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Living Vicariously Through the Lenses of Others

One place I have wanted to see since I was in my early 20s was Egypt. The pyramids, the ancient monuments…they’ve always been like a siren’s call. Unfortunately, I never made it while I had the energy (and the lithe body) that would have allowed me to navigate the tunnels and chambers of the Great Pyramid, and now it’s all but certain I’ll never see Luxor, or Abu Simbel, or Karnak with my own eyes. With the ongoing instability in the region over the past four decades, I’ve always been concerned about the safety of traveling to the country, but at this point, with the standing of the United States dropping precipitously with each passing day Orange Twitler is allowed to remain in the White House, I think I’d be too frightened to travel at all as a US citizen.

But there is, I discovered, a vicarious alternative to being limited to the stock photos published in books of the ancient monuments, something I stumbled upon quite by accident.

One day I opened Instagram, and one of the many hot, bearded “Instagram models” I follow was posed in front of the Temple Complex at Luxor. I clicked on the geo location link and my screen filled with hundreds of pictures of the temple—with views of the complex I’d never seen before.

Naturally this led me to the great pyramid. And the temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. And Karnak. Even a generic #egypt hashtag showed me ancient wonders from a perspective I’d never seen before. I was hooked. The multitude of tourist photos posted to Instagram was showing me Egypt in a totally new way.

Here are a few that caught my eye…

























I can’t help but wonder what the people who built these monuments were like. Were they like us, with the same wants, needs, and desires? What drove them? What inspired them? Did they suffer the same petty jealousies and insecurities that we do today? Were they as driven to buy, sell, and own stuff as we are? Despite their apparent lack of “technology” were they actually more advanced in certain areas than we are? Did they possess esoteric knowledge we lack, or were they as clueless about the ultimate meaning of “Life, the Universe, and Everything” as we are now?

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Dining Disaster

On our way back from Tucson a week ago (has it only been a week?), the four of us wanted to stop for dinner in Casa Grande. The initial decision was to go to Olive Garden, but upon arrival it was obvious we weren’t going to be seated any time soon. That led to a discussion of where else to dine, and one, well actually two of our party suggested Cracker Barrel.

I have never set foot in one of their establishments, having long since decided to boycott the chain for its past misdeeds to the GBLT community. I didn’t want to go that night either, but I was outvoted.

The fact that the place was nearly deserted at 6:30 pm on a Saturday should’ve set off red flags, but for some reason it didn’t.

After getting past the gut-wrenching kitsch, we were seated and after being handed menus, I can honestly say there wasn’t a single item listed that I wanted to consume. I finally settled on a cheeseburger, assuming that would be a safe choice. Ben went with biscuits and gravy, and one of our friends went with chicken fried steak. When our food finally arrived—easily 30 minutes later—our friend took one bite of his chicken fried steak and asked his roommate to have a taste.  “It’s like it was fried in stale oil.” Roommate agreed, and it was sent back to the kitchen and exchanged for something different.

Ben described his biscuits and gravy as “flavorless.” My cheeseburger was wholly unremarkable. The bun—much like our friends steak—was stale and the French fries were mushy, like they’d been sitting under a heat lamp for hours.

Lesson learned. Don’t compromise your morals, because in the end it will get you nothing.

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Own It

You’re trash. You’ve always been trash. When liberals were polite, you were trash. When liberals got a little rude, you were still trash. Now that we’re tired of your shit and treating you like the trash you are, you’re mortally offended and blaming us for being trash? Get the fuck out of here.

You laugh at sexual assault victims. You cheer Latino children being tortured. You get off on police murdering unarmed black men. You mock the disabled. You send death threats to high school students opposed to guns. You call for the murder of homosexuals. You. Are. Trash.

I know it’s hard to look in the mirror and realize that you’re the worst that humanity has to offer but you made that choice. No one forced you to be a garbage person. You did that. You. You can stop any time you want, too. But you won’t because deep down inside, you like being trash. Own it. That’s why you love Trump so much. He told you that being trash is OK and you thought you could come out of the shadows and walk tall as a garbage person.

It’s not working out the way you thought it would and that’s pissing you off so very, very much but I couldn’t care less. Blame us all you want for your weakness. No one believes your whining bullshit anymore. Not even you. You’re trash and in four weeks, America is going to take the trash out.

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I Miss Tucson







There is a tranquility there, a peacefulness that is sadly absent from the frenetic pace of life in Phoenix, especially on grey, rainy days like yesterday when the smell of wet creosote permeated the air and the sound of gently falling rain drowned out all outside sounds. Perhaps it’s the smaller population, or the slightly higher altitude, or maybe it’s simply because the desert hasn’t been bulldozed and paved over the way it has been in Phoenix.

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I Call Bullshit

Some thoughts on Social Media, aka “Get off my lawn!”

Sometime back in the Pleistocene (y’know, six, seven years ago) I was on most Social Media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Facebook was the first to go. Even before the arrival of the Orange Russian Wig Stand I felt it was devolving into a major political and social boxing ring. I was as guilty of fanning the flames as anyone else, and what finally caused me to step aside, do some self-examination and finally close my account was a comment left on my wall by the cute barista who worked at the Starbucks by our apartment that said, “Why don’t you ever post anything positive?”

Facebook was like heroin (or at least what I imagine heroin must be like). I was constantly looking for my next fix, and the withdrawal was just as painful. Zuckerberg knows that. That’s why your account isn’t immediately closed. He knows there’s a better than average chance you’ll relapse and come crawling back for your next high.

It was months before I could honestly say I no longer had the urge to click that icon and reopen my account. I breathed a sigh of relief when the thing had finally been deleted.

I’m now in pretty much the same ready-to-quit mood with Twitter as I was with FaceBook. Twitter (at least when I first joined in 2008) used to be fun, but lately it’s turned into a feculent vat of toxic hell stew thanks to the 2016 election.

Are there still islands of something nice, something fun? Yeah (check out Myrna Tellingheusen and the other residents of the fictitious Vaca Muerta Estates for a good time), but mostly now it’s just two tribes lobbing venomous grenades at each other and an open sewer of nothing but horrific news and outrage.

I’ve reached the point where I can stand to be on it a couple minutes at most every other day (mostly to catch up with Vaca Muerta and some tech news), but after ten years I’m thinking of shuttering my online presence there as well.

The only remaining social media that I still enjoy and spend way too much time on is Instagram. Maybe it’s because I fancy myself an adequately artistic photographer or perhaps it’s just because I’m a visual person. Either way, I still enjoy the platform. Yes, even it is getting politicized to a degree, although at the moment its remaining fairly civil. (Where do you think I find the anti-trump memes, anyway?)

But what’s annoying me about Instagram is how it’s spawned a whole new generation of people who fancy themselves famous for simply being on the platform. “Instagram Models” is apparently a new profession. Along with “influencers.” Influencers of what? Do you think because you’re 20 years old, have six-pack abs and judging from your photos—apparently can’t get your hands on a single shirt anywhere in the world you go—you’re are going to influence…what, exactly? What are you influencing beyond furthering  the rampant narcissism that’s consuming our culture? Do you really think people are going to buy the same brand of jockstrap you’re wearing because you’re posing on a beach in Mykonos?

Someone brought this up the other day by not-so-ironically posting on Instagram, “Public Figure: two words guaranteed to get you removed from my followers. Who decides that they’re a public figure, and why? Sorry, take your self importance somewhere else.”

I responded, “Add to that  “influencer” along with “Instagram Model,” aka I don’t have a real job but I’m (at least temporarily) pretty and whore myself out to rich sugar daddies just enough to travel the world and take (primarily shirtless) selfies.”

But do I follow these men and enjoy looking at their shirtless selfies? Of course I do. They’re pretty. And as long as I can ignore their self-importance I can enjoy that. Do they influence me? Not one whit. Am I being shallow? Possibly, if not probably. As I joke, “My Instagram feed consists of bears, vinyl collectors, drag queens, d-list celebrities, and men who don’t seem to own a single shirt among the lot of them.”

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I Approve Of This Message

For those of you who have been living under a rock (or simply aren’t fans—WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!) the eleventh season of the “rebooted” Doctor Who had its worldwide premiere yesterday with a new Doctor and a new show runner. I was excited for these changes before I saw last night’s premier, and I’m even more excited now having seen this first episode.

In the interest of transparency, I’m completely unfamiliar with Ms. Whittaker’s previous work, so I don’t know if what we saw last night was her normal acting persona or if she’d been studying David Tenant’s Doctor intensely after landing the role. But OMG…the facial expressions, the vocal inflections…she’s at least initially coming off as a female Tenant, and I’m okay with that because—as Ben pointed out—we need a fun, joyful Doctor again.

I immediately came to care about these characters, and while in seasons past it’s taken me quite a while to warm up to new Doctors, this time I was all in from the get go! She’s—as they say across the pond—brilliant!

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