Ghostbusters and the Quest to Become a Man

Men have a long history of infatuation with violence, overactive sex drives and an overwhelming need to spread their progeny.  We enjoy guns and UFC tournaments, have sex twice a day and measure our worth in life by the number of children we're able to sire.  Interestingly (probably only for my own self-awareness) none of this is true for me which, in turn, most likely means I'm not a man.  I'm fine with that, not least because the culture that we live in has constructed ideals of what it means to be a man (and a woman) that are completely idiotic and utterly lacking in any sort of realistic world in which actual people exist.  It probably helps that I don't really buy into the whole machismo thing anyway.  I bring all of this up by way of explaining the long and winding journey my partner and I have been on in order to get pregnant and have our own little bundle of poop and joy.  Part one of the Quest to Become a Man is probably more depressing than I'm willing to hash out currently so let's skip ahead to Part two: Finding out your sperm are stupid.

Towards the end of 2010 I was experiencing some minor pain in my side that was intermittent and barely noticeable.  The only reason I took note was because I have a history with a kidney stone that pretty much derailed an entire summer of my life.  Soon after that I had blood in my urine so off to the doctor I went.  The doc seemed completely unconcerned by the small amount of pain as it truly was a small amount of pain.  Anyone with any first-hand knowledge of kidney stones can tell you "small amount of pain" is not a phrase one would ever use during the process of having a kidney stone.  Instead the doc thought it was most likely some kind of prostate infection (It was, in fact, a kidney stone that I passed December 26, 2010 whilst in the middle of a cross-country trip to visit family, sorry guys!).  An entirely unexpected and unpleasant anal probe later we found ourselves chatting about the prostate and the possible problems an infection can cause.  I asked whether or not that can mess with two people's ability to get pregnant (we had already been trying for a year at this point, which is the magic number for most doctors and insurance people to start figuring out if anything is wrong).  And so began my quest.

The doc's instructions of collecting a sample of sperm were thorough and basically stressed that it is a time sensitive and procedurally sensitive process.  Get it to the hospital in 30 minutes and for god's sake don't miss.   We're talking about your standard pissing cup they hand out at the hospital mind you so right away you are questioning how it's even possible to fill this thing and if you don't, what is wrong with you.  It's essentially set up to make you feel like a failure even after you have successfully completed the procedure and delivered your sperm on time.  The best part is walking through the hospital with a clear plastic bag in which a clear plastic bottle with a sample of your sperm resides.  I wasn't shaking any hands or giving out high-fives.  My mission was simple: keep my eyes forward, walk fast and make it to the lab with as little fanfare as possible.  Thankfully this first time was relatively painless.  When the doc called a week or two later with the results he was sounding appropriately concerned and delivered the news that my analysis came back with some issues and he was referring me to a specialist.  Apparently, along with some lower than normal numbers my sperm are fond of swimming in circles and doing a whole lot of nothing.  Which is to say, they are about as stupid as thinking this whole business really is a quest to become a man.

Round two with the urologist for talking about my sperm came with another surprising anal probe (apparently even mentioning the fact that a previous doctor thought there was something wrong with my prostate, however incorrect, was an open invitation for him to make sure) and a request from the doc that I give a second sample for him so he can have some comparative data to talk about when next we meet.  Round two sperm collection did not go as smoothly as round one, of course, because that would require me to exist in an alternate universe in which I was not required to experience the more embarrassing things in life.

After a fair amount of runaround by the hospital as to where I was supposed to be delivering my sperm after collection I enjoyed the pleasure of being able to deliver said sperm in the company of others.  The nurse was with a few other people, one of which was an impressionable young girl; a situation in which my superbly honed instincts told me I would surely be waiting until this child was done getting blood drawn and out of sight before the nurse took care of my sperm.  Nope.  Instead she brought me into the next "room" (read: behind a mobile partition) and proceeded to ask me in a less than discrete manner a number of questions that made it more than obvious what I was there for.  My favorite was something along the lines of, "Did you collect this sample through masturbation without the use of any lubricants, spermicides, or condoms and were you able to collect all of your ejaculate in this vial."  She emphasized the words, masturbation, spermicides and ejaculate which puzzled me greatly but there I was.  After completing the questionnaire and signing the paper (because, ya know, signatures make everything official and more professional) I exited the "room" to realize that it wasn't just the young girl getting blood drawn.  Every seat was filled and every eye was on me.  I felt like I should say something or apologize or something.  Instead I just flashed an assuredly creepy looking smile and exited to go take care of some paperwork.  It was then I noticed the unfortunate shirt choice of the day bearing this wonderful logo:

To a lesser observer, one might immediately think, "Yes! Ghostbusters!" Unfortunately, at that moment, it was just a confused looking sperm with a no sign over it.  Thus concluded Part two of my quest in which the moral of the story is two-fold: everything they told you in high school about getting pregnant being easy is false and males, never mention your prostate while talking to your doctor lest s/he use it as an excuse to shove her/his hand unceremoniously up your rectum.

An Homage to Space

I would love to become an amateur astronomer.  I've never had a telescope, never lived in an area of the country where the night sky looks anything like this and have only seen a lunar eclipse (that I can remember with any vividness) once but I think I could do it.  Granted, I know nothing about telescopes, or where to point the thing to actually see something but I figure I could find something on the internet about it.  Which brings me to this little list of things in space that I love.  Starting with, perhaps, the most obvious of things in our sky:

The Moon - Our closest celestial neighbor (most of the time) in more ways than one.  I guess the moon is just kind of...well...the moon.  We've all grown up with it, lived with it, seen a gagillion pictures of it but it's also the only place not on this Earth that human beings have ever been.  It's our first step out into a whole new era in human history.  Without this little gem in the night sky, it's possible that life would have never been.  After all, the moon is us, most likely created from a large impact that sent this piece of the Earth sailing billions of years ago.  

Andromeda - Our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor in the cosmos at a mere 2.5 million light years and closing.  Andromeda has always featured in our night sky because it's so bright, but what makes Andromeda so interesting to me is the rate at which it is approaching the Milky Way and our little solar system.  In about 4.5 billion years, the two galaxies are expected to collide.  I have no idea what will happen when the collision occurs, but many scientists expect the galaxies to merge and became a gargantuan eliptical galaxy.  

  Colliding Galaxies - A glimpse into the future, here is a snapshot of a couple of galaxies in the process of collision.  We're actually looking at a couple of things here.  The colliding galaxies are at the top of the picture which, admittedly, looks like a mess of gas and stars and is difficult to distinguish one from the other (which makes sense if they're colliding).  The separate galaxy at the bottom is actually no where near the colliding galaxies and the trail of gas and dust in between the two pictures is somewhere over 100 light years long.

Exoplanets - An artist's rendition of the nearest exoplanet we know of that orbits nearby (about 10.5 light years) Epsilon Eridani.  I'm always overly thrilled by the discovery of new exoplanets, probably because I'm still waiting for that one definite sign of life (flashlight in hand) outside of our own terra firma.  A man can dream...

Horsehead Nebula - Properly known as Barnard 33, the Horsehead Nebula represents a curious and very human tendency to imagine things where they aren't.  I'm not sure if that's because we have a need to find the familiar in the stunningly alien or if it's just some odd sense of vanity left over from thinking that the Earth was the center of the universe, either way, it strikes me that we tend to do the same things with nebulae that we do with clouds on Earth.

Binary Stars - Perhaps because we live and exist in a single star system, I've always been fascinated by the existence of binary star systems.  In this picture we see two white dwarfs orbiting each other at the astonishingly shrinking speed of 321 seconds.  Eventually, they'll merge together and create a new stellar body.  Not all binary systems are doing this, some are in stable orbits and their planetary systems can orbit the gravitational center of the primary star and its companion star or just one of the binary stars.  It's all quite the dance.

Hubble Space Telescope - There's no better way to end this list than by paying homage to the thing that has given humanity its eye into the universe.  Most of the images in this post and most of the images of space we've seen comes from this single object.  Hubble has lifted the veil on nearly 15 billion light years worth of space and time.  It is, in a very real sense, our very own time machine and human knowledge will forever be indebted to it's magical mirrors.  

Yeah, space makes me want to be a poet.

An Homage to Earth and Earthling

I spent a good chunk of time in my formative undergraduate years in the concrete confines of Temple Hall.  Partly because it had a cozy nook at the ground level which I used for various study sessions and last minute reading and also because I minored in Geography.  I know, you thought that was a class you took in middle school, but apparently some people will let you get a degree in the subject. Geography allowed me to take my love of maps and topographic features to new, incredibly geeky, heights.  Here's just a few pictures of some of my favorite and most interesting things on Earth.

Mount Roraima - Is part of a larger plateau that marks the converging borders of Guyana, Brazil and Venezuela.  Mount Roraima is the highest elevation in that plateau chain.  Mountains have shaped the history and spread of human culture for the entirety of our short history on Earth.

Merapi - A stratovolcano in Indonesia known for some nasty eruptions complete with pyroclastic flows.  Beautifully deadly, the Javanese culture believe it to be the home of two spirits, Empu Rama and Empu Permadi. 

Cahokia, Monk's Mound - It may look quaint (and perhaps a bit unspectacular) but Cahokia was an ancient Native American city and this mound is the third largest pyramid in the world (by volume).  Cahokia serves as a reminder that cultures and civilizations use what is available to them.  The Mississippian culture didn't have ready access to iron or stone which is why there was no "iron-age" and their pyramids weren't made of stone which, in turn, is one of the reasons many people thought/think their civilization so "primitive"...this is incorrect.  It's population was larger than London at the time (c. 1250 CE) and the engineering that went into building the city would have rivaled anywhere else in the world.

An artist's rendering of Cahokia in it's prime, Monk's Mound being the big pyramid.  You can also see "woodhenge" on the left of the rendering which is reproduced at the site of Cahokia today.

Masai Mara National Reserve - The most well-known and acclaimed African reserve, Masai Mara also carries the distinction of maintaining a functioning Masai culture in the bounds of the reserve.  It's an interesting  contrast to the American notion of wilderness and nature in National Parks that maintains an absence of human settlement.

Aral Sea - The Aral Sea today is less than a fifth the size it was in the 60's when the Soviet Union began damming rivers that emptied into the sea.  The environmental degradation that resulted from human decisions stands as one of Earth's most poignant reminders of the ability of humans to affect this little planet.

A side by side comparison from 1977, 1989 and 2006.

Mount Washington - As mountains go, Washington isn't particularly high nor does it display any spectacularly original features.  What Washington is home to, however, is some of the most erratic weather ever recorded on Earth.  Temperatures have been recorded as low as -50 (that's without a wind chill) and the mountain held the record for highest surface wind speed at 231 mph from 1934 to 1996.  Things can get hairy up there.  

I imagine, for the majority of human beings, geography isn't the most stimulating of topics but the impact our world has on human interaction and vice versa should remind us of the power that place has on the human psyche.  To this day my first drive up a mountain still stands out in my memory.  It was the middle of summer in Colorado and we were able to drive high enough to find snow sitting on the ground.  I had found my paradise (I love snow).  Anyway, geography (and sometimes even geology...but only sometimes) is cool.  

Disclaimer: Most of the images were just google searched.  I was once told something about being a great writer and stealing from other people and that being okay.  I'm not a great writer so please don't sue me or shut down my little blog.

Classism and Other Easier Ways for White People to Talk Around Racism

Classism [noun] a biased or discriminatory attitude based on distinctions made between social or economic classes.

It seems in our "post-racial" America we are finding more and better ways to circumvent any real conversations about race in the public sphere.  We have a black president now which, apparently, magically alleviates our society of any need for reconciliation.  And because of that faulty assumption, so prevalent in certain corners of public discourse, talking about race in any way that does not conform to "color blind" rhetoric becomes taboo.  Suffice it to say, if you think a "color blind" society would solve all of our problems, you're probably white and spend time convincing yourself and others that you're not racist because you have a black friend.

Classism is the new racism for white America.  And it's a convenient way for white Americans to frame their understanding of inequality because, for an overwhelming number of us, it alleviates our feelings of guilt and/or paranoia over the reality of inequity in this country.  Most of us aren't rich so we can justify becoming righteously indignant over wealth parity.  We can talk about the increasing concentration of wealth (which equals political speech! Thanks Supreme Court!) without having to face our own staggering inability to understand the part we play in the systems of disadvantage we accept.  The word doesn't hit us like racism does.  It doesn't convict us or make us squirm or react so defensively when it is used in our presence.  No, no.  You see, we are the "middle-class" and we are normal, everyday, human beings.  We stand for middle class sensibilities.  We're the backbone of the American economy.

The problem with shifting the conversation from racism to classism so that we can "move beyond" the narrow focus of racism is that classism is still a system of disadvantage and privilege predicated on race.  It might be easier to talk about, it might be less threatening, it might not be full of so many uncomfortable conversations but that's the thing about Euphemism, easier to talk about with a healthy dose of disingenuousness thrown in for the sake of feelings.  I want to stress that I'm in no way implying that classism doesn't exist or that it doesn't disadvantage certain groups of people but I cannot accept arguments and conversations that treat classism as if wealth was the only thing standing between equality and disparity in this country.  Thus, a chart (from an interesting study):

It's pretty clear we're not just talking about wealth as the problem or, more accurately, that wealth is the all encompassing lynch-pin in the understanding of American disparity.  We're talking about red-lining and the lack of inclusion for minorities during the economic recovery of the Great Depression.  We're still talking about systems of disadvantage that have been orchestrated and maintained by white America.  And to a large part, I feel like we're still talking about the pathology of privilege that continues to feed on the fears of middle-class white America.  This well-known scene from Lee Mun Wah's The Color of Fear helps illustrate this pathology a bit:

So, we exist in a culture where the majority culture (power) has been willing to accept and promulgate (sometimes through ignorance) systems of disadvantage in which they readily benefit.  These systems are largely ignored and overlooked by the group that is implementing them because we have the privilege of not having to deal with their consequences and can continue to live in a state of ignorance.  And now, in this most recent economic downturn, white America has been unwittingly hit by these systems that have been used for so long to privilege their own.  We have experienced a piece of the disadvantage that our brothers and sisters of color have been living with and have known about for most, if not all, of their lives (and we've incorrectly placed the blame of this problem on our black president, a bastardization of the truth that so complete that if I were to actually call it racist in public I would be laughed out of the room).  And although it has come primarily in the form of economic hardship, it should provide us with a moment to reflect upon all the systems of advantage and disadvantage we navigate and negotiate in this country every day of our lives.  It provides us with an opportunity to raise our own consciousness, to challenge the fear and paranoia we accept into our narrative and accept the experiences of life in America that those with black skin and red skin and yellow skin have endured.

Yes classism is a legitimate problem.  Yes its reach can be felt across ethnic lines in society.  But to try and talk about classism without also addressing racism does us all a disservice.  It's a convenient way to gloss over the true lay of the land and a white-washing of the realities of experience in America.  It would be easy for us to latch onto classism as the explanation for the current climate of America's economy but my feeling is it would only serve to rob us of the opportunity to identify the fear we've agreed to live with, the fear that keeps us from accepting the voices of American experience that differ wildly from our own.

Jim Tressel, The Game and Paradise Lost

I've not said much about the allegations mounting against Ohio State's football program and coach Jim Tressel.  Partly because, for all the football animosity between Michigan and Ohio State, I respect the rivalry and the whole situation kind of stings.  This rivalry is the reason I became an avid college football fan.  It's why I love the maize and blue.  It is, above all else, the reason my social awareness falls to debilitating depths from September to January.  To overstate what Michigan vs. Ohio State means to college football is not possible.  It is a rivalry steeped in tradition and lore, one that draws it's history from territorial disputes between the states of Michigan and Ohio over the Toledo Strip.  It saw the meteoric rise of one of college football's most respected coaches in Bo Schembechler and set off the Ten-Year War with Woody Hayes at Ohio State.  And most recently the rivalry has resulted in the longest winning streak for Ohio State (7 games) in it's more than 100 year history and herein lies the problem.  It seems that, for about 10 years now, Jim Tressel has been running a program that has been competing on a level so far removed from the loosest standard of fairness that even Bruce Pearl would laugh.

If you want to look at a pretty comprehensive laundry list of Tressel's issues at Ohio State, feel free.  But for me, it's not about the growing landslide of evidence (Sports Illustrated is coming out with even more information this Tuesday), it's about The Game.  For the past seven years Buckeye fans have moved from reveling in Michigan's losses to being bored by Michigan's inability to field a competitive team (which, fine, the Rodriguez era left something to be desired for everyone involved).  And they've done it all by cheating both off the field and on the field.  But perhaps most importantly, they've cheated themselves out of the longest winning streak against Michigan in rivalry history.  Because anyone who's honestly paying attention knows that the Tressel era will forever be painted with this brush.  The NCAA will undoubtedly force the University to vacate a truckload of wins and in the end it's the seven year win streak that'll no longer be a part of the lore of the rivalry.  It's a shame, not least because Michigan still leads the series by 13 wins, or that Michigan's consecutive win record stands at nine and, after the expunging of the Tressel era, Ohio State's will stand at four.  It's a shame because it seems the majority of Buckeye fans and administration at Ohio State seem to be okay with the whole cheating thing (perhaps not endorsing what happened, but ambivalent towards it).  And so, I have to ask myself, what's the point in competing against a rival (or for that matter even considering someone a rival) if they don't want to compete on a level playing field?  It's like trying to play a board game with younger siblings that don't understand why cheating is a problem.  Eventually you stop playing with them until they grow up.

The joke over the past seven years has been that The Game has been uncompetitive because Michigan has failed to win.  The reality is that Ohio State, under Jim Tressel, has sullied the mystique of the rivalry.  An entire decade of Ohio State football (a decade in which they accomplished so much) will forever be marked with a giant red asterisk.  As a Michigan fan proudly indoctrinated from birth I can only share my disappointment that Jim Tressel never found a more important standard to live up to other than winning.

UPDATE: (May 30, 2011) Per the Columbus Dispatch Jim Tressel  has resigned as the Head Football Coach at Ohio State. Obviously I'm taking full credit.

Eliade and the Recollection of Undergraduate Studies

As part of our graduation requirements and exit interview in my undergrad program we were to come prepared with a statement on our understanding of religion.  It was an exercise in reflection as we were also required to write a similar statement when we entered the program.  Mine was relatively short:

Religion is a tool people employ to help them order their world. Whether it is making sense of suffering or explaining that which one does not know, religion and religious thought aids people by providing a framework that allows them to perceive understanding and control of the world in which they live.

The statement was meant to be as value neutral as I could manage while simply stating that religion is essentially utilitarian.  I took pains to make sure that it didn't set religion apart, that there is nothing particularly special about religion.  The reason is wrapped up in the naming of this blog and Mircea Eliade's seminal work The Sacred and the Profane.

In the work Eliade provides an argument for understanding both religious and non-religious experience (or to use the title of the work, the experience of the sacred and profane).  One of his contentions in the work is that non-religious people still act "religiously" when ordering their life or assigning value to specific events.  It is an interesting point as Eliade attempts to differentiate between sacred and profane experience via an understanding that the experience of the profane, while arguably religious in nature, tends to be personal and private and the experience of the sacred tends toward to the communal and becomes ritualized.

I loved Eliade (to be fair, I loved most of what I read in undergrad) but his concept of sacred and profane created a problem for me.  Creating the dichotomy of "sacred" and "profane" naturally created other dichotomies in his work that tended to force divisions in his analysis where I never felt there needed to be.  The part of Eliade's work that tended to embed itself in my thinking, however, was the fact that religious practice and experience is and has been an incredibly ordinary experience in human history.  Instead I choose to subvert Eliade's dichotomy of sacred and profane because I can't help but see the myriad constructions of religious belief and practice throughout the world and acknowledge that religion is not special or unique or at all sacred.  It is simply the experience of different cultures, both privately and publicly, attempting to make sense of life.

I bring all of this up because I'm truly fascinated by the way different people understand their worlds.  Whichever way one approaches the world, I've always thought the key to continued progress as human beings is through understanding of ourselves and those around us.  For myself, religion has played an important role in my life and over time I've come to understand that, in the end, religion is really a story about us.  For my own experience the journey to understand the meaning and purpose of the divine has really been a journey to understand myself.  As Eliade would admit religion is about the stories we tell and the meaning we assign to those stories.  It is, in an oddly peculiar way, what we do as human beings as well.  We tell stories.  We construct our mythologies and assign to those mythologies symbols and rituals to remember them by.  And I wouldn't call that a religious endeavor, I would call that a human compulsion.

What about you internetland?  How do you see the world around us?

Unemployed, Well-Educated, White, Male

As a currently unemployed, well-educated, white, male I love what Tim Wise says in this video.  The myth of entitlement Wise speaks about in the closing minutes of this clip is a powerful witness to the reality of privilege and racism in American society today.  And if I'm honest and I reread the first sentence I just typed, I can point out that a mere three words in to this post I display, without thinking twice, that same pathological entitlement.  Because, you see, I'm just "currently" unemployed.  It would be hard for me (too hard) to believe in a world where unemployment for myself would be an ongoing, persistent, and debilitating issue.  And it's funny because sitting here (in all of my flagrant white privilege) I live in a modest house where I just mowed the grass and have internet access in order to comfortably sit on a seat at a kitchen table so that I can compose this post...white privilege.

It would be a mistake to think Tim's comments are without sympathy for someone in my position.  But Wise isn't addressing the pain of unemployment or the feelings of inadequacy and frustration or the current climate of the world's economic systems.  Wise is giving us a reminder, a proof if you will, that what we think about the unemployed (that they are lazy, that they WANT to be on welfare, that they intend to leach off of the government until our government and society implodes on itself) is a narrative and picture that has been painted by the people in society who look like me.  And as Wise says, "[it] is ironic, and it is sad, and it is tragic," because those are the people that have bought into this myth of meritocracy.  It is that same White Protestant ethic that I can hear in the back of my brain, "god helps those who help themselves," as if all you need to do is work for what you want.

I'm privileged that my days are filled with endless applications and going on the occasional interview.  I'm not excited about it, I'm not happy about it and at times I can feel quite depressed about it, but at least I still have the luxury of searching for employment in a field I would enjoy working.  And never in that process has my status as a natural-born citizen of the United States been questioned (This might have something to do with the fact that I'm not a high profile public figure but I'm also fortunate enough to be white with an acceptable Anglo sounding name).  We need only look at the top rung (THE VERY TOP!) of a hierarchy of public service to see the plague of racism and privilege that continues to permeate this country.  Birthers, was it really the fact that President Obama never released a satisfyingly official document (at least to your unbiased eyes) to assuage your fears of a foreign-born Black Nigerian Muslim with a funny name taking over "our" country or are you just bigots?

There are days I would like to paint myself so that when these people say these things, these people who look like me, I can hide for a few days (at least).  There are days when I wish I could wash off the legacy of slavery and Jim Crowe and reservations and smallpox in blankets and Tuskegee even though I know that would help nothing.  Beyond the laughter President Obama shared at the beginning of his most recent news conference to address the claims of the Birthers, I was honestly and utterly ashamed of myself, of white culture, of privilege, of this country, of all of it and all of us even though I know the shame and the hiding doesn't do anyone much good.  Instead, for now, I'll simply say I am an unemployed, well-educated, white, male and I can admit what our brothers and sisters of color have known and lived with much longer than me, that sometimes it doesn't matter how much you work or how much you know; sometimes the only thing that matters is whether your name sounds white enough or your skin color is light enough.