August 30th 2010,
Dear Jeremy,
We live in a time where information is a ubiquitous fact of life. There is not a moment at present, and certainly barring any technological apocalypse in the time when you will read this, that information on anything is not waiting at your fingertips eagerly for your edification. The problem with this ease of access to information is the equal, or arguably larger, access to misinformation. Anyone with gumption to employ media and internet might have a YouTube page or a blog and present their point of view, whether it is educated or otherwise, and present it to world at large as truth. With that in mind, and before I go further, I feel it behooves me to say these letters are my opinion. They have always been and will always be my opinion. I implore you to fact-check; do your own research, understand everything you can, and determine your own opinion. (Note: My opinion happens to be fact)
This misinformation or, even being supremely fair, lack of well rounded information leads to a lot of controversy in quite possibly every aspect of life from low-brow and trivial affairs such as Paris Hilton’s cocaine arrest to important and underplayed issues such as the benefits of childhood vaccinations. Today, we will speak of the latter, suggesting only of the former and those deeply engrossed with it: “You are a waste of space”.
We live in a time previously unheard of in the realm of medicine and medical treatment/prevention. There are cures, treatments, and preventative vaccinations for a great many diseases that in that time of my parents were incredibly dangerous, in the time of their parents potentially fatal, and in the time of their parents a veritable death sentence. For example polio, at one time, would cripple and could kill children and adults with the effectiveness of a sledgehammer to the spine. It was once in the forefront nightmares of parents. A vaccination for it was developed, employed, and successful within the life span of your grandparents. It was successful in preventing the contraction of polio to such a large degree that the last wild case of it was recorded in the United States before the decade I was born in.
The way vaccinations work is that they inject into the system a small and weakened amount of the sickness being inoculated against into the body. This small amount of virus or other pathogen begins to affect the body and symptoms of the illness may develop (for example a common side effect of a flu vaccination might be “flu-like symptoms). The body fights this small infection and creates its own in-born cure to the illness. Many times the cure cannot be synthesized or mass produced in a fashion that would allow for it to be a mass produced “cure” so in lieu of that vaccinations were developed. An individual’s body creates a cure or resistance to the convalescence in question which is tailor made for that person’s biochemistry (or whatever).
There is something to the effect of 30 different shots that a child must receive within the first six years of their life to prevent upwards of 16 different diseases that are actually life threatening or life altering. Proponents of receiving the vaccinations include: pediatricians, pathologists, and the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The argument that they put forth is rather convincing for most: the discomfort of a shot, or the short time side effect of a vaccine (soreness, overnight fever, a day or two of mild illness) are more preferable to the discomfort of the disease (paralysis, incapacitation, severe long-term illness, disability, or death). This, to your mother and me at least, seems to make for a pretty good argument for having a child vaccinated (also we enjoy poking you with needles—so everybody wins). You are, at almost six months old, in the middle of that process now.
Before I go further I have to make a point of stating some things that people in our times of fancy-pants doctors and medicine forget:
1) Medicine is an evolving science. The bleeding edge thoughts on diseases, health, and medicine today could be debunked and viewed as medieval tomorrow. You can only go with the information and research of the day and balance it with the critical thought that your conscience, morality, intelligence, and education can reconcile. While the science is exacting it is not exact.
2) Medicine is a business that is run by pharmaceutical conglomerates; and business is good. While the researchers themselves may be very altruistic people (altruistic mercenaries of science) the companies themselves are looking to make a profit. The research that goes into developing pharmaceutical drugs is unbelievably expensive; but not solely for profit. The price that you pay for expensive medicine today directly funds the uncovered overhead cost and the upfront direct cost of that medicine, and the next medicine in development. While the companies still make a substantial and sizable profit (arguably an excessive profit, but that’s for another time).
3) Many of these treatments and medicines have side effects—often the more serious the ailment the more serious the side effect from its corresponding medication. The pharmaceutical companies must inform the public about the side effects but may downplay them. Being informed about what a medication will do and might do is as much your responsibility as it is the company’s to publish the information.
4) At the end of the day medical treatment is in your power. You can refuse or accept whatever it is that the doctors want to give you. Read the “Patient’s Bill of Rights” and know exactly what it is that they can and cannot do. Everything requires consent—and consent requires thought.
There is a growing contingent of parents that are convinced that childhood vaccinations are a leading proponent in rising numbers of diagnosis in children with autism. The claim is that the bombardment of illnesses into the young body in the fashion of vaccination and inoculation somehow sets off a chemical reaction in the body that can cause autism in the child. Some argue it is the level of mercury introduced into the system via vaccinations. Mercury has a long history of being involved in various psychological and physical disorders the most prevalent of which is insanity (as demonstrated by Alice in Wonderland’s and Batman’s “Mad Hatter” characters respectively). Others believe it has something to do with the number of ailments introduced at a time shocking the system. Still more do not claim to know what causes it scientifically but site empirical evidence of a phenomenon.
Now Jeremy, I can’t argue: there is some truth in what is said in a blatantly “cause and effect” observation. Many parents claim that directly after vaccination (within several days or weeks) their children had severe regression of development or seizures which were followed by diagnosis of autism. Famously, Jenny McCarthy’s son, Evan, had such an experience and her highly publicized plight and lobby for Autism research has done much to fuel the media frenzy surrounding the disability. She is a proponent of the vaccination theory.
Recently, I spoke with my friend Jon Weiss, a student of Immunology (whom I will refer to as a scientist) about the topic. When I asked this scientist about the idea that vaccinations were causing the statistical rise of cases of autism he dismissed it as easily as I dismiss the notion that Quicksilver is faster than The Flash. He did agree, as a scientist, that there is a possibility that there might be, very well, a likening between genetic predilections towards Pervasive Developmental Delays (PDDs) such as Autism and these vaccinations—but there would have to be the genetic precursor of this occurring anyway. In essence what he said was that while vaccinations may, at times, be the straw that brake the camel’s back in the onset of diagnosis but it is certainly not a contributing factor in the same sense that cigarettes cause cancer.
He further suggested that there might be a confluence of unrelated events in play. Often times, children diagnosed with autism will seem to develop normally and then have a regression that leads to the search for a diagnosis in the first place. This might happen regardless of vaccination status. It is part of the horrifying part of having a child—a diagnosis like autism might strike out of nowhere when you thought you were “in the clear”. It is the perception of a regression within days or weeks of a vaccination (which occur quite often in children under the age of six, especially under the age of one) is merely a coincidental occurrence. For example, I may have my first dirty-water hotdog in Manhattan tomorrow and go to the dentist the following day and find that my wisdom teeth need to be pulled. There is a cause and effect perception that the dirty-water hotdog I ate may have very well caused the malady with my wisdom teeth—but popular understandings would deem it coincidental. Conversely, if many people started to make similar claims the phenomenon (or supposed phenomenon) would require close inspection and study.
In the early 1990’s with the renewal and title change of Education for All Handicapped Children Act in to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), autism became its own category of disability. Previous to this it was considered at times to be a component of schizophrenia, being diagnosed in children as “childhood schizophrenia”, or being a form of mental retardation. With IDEA autism was recognized as being fundamentally different than any of the other developmental, physical, or mental disabilities. This was done, in my opinion, as a matter of prudence and not in respect to some statistical surge. Around this time, with people with autism receiving services for autism as a category of diagnosis as opposed to a subheading or other explanation of a “larger” disorder it began receiving notoriety in the public arena.
To the layman it was a “new” disability—and as such was (and still is) an intriguing one because of its describing characteristics. People living with autism generally look quite typical; especially when one considers the physical appearance of a person with Down’s syndrome or multiple sclerosis which are respectively visually identifiable—almost readily. Like many disabilities, autism exists on a spectrum from profound to mild to moderate and the person carrying any of these levels of the diagnosis will display a scattering of abilities. They might be verbal, or non-verbal. They may or may not have issues with gross or fine motor development and implementation. They might excel and any one or many of these areas. I am wont to refer to the term “savant” but many times those with autism indeed fit that bill of being a person with an “above average or normal” knowledge on a specific subject or ability with a specific skill. Also a person with autism will generally have “no affect” which is most easily (though certainly not most accurately) described as being a lack of perceivable emotions.
The experience of autism is often described as being overwhelmed by the senses (or sometimes by one sense) to such a degree that the person becomes engrossed in it. There is a lack of social awareness, or a lack of social skills, or a lack of ability to be social because of the withdrawn and inward nature of being overwhelmed by the senses. Certain sensations can be more or less desirable or intense at given times which lead to “self-stimulatory behaviors” and other neurological stimulatory behaviors. These stimulations may or may not lead to seizures, or bouts of screaming, and other manifestations of being overwhelmed. It is important to note though that people with autism (and disabilities in general) can live very fruitful, meaningful, purposeful, and depending on the severity of their condition—normal lives. Due to these characteristics, and in my opinion most heavily the lack of physical disfiguration and “savant” like scattering of abilities there has been somewhat of a “popularity” in the media towards autism.
There is still the statistical evidence that incidences of autism are on the rise. There may be more misinformation in that regard than information. At this point in time I am pursing a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education and Special Education and preceding that I spent 5 years working in special education primarily with children diagnosed with autism. Due to the rise in public interest in autism and its history of being lumped with other development disabilities it is easy to diagnosis, for example, a child with moderate Down’s syndrome with autism. One might wonder why a parent might want this to be done—there are many reasons. First and foremost is stigma. Many people, families, and cultures still have a negative view of mental retardation as being a lost cause or as something shameful for the family. Considering the du-jour status of autism it is socially more acceptable in many circles for that diagnosis as opposed to Down’s or M.R.
Though autism “enjoys” this “du-jour” status it is also important to note that autism is statistically one of the less common forms of disabilities—far overshadowed by Down’s syndrome and mental retardation in general. Regardless of this fact it is much easier to get services for autism than it is for many other developmental disabilities. This causes an error in statistical book keeping which would undeniably change the statistics of autism. This is actually a hidden benefit for the child “supposedly” or even “falsely” carrying an autistic diagnosis because the child will receive services that they may not have received otherwise. While this doesn’t do much for the social acceptability of many disabilities it might service the individual in an exponentially beneficial manner. In this way the practice becomes morally complicated; but the complication is resolved by a little mantra that has been effectively jack-hammered into our thought process at NYU: the diagnosis is a means to getting services; it has little meaning after the services are granted. Coupled with the fact that autism is a fairly new and admittedly fluid diagnosis it opens the statistical possibility and logistical argument for a wide gamut of topics in the social/political discussion of autism.
In the end I can’t in good conscience subscribe to the school of thought that says vaccines are directly related to the development of autism. I might suggest that it leads to the growing number of diagnosis of autism, but that is a different statement altogether. The argument also opens up a very different discussion. Supposing that vaccines do cause autism, then autism is no longer its own category for disability. There are 13 educational categories for disability where autism resides apart as its own area; if vaccines are linked to be a true cause then it then becomes a part of the “Traumatic Brain Injury” category or is split between its own category and brain injury. This doesn’t really help the situation at all because now you’ve essentially castrated your own cause by redistributing it into another category that has its own set of protocols. Nor has a strong case been made to discontinue vaccinations because of the high incidence of children getting their vaccination and not “contracting” or developing autism or symptoms remotely related.
I was watching an episode of Frontline when I was prompted to write this particular letter to you, Jeremy. There was a woman in the episode who was a writer and a PhD who questioned why vaccinations were given for rotavirus or polio when you would be hard pressed to find incidents of them in the United States at this date and I was shocked. She was from a community in Oregon with one of the highest community percentages of “opt-out” from the federal vaccination program. Her argument was that because children no longer contracted these illnesses that they should be phased out of program. Did it not occur to this highly educated individual that these illnesses were not occurring because of the success and continued practice of vaccination? It’s almost like suggesting the discontinuation of seat belt laws because of all the lives they’ve saved.
Maybe by the time you read this in the year 2035 (when I’m 50 at you’re 25) this will be a moot issue. The cause will have either been discovered or disregarded as ultimately irrelevant. Maybe there will be one vaccination that makes immortals and negates all disability and illness. Science is crazy like that, and I don’t discount anything as impossible. Until then I just have to hope that whatever meds I get put on are worth the anal leakage and impotence—though I’m not sure what that kind of life would be worth.
Love,
Your Father
P.S. This week you went to a barbeque and a birthday party. The birthday party was for your cousin Raziah and you slept right through most of the loud music. It was a joy. In the past week you’ve launched yourself off of the couch with your powerful calves and did a lot of rolling around on the carpet. I am starting to question the movies I show you because you made a very…interesting face…during Terminator 2: Judgment Day…but I probably won’t change. Remember I hold the remote in this house!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
August 18th, 2010
August 18th, 2010
Dear Jeremy,
Well, it seems you will be getting two letters this month; two letters in such close proximity to each other that I can actually lay off the politics and venture into the realm of “pop culture and bullshit” as outlined by the title of the blog in which these letters are made public. I am going to, for once, really talk about me.
It is important to me that in these letters you get a sense of who your father is as a person along with events that are transpiring in confluence with your developmental milestones. I have not yet really stated the purpose of these letters as such—at least not in the body of them—and I feel that it is important that you understand that when I talk to you here about politics, pop culture, and bullshit it is not to inculcate you with my personal view points (hopefully you will be sufficiently brainwashed by our day to day encounters [insert emoticon]) but rather to give you a sense of who your father is; how he grows as you grow and what is transpiring in the world as that happens.
On a morbid note, if something should ever happen to me that you are not able to know me these letters should stand as some sort of testament or dialogue that we can have and I hope that my attempt to communicate with you through them, in that event, are not poor in the sense that you should at least have some sort of idea about your old man. Since I can’t provide sunstone crystals and holograms this is what you get. Enough of this for now and on to the main event.
I am going to start out talking about something which you probably will have no idea about—or even worse will seem to you to be a wheel that gets pushed with a stick in all the “old tyme” representations of my great-grandfather’s youth—8-bit video gaming. When I was a little boy, and I remember this quite clearly, it was my fifth birthday, I received a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was one of the most monumental gifts I had ever received. In retrospect this gift probably had as much impact upon the rest of my life as did the two comic books I would receive from my mother a year later (more about that another time).
Upon the receipt of my NES life was never quite the same. While my childish mind had been opened to a world of imagination and imposed imagination through action figures, television, movies, coloring books, and formative schooling video games had opened up a sort of voyeuristic or vicarious adventure via nigh pixel high heroes such as Super Mario, Link, Ryu Hayabusa, and Jimmy Lee; the likes of whom would have a profound effect not only on the culture of my generation but upon the sensibility of it as well.
In all of the 8-bit glory of two or three leveled synthesized sound and limited graphics the NES was a gateway to a multiverse of action and adventure (or in the case of Trivial Pursuit the Video Game, confusion) that could never be garnered from any other medium. Sure movies had action and adventure but where was the snazzy music? Literature had the allure of the full imaginative process but not the fulfillment of growing in adept skill or thought process that was required for, say, the level 8-4 castle maze in the originals Super Mario Bros. I remember the unbridled excitement I experienced when I one day found a copy of Super Mario 3 under my pillow or the confusion upon what would happen if I used my power pad past midnight (which was a child’s misreading of “do not use for more than 12 hours”…but even so, what happens after 12 hours? Does the earth open up and swallow me and my Nintendo?).
The NES was simultaneously a norm and a status symbol among other children, and the games that you had were what separated a king from the paupers. This was before there was a great many choices of video gaming console to choose from. As a matter of fact that phrase “video gaming console” is almost too institutional for that point in time—the phrase may have been coined at the point but what you had was a Nintendo, or at the most sophisticated a “system”. There were other systems around—there was the Sega Master System and the Atari, and...I dunno fucking Pong or something; the NES was the standard though. They sold NES games in the drugstore, at the gas station, they were covered by your health insurance, and had cereal named after them (only one of those examples is hyperbole, by the way).
(sidebar: for some reason novelty cereals were a staple of the late 1980’s and early 90’s. If there was a movie or fad to be exploited you better be sure there was a cereal to accompany it. While writing this letter I just reminisced with you mother about: Addams Family Cereal, Barbie Cereal, Batman: The Movie Cereal, and Ghostbusters Cereal. There must have been more. The Nintendo Cereal was called the Nintendo Breakfast System and it had two cereals in one box: Super Mario and Legend of Zelda. It was quite a deal, because both sucked catastrophically…as did all of the gimmick cereals.)
Nintendo popped up everywhere: on bed sheets, commercials, television shows (see Super Mario Brothers Super Show). It was bigger than Jesus, or religion at that time; but there were no bon-fires burning the dog from Duck Hunt in effigy. But even it, in its mighty glory could not live forever. Eventually it died out and 8-bit begat 16-bit which evolved to 32 and 64 bit within a single console (in the case of the NES’s successor the Super NES).
The countless hours that my generation spent flicking buttons across multi-generational platforms lead to a significant issue in the way that my generation approaches work and work ethic—we don’t. I’ve heard many rumblings about my generation being overly accustomed to, what is called, instant gratification. Instant gratification is a simple concept—you play a video game, it makes a noise, you like the noise, you repeat the desired result. The time that is put into getting skilled in a particular game is immediately rewarded with an ending, or gamer points (that came later), or whatever it is the game is giving for meeting goals. When it came to, and indeed still does come to life, well things get hairy if you are expecting the same kind of instant gratification. My whole generation expects it, however, on one level or another.
Now I don’t mean to bash your parent’s generation as being complete morons, unable to separate video games from reality, but the formative idea of short term goal equals quick victory totally trumps our sense of long term goal equals nice house. The advent of the internet didn’t help this too much. That’s right, we didn’t always have internet…and we didn’t always have cell phones either…or fetch-a-sketch drawing tablet shopping machines (as a matter of fact I think I just invented that…if that exists when you read this we had better be filthy fucking rich). The internet took a lot of the work out of academia and all of the steam out the music industry in my lifetime.
Gone were the days of hounding a record store for a rare record or tape or CD; gone were the days of holing up in the library and writing a term paper behind a stack of books. By the time I was in college the library was a place for pranks and naps and record stores were renamed “FOR RENT” or worse yet “Starbucks”; yes even coffee became instant gratification with awful yuppie results.
What that instant gratification generation mind-set means is that a lot of us really decided not to achieve. That doesn’t necessarily imply that we didn’t go to college—for example I did and it only took me seven years to finish: that is NOT instant gratification—furthermore not everyone needs to go to college, it isn’t for everybody (slow it down there, Cowboy, it is for you and YOU DO NEED TO GO TO COLLEGE). Many of us didn’t leave home for a long, long time (if we ever did). It’s a part of being “Generation Y” or “The Boomerang Generation” or whatever we end up being called but the fact of the matter is simple: we have, at the time of this letter writing achieved very little.
Maybe that’s unfair. At the time that this letter is being written, I am five days short of being 26 years old. That’s pretty young, right? Plenty of time to achieve, right? Let me tell you at 26 your Grandpa Glenn owned a business, a house, was married for five years, had your mother, and was an accomplished martial artist. Your Great-Grandfather Joe was a mechanic and a farmer, he spoke Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian, was a retired soldier (for what his military tenure was read his book), and was learning English and photography in a new country at 26. At 26, I am not yet qualified to do what I want to do, married, have you, and have…a…large…collection…of comic books…and video games. I hope you see the important differences. I am probably closer to the “go-getter” category than many of my contemporaries by the way.
Which brings us back to the NES. Nintendo and video game technology changed the face of the world. Without it there wouldn’t be as much of a drive for the advancements in computers technology that there has been in the past 21 years since I was given one. I can’t say that as an undeniable truth but there is no doubt a strong truth in what I say. The world has changed around and because of the advancement of the technology of video games, specifically the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System. As the industry has grown from there and the quality of art work and music has grown in sophistication and maturity during that time is both a boon and a loss for the art of the genre. These is something irresistible about 8-bit gaming in its appearance, its sound, and its feel—and it isn’t nostalgia. There’s an ingenuity to it. The sprites had to be simple and convey as real objects, the sounds had to remind you of other sounds. They were representations not presentations and something about that was really good for the soul—but also really bad.
Hopefully by the time you read this letter, when I am 50 and you are 25 my generation will have done something to make them great, or at least something will have happened to make us memorable. Because as it stands now all we have is the Konami Code (if you don’t know what that is, then I have failed you son. Father Fail). Now either get to playing some video games or get into college, right now. Or do one than the other. I’m still cool…
Love,
Your Father
P.S.- The day I wrote this we spent the day with your Grandpa Kenny. We went out to lunch with him and ran a few errands. I was still off from school and you were a big hit everywhere we went. You happen to be a really good baby, and thanks to the urging of your mother, you are really quite good in public places because you go out so much. Grandpa Kenny played with you all afternoon and held you then took a nap on the couch. Then you took a nap. Then I played video games while you both slept. Good times. Also I haven’t had a cigarette in 18 days. So I got that going for me too. Let’s see if that lasts.
Dear Jeremy,
Well, it seems you will be getting two letters this month; two letters in such close proximity to each other that I can actually lay off the politics and venture into the realm of “pop culture and bullshit” as outlined by the title of the blog in which these letters are made public. I am going to, for once, really talk about me.
It is important to me that in these letters you get a sense of who your father is as a person along with events that are transpiring in confluence with your developmental milestones. I have not yet really stated the purpose of these letters as such—at least not in the body of them—and I feel that it is important that you understand that when I talk to you here about politics, pop culture, and bullshit it is not to inculcate you with my personal view points (hopefully you will be sufficiently brainwashed by our day to day encounters [insert emoticon]) but rather to give you a sense of who your father is; how he grows as you grow and what is transpiring in the world as that happens.
On a morbid note, if something should ever happen to me that you are not able to know me these letters should stand as some sort of testament or dialogue that we can have and I hope that my attempt to communicate with you through them, in that event, are not poor in the sense that you should at least have some sort of idea about your old man. Since I can’t provide sunstone crystals and holograms this is what you get. Enough of this for now and on to the main event.
I am going to start out talking about something which you probably will have no idea about—or even worse will seem to you to be a wheel that gets pushed with a stick in all the “old tyme” representations of my great-grandfather’s youth—8-bit video gaming. When I was a little boy, and I remember this quite clearly, it was my fifth birthday, I received a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was one of the most monumental gifts I had ever received. In retrospect this gift probably had as much impact upon the rest of my life as did the two comic books I would receive from my mother a year later (more about that another time).
Upon the receipt of my NES life was never quite the same. While my childish mind had been opened to a world of imagination and imposed imagination through action figures, television, movies, coloring books, and formative schooling video games had opened up a sort of voyeuristic or vicarious adventure via nigh pixel high heroes such as Super Mario, Link, Ryu Hayabusa, and Jimmy Lee; the likes of whom would have a profound effect not only on the culture of my generation but upon the sensibility of it as well.
In all of the 8-bit glory of two or three leveled synthesized sound and limited graphics the NES was a gateway to a multiverse of action and adventure (or in the case of Trivial Pursuit the Video Game, confusion) that could never be garnered from any other medium. Sure movies had action and adventure but where was the snazzy music? Literature had the allure of the full imaginative process but not the fulfillment of growing in adept skill or thought process that was required for, say, the level 8-4 castle maze in the originals Super Mario Bros. I remember the unbridled excitement I experienced when I one day found a copy of Super Mario 3 under my pillow or the confusion upon what would happen if I used my power pad past midnight (which was a child’s misreading of “do not use for more than 12 hours”…but even so, what happens after 12 hours? Does the earth open up and swallow me and my Nintendo?).
The NES was simultaneously a norm and a status symbol among other children, and the games that you had were what separated a king from the paupers. This was before there was a great many choices of video gaming console to choose from. As a matter of fact that phrase “video gaming console” is almost too institutional for that point in time—the phrase may have been coined at the point but what you had was a Nintendo, or at the most sophisticated a “system”. There were other systems around—there was the Sega Master System and the Atari, and...I dunno fucking Pong or something; the NES was the standard though. They sold NES games in the drugstore, at the gas station, they were covered by your health insurance, and had cereal named after them (only one of those examples is hyperbole, by the way).
(sidebar: for some reason novelty cereals were a staple of the late 1980’s and early 90’s. If there was a movie or fad to be exploited you better be sure there was a cereal to accompany it. While writing this letter I just reminisced with you mother about: Addams Family Cereal, Barbie Cereal, Batman: The Movie Cereal, and Ghostbusters Cereal. There must have been more. The Nintendo Cereal was called the Nintendo Breakfast System and it had two cereals in one box: Super Mario and Legend of Zelda. It was quite a deal, because both sucked catastrophically…as did all of the gimmick cereals.)
Nintendo popped up everywhere: on bed sheets, commercials, television shows (see Super Mario Brothers Super Show). It was bigger than Jesus, or religion at that time; but there were no bon-fires burning the dog from Duck Hunt in effigy. But even it, in its mighty glory could not live forever. Eventually it died out and 8-bit begat 16-bit which evolved to 32 and 64 bit within a single console (in the case of the NES’s successor the Super NES).
The countless hours that my generation spent flicking buttons across multi-generational platforms lead to a significant issue in the way that my generation approaches work and work ethic—we don’t. I’ve heard many rumblings about my generation being overly accustomed to, what is called, instant gratification. Instant gratification is a simple concept—you play a video game, it makes a noise, you like the noise, you repeat the desired result. The time that is put into getting skilled in a particular game is immediately rewarded with an ending, or gamer points (that came later), or whatever it is the game is giving for meeting goals. When it came to, and indeed still does come to life, well things get hairy if you are expecting the same kind of instant gratification. My whole generation expects it, however, on one level or another.
Now I don’t mean to bash your parent’s generation as being complete morons, unable to separate video games from reality, but the formative idea of short term goal equals quick victory totally trumps our sense of long term goal equals nice house. The advent of the internet didn’t help this too much. That’s right, we didn’t always have internet…and we didn’t always have cell phones either…or fetch-a-sketch drawing tablet shopping machines (as a matter of fact I think I just invented that…if that exists when you read this we had better be filthy fucking rich). The internet took a lot of the work out of academia and all of the steam out the music industry in my lifetime.
Gone were the days of hounding a record store for a rare record or tape or CD; gone were the days of holing up in the library and writing a term paper behind a stack of books. By the time I was in college the library was a place for pranks and naps and record stores were renamed “FOR RENT” or worse yet “Starbucks”; yes even coffee became instant gratification with awful yuppie results.
What that instant gratification generation mind-set means is that a lot of us really decided not to achieve. That doesn’t necessarily imply that we didn’t go to college—for example I did and it only took me seven years to finish: that is NOT instant gratification—furthermore not everyone needs to go to college, it isn’t for everybody (slow it down there, Cowboy, it is for you and YOU DO NEED TO GO TO COLLEGE). Many of us didn’t leave home for a long, long time (if we ever did). It’s a part of being “Generation Y” or “The Boomerang Generation” or whatever we end up being called but the fact of the matter is simple: we have, at the time of this letter writing achieved very little.
Maybe that’s unfair. At the time that this letter is being written, I am five days short of being 26 years old. That’s pretty young, right? Plenty of time to achieve, right? Let me tell you at 26 your Grandpa Glenn owned a business, a house, was married for five years, had your mother, and was an accomplished martial artist. Your Great-Grandfather Joe was a mechanic and a farmer, he spoke Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian, was a retired soldier (for what his military tenure was read his book), and was learning English and photography in a new country at 26. At 26, I am not yet qualified to do what I want to do, married, have you, and have…a…large…collection…of comic books…and video games. I hope you see the important differences. I am probably closer to the “go-getter” category than many of my contemporaries by the way.
Which brings us back to the NES. Nintendo and video game technology changed the face of the world. Without it there wouldn’t be as much of a drive for the advancements in computers technology that there has been in the past 21 years since I was given one. I can’t say that as an undeniable truth but there is no doubt a strong truth in what I say. The world has changed around and because of the advancement of the technology of video games, specifically the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System. As the industry has grown from there and the quality of art work and music has grown in sophistication and maturity during that time is both a boon and a loss for the art of the genre. These is something irresistible about 8-bit gaming in its appearance, its sound, and its feel—and it isn’t nostalgia. There’s an ingenuity to it. The sprites had to be simple and convey as real objects, the sounds had to remind you of other sounds. They were representations not presentations and something about that was really good for the soul—but also really bad.
Hopefully by the time you read this letter, when I am 50 and you are 25 my generation will have done something to make them great, or at least something will have happened to make us memorable. Because as it stands now all we have is the Konami Code (if you don’t know what that is, then I have failed you son. Father Fail). Now either get to playing some video games or get into college, right now. Or do one than the other. I’m still cool…
Love,
Your Father
P.S.- The day I wrote this we spent the day with your Grandpa Kenny. We went out to lunch with him and ran a few errands. I was still off from school and you were a big hit everywhere we went. You happen to be a really good baby, and thanks to the urging of your mother, you are really quite good in public places because you go out so much. Grandpa Kenny played with you all afternoon and held you then took a nap on the couch. Then you took a nap. Then I played video games while you both slept. Good times. Also I haven’t had a cigarette in 18 days. So I got that going for me too. Let’s see if that lasts.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
August 5th, 2010
August 5th, 2010
Dear Jeremy,
I want to weigh in on an event that transpired some eight and a half years before you were born—or rather a current debate that has everything to do with it. Y’see there was a day in my senior year of high school, it was the day of senior assembly as a matter of fact, and this day was absolutely insane. It was like a damned made for cable movie and nobody knew nothing about anything.
I was in a first period math class at the start of the first full week of the school year. As the class was drawing to a close I saw a crowd gathering by a large bay window down the hallway; the teacher has allowed me to go see what the commotion was—the tone was calm and, for lack of a better word, chill. As I looked across Jamaica Bay at the stunning view Beach Channel High School had of Manhattan I noticed one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had quite a bit of black smoke rising out of it. Some of the adults were saying an airplane had flown into it. I remember thinking that the day was incredibly clear but that it must have been an accident.
I won’t spend too much time harping on my personal experience of September 11th but I will say that the day itself was, as I stated before absolutely insane. Rumors were flying abound; planes and missiles had hit the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, Sears Tower, The White House, a field in Pennsylvania. Some of this was true some was not but it was hard to tell especially in the face of what we were seeing from the school windows: a black cloud of ash hiding Manhattan from plain sight. I remember teachers running around wildly trying to get spouses, friends, and family members on the phone; adults and students were crying in the hall way. I was scared to make the short subway ride home because, shit, who knew what was going on—someone had declared war on fucking America and it wasn’t aliens. It was surreal and frightening.
As time wore on facts came to light about who perpetrated these atrocious acts and why. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist organization had decided that the decadence of America in particular and the West in general could no longer be suffered on this earth. With the promise of a seemingly impossible afterlife he sent zealots and murderers into our midst to symbolically destroy everything we stand for as a nation: individual liberty, freedom of religion and speech, and the equity of races/genders/creeds/etcetera. The idea was to make us run from our way of life.
This “man” bin Laden has not, as of yet, been brought to justice. He probably won’t be and there is small solace in the fact that he will die in a cave—a lavish and comfortable cave but a cave nonetheless. There is small solace in the fact that, assuming there is an afterlife, that the murderers of that day have probably not found themselves in a tropical paradise with some gratuitous number of virgins to spend eternity with—their destination is, hopefully, far warmer than they had hoped with a great many more pointy things that do not originate from them but reside in them all the same.
Brandied about was a new patriotism in America in a Post-9/11 world. A patriotism that declares “These Colors Don’t Run”; a patriotism that put Osama’s face on urinal cakes; and most importantly a patriotism that promises to “Never Forget”. And perhaps we haven’t forgotten—not the shock, nor the pain, nor the betrayal of our illusion of safety but we have forgotten the reason. We were attacked to change and destroy our way of life. To deconstruct our sense of separation of church and state, the right to believe whatever one wants to believe, and to act or practice those beliefs—so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.
Which brings us to the present day. The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, dubbed Ground Zero for the far better part of the last decade, has been halted by every imaginable entity that seems to think it has the right: the land owner, the insurance company, the architect, the Port Authority, the local government, the 9/11 families, financial problems, the public at large. Monkey wrench after monkey wrench as the festering wound of the attack lays physically unrepaired—a crucial part of the psychological healing process has not occurred. Symbolically we have not yet bounced back with just about 13 months to go until the decade mark will be reached. And now, scandal strikes.
An Islamic entity has purchased a building that had a 757 Engine crash through it on 9/11 and they wish to convert it into a mosque and community center living in the shadow of the World Trade Center (or as it is now its ruins). You could not begin to imagine the uproar—and I won’t argue with its sentiment. While the mosque is being touted as a memorial in itself to the victims of the attacks many see it as a slap in the face. The proposed name for the site is “Cordova House” which has a deep a long history in Islam as a name associated with Muslim conquest.
Shit, Jeremy, if they ain’t right this time. They are. It is a slap in the face, and honestly who knows where the money is coming from? Right. I mean not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims (except for the IRA, Irgun, Shining Path, The Weather Underground, The Ku Klux Klan, Revolutionary Struggle, and had they lost The Continental Army among many others). Not to compare any of these groups to another of course but this is a wild accusation to make. This kind of gross exaggeration is the same sort that started many a-bad rumblings in Europe during the 1920’s and 30’s against Jews. In fact I have heard these very same similar arguments from survivors of those horrid times applied today (and I have gently tried to remind them of how they sound). The malcontented parties are so blinded by their outrage that they have demanded legal recourse in blocking the mosque from being built.
This is exactly the point where the terrorist act of 9/11 emerges victorious. The moment we become exactly like them. Regardless of propriety in the sense of taste and manner, and in many—many—ways respect and respect for the dead the very moment we infringe on the American cornerstone of freedom of religion and the right to own land on the basis of our prejudices we have become no better than the zealots who attacked American. At least in principal—I am not saying that blocking the mosque is paramount to a mini-9/11, what I am saying is that we will have become just as intolerant as they are. It is our tolerance and there-and-by our freedom that was attacked—it is our moral duty to take the high road in this matter, at least legally and allow this mosque to be built. The law of the land cannot stand in the way—it balks the constitution to do so. I dare a single person to say the constitution should be ignored in this sense, especially a conservative given the climate the President has had to deal with in passing laws and the sanctity of the constitution—you will discredit your every argument in American politics forevermore if you do.
For the sake of clarity however I do feel it my duty to say “I don’t want that fucking mosque built. It shouldn’t be there. It’s in bad taste and a slap in the face” but this is America, dammit. I’ve heard people say “why can’t we build a church or synagogue in Mecca?” and to that all I can say is: Mecca is not in America. If it were it would probably have a synagogue and a church and it would certainly have a McDonald’s and a Starbucks. The people can make it very uncomfortable to have a mosque there however—civil disobedience is allowed. Commerce can make it very uncomfortable—construction workers don’t have to work there and companies don’t have to take the contract—if they believe so strongly it shouldn’t be there they will pass up the work; even in this dismal economy. The people who disagree can do every non-violent and legal thing they want. Shit, they could get the permit and open a pig slaughter house on every adjoining wall to the building and be within their rights to do so, but the law cannot and should not intercede. They have every American legal right to build wherever they want that they can manage to purchase.
People won’t do any of that, I don’t think. They will sit and pretend their hands are tied and that the world is cow-towing to Islam the same way the Jews were accused of being cow-towed to for hundreds of years. They will sit and talk about what a shame it is that the government did nothing and how the honored dead have been forsaken. They have not. If this mosque is built it is legal and constitutional and those two things are the levies of equity that were attacked on 9/11, if not physically than symbolically.
Son, I gotta tell ya people don’t know how to be thorough and this country is getting greedy and exclusive and ugly (or maybe it always were and we thought otherwise in the past). Just remember this, when you block someone from building a mosque I guaran-goddamn-tee you the next thing that gets blocked is a synagogue, and then a church, and then a minority owned grocery, then a low income health clinic, then the press. Then we’ll have no rights. It’s a slippery slope to take rights away from some groups but not mine. The moment that happens your rights become other people’s advantages.
Love,
Your Father
P.S. This past month you had a cold. You ran a fever. We all caught it. In was during my last week of summer session. Thanks for that. You started sleeping in your crib, in your own room, and we started using our awesome video baby monitor. You rolled over from both sides. You weighed in at over 15 pounds and measured at over 2 feet…long. You got a swing, a play pen, and an awesome black Cadillac looking bouncer. I am off for the whole month of August and it’s just you and me pal…so please stop waking up at 6 in the morning! I love you dearly but I am on vacation!
Dear Jeremy,
I want to weigh in on an event that transpired some eight and a half years before you were born—or rather a current debate that has everything to do with it. Y’see there was a day in my senior year of high school, it was the day of senior assembly as a matter of fact, and this day was absolutely insane. It was like a damned made for cable movie and nobody knew nothing about anything.
I was in a first period math class at the start of the first full week of the school year. As the class was drawing to a close I saw a crowd gathering by a large bay window down the hallway; the teacher has allowed me to go see what the commotion was—the tone was calm and, for lack of a better word, chill. As I looked across Jamaica Bay at the stunning view Beach Channel High School had of Manhattan I noticed one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had quite a bit of black smoke rising out of it. Some of the adults were saying an airplane had flown into it. I remember thinking that the day was incredibly clear but that it must have been an accident.
I won’t spend too much time harping on my personal experience of September 11th but I will say that the day itself was, as I stated before absolutely insane. Rumors were flying abound; planes and missiles had hit the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, Sears Tower, The White House, a field in Pennsylvania. Some of this was true some was not but it was hard to tell especially in the face of what we were seeing from the school windows: a black cloud of ash hiding Manhattan from plain sight. I remember teachers running around wildly trying to get spouses, friends, and family members on the phone; adults and students were crying in the hall way. I was scared to make the short subway ride home because, shit, who knew what was going on—someone had declared war on fucking America and it wasn’t aliens. It was surreal and frightening.
As time wore on facts came to light about who perpetrated these atrocious acts and why. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist organization had decided that the decadence of America in particular and the West in general could no longer be suffered on this earth. With the promise of a seemingly impossible afterlife he sent zealots and murderers into our midst to symbolically destroy everything we stand for as a nation: individual liberty, freedom of religion and speech, and the equity of races/genders/creeds/etcetera. The idea was to make us run from our way of life.
This “man” bin Laden has not, as of yet, been brought to justice. He probably won’t be and there is small solace in the fact that he will die in a cave—a lavish and comfortable cave but a cave nonetheless. There is small solace in the fact that, assuming there is an afterlife, that the murderers of that day have probably not found themselves in a tropical paradise with some gratuitous number of virgins to spend eternity with—their destination is, hopefully, far warmer than they had hoped with a great many more pointy things that do not originate from them but reside in them all the same.
Brandied about was a new patriotism in America in a Post-9/11 world. A patriotism that declares “These Colors Don’t Run”; a patriotism that put Osama’s face on urinal cakes; and most importantly a patriotism that promises to “Never Forget”. And perhaps we haven’t forgotten—not the shock, nor the pain, nor the betrayal of our illusion of safety but we have forgotten the reason. We were attacked to change and destroy our way of life. To deconstruct our sense of separation of church and state, the right to believe whatever one wants to believe, and to act or practice those beliefs—so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.
Which brings us to the present day. The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, dubbed Ground Zero for the far better part of the last decade, has been halted by every imaginable entity that seems to think it has the right: the land owner, the insurance company, the architect, the Port Authority, the local government, the 9/11 families, financial problems, the public at large. Monkey wrench after monkey wrench as the festering wound of the attack lays physically unrepaired—a crucial part of the psychological healing process has not occurred. Symbolically we have not yet bounced back with just about 13 months to go until the decade mark will be reached. And now, scandal strikes.
An Islamic entity has purchased a building that had a 757 Engine crash through it on 9/11 and they wish to convert it into a mosque and community center living in the shadow of the World Trade Center (or as it is now its ruins). You could not begin to imagine the uproar—and I won’t argue with its sentiment. While the mosque is being touted as a memorial in itself to the victims of the attacks many see it as a slap in the face. The proposed name for the site is “Cordova House” which has a deep a long history in Islam as a name associated with Muslim conquest.
Shit, Jeremy, if they ain’t right this time. They are. It is a slap in the face, and honestly who knows where the money is coming from? Right. I mean not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims (except for the IRA, Irgun, Shining Path, The Weather Underground, The Ku Klux Klan, Revolutionary Struggle, and had they lost The Continental Army among many others). Not to compare any of these groups to another of course but this is a wild accusation to make. This kind of gross exaggeration is the same sort that started many a-bad rumblings in Europe during the 1920’s and 30’s against Jews. In fact I have heard these very same similar arguments from survivors of those horrid times applied today (and I have gently tried to remind them of how they sound). The malcontented parties are so blinded by their outrage that they have demanded legal recourse in blocking the mosque from being built.
This is exactly the point where the terrorist act of 9/11 emerges victorious. The moment we become exactly like them. Regardless of propriety in the sense of taste and manner, and in many—many—ways respect and respect for the dead the very moment we infringe on the American cornerstone of freedom of religion and the right to own land on the basis of our prejudices we have become no better than the zealots who attacked American. At least in principal—I am not saying that blocking the mosque is paramount to a mini-9/11, what I am saying is that we will have become just as intolerant as they are. It is our tolerance and there-and-by our freedom that was attacked—it is our moral duty to take the high road in this matter, at least legally and allow this mosque to be built. The law of the land cannot stand in the way—it balks the constitution to do so. I dare a single person to say the constitution should be ignored in this sense, especially a conservative given the climate the President has had to deal with in passing laws and the sanctity of the constitution—you will discredit your every argument in American politics forevermore if you do.
For the sake of clarity however I do feel it my duty to say “I don’t want that fucking mosque built. It shouldn’t be there. It’s in bad taste and a slap in the face” but this is America, dammit. I’ve heard people say “why can’t we build a church or synagogue in Mecca?” and to that all I can say is: Mecca is not in America. If it were it would probably have a synagogue and a church and it would certainly have a McDonald’s and a Starbucks. The people can make it very uncomfortable to have a mosque there however—civil disobedience is allowed. Commerce can make it very uncomfortable—construction workers don’t have to work there and companies don’t have to take the contract—if they believe so strongly it shouldn’t be there they will pass up the work; even in this dismal economy. The people who disagree can do every non-violent and legal thing they want. Shit, they could get the permit and open a pig slaughter house on every adjoining wall to the building and be within their rights to do so, but the law cannot and should not intercede. They have every American legal right to build wherever they want that they can manage to purchase.
People won’t do any of that, I don’t think. They will sit and pretend their hands are tied and that the world is cow-towing to Islam the same way the Jews were accused of being cow-towed to for hundreds of years. They will sit and talk about what a shame it is that the government did nothing and how the honored dead have been forsaken. They have not. If this mosque is built it is legal and constitutional and those two things are the levies of equity that were attacked on 9/11, if not physically than symbolically.
Son, I gotta tell ya people don’t know how to be thorough and this country is getting greedy and exclusive and ugly (or maybe it always were and we thought otherwise in the past). Just remember this, when you block someone from building a mosque I guaran-goddamn-tee you the next thing that gets blocked is a synagogue, and then a church, and then a minority owned grocery, then a low income health clinic, then the press. Then we’ll have no rights. It’s a slippery slope to take rights away from some groups but not mine. The moment that happens your rights become other people’s advantages.
Love,
Your Father
P.S. This past month you had a cold. You ran a fever. We all caught it. In was during my last week of summer session. Thanks for that. You started sleeping in your crib, in your own room, and we started using our awesome video baby monitor. You rolled over from both sides. You weighed in at over 15 pounds and measured at over 2 feet…long. You got a swing, a play pen, and an awesome black Cadillac looking bouncer. I am off for the whole month of August and it’s just you and me pal…so please stop waking up at 6 in the morning! I love you dearly but I am on vacation!
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