they were rearranging the notices and bulletin boards on the wall to accommodate a very large whiteboard. The men were asking each other if it might fit the spot on the wall they'd cleared for it. Now, everyone in this shop carries personal tools attached to their belt depending on what they need the most so this was a perfectly logical thought on my part. I asked if any of them were carrying a tape measure so that we could see before they lifted the heavy thing up.
My boss turned to me and said--and don't get me wrong here, he said it with good humor--"We're GUYS!" because to him maleness implies a lack of logic, organizational skill and good sense. Personally, I think they're using sexism as a excuse not to do their jobs correctly. This was a problem in my last office, but getting put in charge of the shift let me teach some of them not to give in to antimasculine stereotypes and just do the fucking job. I don't have that luxury here, it's the boss who needs the training.
On top of that, they insulted my technical abilities. The rest of the shop joked that I'd be telling them to read the directions next. How on earth did they get the idea that using the proper tool to make their job easier was on the same level as consulting the idiot manual?
That aside, I do like the people there. Very relaxed and full of joking, like a good maintenance shop should be.
And I may have found a place to live. It has a balcony, a landlady who can't pronounce my name, and the option of DSL so the comics community won't be rid of me just because I'm in German Appalachia now.
I am the only woman in the shop, which isn't too surprising. Depressingly few women go for my career field, I'm only accidentally in it myself. I'm actually one of four women in the building, which is a tad bit disconcerting. That my shop hasn't had a female technician assigned to it for almost three years prior to my arrival is downright infuriating. Something needs to be done about the lack of women in technical career fields.
In the meantime, a shop that is very set in its ways tries to adjust to mixed company. The ground rules about profanity have been laid, but two incidents display the difficulty that still exists here. Last week I found myself without anything to do and so I tried to sort a particularly annoying pile of junk. The boss was quickly disturbed by this and insisted that disorder and chaos were the proper way of the world. For my part I fell into the stereotypical role of the only woman in a small group and continued to arrange things as I saw fit. The rest of the shop was very amused, and started taking bets on what week I'd lose my sanity.
Today in the office they were rearranging the notices and bulletin boards on the wall to accommodate a very large whiteboard. The men were asking each other if it might fit the spot on the wall they'd cleared for it. Now, everyone in this shop carries personal tools attached to their belt depending on what they need the most so this was a perfectly logical thought on my part. I asked if any of them were carrying a tape measure so that we could see before they lifted the heavy thing up.
My boss turned to me and said--and don't get me wrong here, he said it with good humor--"We're GUYS!" because to him maleness implies a lack of logic, organizational skill and good sense. Personally, I think they're using sexism as a excuse not to do their jobs correctly. This was a problem in my last office, but getting put in charge of the shift let me teach some of them not to give in to antimasculine stereotypes and just do the fucking job. I don't have that luxury here, it's the boss who needs the training.
On top of that, they insulted my technical abilities. The rest of the shop joked that I'd be telling them to read the directions next. How on earth did they get the idea that using the proper tool to make their job easier was on the same level as consulting the idiot manual?
That aside, I do like the people there. Very relaxed and full of joking, like a good maintenance shop should be.
And I may have found a place to live. It has a balcony, a landlady who can't pronounce my name, and the option of DSL so the comics community won't be rid of me just because I'm in German Appalachia now.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
I STILL aten't dead.
Even though it's been long enough to realize that absolutely nobody is still checking this blog (I double-checked the stats, flatlined at zero for at least a month), that's no excuse not to use it. I have, of course, had many other excuses not to use it in the past few months but it's nearing four in the morning, I've nothing planned in the morning and I'm unable to sleep anyway.
It hasn't been the greatest week for sleep. After several months of professionally and personally preparing for an extended stay overseas, packing up every bit of my life in Oklahoma and sending it to the boat, dragging that furry bastard on a plane ride to Pennsylvania so that my sister can feed him (I can't bring myself to trust anyone in Oklahoma City to care for a cat, there are too many stray cats wandering around. Someone is letting them loose), I came home to discover that my mother has decided to drown me in the best aspects of American Culture before I cross the Atlantic and forget everything here.
Or perhaps she's trying to make me feel better about leaving the country.
You need to understand what I mean by American Culture to truly get what sort of week this has been. When people ask where I'm from, I like to say "Scranton." I say that so that it'll sound like I'm actually from somewhere. I'm not. I'm not even from a town. I grew up in a township. I could never name the mayor of this township, because I wasn't sure (and still aren't sure) that there was one. The most well-known person in the township seemed to be my father. I suspect this was because he was a policeman. Near as I can figure, there were only five policemen in the entire county, and they worked part time for the different municipalities. There are a lot of trees here. And some hills. And on certain nights growing up all of my father's relatives (who lived within two miles of the house) would gather together at dinner and it would end with my parents strumming old country hymns such as "Green Green Grass of Home" and "In the Garden" on ukuleles and forcing the kids to sing along. I went to a school district where, if you were late for school one morning and went to sign in with your excuse it wasn't uncommon to see "Horses got loose" in a previous spot on the sheet. My coworkers at my first job asked if I rode a donkey to school when they found out where I was being taught.
The woods all around where I lived where posted "No Trespassing" signs, and I used to sneak lightly around them worried about some old hillbilly with a shotgun aiming for anyone who crosses his land. I thought I was lucky to not be under fire when I wandered those woods. It was my mother's comparatively upscale upstate New York relatives who finally clued me in that the old hillbilly with the shotgun was my own father, and that the "No Trespassing" signs were to keep hunters from wandering in and mistaking the little brown-haired girl in the brown coat for a deer wandering those woods.
Now, I suppose you could attribute my reluctance to name my home"town" right off when someone asks where I'm from to shame, but really it's just weariness. After so many times of explaining what a township is and just where in the larger-than-it-seems state of Pennsylvania mine might be I just settled on the nearest city as a workable location. I couldn't honestly say I was from Philadelphia or New York, but if asked I could say that Scranton was somewhere in between and leave it at that without too many people trying to find out what a township is.
On the contrary, rather than shame I've encountered more often a strain of that irritating hillbilly pride--irritating because the hillbilly/redneck/hic/yokel/etc pride turns out to be just as judgmental and snobbish as the upper class city stereotype it rails against for being snobbish and judgmental and hypocrisy is just fucking annoying no matter where you find it--in me. This is due to the exact position of where I'm from. With Philadelphia to the south and New York to the north, I never labored under the impression that Scranton was the proverbial "Big City." I knew exactly what a big city looked like and San Antonio, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Chicago, St Louis--none of them impressed me like people figured they would a sheltered hillbilly girl who just joined the military. Indeed, my friend Liz from Wyoming insisted that I was from a city and just didn't know what real country looked like when I wasn't impressed by San Antonio.
But on the other hand, San Antonio is no slouch. Neither are any of the other cities I've seen New Yorker and Los Angelino Airmen turn their noses up at. The idea that San Antonio is a small town or has a small town feel is fucking ridiculous and the expression of that idea only proved to me that a certain Airman's Chicago apartment was just as sheltered as any Wyoming ranch. After the fourth of fifth idiotic Airman from either side, I realized that growing up in the wilderness meat of a megalopolis sandwich had given me a sense of perspective that many people lacked. And to this day I use that sense of perspective to feel superior to country folk and city folk alike.
But I'm rambling again, the point was to illustrate what my mother meant by "American Culture." In the past week and a half I have been to the Pocono Speedway (I got to watch the cars go round and round and round), Gettysburg (which was actually pretty fucking cool and I would advise anyone who sets foot in the United States to visit that town), New York (People where I grew up tend to consider this city something of a large shopping center with a good theater attached, so we made a conscious effort to sightsee this time), Hershey (where we forgot to buy chocolate for my father), and a Toby Keith/Montgomery Gentry concert and I haven't gotten my comics for a few weeks. I've had some fun in all that but I'm pretty fucking tired and I've been pretty fucking busy, and I still have a transatlantic flight to look forward to. And a foreign country. Which I strongly suspect will throw that finely tuned sense of perspective out of whack.
I'm going to Germany, and while I've been both excited and freaked out I find myself with just two main thoughts:
1) I'm so glad my high school didn't offer German lessons. Four years of sleeping through Spanish left me with the embarrassing tendency to nod off whenever I heard the language, which was just plain awkward in San Antonio.
2) The scene in Frankenstein with all the villagers carrying torches and pitchforks. But I'm not sure if that's a sign of prejudice or anxiety.
So, if anyone was wondering why this and my other online projects are so dead this summer, it's because I had bigger and more annoying things going on and it might continue for a bit.
It hasn't been the greatest week for sleep. After several months of professionally and personally preparing for an extended stay overseas, packing up every bit of my life in Oklahoma and sending it to the boat, dragging that furry bastard on a plane ride to Pennsylvania so that my sister can feed him (I can't bring myself to trust anyone in Oklahoma City to care for a cat, there are too many stray cats wandering around. Someone is letting them loose), I came home to discover that my mother has decided to drown me in the best aspects of American Culture before I cross the Atlantic and forget everything here.
Or perhaps she's trying to make me feel better about leaving the country.
You need to understand what I mean by American Culture to truly get what sort of week this has been. When people ask where I'm from, I like to say "Scranton." I say that so that it'll sound like I'm actually from somewhere. I'm not. I'm not even from a town. I grew up in a township. I could never name the mayor of this township, because I wasn't sure (and still aren't sure) that there was one. The most well-known person in the township seemed to be my father. I suspect this was because he was a policeman. Near as I can figure, there were only five policemen in the entire county, and they worked part time for the different municipalities. There are a lot of trees here. And some hills. And on certain nights growing up all of my father's relatives (who lived within two miles of the house) would gather together at dinner and it would end with my parents strumming old country hymns such as "Green Green Grass of Home" and "In the Garden" on ukuleles and forcing the kids to sing along. I went to a school district where, if you were late for school one morning and went to sign in with your excuse it wasn't uncommon to see "Horses got loose" in a previous spot on the sheet. My coworkers at my first job asked if I rode a donkey to school when they found out where I was being taught.
The woods all around where I lived where posted "No Trespassing" signs, and I used to sneak lightly around them worried about some old hillbilly with a shotgun aiming for anyone who crosses his land. I thought I was lucky to not be under fire when I wandered those woods. It was my mother's comparatively upscale upstate New York relatives who finally clued me in that the old hillbilly with the shotgun was my own father, and that the "No Trespassing" signs were to keep hunters from wandering in and mistaking the little brown-haired girl in the brown coat for a deer wandering those woods.
Now, I suppose you could attribute my reluctance to name my home"town" right off when someone asks where I'm from to shame, but really it's just weariness. After so many times of explaining what a township is and just where in the larger-than-it-seems state of Pennsylvania mine might be I just settled on the nearest city as a workable location. I couldn't honestly say I was from Philadelphia or New York, but if asked I could say that Scranton was somewhere in between and leave it at that without too many people trying to find out what a township is.
On the contrary, rather than shame I've encountered more often a strain of that irritating hillbilly pride--irritating because the hillbilly/redneck/hic/yokel/etc pride turns out to be just as judgmental and snobbish as the upper class city stereotype it rails against for being snobbish and judgmental and hypocrisy is just fucking annoying no matter where you find it--in me. This is due to the exact position of where I'm from. With Philadelphia to the south and New York to the north, I never labored under the impression that Scranton was the proverbial "Big City." I knew exactly what a big city looked like and San Antonio, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Chicago, St Louis--none of them impressed me like people figured they would a sheltered hillbilly girl who just joined the military. Indeed, my friend Liz from Wyoming insisted that I was from a city and just didn't know what real country looked like when I wasn't impressed by San Antonio.
But on the other hand, San Antonio is no slouch. Neither are any of the other cities I've seen New Yorker and Los Angelino Airmen turn their noses up at. The idea that San Antonio is a small town or has a small town feel is fucking ridiculous and the expression of that idea only proved to me that a certain Airman's Chicago apartment was just as sheltered as any Wyoming ranch. After the fourth of fifth idiotic Airman from either side, I realized that growing up in the wilderness meat of a megalopolis sandwich had given me a sense of perspective that many people lacked. And to this day I use that sense of perspective to feel superior to country folk and city folk alike.
But I'm rambling again, the point was to illustrate what my mother meant by "American Culture." In the past week and a half I have been to the Pocono Speedway (I got to watch the cars go round and round and round), Gettysburg (which was actually pretty fucking cool and I would advise anyone who sets foot in the United States to visit that town), New York (People where I grew up tend to consider this city something of a large shopping center with a good theater attached, so we made a conscious effort to sightsee this time), Hershey (where we forgot to buy chocolate for my father), and a Toby Keith/Montgomery Gentry concert and I haven't gotten my comics for a few weeks. I've had some fun in all that but I'm pretty fucking tired and I've been pretty fucking busy, and I still have a transatlantic flight to look forward to. And a foreign country. Which I strongly suspect will throw that finely tuned sense of perspective out of whack.
I'm going to Germany, and while I've been both excited and freaked out I find myself with just two main thoughts:
1) I'm so glad my high school didn't offer German lessons. Four years of sleeping through Spanish left me with the embarrassing tendency to nod off whenever I heard the language, which was just plain awkward in San Antonio.
2) The scene in Frankenstein with all the villagers carrying torches and pitchforks. But I'm not sure if that's a sign of prejudice or anxiety.
So, if anyone was wondering why this and my other online projects are so dead this summer, it's because I had bigger and more annoying things going on and it might continue for a bit.
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