Hats

I know that to my legion of good-looking, intelligent, talented, and successful readers out there, my brooding silence has been disappointing. Well, I have no excuse; I'm sure you all have done just swimmingly in my absence. But here's something for today.

Hats. 

I'm nothing near a chapeau connoisseur, nor have I ever been a fashion-conscious person, but I have gradually realized how significant a nice hat is. I never really wore hats until the last couple years; I didn't really see the point. But to my brother's credit, he introduced me to both the utility and class a nice hat can offer. After I bought one, I began to think about what that bit of funny shaped cloth on the head actually means.

Starting from the caveman beginnings of the hat:

Sun hot. Rain falls from high. Head cold in snow. Rock on stick hurt brain. Etc.

Very urgent and self-apparent stimuli have a way of drawing swift redress, even if you haven't figured out the wheel yet.
I imagine that our ancestors very quickly realized that some protection of covering the hair-festooned brain box was a useful endeavor. So sunshades or other wide-brimmed devices (what I think of as hands-free umbrellas) probably came about very soon after men decided to clothe themselves.

Also, the face and head are the way we recognize each other. Even though the differences from face to face tend to be slight from person to person (compared to things like height or build, which can be drastically different) we are programmed to tell people apart with the face and head. Aside from twins, how many people have identical faces? Even identical twins end up with recognizably different faces most of the time. Compare that with how many people have the same first and last name.

Example - think of a person you know by name. What comes to mind immediately? Their face. Adding additional adornment near the thing that people recognize you by is a logical step.

So I'm certain that hats evolved (in parallel with clothing) to assume ceremonial/cosmetic worth as well. Think of skulls, bones, or other sorts of adornments. Think of ceremonial headdresses.

Okay, I'm going to skip to more anecdotes.

How do you recognize a Texan? Hat:

Spartan? Helmets (Yes, I know, it's actually a Corinthian helmet, used by dozens of distinct city states, but whatever):

Mariachi band? Sombreros:

German Wehrmacht circa 1916-1945? Helmet:

Darth Vader? Helmet:

Losers? Flat brim ball cap:

Knights would fly the scarf or handkerchief of a woman (a lady's favor) from their helmet.

Further anecdote - there are some unfortunate titles people sometimes stereotype Arabs/Middle Easterners with - towelheads, ragheads, etc. (Maybe they call our soldiers urnheads. Who knows).

I could go on, but I think the point is clear enough. Hats have transcended simple utility. They are now fashion statements and identifiers. Think about people with hats marked with their favorite sports team, or a brand name. Wearing jerseys around is considered pretty tacky, but a baseball cap is generally okay.

However, I must mourn the hat's loss of ground in American culture. It used to be that a man or woman would not consider themselves fully dressed unless they had a hat on the head. Picture from the Great Depression -

Almost every man in the picture is wearing a hat (and a suit, but that's a topic for another day). My grandfather still has a favorite cap he wears to go out with, along with a formidable baseball cap collection.

When indoors or speaking to a lady/someone worthy of respect, the hat would come off. I think this is a nice gesture. I remember back in my high school days, one of my friends would always tell others to take their baseball caps off inside.

"You're disrespecting the building," he'd say.

"Dude, it's a McDonalds."

The point was lost on the hat-wearer, but it was not lost on me. How is not taking your hat off disrespectful, you ask? Well, what does it mean to show respect? I think of it as inconveniencing yourself on purpose in order to elevate another.
Standing up for the National Anthem/important things.
Adding additional care to speech ("yes sir/ma'am" versus "yeah").
Listening politely to someone blabbing about their opinion.
Reading my blog.

Hats are part of this. When removing the hat from the head to speak to someone, it's a slight inconvenience. Hands are occupied. You have to reach up to remove it/etc.
The bare head is also traditionally a weakpoint. To bow the head/remove its covering before someone is to give them a chance to attack (since you've taken your eyes off of him/her).
The American military actually got the tradition of uncovering indoors from the fashion of the times (Note to Hollywood - stop showing soldiers/sailors/Marines inside buildings who are not on watch/armed/reporting to a senior wearing their covers! STOP!).

So, a hat isn't just useful because it keeps the sun out of your eyes, rain off your back, or the warmth in your brain. It is a way to be more respectable (unless you wear a flat-brim seated precariously atop your silly dome).

Well I'm going to try to bring this all back. Not for other people, because that's a lost cause already (nor would it be right), but just for me. Here's me with my hands-free umbrella:

Look at how classy that is, even in the wilderness.

I hope everyone's doing well out there. Remember the words of Bruce Lee:

Don't miss all that heavenly glory because you're looking at the finger.

Unrelated note: I'm going to try to bring Picture Friday back. That thing where I find an interesting image and provide some lame commentary.

Until that Day,

Sojourner

A Pair of Boots

I was issued this pair of boots roughly three and a half years ago:

They look quite nice from this angle. I am quite proud of that shine.

This is how the sole used to look (this is an identical pair I bought more recently):

This is how the soles of the 3.5 year old pair look now:

They've been through a lot. Until this past summer, when I finally bought another pair to use for the field, these protected my feet while I did the more interesting or difficult things that life occasionally brings me. 

The right boot has a gash from when I was laying barbed wire, and as you can see, the soles of both are utterly destroyed, mostly from drilling in them. They have been ground down at a steep angle from facing movements, columns, etc.

For about an hour and a half every week-day for the past three years, the boots have been ground down. This is the result.

Since no one else's boots demonstrate the same amount of wear on the sole (even people who drill as often/more than I do and who have also kept the same pair of boots for as long/longer), this leads me to produce three possible reasons for their unusual wear and tear:

1. I am special. Turns out the great pains the public school system underwent to convince me of this were worth it, and the destruction of my footwear is the result of a combination of exceptional work ethic and natural charm.

2. I was given a defective pair of boots; a bad batch of rubber was used on the sole/the bonding agent was faulty/the QA team came in late that day/the guy issuing boots didn't like my face/etc. 

3. I have an abrasive personality that naturally corrodes everything I come into contact with. This accelerates the natural entropy that gradually disintegrates everything in the universe. Children fear me and run to their mothers when I pass.

Analysis of these three reasons:

#1 is totally ludicrous because I have discovered that everything I learned in public school is wrong, irrelevant, incomplete, or combinations of the three. Why would this one statement (you are special/unique) be true when everything else is not? That doesn't follow.*

#2 seems very plausible to me. I know next to nothing about shoes, their construction, etc., but I recognize that even exceptional companies produce lemons/duds/etc, and the excess wear that these have seen could be attributed to a sub-par product that slipped through the cracks.

#3 may seem a bit like #1, except that whatever is inherently "special" about my person is negative, vice positive like school would like for me to believe. Given that my peers occasionally use that exact word (abrasive) to describe me, this also may be true. This could also be attributable to body odor.

--------------

*On the off chance any of my hard-working teachers become offended by #1 (I mean, I'd be irritated too if someone told me all of my efforts were for nothing, but hear me out - that is NOT what I am saying). I am of the opinion that it is not possible to teach a person anything - you cannot MAKE their brain accept the information. In the end, the individual must choose to accept what he is hearing/seeing/etc. Learning is ultimately the responsibility of the learner, not the teacher. 

It does not matter how good the teacher is - if the kid doodles during lecture or sleeps through class, he ain't learning anything. Trust me, I know this from experience after waking up with drool on my notes. No amount of money poured into schools will change this fact. 

Until we put collars on our necks that shock us when they detect the transition from alpha to theta waves.

The most valuable thing my teachers taught me over 12 years of public school? How to learn. Although, like I said, this knowledge was incomplete, I'm still figuring that out.

---------------

Sorry, that was a long aside. Back to the boots.

I am emotionally attached to this pair of boots now, even though I don't run in them anymore (it probably would not be good for my stride to run or walk in them for long periods). As I said, I wear other, newer boots if I'm running/hiking/etc. I only wear them to drill in or when people expect my boots to be polished. 

I also fell in love while wearing these boots, but that's a different story I won't go into.

Since they take such a good shine (yes, I will parenthetically brag about this. You can see your reflection in them, for Pete's sake!), I wear them because they look good. I know, it's ironic, but even though boots are ostensibly worn for their utility - those in the military know sometimes it's all about looks and "inspection-readiness."

There's a metaphor there - valuing appearance over function, using the wrong metric to grade performance, etc., but I'll let you draw those out.

I won't have a cause to wear black boots anymore in a couple months, nor will I be drilling everyday anymore, so these will no longer have a purpose. We'll see how I feel about them then.

The road will be the same -

Rough, hard, and cold.

Striding on to lands unnamed

Will I be so bold

To keep my well-worn boots

And my blistered feet

Tied to absolutes

As I walk down that dark street

For there is only one good death

out of many on the ancient path.

Until that Day,

Sojourner

Insurgency

Scenario:

The United States Marines deploy to a backward, violent country. Its government doesn't care about its people. The president declares that we are going to "teach them how to govern themselves."

The Marines displace the government and destroy most resistance within a year. An interim government is established, with a local we handpicked nominally in charge, while most of the cabinet offices and secretary positions are occupied by Americans.

The Marines build schools, run infrastructure building projects (roads, sewers, communication lines, etc). The Marines are also tasked with training up a local military/police force that will gradually take over for the Americans.

However, problems begin to arise. The locals that are supposed to assume a police/military role are (in general) lazy, illiterate, and uncommitted. Precepts about social standing make unifying the country difficult, and the longstanding traditions of politics through violence are a key part of the cultural memory.

Accidents, incidents, and a failure of cultural awareness, coupled with growing distaste for the foreigners with guns patrolling the countryside, leads to a resurgence of insurgency. The amount of resistance grows from several hundred isolated fighters to thousands, camped out in nearly inaccessible hills in the country's northern region. They initiate surprise attacks and spread rumors about the American occupiers, bringing more and more people into their fold.

The Marines' initial response is headhunting - trying to take out the leadership of the insurgency, and offering money and clemency to the fighters if they disarm or switch sides.

Many in the United States are concerned that the military occupation is driven by economic reasons; they claim that the Marines are there to further the goals of corporations. Furthermore, a concurrent war pulls many of the Marines and soldiers to another country, weakening the occupying force and giving  the insurgency time to brood and grow.

Sounds like Afghanistan, right?

Well this is Haiti, in 1915.

The president here was Woodrow Wilson - and he was an idealist, which means that he was a noble soul touched by ignorance (I consider myself to be an idealist also; I feel like this is better than the alternative). I think he genuinely believed it was his responsibility to help people all around the world find democracy.

The US was drawn into World War I in 1917; Haiti was practically forgotten except by the Marines trying to hold onto it.

Another note -

How did we beat the insurgency in Haiti? We found the guy in charge of the insurgency, infiltrated his camp, and assassinated him. Good times. The insurgency was mostly over by 1920, and after a long, protracted withdrawal, the last Marine contingent departed in 1934.

We were there for almost 20 years.

Meaningful Query - How successful is Haiti now?

How useful are historical parallels like this? I don't know. The frequency of history repeating itself does seem to reinforce the idea that we, as a species, don't change much.

Egregious motivational picture of then-Major Smedley Butler, one of the heroes of the Marine Corps, and two fellow Medal of Honor recipients:

Until that Day,

Sojourner

Learning to Dislike Yourself (AKA the Facebook Timeline)

The internet is a frightening thing. It's done a lot of things for us/to us/with us but arguably one of the most significant things it has done is make things permanent in a way they could never be before.

Once something is on the internet, it is there forever. Cached pages, hard copies of things saved on servers or in history, etc. My knowledge of the internet and computers is rudimentary at best, but I am still more than confident in the fact that the internet is eternal. That picture you put up five years ago? You may not remember, but Facebook does.

I opted into the whole Facebook Timeline thing. It is a very clever concept, to condense the wealth of experiences one has in life into this neat, interactive timeline. It's like what studying history should be like - you start with a survey of watershed events, periods and ages, then you can zoom in, down to the details. Except history can be interesting if you focus on the right things. Whoever begins to collate a "History Timeline" a la Facebook will make bank.

But the Facebook Timeline...

It's truly frightening how much information one could collate on me over the past ~5 years I've spent on it. If I were the subject of some plot, where someone needed to steal my identity, the bad guys would have all the requisite information. Actually way more than you could possibly want. Who my friends are, what things we talk about, what my interests are, what I do, what I am, etc. You could probably even start explaining "why" I am. I am certain that future psychologists will use tools like this to examine people from birth to death, especially once the generation is born with ("into" might be a better word. Sort of like, born "into" slavery) Facebook.
Parents already do this.

They make Facebook pages for their unborn children.

How f***ing creepy is that?

Well, massive, society-sweeping change aside (remember when people said social networking was a fad?), I went back to 2007 or so when I first made my Facebook page. And I promptly learned several things about myself:

1. I was a pretentious douchebag.

2. I did everything I could to sound intelligent and mysterious.

3. My friends/acquaintances did their best to make me normal, but they failed.

4. Did I mention I was a huge douchebag?

Some sample statuses to prove douchebaggery (parenthetical inserts are my contemporary commentary on my past self):

"Sojourner gives fortune a side-long glance."
(Okay, cool. You're a pretentious idiot).

"Sojourner requires no eulogy."
 (Uh, yeah duh, past self, you're not dead. Of course you don't need that. Idiot).

"Sojourner is thinking."
(Oh, sweet. You and the rest of the insipid, miserable human race. Great. You're thinking).

"Sojourner asks how shall he best dissemble?"
(Who cares. Go dissemble however you like. Literally no one cares).

"Sojourner expunges the laborious nascence."
(Oh, let's just open the frakking dictionary and shove as much crap together as we can. Everybody thinks you have a genius-level intellect now. Or they just know you're a tool).

"Sojourner tips his hat to the dark visage."
(Sweet man. You don't even have a hat).

"Sojourner thinks of a silent time and a place with no darker light."
(Uh, you're asleep. Cool. Don't you look clever. Wait, no, you just look pretentious).

They go on like that for literal years. And as I followed the thread to the present day, I realized that I haven't really changed much. If anything, I've gotten lazier with my statuses. Now it's the cookie-cutter "haha, lol, fun weekend. This week's going to be lame! I hate Mondays! lol lol." et. al. ad nauseum. Not sure which option is less lame.

One thing that has remained constant is my fantastic group of friends. These are people who for some reason or another (maybe it's because of how good looking I am) put up with my acute douchebaggery. Thanks, ladies and gents. I may respond to you with years of either laconic disinterest or excessively wordy verbal mazes, but I appreciate you.

What to do with this? Looks like I'll have to reacquire the permanence and castigate the errant members of my psyche or something.

Until that Day,

Sojourner (2012 iteration)

A Rant to Hollywood

I went to see Haywire today. Thought it was pretty brilliant. I actually believed that the lead in the movie could successfully fight/kill people in a hand to hand fight. Unlike a lot of actresses who look more like models than fighters, Gina actually looked like she could A. take a punch, and B. punch back. She's not a wraith-thin, runway-soft looking lady. A lot more convincing than Jolie in Salt (or Saldana in Columbiana) or any of the skinny, 98 pound shrews can somehow one-punch knock-out trained fighters with their reed-thin arms.

Gina is also a very, very attractive lady. I don't mind that she's more than 100 pounds and that you probably can't see all of her ribs.

But this isn't about Haywire; this is about a preview for another movie that I saw right before.

I like previews; unlike actual, full-length movies, trailers have not yet made any profit from the viewer. In fact, they actually cost the studios money in advertising time/production costs. Trailers have to sell the movie to you. So you get a crisp, well-edited summary of what the studio thinks are the attractive parts of the movie. Some cool images, dramatic dialogue, prolonged, slow motion screams of "NNNNOOOOOO!!!" etc. Explosions everywhere. Dramatic, witty punchlines. It's great.

So a trailer comes on, green screen, white words, for "appropriate audiences," whatever. I sit up, expectant. Slow pan around a mountain, establishing shot. Close up, man with a Steyr. He racks the pistol, and because he had a horrible grip before, he sort of juggles the pistol up to regrasp, putting his finger on the trigger in the process.

I almost break out into a laugh. Then some authoritative female narrator comes on - "he was one of the most brilliant CIA operatives..." And I laugh aloud. I mean that's funny.

Okay, I get it. He's definitely dangerous, all right. Going to shoot somebody or himself by accident. That's pretty dangerous, I wouldn't want to be in the same room with that. Or the next room over, for that matter. I couldn't take the rest of the trailer seriously. It was just too funny. "He's DANGEROUS!" Yep.

Hollywood, I like this whole "gritty, realistic" thing you've been trying to do recently. I like that you don't portray fighting as something clean, fair, or simple. But to try to sell me "elite, hardened" warriors who put their fingers on the trigger constantly or don't seem to know what holsters are kills it for me. Every time I see some elite, well-trained operator carelessly shove a pistol  into the waistband of his/her pants I laugh. Then whenever these secret agent types go chasing after someone, vaulting fences and free climbing buildings and miraculously their pistol is still just hanging out in their pants just when they need it, I laugh louder.

"Oh, let me just stick this pistol into the back of my pants." Hilarious. You know, they make holsters for that. So that when you do anything more than stand up, they don't fall out. Or slide down your pants. Or so that when you reach for it, you know exactly where the grip is. If you have to draw your gun, I don't think you want to have to fish around for it in your pants because it shifted when you walked across the street.

Or so this doesn't happen:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/2011/08/07/20110807cr-penisshot0811.html

I mean how many reasons to use holsters do you need? (The fact that I need my penis is reason enough for me. I have no plans to lose it at any point. I certainly will take the necessary steps to mitigate the risks of losing my penis.)
How ironic is it that it was his fiancee's gun that took his manhood from him? Very, very ironic.

The comments on the article are pretty funny. "In other news, his fiancee has changed her relationship status to "it's complicated.""

Back to Hollywood -
I get it if someone is untrained or has no experience with guns, or is a criminal who learned his gunfighting craft in the street. Okay, these are the sort of people who shove loaded guns in their pants and put their fingers in the trigger because they don't know any better. If that's the sort of person they're trying to portray, cool.

But if it's some super cool, elite agent, let's have them demonstrate the skills from the day-1 class at the Academy, okay? The sort of rules that leave them with functional hardware at the end of the day.

If you want a movie where weapons are handled well, watch The Way of the Gun. That is a fantastic movie for gunplay.

Also, Haywire was really good (There was a "let's just shove this loaded gun into the back of my trousers" scene. But it didn't end well for him, so I didn't mind as much). Go watch it. Tell Hollywood that we like actresses who can believably throw (and take) punches. Hell, you think today's gender matters obsessed society would be all over that.

Until that Day,

Sojourner