Crazy Busy

"The human race will eventually die of civilization." 

        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Chuck McKay
    

    Springtime: the time when a man's fancy turns to thoughts of how insanely fricking busy he is all the time.

    Every May, it's the same. All the day planners and appointment calendars belonging to everyone I know fill up like water balloons on a fire hose, until they explode into a colossal overwhelming mess of stress and exhaustion that makes you want to spend the day curled up on the couch, crying.

    Check out this example of a to-do list I made recently:

    Saturday, May 8:

        - Clean out shed

        - Cut grass

        - Plant garden

        - Move giant tree blown into yard by absurd storm

        - Write column

        - Plan daughter's birthday

        - Move messy dishes from counter to sink

        - Arrange fantasy baseball line-up

        - Play with child

        - Acknowledge existence of wife (quick nod)

        - Search the aisles of Wal-Mart vainly for magic anti-sleeping potion

    And that was only the first page. Yikes!

    The busiest people in the world are American middle-class parents of young children. Not only do they have to manage their own affairs, but they're in charge of the increasingly busy lives of their 2.5 children.

    And, increasingly, they're doing it all with virtually no outside support.

    Granted, my research on this topic consisted of several minutes of intense personal reflection, half-distracted by trying to excavate a booger without anybody noticing. But the logic is sound.

    In generations past, old people got feeble and pathetic around age 50. They would move in with their kids, and you'd have several old and people around to help.

    Nowadays, you're just hitting your stride at 50. Time to start a business, do some traveling, live for yourself now that the kids are grown. Certainly not time to go back and help somebody else raise their kids.

    In generations past, the husband earned money, the wife managed the household. Nowadays, the wife earns money, and the husband lives alone in a shabby apartment and sends child support whenever he remembers to get around to it.

    In rare cases in which parents are still married, they're both working, and both exhausted when they get home.

    In generations past, two incomes were not necessary, partly because people didn't have to rely on corporations to meet all their needs. They could grow their own food and make or mend their own clothing.

    Nowadays, you're lucky to find someone who can make his or her own paper airplane without the aid of a Youtube video.

    Our society has structured itself to squeeze productivity out of the working class, children or no children. Pay them enough to buy basic needs and hire daycare and everything will be fine.

    Except it's not. Parents who have nothing left to give their kids (or each other) at the end of the day end up raising kids who lack healthy emotional attachments and direction.

    They end up getting divorced and bouncing the kids around like beach balls, hoping the lack of consistency and permanence doesn't scar them too badly.

   Can we still expect tomorrow's adults to become leaders instead of prisoners; strong parents instead of deadbeat couch potatoes?

   A society that does not funnel as much resources as it can to people raising children is a society that has gone crazy and botched its priorities. It's that simple.

Real Men Don't Write Blogs

It's not easy being a man these days.

As women progress toward assuming their rightful place as equals, society's messages about manhood get more confusing. Gentlemen are now expected to do things our fathers would have thought absurd, like pick up dog poop with a plastic bag (which forces you to make That Not-So-Manly Face).

As a service to humanity, I have spent several minutes studying the problem. Cultural indicators about manhood revolve around three key principles (boys, write these down):

1. Own a truck.

2. Develop an unhealthy interest in sports teams comprised of people you have never met.

3. Deal with household spiders (humanely, of course)

The media, which are always right, tell us that as soon as we Own a Truck, we become muscle-bound and hard-working. So I desperately want one, even though my driveway is too small to plow and the largest thing I ever have to haul around is my 75-pound collection of finger puppets fashioned from foam packaging peanuts.

Trucks guzzle gas. As for safety rankings, I might as well run the highway in a giant hamster ball. But I've watched so much TV that my brain automatically associates trucks, especially Fords and Chevies, with the cherished Man quality of toughness, even though my personal experience tells me the average domestic truck is about as rugged as a plate of lasagna.

I'm doing much better in the area of sports, because it's not quite as expensive. In fact, for I've once again joined a fantasy baseball league.

I realize following professional sports at all is bad enough. It's basically soap opera drama with enough strategy thrown in to help men feel like they're being analytical and smart in addition to getting worked up over stuff like rivalries.

But at least people don't form make-believe social groups using the characters in General Hospital.

For those who don't know, fantasy baseball involves “drafting” real major-league players. Then you go around saying things like, “David Ortiz is my first baseman,” or “I own Curt Schilling.” I used to wonder if players like Ortiz felt really small, being owned by so many different people. But “Big Papi” probably has his own fantasy team, considering how manly he is.

Anyway, once I have a team, I spend the season keeping track of each player’s real-life statistics. I make roster moves depending on how I expect certain players to perform at certain times (“Pedro Martinez will probably feel comfortable pitching in Seattle this week, since he looks like some of his ancestors were salmon”).

I take great care to make sure that my team does not contain any New York Yankees.

At the end of the year, the team with the best overall statistics wins. Victory brings the satisfaction of realizing you wasted several hundred hours of analytical energy that could have been used figuring out how to become wealthy in the stock market.

Or figuring out how to get that spider out of the house without harming its self-esteem.