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| Last known photo of me happy. 11/8/2016, 4:02pm |
I want to be a care-free person again.
I use "person" instead of "man" to describe myself a lot and it's not because I'm gender nonbinary. Sure, I'm 28 but...I'm not an adult yet. Do I seem like a 'man'? Maybe if I'm older than you. Or if you're enough older than me. But that's not what I see. My generation is not just 'the adulthood starts at 30 generation' to quote Community, but also the utmost infantilized of all since the 'teenager' began sometime in the mid 20th. We are preyed upon for our disposable income but also kept poor so that we cannot spend any income but the disposable. Your investments are no good here. My sister got married and recently bought a house. Somehow she broke the mold that I see all over the place. She's two years younger than me.Also, "traditional" (i.e. "stupid") notions of "being a "man"" are stupid to me, so I can't find that label there, and I wouldn't want to. I consider myself an adult, but not a "man." It's exactly like when someone calls me "Dave." I'm not a Dave. I'm a David. Dig it? I'm an adult but I'm also just a kid, a dude, a chap, a guy, el duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
Why do you think I'm letting my facial hair grow as a marker for how long this God Damned Quarantine has gone on? I usually shave. I prefer that babyfaced look, even as there are aspects of my beard and mustache that I like. (If my cheeks filled in more I have the perfect natural shape to bring muttonchops back in a big way.) Even when I rock the 'stache, though, it's primarily to be retro and silly.
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| Does this look like a Man to you? |
So what's the status I'm lacking? I don't know, and that's not what I'm here to explore in this blog post. So I'll keep this brief. I can't own a house. I've never had a girlfriend or been on a date. I've only gotten my driver's license because it grew to be something that would be much much much more convenient than catching busses or getting rides from my parents. I did it mainly for their convenience; they're adults with important things to do. But otherwise I'd put here "I can't drive." or "I don't have a car."
Catching busses...to the job I didn't seek out yet landed in my lap instead, ahead of my graduating from college with not but nebulous short-term plans in 2014. I could've used a year off to get some stuff done. How much have I accomplished this year?
Whatever it is that is "man" is not a part of my lifestyle. Like being a "person who goes to the gym" or "cyclist." I may ride a bike but I'm no fucking cyclist, capisce? (Apparently that is how 'capiche' is spelled.)
What was I getting at? Oh, yeah. Care-free. In that way I am truly not a "kid" of any kind. Mortality rests visibly upon the mantle that is my troubles, worries and expectations. Thanks, Obama.
So, let's talk about ugly anger, the main inspiration for this post, and what that opening large-fonted text was trying to introduce...
I've been haunted by my own episodes of vitriol lately. And I'm trying to examine why they even come up, in this news-neutral zone where nothing of consequence should even garner a response of severity.
Well, I get pissed off playing video games sometimes. Often, actually. Happens to us all. The swearing just comes out. You know how it works, swear words are some strange magic of language where to utter the syllables, the vowels and consonants, it releases some of that emotion in exclamation. To bottle it up is apparently so bad that the body naturally makes us summon phrases to vent the valve via vice.
Not all games, of course. I can be killed by any number of NPC in Hitman, Assassin's Creed, GTA, Mario or whatever, and it's no skin off my back so much that it's not skin, it's water, and that water is already under the bridge. I might utter a remedial "dammit" for having to redo something, but I'll just as naturally stay silent. But, I can be easily made a sore loser if I'm playing against humans. There are scenarios that I'll respect as a fair effort, i.e. on my part, and scenarios I'll perceive as "bullshit", and the line between the two is so fine you could thread it through a needle that someone micro-sculpted on the head of a pin. A scale so delicate they use it to measure what -- exactly -- a pound is. I couldn't even really map it out, that's how thin that border can be. Who knows what will tip to the vitriolic side!
But the easiest way to be bullshit is if I'm trying to do something in the game that does not concern another person's involvement (Frankly my dear, I don't play games to interact with people*) and I am stopped by some kind of weapon from some kind of person with some kind of notion of playing that way. As if I'm supposed to be interacting with them and not whatever it is I'm doing. I hate that shit. If I'm not in "shoot at me" mode, it can cause me to exclaim the purposefully, knowingly-ironic "Don't fucking shoot at me! That's not what I'm here for!"
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| Pictured: being shot at, but it is what I'm here for |
You know what? There's something about being petty or indignant and totally, selfishly stubborn in an otherwise inconsequential context, that allows me to exercise the emotions...or exorcise? Explore them, at any rate. I'm generally easy-going and creative-problem-solvey in day to day life, so when I feel myself being really up my own ass and teeth-grittingly pissed about something small and fruitless, I have to admit it's nominally interesting. I mean, that's the what and why of this blog post. Don't get me wrong: I dislike it. It's ugly. I'm ugly. It's totally uncharacteristic of me. But it is a characteristic of me. So wherefore? If all I have to better myself is the faculty to introspect, I'm going to look under that rock when the opportunity presents itself. What insects dwell there? If I want to fix, correct, or change something about myself I need to understand it first. Science, you know.
There's levels to it. I can get really worked up in like, Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. when I'm alone (which is the most often how I play those games) but in a group or a party nothing can possibly bother me. My parents see me at my most mentally broken-down and they've worried if I'd get like that in public, but that's not something I worry about because that stuff is diffused around others. Simply being observed changes behavior, just ask any documentarian. There's also powerful energy in being around other people. Skin can change thicknesses. A public persona isn't a lie. There's a truth, that you offload certain things when in different environments of people. Or vice-versa: it's why mob mentality is a thing that can make people monsters**.
My point is, it's not necessarily that I'm less able to be angry around another person, but that there's a spectrum of reaction that goes from "Oh, come on!" around several others, to the other, sentences-compact-with-cusses end, where I may let myself turn ugly around the people with [and for whom I have] unconditional love.
You know how that is; you're your ugliest around the people you love the most, too. Because you're not at all scared of alienating them. Those very special people who can be around your most foul bullshit or screaming saddest, because strong relationships allow for those kinds of emotions. Maybe they check you on your shit, maybe they let you vent, whatever the case may be. Those are the best people.
And, the most extreme end of that reactive spectrum can be when I'm alone, where there's no social buffer and anything can get all the way under my skin. Like difficult challenges against NPCs of all people in Smash Brothers. I can seethe. I can spout a string of grammarless profanities at Falco or Dark Pit or whomever. It's not performative, so I don't know what it is. Maybe it's performative from me to my emotions? To say "hey, you're validated by my expletives"?
Or maybe it's to rub my face in the unpleasantness that is within me. Because that kinda stuff is in all of us, and it's facetious to pretend otherwise? Maybe part of why I allow myself to fall to those places is that, especially now that I've turned a light on, I want to understand or examine or just feel that way, in a sort of controlled environment? I dunno, but it's worth chewing on. Because the anger kind of commandeers my self-awareness and I can't look at myself in a meta way until after the fact. Which is partly why I can move past the feeling rather quickly: when it's over something pointless it can fade in a minute and I'm back to a neutral emotion and a calm state. And then I am back in the driver's seat, and I can turn to Anger and be like "Yo what is wrong with you? Why was that?"
I mean sure, there are times, especially when I'm alone, where frustration begets frustration and I just get miserable, and I'll keep Smashing some Brothers until I hit some arbitrary satisfaction point, like winning against a specific fighter best out of 3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 21. Or playing online match after match until I win one and then I can go to bed. But that's kind of interesting, too, in a strange way. Even if mostly it just deprives me of sleep.
It's interesting because it's wholly unlike my anger towards shit that's worth getting angry about. The righteous despair at inhuman scum like Paul Ryan; I forget exactly why but a handful of years ago I got mega pissed and started wishing republicans like him immense death and torture and pain for what they're inflicting on all of us. Just unholy desires of harm against those who desire unholy harm. Cruelty for the cruel. You know, people whom -- amorally and completely clinically nay, mathematically speaking -- the world would be demonstrably and inarguably better if they stopped existing. Stopped interacting with the world around them in a conscious way. No more. Ceased to be. Expired. This is an ex-parrot!
Scratch those last few sentences: I wouldn't say "you're only good to us dead" because no, they're not even good to us dead. Okay, maybe psychology could benefit slightly from brain examination, and I forgot about mulch, but that's all. And when I say "stopped existing" I mean *blip* and they're not there anymore. Because I'm not violent, and non-violence would be preferable even as a spectator. *Blip!* A rapture for the rapacious.
Anyway... It was a hate-soaked tantrum about Ryan, and probably others. That rat-faced elf bitch? You know, the rat-faced elf bitch, whatever his fucking racist name is. Why is it the racist-est people have racist-ass racist names. It's always so fucking obvious you could cull them in grade school. But that would be prejudiced, and that ain't what we gotta do to those who love to be prejudiced to others...anyway... It was raw rampaging rage towards those people who that day had done something especially shitty and bad. I can't remember what, but close your eyes and throw a dart at their work log and you won't miss. It could have been any day.
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| Raul Pyan |
Anyway anyway... I was around my dad, and I just sunk, kneeling on the hallway floor to see how low I could go. Slamming open the door to my hatred like an undiscovered closet in your house and just checking to see exactly what's in there. And see, unlike getting mad at Mr. Game & Watch, the vibe is totally different. I can lean on self-righteousness, I can legitimately lament; I can address in the moment the guilt I feel for even feeling so angry and hateful, and continue in that mode because the fuel is limitless. Because the target of my disdain is legitimately vile. My anger, my fury, my rage is justified in all ways, even when my behavior is admittedly still inappropriate. (There are always better outlets for anger. Like music.)
A part of me wonders if the petty, pointless anger at fruitless fluff is just a side-effect of "you're actually mad/stressed/upset about something else." Which...could very well be the case? Part of the case? My real anger, my legitimate gripes, and my constant, world-in-the-balance stress is a constant radiation, an intelligent awareness that I simply cannot turn off because it's wired in my vital circuitry. Even vehement escapism doesn't always get the job done, only in dreams. So, it wouldn't surprise me if my useless ugliness is a vent valve for that pent up serious strain.
But there's still a core, primitive emotional distinction. Super Smash Bros. isn't evil. It just presses my curious upsetting buttons, sometimes, for some reasons. Getting shot at by someone with an uncreative username isn't an injustice, it just ticks me off...but for some reason those sparks ignite a gas leak. The anger I feel in those petty situations is vapid, vacant, and vain. Even when it brings up episodes of seething hatred, the source code is different than that noble anger. The sheer gulf between the two versions of those similar emotions is fascinating.
On a slightly separate train of thought: I also wonder if my vitriolic, hateful, curse-y anger aroused from the petty stupid shit*** is such a raw fury and anger because...well...maybe the stuff which truly gets me angry has other channels of expression? So that red-hot "go fucking fuck yourself you fucking piece of shit" hyper-swearing reaction isn't the only place where my brain goes when I'm rightfully pissed...therefore it comes out at stupid shit where it's frankly inappropriate, but nevertheless an area in which that vent can vent?
Like, if the senate votes in favor of [insert your favorite human rights violation here], or like when Net Neutrality is threatened: I get angry, sure, but that anger comes from a justified and valid, and righteous place. But, it also goes into feelings of fear "what if this ruins our lives?" (super fun to have this thought constantly with government, by the way) and feelings of depression, and hopelessness, and existentialism, and so on. And it can also get expressed in the form of jokey, sarcastic, or even vitriolic tweets and other postings. Sure, yeah I tweet angry! I let my fingers fly uncontrollably on the keys so the tweet resembles the rage in which it was written, wher theurejr;'s comstatln;yly mistplesslkspellings all over, but you can sorta read that it's simply calling the legislative branch of our fucking government a fucking bunch of fucking bastard-bitch-piss-shits. But since it's written, I'm not shouting and seething and hurting my voice with a clenched soul as the red mist descends.
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| Nearly literally froze my toes off to kick Ajit Pai square in the nards, 12/7/2017 |
By contrast, if something in a video game ticks me off, there's absolutely zero depression, zero fear, zero {contemplations of my knowingly-unethical decision to eat meat} in the inventory of possible reactions. It can't channel down a flow chart of actions, it just goes straight to "Let's curse a bunch!"
To speak on cursing for a 'graph: best recourse to salve that particular impulse is probably just to figure out good non-swears that sound-alike. I can't do exactly what older generations do, like "son of a biscuit" and so forth. It just sounds silly to the point of not even expressing any anger at all. Although, something like "gosh darn it" might help steer the anger into "hey we're just havin' fun here" territory where the silliness is a diffusive tool. Furthermore, "screw" is still an effective replacement for "fuck." And "COME ON!" is powerful: it works really well as a PG catch-all exclamation. Its intonation is flexible as hell, even allowing for a "the fuck" in the middle of it. It can express a lot without saying much. ...Though regulating speech while Anger is at the controls is a little tricky to implement, and I'm a talkative person.
In real life, though, if I feel a transgression (even just pettily) has been trespassed against me, I can generally remain calm, or reliably civil (which basically allows for a dip into good ol' Midwest passive-aggression.) Say a product doesn't work and needs to be refunded or whatever (bad example, but I fail to think of a specific/good example) -- the agreement of refundability is enough of a cushion to defend my irritation and upset-response, and allows me to not act as irritated or frustrated as I may need to. I can stick to the lawyerly disposition, so to speak. It's like how a client can be emotionally saturated but their lawyer is detached enough to have calm composure and do their law-talking thing in the courtroom, because that lawyer is a conduit of representation for the begrievanced.
...Maybe that's the key in the petty triggers that so enrage me into ugliness. They're unjustified, or unjustifiable emotional responses? I know they're irrational, but I feel them anyway. And maybe I get irritated by that, too: by the fact that I am irritated (without good reason) creates an exponential frustration? I shouldn't be angry, but I'm angry, so fuck you and fuck everything?
Of course, if any of these suppositions -- sentences ending in question marks -- are true: they don't excuse rancid behavior. But it's worth understanding what is true, dig? It's worth knowing the hows and whys and whats of what makes me stupidly angry in order to remedy an effective solution eventually.
Here's a good real-life example that kinda bleeds these two things together; an anecdote that occupies the overlap between "justified upset" and "irrational frustration that just makes me more upset for being upset about it." A case of being angry at something that's both inconsequential and emotionally valid. Of knowing I'm angry, knowing that getting angry isn't going to solve anything, but also knowing that it's okay to feel angry in the situation.
I had to update my iOS recently, which I haven't done since I got my phone. I hate the idea of doing it. I don't fully know why, but I dislike (up to and including 'resent') doing it. Partly because of an irrational fear of losing photos, Voice Memos, Notes, etc. Partly because of that mask of illusion slipping from the sense of ownership over anything digital or connected to the internet, made for you by a benevolent corporate overlord. But mostly because UI changes bother me. Specifically when something is perfectly fine the way it is, but they change it to something worse. Not just unfamiliar, that takes some getting-used-to; but evidently and demonstrably harder to navigate, trickier to use, more complicated than it needs to be or than it used to be. This triggers my ranting, raving, and bitching. And that is exactly what I did. After accepting the reality of updating in a resigned manner, I nonetheless ran into some roadblocks. So we'll get to the post-update frustration after we get to the pre- and mid-update frustrations. That lawyerly disposition is taking over to make sure all the precise details are in order, so as to best explain what was going on and why it infuriated me so...
Pokémon Go, an app I use every day, needed to update one day. This is normal, except this particular update was only compatible with iOS 12 or higher. Well, I don't like to update my phone, so when iOS 12 was brand new I didn't get it ('brand new' means 'potential for bugs', to me) and so my phone has stayed at iOS 11.3 pretty much since I got it in August of 2018. But now I had a reason to update. Nothing until now had forced my hand. I accepted the emojis that looked like [?]'s to me.
So I spent the next couple days prepping for the big 'date: backing up my photos, Voice Memos, and even Notes manually (my Notes are in the iCloud sphere but I emailed them all to myself just because I'm paranoid about losing them, as I once did when my old iPhone broke and I hadn't yet learned what iCloud was or how to even have Contacts saved to it...there's a contact I wish I still had...) And then I spent a lot of time deleting photos from my Camera Roll in order to free up the space needed for the hefty update file.
I hoard photos there, man. Even though they're backed up. Again, paranoia. But moreso, many of them are sorted into albums that I needed to recreate in my archive, just to make sure I could find 'anything I have on my phone' when they're not on my phone anymore. I don't use my phone for music and I don't download that many apps, so most of the space is filled up by pictures. I didn't even have much more than a dozen videos at the time.
I know, I know, part of my anxiety around updating springs from my worries over keeping my own shit, even when that shit is digital. And having lost a fairly significant chunk back when my old phone got busted, I always bristle against the reality that it's all sort of temporary. Even my written ideas. Even my friends' contact information.
So I free up the space the file needs, and I plug my phone into my laptop so that iTunes opens up, and prompts, "Hey there's there's a new version of iOS, wanna update?" and this time, uncharacteristically yet confidently, I click "Yeah dude."
...Except it didn't work. A brand new problem.
You see, when I opted to update via the laptop and iTunes, it then attempted to download the update file for iOS 14.2 to the laptop's storage. Well, turns out the laptop didn't exactly have the 5-7gb needed at that time. I had some stuff I could take off of it onto a flash drive...but moreso, this is my dad's laptop. He had bought a newer one before the pandemic started, and gave this one to me so I'd have a computer to use at my place (my desktop computer was at their house, because I could visit and even stay the night there if I wanted to edit something.) And so I created my own profile and everything and started saving documents and images and funny videos from Twitter to this here laptop, which had less space than it would because all of his files were still on it. But it wasn't an issue. I had a hard drive to use for most things, my Photos library for example.
But when iTunes decided my laptop needed to hold the weight of the update file for my phone, it became an issue. The update couldn't take place, and suddenly a ~5gb chunk was taken out of my laptop. So, I (believe I) tried doing it via the phone next, and then my phone lost ~5gb, separately, and couldn't update either. Another roadblock. I still had some space on the phone; the download was successful, it just wasn't able to install. Oops.
Dear reader, I'm sorry if these details are boring as shit. I gotta get through them.
To tide you over here's a picture of some bee cats:
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| I didn't make this I just enjoy it |
My foolishness was in connecting the iPhone to iTunes to update in the first place. My parents told me they've never updated their phones that way, and I immediately realized why I'd been tricked into this mistake: the only place a notification ever comes up about updating the iOS is iTunes. Every time I plug the phone in to import photos, iTunes opens up, and then a pop-up that I always hit "Cancel" on, about the latest available update. Well, I experience this every month or so for around two years and the brain starts to absorb an idea like a sponge: "iTunes is a place to update the phone." Couple that impression with the notion that when a phone is plugged to a computer there's just something a little more 'official' about the activity, you know? A secure connection for downloading large files. Cables are physical, the connection cannot be interfered with by lack of Wi-Fi or whatever. And I'm a physical media kind of person.
I'd fallen into a trap of my own conditioning.
So my mild, begrudged upset and anxiety over updating my phone becomes anger at myself for doing something stupid and getting into a fine mess, where "trying to do it right" proved to move me forward zero percent. Set me back, in fact. So, justifiably, I'm mad at me, and at the thing that ain't workin'.
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| Just this for hours |
Over the next (what felt like a) couple days, and in phone calls with my parents, we sussed that it failed to install on the computer not due to lack of space, but because with the update file downloaded in both places it couldn't install from either source. Some snag in its order of operations? Doesn't matter what exactly it is, more what it isn't. This made me further distraught. Justifiably so. Especially since the download file could not be found anywhere on the computer by searching through the Finder or Spotlight. Nothing that "existed" that resembled that update file could be located anywhere on the computer via basic investigative means, so I couldn't delete it and free up that space.
My mom told me to not plug the phone back into the computer, despite my thought that I could maybe find the update file through iTunes with the phone connected. This made me upset further, because I felt a solution was being nixed. And the whole problem with the sucked-away 5gb on the computer was being overlooked.
But she was right, and she had the solution: she told me where I could locate the update file on my phone in order to delete it. That was a relief. But, I was still worked up, so it didn't give me the feeling of relief. The solution couldn't instantly calm me down emotionally, even though I instantly grokked it intelligently. So I continued to be irate, though now less-justifiably. I hadn't yet reached the pace or place to calm down.
Her solution continued: delete the update file from the phone, then turn the phone off, on, and re-download the file and install without connecting it to the computer at all. Spoiler alert: this was the correct solution!
But I couldn't stop being upset, even though I'd been shown reasons not to be. Because what about the lost space on the laptop? The un-findable file, now completely moot and worth deleting? She said forget about it for now. I didn't want to hear that, though, since it still felt like a thorn in my side, even though it had been removed for me. I felt the need to vent and bitch further, just be static: to wait to calm down. So I got mad at the fact that I didn't have a reason to be mad, but I still felt mad. I had to interject self-aware isms in between shouts of mental anguish.
The solutions continued: I'd already freed up the space I'd lost on the laptop, and we'd get a hard drive so I could transfer all my dad's files back to his custody, freeing up much more. So even if that file was still lurking like a watch left inside a patient after surgery, I'd have more than enough space for it to be a non-issue.
Plenty more creative-problem-solved solutions than we'd started with. And this was the overlap: We found the thing that works, and myself [my brain] recognized it. But my anger was still in control. I accepted the solutions before my emotions could. So I was both justifiably and un-justifiably upset. Pissed at both petty and legitimate gripes, as well as at myself for the former. A gradient experience instead of a solid color. Cognizant of my own inability to get past it even as I was doing the actions to get past it.
I updated my phone successfully, and by then I was able to calm down completely.
It was a long walk, but this is a much better, more recent example than "Say a product doesn't work and needs to be refunded or whatever..." TL;DR, I got mad at the problem, I got mad at a solution that opted to ignore some of the problem that proved vestigial, and crossing both those thresholds to get fully back to normal took my emotional self longer than my intelligent self.
I didn't play Pokémon Go the next day. Silly though it is to say, Pokémon Go and Niantic Labs hurt my feelings. Not directly. But the situation caused me great mental stress for trivial reasons. Sure, I was busy doing other stuff, and I wanted to wait a few days anyway to catch Pokémon so my streak reset on the day of the week I'm used to...but that urgency wasn't there. The drive, the impulse to open the app never occurred. (Which is par for the course in the cocoon -- Instagram has barely tempted me. App abstinence is possible, y'all.)
Oh, and I still got mad after updating the iPhone. Pokémon Go didn't really seem all that "next gen" but whoop-de-doo, my whole phone's User Interface got a facelift and I don't like it.
I'm irked by iOS 14.2, it made me so mad I hit myself a few times because I feel like I needed some punishment in exchange for the universe answering my wish to fix the UI in Photos, specifically. Because the UI in the Photos app is atrocious. If anything I'm more likely to update my phone the next time there's an update. Because the app in which I organize, organize, organize my memories looks like dogshit now. Here's the raw, ugly, unabridged Notes note I took about my first impressions with the new doo:
- Photos need to be able to be like they were, showing four in a row. Why only three in a row or five in a row but not four? Fucking bitches.
- Photos need to organize the albums vertically by default like they were. Not horizontally, I VIEW IT VERTICALLY BECAUSE THE PHONE IS VERTICAL. FUCK.
- FUCK THE NEWS APP. FUCK THE NEWS WIDGET. KILL YOURSELF NEWS FUCK FUCK NEVER SHOW UOUR FACE TO ME IN ALL OF TIME VEER FOUCKDJDHDHJDJDB FUCK YOU. CHOKE ON MY SHIT.
- Photos - GET RID OF THE FUCKING DARK GRADIENT AT THE TOP OF THE SCREEN IN THE LIBRARY FORMAT. IT’S FUCKING DISTRACTING.
- 💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣💣🧠☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️
- BRING BACK THE ADD TO ALBUM BUTTON RIGHT THERE AT THE BOTTOM BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST USED FUCKINNG FUNCTION OF SELECTING ONE OR MORE PHOTOS UOU GUCKING INSOLENT FUCKS. I HATE YPU.
- CALL “RECENTS” “CAMERA ROLL” AGAIN, THAT’S WHAT IT IS AND THAT’S WHAT I WANT. FUCK YOU ALL.
- JUST LET ME ORGANIZE THE UI OF MY PHOTOS. I FUCKING USE THAT APP MORE THAN ANYTHING. IT NEEDS TK BE COMFORTABLE YOU UNFATHOMABLY EVIL FUCKS
- KEYBOARD IS WORSE THAN BEFORE. WHY.
A few constructive criticisms for the folks at Apple. I even found out you can 'Share' a Note with Apple, so I did. Take these helpful tips into consideration, thanks. Oh, here's some visual aids:
As you can probably glean from the tongue in my cheek, I'm less aggressively-disgusted by all this malarky than I was when I typed that list. Here I am almost a month (wow) later and I've begrudged myself to be calm about it. The UI changes that are legitimate "get used to the differences" differences, I have gotten used to. Even the ones that are a wee bit overcomplicated: like how sometimes I can answer a call and press what used to be "Speaker Phone on/off" and it goes right to speaker phone, but sometimes a dialogue tree opens up and I have to spend one whole second pressing another button that reads "speaker phone", because Apple supposes that perhaps I'd ever want to take them up on this new, third option of playing the audio of a phone call on "Bedroom (2)" which is a bluetooth speaker that I do not own and have never connected to??? Who the fuck lets you suppose, Apple??
But whatever, when it's like that, I'll handle it. The soreness is merely momentary. The more enraging stuff: like Photos presenting my images either 5 across or 3 across but never 4 (the Goldilocks ratio), or how there's a wholly unnecessary and downright redundant "text to recent contacts" row shoving down more commonly-used Photos Actions when there's already a "Messages" button in the 'send to' row... With that sort of stuff...I'm dealing with it, but I'm not "used to it" and I still feel I will never "get used to it."
So I treat the Photos UI like an annoying neighbor you just have to live next to because every time you take a screenshot in Pokémon Go it goes to his printer and he files it away in his house okay this metaphor broke rather quickly, didn't it? But it's the funny kind of absurd, right? Right?
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| Fixed it for you |
Look, I am self-aware about my resistance to change. I also understand that it's a bigger deal for people on the autistic spectrum, so this gives me a reason to be comfortable in being uncomfortable. This is who I am, sometimes. A part of me.
I'm self-aware that I'll get used to new stuff. It's happened enough times. So I could get used to 3 or 5 photos per row...but I don't want to get used to it. I'm allowed to draw lines in the sand, aren't I? The more trivial it is, the easier the line is to draw! Why not just fix these small problems? Show some respect towards others, and some self-respect while we're at it. Why, if you 'just get used to' third-rate bullshit all the time, you know what you get? You get Stephen Colbert losing his teeth in an earlier time slot on a basic network because the audience skews older. You get movies set in New York City where characters eat Papa John's or Pizza Hut. You get the United States of America. So fuck the lack of 4-photos-per row! Bring it back! This is my fit and I'm throwing it, down like a gauntlet.
UI's could really stand to be a tad more customizable, frankly. There's a 'Game Mode' on my TV. For whatever reason, being 'On' means the screen shows more of...the screen. Whether in a video game or on the Apple TV. When it's 'Off' the picture is slightly zoomed in; noticeable in video games because you can see the edges of the frame are...out of the frame. So, I have to turn Game Mode 'On' whenever I turn my TV on. Why can't it just stay on, like how the volume stays set? There's some customizability, but not as much as there ought to be, is the point of that story.
While I'm at it, fuck it: I don't have that many cards to play, so let's slap down the Autistic Card like I'm Yugi Moto about to save the world with a face-down-in-defense-mode: Changing perfectly good UI for no good reason, and/or actively making it worse -- with zero option to alternate or customize between the two -- is ableist. It's indirectly ableist against autistic people. It's not inclusive and it's downright inconsiderate. It's borderline disgusting, if you think about it. Micro-aggressions are like that, innit? Our every days are filled with a million little things nobody thinks about until or unless it inconveniences someone who in some way is lacking some privilege. The best way to be aware of the micro-aggressions we propagate, perpetuate, or even instigate is to hear them called out. So I'm calling this one out. Bad, frivolous user interface changing and customization-rigidity are ableist.
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| Your move. |
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| Feelin' some type of way |
But here's the thing. I don't want to know. I've proven I don't need to know. But the world won't make this concession, and I must accept that. Yes, if there can be a point to this experimental pupating practice, it would be to prove that I am still alive. I can live regardless of what the outcome is. It has no effect, yadda yadda yadda I'll cover this in my next post. But the benefits of this exercise don't really address the fact that I'd really rather not know.
I think I want to learn in a controlled environment, of course. For example where or when or so-that I can't hurt myself in anger; or where I can smash something that I don't mind smashing. Remember, good or bad: I don't want to know! Simple as that folks, I'd like to live pre-November 3rd for as long as possible. I'm stealing time, fuck everyone else! Is that so much to ask, especially in a year when so much time [280 days as of publishing this piece] has been stolen from me?
I'll talk about this in the next post. This one was about anger. The rage without permission, how it makes me what I'm not and how I could try to approach it.
Regardless of outcome I know what my anger says. The thing my heart screams for because it must be done:
Something I need but cannot even conceive of myself, because I'm nonviolent. But something that would 100% make the world an immeasurably better place. And would make me immeasurably less miserable, less hateful, less angry. Sometimes fighting a Level 9 CPU Smash Brother best out of [until I win by two in a row] is not about having anger satisfied, but extinguished. Not rewarded by satisfaction, but unplugged. Y'know? Washed away -- a dump of cold water on the enduring coals that infest my heart.
I recently watched the 1927 silent film The Unknown, which ends with the title card soap-boxing the film's message:
“So…. for Alonzo there was an end to Hate called Death…. and for Nanon, an end to Hate….called Love.”
Dibs on love. And gee, someone who cannot love can only take the other option, aye? Just math.
I've had the idea lately to put a song I find emotionally relevant to a blog post at the end, hidden in the final period of the piece. Incidentally it happens to be a song I hear around some portion of the time spent writing it. The blog post is like a tuning fork for the mind, and the song resonates. But this piece is all about no-subtext, raw exposition. Wearing my thoughts on my sleeve. So I'm embedding it instead. I got hate in me, sure, but also I Got This Love.
— David "The Pants" Hoh
*except my IRL friends, obviously.
**or just reveal white, young sports fans as the monsters they consistently, repeatedly, are. Celebrate a win with a cold beverage and a firm handshake, you animals.
***like a taunt, which is designed to agitate, from some unoriginal gamer tag with a full social security number at the end of it.
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