Searching for the seat of Totalitarianism in everyday things...

I doubt Cartesian Duality:

I am probably not using the term correctly. But I recall the moment I began doubting Cartesian Duality. I shouldn't use that term. It makes it seem like I've got dog-eared copies of various books sitting on a shelf in a wood-paneled room somewhere. I am talking about the "Mind/Body Split". The notion that there are things "of the mind" and things "of the body" and that the sphere of the mind is "higher" than the base body, and more... on two angles. First, that society reflects that and work "of the mind" is more valuable than base work "of the body". Second, that we will one day be able to separate our "mind" from our "body". I doubt this very much.

I began doubting it, I recall the day, when we were reading Romeo and Juliet in Ninth Grade English class. The teacher, who I despised, was reading one passage from the play, something "bawdy", and she stopped to point out that, "Shakespeare, you see, wasn't always high-minded and noble, he had philosophical soliloquies for the aristocrats in the balcony, but he also had bawdy humor for the peasants in the... [wherever the peasants sat]."

I objected and said, "I think it is presumptuous to assume that the peasants and burghers were uninterested in philosophical pursuits, and that the aristocrats were above laughing at bodily humor." She insisted that this was in fact the case. She went so far as to basically call me a peasant, and claim that I would never understand anyway. Because she was a stupid fucking self-centered bitch-cow who thought that Laurence Fishburne was going to come along any second and offer her the red pill. Sorry, Bitch, I hope your enjoying your after-life as worm food.

I recall in the mid nineties, there were a lot of people who thought we were about a decade away from "virtual reality". This was the (now) quaint notion that we could "download" our brains into a computer and then "download" that onto "the net" and then "download" reality onto a "downloaded" "download"... It was the people who liked the way "download" sounds... which reminds me... I'll get back to it... I ran into a lot of computer nerds from CMU. And it seemed to me at the time that not only were these guys hopelessly... hopelessly naive about the complexity of the mind/body system, they were pretty damn stupid as far as computers were concerned as well. And it's all well and good to yack about "downloading" yourself onto the "Net" and how physical reality is an illusion when your Dad is paying for your two story condo in Shadyside. Whatevs!

There was also this naive, non-sensical, and self-deluded notion that their minds were vastly superior. And they believed (though rarely would they state it explicitly) that when they "downloaded" themselves, they would be the new masters of society. Their brains were just SO AWESOME. So, that's the view of themselves that they had. They were brain jocks... Brain Bullies.

Dude at the Mall:

I had to go to the mall to scout ahead for a meeting tonight. There was this guy there, with his wife and a child. He was dressed totally "straight". He had a mannish shirt and ordinary cargo shorts (very standard attire for Tucson Summers). But he was also carrying a purse. Not some sort of man-purse mind you. A real, genuine, hard-core leather purse. It was styled and everything. It was the sort of purse you'd expect a rich old lady to have. And he also had outrageously long and elaborate clawed fingernails. Perhaps three inches long they were, which doesn't sound that long, but go ahead and look at your index finger and imagine that there's a nail on the end of it as long as the finger itself.

And they weren't just long, they were elaborately decorated. If they weren't on someone's hand (which serves a utilitarian function) they might have been quite pretty. Elaborate fingernails weird me out. It's like taking a cellphone, one that flips open, and wrapping it up in jewel-be-studded leather straps. Then dipping it in gold and wearing it around your neck. When I see someone with fingernails I think, "There's a person I couldn't get along with." Because not only are you saying, "I don't use my hands for anything." You are announcing that you are PROUD of this fact.

So what weirds me out is the presence of two elements of drag-queeniness, devoid of the entire getup. Like, if he was all done up I'd have my ordinary reaction to a drag-queen... Please, please, please don't notice me. Please don't talk to me. Please don't make a "joke" that I have to "laugh" at. Please go away. Please. You're not funny. If you were funny, you wouldn't have to dress like that. If you had anything at all interesting to say, you might say it, but you don't so you have to make some sort of commentary on "gender" that I totally get... and if you just stuck to the notion that gender is arbitrary and that by "crossing over" you are demonstrating that our societal views are non-sensical, you might have something. But you have to play this incredibly uncomfortable game of demanding that I notice that you are doing this, then scolding me for noticing it, but if I don't notice it, YOU POINT IT OUT... and THEN scold me for noticing it anyway... etc...

So, I suppose that he was a draggy type of guy going out in normal straight attire. But after he got used to wearing a purse, he couldn't dispense with it. And as for the nails, if you spend $500 on nails, you wouldn't cut them off to go to the mall.

People who know one thing:

Some people know ONE thing. And they like to show off that they know this ONE thing. For instance did you know that, when used to cut hair, scissors magically become "shears". And did you know that this is really important? Well I found out about this fact around ten or twelve years ago. Someone was cutting someone's hair, and asked if I wanted a haircut too. I said yes. At some point, I mentioned "scissors". She pointedly asked, "What did you just say?" and I followed up, "mumble... something... mumble... scissors... mumble-something." She literally stopped everything she was doing and stared at me, for a good five seconds. I know that doesn't seem like long, but try it the next time you are talking to someone. Just stare at them angrily for five seconds.

Then she said, "I didn't just hear that."

And I said, "Okay," and dropped it.

Now this was one of those authority-grabbing grabbing moments where I am supposed to be so horrified at disappointing her in some way that I would have to grovel to know what I had done wrong. "Please! Please tell me what I did wrong, Mommy! Please!" was the kind of response she was expecting. But I said nothing. Because I didn't care. I was getting less and less interested in having this nut-job cut my hair. She went back to aggressively cutting hair.

After an uncomfortable silence, she stopped again, glared at me and all but screamed, "SHEARS!"

I was very uncomfortable. And the guy getting his haircut was as still as a deer in headlights. I didn't say a thing, and I sensed again that I was supposed to have done something VERY WRONG. And I was supposed to be apologizing now, profusely. At this point I had no idea what I had done that was so terrible, so I asked, "Did I do something wrong?"

She threw down her scissors and comb and yelled, "Shears! They're called shears, not scissors!"

"Well," I replied, "They look like scissors to me."

That was the "wrong" thing to say. She actually had to leave the room at this point. No joke. She was red with rage. I was wondering what on Earth had happened to her that this semantic point was so unbelievably important to her. I was trying to conjure up the complicated situation in which referring to scissors as "scissors" instead of as "shears" could get someone killed.

MacGyver: Give me those scissors!

MacGyver: I said scissors, these are shears, you stupid...

BOOOOOM!

Later on, she insisted, and I mean insisted that I refer to her scissors as shears. She held them out to me and asked, "What am I holding in my hand?"

...

"WHAT... am I holding... in my hand?"

She was demanding that I say "shears" or she wouldn't cut my hair. And believe you me, I was fine with her not cutting my hair at this point. Especially since she had offered to cut it at a discount from what she imagined a fair price was... I mean, this wasn't even a FREE haircut. It wasn't even a good deal. And I had to drink Mussolini's Castor Oil AND pay $15 to get it?

No thanks... Scissors, baby, and 2+2=4. And we've ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia.