Train Wrecks

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 22:09:01

Amy Winehouse quit her tour yesterday. Sarah Palin quit hers today. Train wrecks of a feather?

You know, trying to write while watching TV is almost pointless. Hell, trying to do anything while watching TV is an exercise in futility, at least if the thing on TV is of any interest. And, as I’ve mentioned, my interests are broad. And my ability to focus is binary, either completely on, focused on one thing, or so diffused that the multi-tasked are half-assed; Over the last three years, the internet has given me back the radio broadcasts of my favorite baseball team, all 162 games plus, last year, post-season play. I can barely imagine the pointlessness of watching 162 games on the internet. Over 500 hundred hours glued in place, watching it fully, or spreading my attention across it and several other things at once; sorting laundry was my mom’s activity while she watched her soap operas, because writing articles and watching her soap operas wouldn’t have put food on the table.

Finally, ‘Batman Begins’ ends.

I promise, this’ll (probably) be the last piece on my approach and, well, me, for a while. I’ll get down to actual subjects soon enough. I like politics and girls and comedy and some baseball, and I’ll write on all of that. I’m mostly an analyst. What kind? What kind do you need? One of the great things about the field I’ve found myself in is that it invented the term ‘systems analyst.’ Since then, almost every other field has lifted the title and applied it to a manner of self-inspection. But the neat thing about the original title was that it was a description of a function of mimicry, of emulation, of synthesis ( I keep getting ‘or’ when I type ’of’. Overshooting the row, I guess.)(bloody analyst). In every other field, it’s a title of a definer of the object of the field, or some small portion of its subject material. An ecological analyst, a medical analyst, a financial analyst, all describe functions within their chosen subject.

But the field that invented the term meant it to describe the analysis of other fields, or at least of functional subsets of other fields. Whether the description of the work flow across a manufacturing shop floor, the sales of orders of shoes, tracking the existence of the intangible known as intellectual property, or what enticements best return a subscriber from cancellation, all fields are open to systems analysis, and it’s where I found a calling, so to speak. An interest in almost anything, combined with an ability to focus on that one thing to a degree most people find uncomfortable, perhaps obsessive. And, of course, being able to see that obsession from their point of view, from my point of view when I am not deep in that trance (because, believe me, that’s perhaps the best word for it) allows me to see it for what it is: incredibly productive and yet horribly antisocial.

So anyway, that’s where I find myself, where I’ve been for decades (yep, I’s old. –ish, anyway,) straddling a fence between being a sociable, aw-shucks kind of workaday guy, and being the obsessive (I seem to be obsessed with the word here.)(I also have a hell of a time getting my two fingers to hit the key as I hit the Shift key, so my parens keep coming out as 9 or 0 rather than ( and ), and my sentences often are capitalized.) Straddling as if my jeans are hung up on a barbed-wire fence, and instead of getting to one side or the other, I’m just trying to stand tall enough that my balls not get punctured.

Really, all psychoanalysis and behavioral hoohaa aside, this is a dilemma I carry around all day, the overlay that colors the inner workings of the constant outward observation and the internal compilation of connections and repercussions and interlockingness of …all hell, this is starting (starting?) to sound like the bad ramblings of a freshman’s acid trip. “And it all interconnects, and everything is just a reflection of everything else, and we are he is I am she is you are me and we are all together.” Cootchie-coo.

Amy and Sarah both make me jealous.

Amy, because she’s got one talent, one thing she does spectacularly well. And she’s so awful at everything else that it’s obvious what she should do,. If only she’d get over her disappointment at only being good at one thing, and enjoy the fact that, being that good at that one thing usually excuses you from having to be good at anything else, including, apparently, being good.

Sarah, because 23% of the American adult population looks at her and says, “That’s ME!”. Not “I want to be like her,” or “I could do that.” No, it’s an identification with a generic ‘C’ student, an approach to the world that, like Stuart Smalley, says ‘gosh darn it, I’m good enough, and people like me,’ without any sense of a need to learn, to grow, to understand. And without any comprehension of why they should be liked, or, especially, to understand why she got singled out and raised up.

In both cases, at least they went for it.

Well, better late than never.

882 ~ Wednesday, June 22, 2011 23:27:08