I think my 8th grade french teacher drunk-dialed me once

My French teacher had the unfortunate surname “Seaman”. You know, like a Man of the Sea. Not like jizz. Think about sailors. Nautical masters of the waves. Don’t think about male ejaculate.

She taught us French from kindergarten up through 8th grade. Her daughter was in my year, and I shudder to think how she survived high school with the name Seaman. We all grew up together from kindergarten and had no concept of seminal fluids until much later. We were also sheltered private-church-school kids who were afraid of the repercussions that might come from mocking her unfortunate name. Mind you, it wasn’t pronounced ‘Shayman’ or ‘Zeemahn’, it was pronounced ‘Semen’. Exactly like the genetic fluid expressed from a human male penis.

Anyway, Mrs Seaman’s class was fun until 7th grade. She taught in an old-fashioned style revolving around memorizing nouns and conjugation tables. At least, she used to teach that way. My older sister had the benefit of her original style. It was tedious and you did not learn how to actually speak French so much as you learned how to translate it. They would learn to pronounce correctly, but the idea of having a natural conversation with a native French speaker was basically unthinkable. That was fine though. The kids would graduate 8th grade and move on to High School where they would actually learn a language. The students from Advent would have the advantage of knowing lots and lots of nouns and verbs.

The year after my older sister graduated 8th grade, Mrs. Seaman was introduced to French in Action. FIA was the latest concept in language learning. It was ‘immersive’ which meant watching videos entirely in French with no English whatsoever. The idea was to focus on actually conversing and hearing the language spoken rather than looking at lists of nouns and tables of verbs. It has been proven effective since its inception in the 90s. Mrs Seaman was introduced to it and she fell in love with some aspects of it. The problem was that it was an all-inclusive program. You weren’t meant to skip around or change the curriculum. Mrs. Seaman wanted to keep using some of her worksheets and xeroxes from old lessons. For me it highlighted how little I had been paying attention in her class up til then. I had no problem with the French immersion videos and cassette tapes, but her lists of verbs to conjugate made no sense. I was able to limp along as a C student. She took issue with that, but the way her grades were weighted it meant I would never fail her class, just the parts from her old curriculum. The new stuff was easy and you felt accomplished when you spoke whole sentences in French.

Our school ended at 8th grade and we would all be moving on to high school where we could actually choose what language to take. I was pretty vocal about hating French and never wanting to study it again. Realistically, it’s a stupid thing to learn in Alabama. It was an effort to make the private school seem more classy. If they actually cared about our education, it would have been Spanish we studied. So few Americans even have a passport. These kids might use their French briefly when on vacation in Paris. There are those elite few who actually take their education to a place like Haiti or West Africa, but 99.99% of Advent students stay in Alabama and live down the road from their parents.

Mrs Seaman had to know her class was garbage. There was nothing to judge it against. One of the many pointless endeavours were the Christmas Carols we learned phonetically in French. Every year Mr Rick Phillips put on his self aggrandized circle jerk of Christmas music. It would dominate the months of November and December. Mrs Seaman’s class stopped doing French lessons for six weeks and started learning a French carol. We’d listen to tapes and repeat back to her. Later Mr Rick would just take her class time and we’d practice the song around his piano. At no point did they translate it for us. Our language skills were shit and the song was all about things like archangels and the Christ child and the manger and biblical shit that had no bearing on modern life. These were not words we had studied.

Anyway, she called our home one time when I was there alone. It was after 8 and my parent were out to dinner. My sister had a car and a social life. I was 13. I remember it being extra weird and feeling like I was in trouble and it was my standard reaction was to be apologetic and absorb another lecture about how I wasn’t applying myself and would fail out and repeat the grade or whatever threat it was. She was slurring her words, which took me years to understand what that meant. She kept repeating herself about how I had failed so and so pop quiz and how if I didn’t start working extra hard I wasn’t going to be able to go on the six flags trip in spring or maybe I wouldn’t even get to go to France with the class after 8th grade. I remember telling her that I had no intention of going to Paris with the class and I had already discussed it with my parents. My sister had a dim view of the French program at Advent and she said the class trip was spent mostly in hotel rooms. She had since visited France with our grandparents and said the Advent trip was a waste of time. She also convinced me to take Latin, which I think was one of the best decisions of my life.

So Mrs Seaman threatened to deny me a place on the class trip and I did not care, which made her mad. She repeated all the same things again and asked to speak to my parents, who weren’t home. She was angry and said we’d finish this conversation at school, but that never happened. I assume she sobered up and realized the bullet she had dodged by not talking to my parents. I told them she called and they thought it was weird. They were certain I meant her daughter had called me, but I insisted it was my French teacher who called apropos of nothing to tell me I was failing her class, which wasn’t true. So I missed the France trip, which I was happy about. I did not care about the wonder and mystique of the City of Lights. I could not care less about all the Catholic Churches. We were not allowed to have wine or even coffee. It would have been another week of Mrs Seaman belittling me.

So that was that. Mrs Seaman was a shitty teacher who decided to belittle me. I’m happy I never have to see her again.

Mr. Rick was a total dick

Mr. Richard Phillips of Birmingham Alabama who taught at The Advent Day School throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s was a total dick. I assume he still is one if he still lives today. He did not strike me as the type who grows and learns. He struck me as the type who needs an adoring audience. He struck me as a self-centered asshole who resented the fact that he was a music teacher and not a music creator. To this day I can’t listen to Christmas music without remembering bits of his detrimental influence on my life.

Mr. Rick taught music at the private episcopal day school for ages 4 to 14. The school boasted a robust music program, and I cannot deny that I learned how to read music. I also learned a lot about the baroque period and various other bits of classical music trivia. I learned that Mr. Rick represented a whole subset of the music industry, being a person who had complete and utter disdain for all modern music. As a 42 year old, it seems absurd that you might try to teach music appreciation to 12 year olds while also telling them their performing idols had no merit. That was Richard Phillips through and through. Classical music was correct, church music was correct. Every other musical expression was a fleeting pile of shit that held no value.

Mr. Rick was a fun clown to us from ages 4 to 8. His three day a week class involved us playing with xylophones and singing songs on stage. I remember it was fun. In second grade his attitude changed. He now wanted us to call him Mr. Phillips. We got homework from him. We were issued our plastic recorders that year. I remember looking forward to this moment. My older sister had a recorder that I wasn’t allowed to touch. I couldn’t wait ‘til it was my turn to get my own. When that day came, it was terrifying. We had crossed some line in his mind and we were now ready for his hard-ass teaching style. This was now a “serious” class. We had math and science and history and English every day, and music was only three days a week. Nevertheless, he expected us to do his homework and learn songs on the recorder. I was terrible at the recorder.

I recall in 4th grade he actually pushed it too far. He got it in his head that we should be reading thirty pages a week of classical music history leading up to this big test on the Baroque period. I just plowed through, doing the minimal amount of studying and expecting to get a D on the test. I guess several of my more studious classmates had hit a wall of despair trying to memorize all the esoteric shit he foisted upon us and petitioned their parents to help study for this intense exam. I guess those parents engaged with the material he gave us and noticed it was both dense and also poorly organized. I guess those parents complained to the headmaster who then asked Rick what the hell he was trying to teach the fourth graders. The exam was given to us but we never got the results back. Rick’s curriculum returned to its original form, that of a music teacher.

Despite his attempts to make his music class into a history class, Richard Phillips continued to behave like a man worthy of admiration. As we entered the 5th grade, Mr Phillips announced we were now eligible to audition for his choral ensemble. This meant spending three days a week in practice with Mr Rick after school. It meant performing for the school every Wednesday during chapel. The ensemble also travelled to various churches and retirement homes to sing hymns while Mr Phillips waved his arms about. The ensemble got to wear fancy red scarves while they sang. It was all very lah-Dee-dah.

In order to be in the ensemble, you had to audition. This meant performing a song for Mr Phillips solo while he judged your worth. I could not have less interest in this proposition. I’m sure he could see that I was neither wooed by his strength nor was I intimidated by his sway. I did not want to be on his team nor was I jealous of those who were on his team. His approval meant nothing to me and therefore he hated me. To be honest, I thought the whole audition was a loyalty test. In other words, I thought the will to perform solo in front of Rick was enough of an ordeal to grant you a place in the ensemble. Everyone can be taught to sing. Wrong. I have it on good authority that Rick has rejected several nine year olds from his ensemble. Not good enough. Untrainable. Rejected. Nine years old.

The man is a joke. An absurd failure of a human whose desire for praise extends to middle schoolers. A forty five year old man who needs to be admired and feared by ten year olds. Worse than zero, he is a negative one. He negates positivity.

The reason he is on my mind is because it is December. Mr. Rick had an annual circlejerk to his talent every Christmas. He called it Lessons and Carols. It was a performance by the children of the Advent Episcopal Day School that he took credit for every year. It was a four hour concert of children’s choirs attended by roughly 1000 parents and grandparents. It was an opportunity for Rick to bask in the glory his position afforded him. He put his name on all the musical pieces to indicate that he arranged them. He would leave off the actual composer’s names since hymns are public domain. He decides to add some eighth notes here and there and boom, his name is more important than Mozart.

Each grade performed a song leading up to the middle school ensemble. They sang a much more intricate number. The crowning pinnacle of the ensemble sung the solo parts. This role was chosen after months of trials. The finalists had to spend hours of one-on-one time with Rick Phillips to determine who was worthy of the solo role. The one chosen would have the glory of starting the concert by singing Once in Royal David’s City alone in the church full of one thousand pairs of ears. The soloist would have no accompaniment and would begin with no instrument to set the tune. The soloist was always a boy under 10. There were a few notorious failures where the child got nervous, couldn’t find their voice, and the whole performance began with total silence. The student lived with this shame for the remainder of their time at Advent Day School.

I think it’s weird when choir leaders choose to focus on prepubescent boys. It’s probably harmless 99% of the time. Mr Rick probably wasn’t a pervert or a racist, but he behaved like one sometimes. Choir leaders can be hypnotized by the allure of young boys voices. They can’t stop chasing that high and see every young boy as a potential instrument. Mr. Phillips was insistent that we all use our “head voice” rather than our “chest voice”. This became more and more humiliating for the young boys as their voices started to change. You enter fifth and sixth grade and you want to start being attractive to the opposite sex. Making us sing falsetto in front of the girls was tantamount to making us wear pink tutus and braid our hair. Now, I admit that all boys should be more open to traditionally feminine things, but this was the mid 90s for me. I am sure the girls were equally humiliated in their own way.

That was the thing with Mr. Richard Phillips of Birmingham Alabama - he was a bully. He wasn’t a violent bully, he was a mocking bully. He had decades of experience on us so of course he was able to roast us with hilarious results. You were expected to take the roasting happily with good humour. If you got upset it was your own fault somehow. Mostly he liked to do character bits. He had his “black guy” character, his “black girl” character, and his “Chinese person” character as his main repertoire. He would do these character AT the students who had these racial features. He would do little bows at the Asian students and he’d do mock gang-signs at the Black students. Other characters who would show up were his lispy gay guy, “y’all sound worse than Helen Keller on a bad day,” was a favourite line.

I remember the media fiasco that was the John Wayne Bobbit spousal abuse case. The details of a marriage so desperately sad were fodder for ten thousand low-effort late night jokes. The shudder that enters a man’s spine when he considers being mutilated thusly is incomparable. Maybe childbirth is a million times worse - i will never know. What I do know is that everyone should be ashamed for ever finding that situation funny. Mr Rick thought it was a fucking laugh riot. He wanted to make jokes about it so hard but he was just so devoid of creativity that all he could do was wave his scissors towards the boys, snapping them shut over and over with both hands yelling “Bobbit! Bobbit!” at us. He’d laugh at his incredible joke, we’d recoil and get uncomfortable.

When I imagine being my age (42) and making repeated references to 7th grader’s genitals, I picture myself getting fired in disgrace later that afternoon. Rick Phillips made this reference dozens of times over several months. It was always directed at us boys and always in front of the girls. I recall mentioning it to my parents over dinner just casually. “Mr Rick loves to make this joke about that guy whose abuse drove his wife to mutilate him.” My mother was well acquainted with the headmistress of the school and I think she relayed this fact to her. I think Mrs. Battles marched down to Rick’s office and was like “Jesus Christ Rick?!?” Probably not so spectacularly in reality. I know my mom asked “are you sure he’s not saying “bob it”, like the Bob haircut? Like he’s threatening to give you a haircut, not threatening to cut your penis off in front of the classroom?” I assured her that was not what he was referring to.

Anyway about a day after that conversation, Mr Rick did the Bobbit routine again, but this time he specifically said “you know I am referencing the bob hairstyle right? I don’t know what else you could think, but I have definitely been saying ‘bob it’ this whole time.” What a coward.

The final Mr Rick Phillips of Birmingham Alabama story I have is from our final year at Advent. It was 8th grade and we were 13-14 years old. There was a mere 22 of us in the class and only four were boys. We always had more girls in my year and the imbalance just continued. For whatever reason, Mr. Rick wanted to teach 7/8th grade together, but separate sessions for boys and girls. At this point I had so little respect for him that I was doing just the barest minimum. I remember one time him playing the “match this pitch” game, where he tried to get us to sing up high as usual. I was just done, and pretended I couldn’t do it. He’d hit a key on the piano and I’d flatly say ‘laaaaa’ a couple octaves lower. He was so sure he could just force me to do it. I was thinking how little power he held over me and I was glad to receive an F. I was already accepted into highschool. His class was not core curriculum. He was so so angry. He got red in the face. He threw his heavy set of keys (why did he have so many keys) against the wall so hard it made us all jump. Matching pitch was supposed to be the last twenty minutes of class, but he spent the whole time trying to make me do it.

Then I graduated and entered High School across town. I was so humiliated by Rick Phillips that I had no desire to even consider joining the High School choir. I regret that decision. I met the high school choirmaster and he seemed nice. I later had the opportunity to sell weed to a friend of his. I realized he was a self-actualized unashamed gay man who loved music of all kinds. He was basically the opposite of Mr Rick Phillips. He taught his students technical theory and a love of the broad artform that is music. Mr Rick Phillips taught us bullying tactics.

So if anyone out there ever wants to Google around for information about Mr. Richard ‘Rick’ Phillips of Birmingham Alabama, choirmaster of Advent Day School, I hope they find this document enlightening.

To be clear, Mr Rick…. was a dick.

Speech Class and the Art of Debate

I had to take Speech in high school

It was one of the most stressful and also most beneficial experiences of high school. It helped me learn how to overcome the intimidation of public speaking as much as any human can. There is no trick, you just have to experience public speaking a few dozen times and you start to get used to it. Some people are able to memorize an entire essay and combine it with hand motions and eye contact to create a ‘speaking experience’. Personally I prefer to work from a rough outline and speak from my knowledge base. Hand gestures and such are corny and I never cared enough to take public speaking to the next level.

My experience wasn’t unique. Everyone in my class of about sixteen students was nervous and quickly got a lot better. Apart from one or two especially quiet kids, I remember us mostly enjoying this class - at least we weren’t listening to the same teacher drone on while we take notes. There was the typical amount of busywork handouts we had to fill out and chapters of a book we had to read, but the days we delivered or received speeches were always entertaining.

My 10th grade class had 46 kids overall. We had boisterous kids and timid kids and everything in-between. Two of the most quiet were Danny Han and David Huyan. I should mention that my school was only about half white, the rest being Black and various POC kids of the doctors and professors working at the University. These two guys Danny and David were not related and did not know each other prior to high school. I had virtually no interaction with them. They were among the many students who were not interested in smoking weed and partying, so I had little in common with them. I have changed their names here, but their actual names were similar in tone and spirit. At the great risk of sounding like a monster, these two Chinese kids looked alike, hung out together all the time, and had very similar names. I don’t remember anyone confusing their names, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen time to time.

The pair came out of their shells our senior year, and I recall them attending a few parties. I remember how they both owned a version of this white T-shirt that might have been skater attire or other Hot-Topic type gear. It was understated, just a single line of text on a white plane that read “do not conform”. This connected with our post-grunge ethos, and was a T-shirt that I might have bought if I encountered it. The problem was that both of these guys owned the same shirt. On more than one occasion they would both be wearing the shirt purely out of random rotation. My school was very literary, so I am sure the literal definition of irony was not lost on anyone.

Danny was in my speech class but David was not. Danny was fine at speaking, although it was strange hearing him talk for five minutes straight. Other quiet kids could sometimes be heard to rant at length about TV shows or books, etc. Anyway, we had all become accustomed to everyone’s speech styles after several months of the class. We had covered the basics of public speaking on a variety of topics and with different limitations placed on us. We eventually came to the advanced topic of Debate.

Debate as a sport is idiotic

So after over six months of learning how to speak, we came to the highest academic level of applied speech - debate. This began with a chapter about the fundamentals of debate structure, and then some worksheets. We then had a lecture about efficient research and note-taking. Then we read up about the history of debate from Socrates to Lincoln/Douglass and watched some dramatic recreations on VHS. It was all very dignified and theatrical. It seemed to be focused on being compelling, likeable, relatable, and approachable - the things we had been taught so far.

So then we pop in a tape of a modern debate competition at the high-school level. I recall the first thing I noticed was that both teams were dressed like prep-school nightmares in their khaki slacks and blue blazers. Girls wore dresses fit for the Amish. The topic is announced, hands are shaken, the teams take their seats, and the judges initiate the debate. The first team member approaches the podium with a strange energy in his stride. When he is given the green light, he begins speaking as fast as any human possibly can. He is gasping for air and diving into his sentences like an olympic sprinter whose also throwing shotputs. It is so incredibly distracting and weird that I haven’t taken in the content of a single word, just marveled at the spectacle. I begin to question if perhaps this person has some disability and I am laughing at their speech impediment. Perhaps this is an Autistic individual who always communicates this way?

No. The next speaker is every bit as frantic and desperate as the first. Each competitor not only spews out their prepared lines like a hostage in an action movie begging for their life, but they interject their sentences with exasperated derision at their opponent. It is as if they lose points for any moment of dead air.

So at the end of round one, we stop the tape and discuss the techniques. Most of us are like me, baffled by what we just watched. It seems high level debate competitions are not about convincing an audience of anything, but rather grabbing up as many points as possible. It doesn’t matter if your rebuttal was a good idea, just that you rebutted a point. This seems to mean the players are encouraged to throw out as many points as possible in the hope that the opponent cannot rebut all of them in their time. So its really a competition of lung capacity.

We then find out that Danny Han and David Huyan both attended debate club over the summer. This was just another extra-curricular class that existed solely to put on a college application. Danny and David were almost certainly going through the motions dictated by strict parents, but who am I to judge. Maybe the two quietest students in my class both independently chose to attend a public speaking class over the summer for fun. Anyway, they had dutifully internalized every technical aspect of debate, and regurgitated that knowledge accurately. David visited our class and the two had a debate for us to see the skills in action. I was still reeling from the video of the preppy kids frantic vocalizations, and thought maybe that was limited to the most desperate elite debate teams.

No. Danny and David conducted an equally maniacal breathless back and forth. They filled their allotted time up to the second with repeated facts and scoffing noises. Apparently it is more important to speak like a desperate schizophreniac than to be understood by a common audience. They would rather repeat the same statements three times like a lunatic than say it once clearly. It was very strange. These two quiet kids almost foaming at the mouth in their desperation to get us to agree to their side. This topic was given to them and it was not of personal relevance at all. Their pro/con status was decided by coin flip. It was unimaginable to me.

At the end of the debate, we were all meant to choose a winner by writing their name on anonymous cards. Several of us wrote ‘DH’ in an obnoxious insensitive joke on the absurdity of it all. The class was divided into groups of four to choose a topic and debate in front of the class. My group chose school uniforms, and my partner insisted we take the opposing stance. Although I also did not like the idea of uniforms, I knew there was going to be ZERO evidence against school uniforms. Our performance was shitty and we all four just went through the motions. My side ran out of facts very quickly and they had an infinite supply of pro-uniform articles. We ceded our time and graciously lost the debate. None of us tried to do the meth-head approach.

All of this has been on my mind again recently with the right-wing speaking tactics of the day. Rather than making one cogent point, the game is to shotgun blast out as many statements as possible. If your opponent cannot refute them all, you win? These are people who probably excelled at high school debate. They probably also still say Great Gatsby is their favourite book. They probably still know their locker combination.

The conclusion is the same as many others. We need some agreed upon rules of engagement. An untrue statement should get you zero points. Not answering a question gets you -1 point. The problem is we need an agreed set of truths that allows for a large grey area. Being honestly wrong about something is not dishonorable. Avoiding a problem or passing the blame is whats lacking in honor. These bad-faith debaters simply want to rewrite the rule-book to favor spectacle. Just like DH’s desperate frantic begging, these people are using the optics to make their backwards ideas seem correct.

What killed the GOP?

Who killed Davey Moore?
why, and what’s the reason for..

That’s a lyric from a Bob Dylan song regarding a boxer who died in the ring. The song ponders whose fault that death was, considering a new angle each verse - the crowd, the manager, the other boxer, etc. It is basically a dire retelling of the classic analogy of the straw that broke the camel’s back. No one straw is really at fault, but they are also all at fault too. Personally I’d blame the manager for putting undue pressure on the referee. He should go to prison and the referee should get fired. Maybe consider enacting new legislation regarding boxing safety. It’s still a great song.

I heard a new term this week - Schroedinger’s Asshole. This is a person (asshole) who makes a tasteless or harmful “joke”, and if you tell them their joke perpetuates lies and encourages violence, then they say you are just uptight and can’t take a harmless joke. If, alternatively, you tell them you agree with the premise of their “joke”, then they will open up an assert that they too agree with it and wish to act on it in real life someday. Like Schroedinger’s cat, the asshole’s statement may be a true belief or just a joke depending on who is reacting to it. The tasteless joke can turn into tasteless discourse and tasteless organization and eventually elect tasteless candidates…

I was born in 1982. It feels like the Republican Party has been seeking that Reagan high ever since the eighties. I cannot claim to be an expert on that particular administration, but my guess is he would have conceded gracefully if he lost re-election. If I were a twenty-something in those days, I would have hated Reagan I bet. His offences seem quaint now, of course. He did essentially invent the “dog whistle” feel-good style of sugar coating bigoted policies. Finding one dubious case of a welfare fraud and using it to cast shade on a nationwide social service that benefits millions is some grade-A propaganda.

Did Reagan set the party’s decline in motion?

Maybe, but they have had every chance to remain relevant and squandered them all. He showed the party what was possible and how little effort they had to make with the right guy. They have been looking for the next ‘right guy’ for thirty years. That whole time they should have been working on their party fundamental principles. Those are not clear and they seem to change with the situation.

But what are the pillars of the GOP and how have they contributed to the party’s current state in 2021?

#1 - Warmachine

The GOP claims to be for small government, which means fewer social services. When confronted with raw data that shows how providing healthcare actually reduces costs overall, they reject the notion because it feels antithetical to their credo. Conversely, when companies need bailouts due to housing market collapse or global pandemic, they come begging the Government. It’s all a clear farce that requires deft doublespeak to avoid the flagrant hypocrisy. They want lower taxes overall, but we also need to perpetuate the forever-war with f-35s and armoured personnel carriers. The USA actually does manufacture a lot of things, we just don’t hear about it as consumers. What we make is weapons and we sell them to countries. We also sell them to law enforcement and bill them to the government. But of course, none of this can be reduced at all. The real problem according to the GOP is homeless people receiving shelter and single mothers receiving aide. That shit adds up.

Republicans love the Army and having a strong presence in the world. I used to hate that notion. I still think its a profound waste of money and should be massively downsized, but I believe serving in the armed forces can enrich ones’ life and the country also. I don’t recommend it to everyone, especially not me.

The Republican Party uses the armed forces as a placeholder for American exceptionalism. To quote a friend from high school “at the end of the day, America has most of the food and all the weapons”. My history classes told me that the American revolution was a global inspiration that led to the end of colonialism. In the decades following 1776, most of South America declared independence from Europe. The wave of democracy slowly circled the globe and ended up crashing onto Vietnam. US self-congratulatory politics suddenly came into contact with a catch-22 situation. That situation is still being reckoned with today. I may have to write a separate essay about Vietnam in the future.

The real story of America’s double-think problem with the military began after WW2. The wave of democracy that slowly dismantled the monarchies and liberated the colonies had the added effect of creating a power vacuum. Britain could no longer rule the waves because the nation was bankrupt after two world wars. They remain the cultural kings of the world, but their military control over the world was gone. The US came out of WW2 with an implied mandate to maintain control over the world with a military presence in every corner.

The men who fought in WW2 became deified and military service became a de-facto badge of duty all american males should aspire towards. It is truly challenging for me, an old millennial, to grasp this concept. If my country wanted to draft me at age 20 and send me to Iraq in 2002, I would flee for Canada without a moment’s hesitation, and my father and family would help me do it. Why is that? It is because my father was born in ‘51 and witnessed Vietnam. He is lucky enough to suffer from kidney issues which prevented him from being drafted, thus ending any pressure he may have felt from his father.

This rant is not intended to be about Vietnam, but the GOP. The point here is that the party loves to espouse militaria. It’s all an excuse to keep funding weapon contracts. The weapon cycle is much like the nitrogen cycle in nature: Military orders more bullets -> factories in middle america keep making bullets -> representatives from districts with bullet factories are motivated to keep the military growing. The Republican Party trots out soldiers and their families wherever possible without ever acknowledging the hypocrisy that the majority of the representatives have never been part of the military. They would never advise their children to join the army. The goal has always been money in the end.

I honestly believe Spielberg plays a big part in rekindling the military-industrial complex. “Saving Private Ryan” came at a time when “The Greatest Generation” was approaching their golden years. The future seemed dark and scary, but the past got shinier and more glorious each year. That is a vague quote from The Watchmen. Camera technology had progressed to where we could glorify the achievements of WW2 on a new level of realism. The nation’s history buffs had a good concept of what WW2 was like, but I think the vast majority of Americans who never cared much for history class had a version of D-Day in their heads that looked more like “White Christmas” or “The Longest Day”. These casual citizens respected and admired their grandparents who served, but never conceived of watching people die on beaches under gunfire.

Saving Private Ryan sparked a newfound respect for The Greatest Generation as well as the military in general. It was released about two years before 9-11. Thousands of impressionable kids my exact age enlisted to fight terrorism largely because of the renewed cultural interest in WW2. Unfortunately, all the realistic portrayals of Vietnam came out when we were toddlers. America has spent an immense amount of time trying to forget Vietnam ever happened. Maybe if Platoon was released in 1999 the world would look different today.

I personally witnessed the tonal shift that America made regarding the military after 9-11. Recruitment had been in decline for decades. Ads on television were minimal and somewhat laughable. With new technology and the changing nature of warfare, it really felt as though America was on the verge of adopting a more cost-effective approach to defence. If we aren’t fighting the cold war and Europe is becoming more and more stable with the EU, then why do we need all these bombers? The invasion of Iraq in 2002 changed all that of course. All of a sudden, mid-century military strength was the way forward. Nothing was complicated, just tough american muscle against Saddam Hussein. Nevermind the manufactured connection to 9-11 and the obviously pre-decided course of action in Iraq. Its like Bush told us - We’re gonna find you and we’re gonna get you. That makes sense to voters with 7th grade educations.

So now the GOP’s prime directive (perhaps) is to maintain a strong military presence everywhere. Being opposed to this is equated with being un-american. If you say “we should decrease military spending,” the GOP begs on behalf of the low-income families who join the military to pay for college. “Why do you hate low income families? Why do you want our troops to die?” The American flag itself becomes a symbol of the republican party. Even now all politicians are subject to scrutiny if they aren’t wearing their cute little flag pin. Sometimes I feel compelled to scream at the top of my lungs about how no one in America wore flag pins before 9-11. The nature of recruitment ads changed as well. There was a dramatic and noticeable uptick in all the classic recruitment cliches. It wasn’t subtle.

Nowadays, the armed services seem to have reached some form of balance. The country still funds a presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal all along was to never leave, and maintain a state of readiness in strategically valuable corners of the world. The Suez Canal is essential to global commerce, therefore America must protect its priorities by keeping supplies in the area despite how the sovereign nations in the area feel about it.

In the recent years, the US has enjoyed relative peace in the world of nation on nation conflict. The Middle-East remains highly tumultuous and our troops are often put in danger, however the average American feels no immediate fear of military strike. In the years following 9-11, there was a constant unspoken feeling that, at any moment, news of the next unfathomable terrorist attack would interrupt Friends (or whatever). That fear has waned.

The military may have been worn out as a touchstone for republican ideals. It is hard to call Obama weak on terrorism when he zaps Bin Laden in his first term. He destroys Mitt Romney’s criticism of the decreased military spending by reminding him that we also reduced spending on cannons and horse archers. Future wars are fought on new battlegrounds. New battlegrounds bear little resemblance to Iwo Jima and Normandy, and so it is hard to connect the Greatest Generation to a drone pilot in Virginia. If you have to draw on nostalgia to make your point, then maybe it isn’t a great point.

This is all a meandering way of saying the republican party has deified military service when it is really just a government job with a high fitness requirement. Being a candidate who promises a stronger military is really saying they want more money from the government for their district. This is justified because they will build a weapon factory and profit off the sales, as mentioned above. Pro-military GOP members do not want to help soldier’s education, healthcare, or livelihood. They want to sell weapons and call it protecting freedom. Appealing to the heroics of yesteryear is akin to propaganda. WW2 was complicated and the US contribution was one aspect. I don’t mean to denigrate the achievements of my grandparents’ generation, but America was never subject to the level of destruction England and the whole of Europe endured. America likes to claim it won WW2. We showed up in the fourth quarter at best.

#2 - God Bless America

The GOP also loves religious freedom. Reagan did a great job of tying the Republican Party to the evangelical Christian lot. The party’s guiding principles were now aligned with the bible apparently. Nevermind how completely at-odds Jesus is with the entire history of the party before or since. “Judge not lest ye be judged” does not allow for the death penalty. “Turn the other cheek” does not allow for preemptive strike on a sovereign nation. Even if they went old-school and chose the Ten Commandments as their guiding principles, it still raises several questions. The GOP would effectively be saying all other religions are wrong.

The real issue here is that the evangelical Christians in the USA have gotten much more extreme since Reagan. Standing with Christian values can often be shorthand for anti-lgbtq or anti-Muslim sentiment. Reagan’s administration was casually homophobic, much like all of America in those days. It’s unfortunate and it’s hard to fault him for not being a trendsetter, but the opportunity was there and he did not take it regardless. He did of course, know about the AIDS crisis and felt no urgency to help these American citizens. He probably set back gay relations by a decade, and he probably didn’t feel much remorse.

The Republican Party certainly hasn’t changed their general stance on non-cisgender identities at all. They have dragged their feet and used gay-panic as a wedge issue to win elections. The threat of gay culture on the children of America is essentially the modern day equivalent of communism or LSD. Clearly one of the fundamental principles of the GOP is the deliberate repression of LGBTQ individuals in an effort to shame them into non-existence.

As for religious freedom in general, the GOP pretends to care. I am doubtful that they espoused victim hood so much in Reagan’s era. Nowadays, the Republican Party loves to claim they are being persecuted, repressed, and marginalized. As has been said, any ruling class sees the increased freedom of others as an attack on their freedom. The country with Christian iconography on its money and government buildings is not going to abandon Jesus when a Muslim is elected to office. The GOP has begrudgingly accepted a number of token individuals of various groups to act as justification for sweeping repressive actions. In all honesty, the Christian angle of the Republican Party has become much more subdued ever since W. Bush left office. We still argue over abortion even though it has been settled law for decades, and the GOP trots out the Bible as the reason, but that’s all just symbolic at this point.

As someone who was raised by a protestant and attended church school growing up, the GOP’s relationship with Christianity has always been troubling. The art of preaching a sermon with a clear lesson drawn from a specific passage from the Bible is actually something that takes time and effort to weave together. One cannot simply say “read the bible” as a defense to anything. You must cite and extrapolate meaning. Putting the burden of understanding onto a non-religious person is fundamentally backwards. The Bible is long, dense, and challenging. It requires thought and perspective to derive meaning. This pursuit is what we call “theology”. If you want to argue that women don’t deserve control over their reproductive rights because of the Bible, you need to cite sources and explain the relevance to modern life. You need to convince people. If you cannot do that, then your values will remain part of your religion and not your legislation. The bottom line is that the GOP simultaneously believes in freedom of religion while actively campaigning to restrict representation by non-Christians. They cherry-pick lessons that suits their narrative and elicits emotional responses from voters. A candidate can use their church attendance as a demonstration of morality. They are never required to justify un-Christian behaviour in their daily life.

#3 - Drugs and drug users are evil

When I was in college in 2001, I remember seeing the infamous PSA about how buying marijuana helps fund terrorism. That one was a step too far and was quickly discontinued, but a lot of people within the GOP felt this was an appropriate message to Americans. It was all wrapped up in the Bush administrations’ solution to 9/11 - Tell Americans to keep buying shit especially airline tickets, and quit smoking grass because its un-taxable. Marijuana was always a gateway drug, but the gate it opened was the one that allows cops to violate the fourth amendment on a daily basis. The odor of pot is probable cause to unlawfully search someone. Does the cop know what pot smells like? Maybe. Can you capture a smell and present it as evidence? Nope. Is there any way to define where a smell came from? Not without elaborate machinery and preparation.

The War on Drugs began back in the eighties. This was perhaps the first time the phrase “war on …” was used in regards to an inanimate object rather than a nation. Reagan started the war on drugs, and because of that, it is considered beyond reproach. The war was always an excuse for veiled racism. Drugs are things bad people do whereas medicine is for good people. Nevermind that a lot of elected from both parties actively enjoy illegal drugs and face no threat of being tested. In the year 2021, we have an actual word for the damage caused by this double-think : the opioid crisis. GOP spends decades deriding the morality of drug users while prescription drugs are being abused by every level of republican anti-drug advocate.

It makes more sense to blame the pharmaceutical companies for ignoring the obvious effects of their products, but the GOP is guilty of rampant hypocrisy here. Nowadays, we are developing effective new approaches to addictions. We increasingly recognize that addiction is a disease of the mind, not a moral failure. This comes just in time for modern parasites like Rush Limbaugh to blame the disease for his opioid addiction despite spending decades demonizing anyone with a minor marijuana possession charge.

The war on drugs was always centered on police control. It’s a blank-check for probable cause as mentioned above. In addition, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to help increase fear among white suburbanites. Your fear of Black people is now justified because they could be drug dealers. It is now perfectly reasonable to have cops come into elementary schools to scare the crap out of kids and reinforce their dominance. I should say most of the kids were not scared of the cops when they came to talk to us about drugs. Most were just distracted and excited by the handguns they carried. Either way, the message about drugs was lost on me because I went to private church school and no one was selling any angel dust to us 3rd graders.

Bottom line is that the GOP pushes the morality narrative hard and being anti-drug is a big part of it. Records have shown that many of the party themselves have dealt with prescription drug problems, thus nullifying the moral failure aspect. They spent half a century asserting that marijuana is a gateway drug and should be grounds for prison time. Now we are on the verge of federal legalization. In the near future the party may shrug and pretend they weren’t all that serious about pot anyway. Nevermind the millions of lives ruined over small amounts of pot.

#4 The culture war is coming for your children

This concept ties the three previous pillars together into a simplified digestible nugget of Colbert-style truth-i-ness. The target of rage changes but the song remains the same. The increasingly diverse world is becoming mathematically more just and fair. Those who have always enjoyed freedom are made to believe that the increased freedom of others is a threat to your own. It can become very tricky to connect these dots however.

in the 1960s, the civil rights movement had reached a tipping point. It had been demonstrated time and time again that Black people deserved equal rights and it was not a threat to society in any way. This was self evident to many people and had been for hundreds of years as it remains today. The wide acceptance of this truth enraged a segment of white Americans who still clung to pre ww2 notions of eugenics. This vocal minority fled to the GOP in direct reaction to the civil rights and voting rights act, signed into law by LBJ, a democrat.

Since the 1960s, the GOP has flirted with the white supremacy movement in various veiled ways. The pro-segregation messages were built around anti-communism sentiment. The soviets were funding MLK to sew discord in American politics, so its not racism its patriotism. This was always a losing battle, threat of communism slowly evolved into a general fear that blacks were up to something. Reagan’s war on drugs signified the general shift away from mid-century conspiratorial demonization into a postmodern direct 1:1 comparison. Black gang members are coming to sell your kids drugs.

In my youth, the threat of Black culture seemed to wane for the most part. I was raised in Birmingham in the 1980s and the legacy of slavery in America was ever present. We began learning about it in second grade and it remained at the forefront of my education throughout. It is hard for me to truly understand the country as a whole when it comes to race relations especially. It was not until I had left my hometown for Chicago that I began to grasp the rest of the nations’ concept of race. I will save the full diatribe about my life as a son of Alabama for another time. My point here is to mention that most of racist-ass America very rarely encounters a Black person. People from medium-size midwestern/northeastern cities are so quick to judge Alabama as being full of bigots, yet they have had about two hours of education on the civil rights movements. The fear of these culture shifts that are characterized as threats is targeted at people who will never encounter them. The GOP’s message isn’t always “The gangs are coming to your hometown”, but rather “the gangs control Chicago, a leftist democratic city”.

If this pillar ended at racial bigotry, then it would have been abandoned decades ago. The unfortunate reality is that the culture war must always rage. The weapons the GOP built to attack desegregation needed new targets. The general intent has always been to establish a shared vision of “normal” and attack anything that threatens to change this vision. No one would outright say they support racial segregation today, but within my parents lifetime it has been outright illegal for mixed race couples to be married, so… clearly a lot of voting people alive today used to support that. They lost that battle, and the next front was women’s liberation in the ‘70s. Obvioulsy this was not a direct change one day, rather a slow diversion of resources towards a new enemy. In my lifetime, this used to be a laughable concept. The very idea that a woman would have any rights restricted based on gender is absurd. Sadly, not so much.

This week we mourn Rush Limbaugh and we revisit some classic popular wars waged by this right wing hero. One that comes to mind is the war on Murphy Brown. This sitcom from the early ‘90s was a sensation that ran for several years. During its rise to prominence, Rush dedicated hundreds of hours of content centered on the audacity of presenting a single mother who is successful. It is amazing to imagine someone could talk about this for more than five minutes. The show apparently touched a nerve for a segment of the GOP who saw female empowerment as a threat to their own power. It was offensive to consider a family that did not consist of a man and a woman plus two children. All sorts of mental gymnastics were displayed in an effort to say that children need this and that, and people can’t be both things, and one parent must work and one must be a wife, etc. All of these arguments are made with the willful ignorance of the millions upon millions of people who were raised in single-parent households, not to mention those raised by other relatives or foster parents, etc. Two loving parents are maybe better than one, but a loving one plus an abusive one is probably worse than just one half decent parent. Also, if we are criticizing single-parent households, does that meant we are going to start offering more social services to them? If this is a group doomed to failure, maybe the GOP should fight on their behalf and win them as voters?

Its easy to see how the pivot from unwed single mothers towards gay marriage and the LGBT movement occurred. In my lifetime I have witnessed the nationwide total shift in attitude towards gay people. Obviously total acceptance has not been achieved in 2021, but it is remarkable to think on how far we have come in my lifetime. With the recent popularity of Raimi Malek’s Freddy Mercury biopic, it feels sometimes that society has a revisionist memory of the ‘80s. Queen’s performance at Live Aid should be played alongside Reagan’s press secretary answering questions about AIDS. When I was a toddler, my government was literally laughing at the idea of a disease that only affected gay people. Later when I was in highschool we had evolved to admit gay people were citizens sometimes worthy of respect. Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom was popular, although one episode in particular was banned in Alabama. In my college years, the push for marriage rights hit its tipping point. The LGBT community was now recognized as a protected class due to the clear history of violence and institutional bigotry. You cannot fire someone for being gay.

The relatively rapid acceptance of the gay community in America has made it the perfect target for the GOP’s hate machine. Black people are easier to identify than gay people. A big reason for the success of the gay rights movement was the fact that gay people already existed everywhere. Everyone has a family member who is gay. This provided most people with an easy entry point towards acceptance. Unfortunately, this also feeds into the backwards narrative that gayness is a choice. If you convince yourself that people are choosing to be gay, then you can see this as a war to be won. Anyone demonstrating success and happiness while gay is a propaganda artist just like Murphy Brown.

This cycle of gradual cultural acceptance is playing out again now with trans-rights. The right-wing is attacking them with similar fervor and stupid messaging. All of these fights fall under the same broad effort. It is pretty much what our dear departed monster Rush put forward in the 80s - American families should look like a generic Normal Rockwell painting. Any deviation from that is an attack on our core values. But there is a paradox to this idea - the people who hear this message are already living out a modern Norman Rockwell painting. No LGBT people or single mothers will hear the GOP and choose to join the team that has demonized them for so long. If you want to live in a white ethnostate, you can pretty much find it in rural America. As I mentioned with the fear of gang violence, the suburbs are not in any danger of being invaded by the crack dealing gangs.

The threat is not towards the voting members of the GOP, but towards their children. Right now, the threat is that the LGBT movement will indoctrinate your children. Before, it was that feminists will teach your daughters they don’t have to be homemakers. Before that, it was that your children will learn its okay to befriend and date Black people. The target changes but the broad message remains the same. The leftist culture war is coming to ruin your children with ideas.

I have pondered the various generational divides at length, and I can’t stop seeing the Baby Boomer nostalgia directing the most awful parts of American society. The goal is to recreate the feel-good parts of their childhood, and pass on traditions they perceive as being eternal. The reality is that the post WW2 era was characterized by people and nations searching for their true identity. The horrors of that war forced the world to condemn eugenics and start to close down the European colonial era. America, like most places I assume, was aggressively trying to get back to a sense of normality while also flexing on the Soviets. The childhood many boomers experienced was the product of a nation demonstrating its superiority. America was prosperous because it had avoided much of the devastation from WW2. American factories helped end the war, and were easily retrofit to make consumer goods. There was a massive housing boom to sustain the growth.

The baby boom years were unsustainable, and deeply unfair to minorities. These boomers remember playing outside with no supervision but causally forget that four or five classmates died in their gradeschool from biking without a helmet. The generation that tells their kids how no one gave them a participation trophy is literally giving their kids participation trophies. I’ll save my generational rant for later, and conclude by saying that the baby boom wishes the world was the same as it was when they were children. This is foolish because they have a skewed memory of the world that neglects large parts of the population who were suffering under this system.

So, while its clear that anyone who wants to live a baby boom fantasy is well within their rights to do so, they cannot force these values on the nation. You cannot outlaw lifestyles you dislike, such as dating a black person or allowing a single woman to have a bank account. The fourth pillar of the GOP is the culture war that is coming for your children. You should be afraid of teachers and Universities especially. They might teach your kids that other lifestyles are permissible.

5 - Owning the Libs

The prior four pillars have existed my whole life, but this one seems to be a recent phenomenon. There is a much larger essay to be written here about Facebook and online discourse which I will seek to avoid falling into here. Even prior to the social media juggernaut, the 24hr news networks were developing this idea. The core notion is that audience engagement is the one true god. If you can keep eyes on your content longer, then the message or result does not matter. Outcomes, proofs, and good-faith debates are all secondary to continues engagement. This means targeting content towards the most engaging emotions, one of which is rage. This is not limited to one side of the aisle, but the Democratic Party does not build their strategy on audience engagement. They present ideas about government and finance and the future and such. The GOP finds much more values in attacking the opponent rather than presenting better ideas or challenging established law with reasoned debate.

I find it astounding how some of my fellow Americans must be quasi-literate. Any highschool speech class will teach you that it matters more how your audience feels than what you say. I get that idea, but at some point your words still must communicate an idea right? The past four years our failed casino owner president spewed word salad at every official event, not counting rallies. I am not an expert on his rallies but the unregulated nature means he didn’t get so lost in his concepts. He had to remind the audience he was the real victim in every situation. So many jokes were made at the preposterous assertions he made, but I was always more focused on the paragraph long sentences with no discernible subject or object, just a string of semicolons and half formed grievances. Apparently this style of nothing-speak works on some level. The assault on proper English is all part of a general disdain for education.

It is frustrating beyond belief. You cannot debate the merits of nothingness. If your stance is that I am wrong, then you have to posit an opposing idea. That’s what government is. It is not a lawless boxing match.

fin

So the GOP is the anti-drug pro-religion strong defense party that wants to preserve outdated definitions of family structure. Unfortunately, these are all stagnant battles with no real mandate for action or change. I cannot imagine how this is sustainable. My prediction is that the GOP will fracture into the sensible and silly aspects. My hope is that they will cancel each other out and dumbfuck America will go back to not voting, having lost all faith in the process thanks to Orange 45. In an ideal world, they would vote in every election and we might eventually break the two party system into four or more. I’d welcome the Democratic party breaking up also, but right now they seem more cohesive than ever. I honestly don’t think there is a huge difference in the extremes of the Democrats. Trump literally attacked the last two Republican presidential candidates as well as everyone who was in favor of the Iraq invasion. The GOP wanted his supporters so badly that they eagerly embraced his values. I don’t even have to mention Trump’s family values vs the GOP’s. The distance between John McCain and DT is vast. The Sanders v Pelosi divide is nothing in comparison.

God knows what the future holds. I have never witnessed a shift in political parties in my lifetime, but maybe it is time. There have been several in American history, and we live in unprecedented times.

Helicopters

My old helicopter and some hand painted canopies

Before I became a student of Graphic Design, I had a number of hobbies that almost satisfied my creative mind during my non-foodservice hours. One of these pursuits was radio-controlled helicopters.

An RC helicopter is not a new invention, but advancements in nickel-cadmium batteries have pushed the hobby into the next level in the past decade. Previous models ran on kerosene fuel or even actual jet fuel. They were loud, expensive, and dangerous. Modern choppers can be much smaller and lighter. The batteries only last between ten and twenty minutes, but they are stable, and you can swap them out easily. The ultra-light helicopters can be flown indoors and are unlikely to cause any damage. Gyro stabilizer units can be made extremely small and cheaply, so the newest choppers can self-level with ease, making flight less of a learning curve. After a few weeks of flight experience, I quickly outgrew my entry-level chopper and wanted to get something more expensive.

The helicopter is a remarkable invention. An airplane has a natural stability. Fold a halfway decent paper airplane and it will glide gently to a sliding stop on a smooth floor. Air travelers can take comfort in knowing that an airplane wants to stay flying. A helicopter is another thing entirely. The chopper is completely dependent on its engine. Lose power and the vehicle falls like a rock. Helicopters are profoundly dangerous. It is a testament to their usefulness that anyone ever boards one. The ability to take off straight up or to stop midair makes the most dangerous craft viable.

My entry level helicopter lacked a collective pitch elevator. What is that? Well, before I began my heli-obsession, I assumed that the main rotor created lift by spinning faster. Like a desk fan, I figured a helicopter blade would rotate faster to blow more air downward, thus sending the craft up. Ultra-light RC helicopters and basic toys work in this way, but a real helicopter uses what is called a collective pitch elevator. The helicopter starts its engine and the main rotor begins to spin. As the engine warms up, the rotors spin faster until they reach the optimal RPM, but the helicopter does not lift off. This is because the rotors are not angled at all but are flat parallel to the ground. There is an additional mechanism that controls the pitch of the rotors while they spin at severe speeds. The pilot lifts with their left hand a lever called a manifold, which is similar to a parking brake in a car. This causes the rotors to change their “angle of attack” and lift is created. The rotors’ RPM does not change.

In order to accomplish this trick, the blades require an elaborate mechanism of rods to push and pull the rotors as they spin at high speeds. The parts are subject to immense forces and they are the most obvious point of failure for an already delicate system. A model helicopter obeys a different set of physical properties. A push rod three centimeters long made of aluminum is vastly more effective that its full-size counterpart. An RC helicopter can rapidly change its angle of attack, accelerating and braking at rates that would shatter a real helicopter. An RC chopper can also change its thrust in the extreme negative, creating a situation where the vehicle can actually fly inverted. YouTube is loaded with videos of the aerobatic performances these RC pilots have recorded. There are competitive events, of course.

So, my own heli-adventure led me to buy an intermediate level chopper with a collective pitch and the power to go upside down. My toy grade chopper had a main rotor diameter of about one foot, but this new one was closer to two and a quarter. The first time I fired up the engine I had no intention of lifting off, but the power was honestly intimidating. The spinning rotor stirred the air in my spacious living room. I spent days checking all the various control surfaces and made sure I had setup my craft correctly.

The first liftoff was outside. I rose about three feet off the ground and felt comfortably stable. I pitched forward just a bit, but the chopper leaned forward like and started towards my neighbor’s yard like a dog chasing a tennis ball. I was not expecting such eagerness, so I pulled back and now the vehicle was heading towards me with its main rotor coming at my face. I overcorrected forwards, and the rear rotor lifted up fast, and the chopper leaned into my lawn, bit into the dirt and whipped its tail around so hard it bent the aluminum boom shaft. I realized the controls needed to be much less sensitive.

My second attempt was much calmer. I took off vertically, rotated 360º slowly, and set it back down smoothly. I was confident, so I took off again. I tried moving forward a bit, but again the craft wanted to go faster than I was ready. I overcorrected backwards, but it was too much. When learning my light toy-heli, I often deliberately flew it into my pant-leg. The blades have hinges that allow them to retract when they encounter an obstacle, so they do not break with every collision. The new chopper had a similar hinge, but the blades were composed of thicker plastic, and the engine was much more powerful.

The heli came towards my left thigh, and I rose it to catch the rotor, but WOW that thing was rotating quickly. The blade hit my thigh so hard that I was not sure if I needed to get to the hospital or call an ambulance. I quickly examined my thigh and saw that my jeans had not been sliced although they were clearly scarred. I dropped my pants a bit and looked at my thigh which had two remarkably brutal bruises. The blades were moving so fast and hard that I broke a gear connecting them to the engine by impeding their rotation. Despite this, the second blade was still able to rotate around and strike me just as hard as the first. Both white blades were notably blue at their tips where they whipped my jeans.

Once the fear wore off, I was in an impressive amount of pain. I am not an outdoor kid or a sports player, so I can only assume this is a common occurrence to anyone who plays hockey. My leg turned all sorts of interesting colors as it healed. I repaired my chopper, but never flew it again. The year was 2015, and shortly after my accident, there was a story out of New York City where a hobbyist killed himself by accident when he flew a much larger RC chopper into himself. This gas-powered model is capable of speeds up to 90mph. When it collided with the pilot, he was effectively decapitated. After several months of consideration, I decided I would never fly it again, and sold my heli on ebay.

Rethinking Beverages

An old graphic I made for a school project in 2003

The current project for our Interactive Design course has me thinking a lot about soda. When asked to design an interface for a vending machine, my inner cynic keeps screaming out about how Coke is a blight on society and maybe the best vending machine is the one that tells people to stop using vending machines. Sodee-Pop is a socially accepted vice that is arguably worse than smoking. Of course everyone deserves a treat now and then, and I personally enjoy drinking a can or two of tonic water a day, though I dress mine up with a bit of ice and a squeeze of lime. Also gin.

Beverages seem to be falling into a few highly specialized categories. If you want some fast food or a break from work, then a Coca Cola over ice is traditional. If you are hitting the gym or recovering from a hangover, then you should choose a low sugar refresher like Gatorade. If you are cutting out caffeine or sugar, then maybe an ice-tea or one of those godawful kombucha concoctions is appropriate. If you are enjoying cocktails, then your options are tonic, soda water, or Collins mix, etc.

But why shouldn't you have tea with booze? And why should gin be the only thing infused with juniper and pine? The DieLine.com highlights a drink-maker seizing on a new trend of mixology, Rocktails. In an interview with the company's packaging designer, Shaun Bowen, the DieLine learns a bit about what went into making this clever hybrid.

Rocktails makes craft-distilled botanical drinks with zero alcohol, designed to drink as is, or as a mixer with the spirit of your choice. The brief was to target sophisticated foodies and take advantage of the growth in the non-alcoholic category.

The packaging is very sharp. It resembles a classy vodka bottle, but it is single serving sized. The beverage is upfront about its 0% alcohol content. It clearly identifies the complex array of ingredients with professional adult text and imagery. The simple color palette does not scream "health nut", nor does it yell out "PARTY TIME!!!111". The label walks a perfect line between up-scale classy cocktail and sober nightlife. You don't have to be a martini snob or a non-drinker to have a satisfying beverage.

Often I have found myself out a bar without a drink in hand. The question of "where's your drink" comes up and I have to either buy another round that I don't need or subtly ask the bartender to make a "fake gin and tonic" which is just soda water and a lime wedge. I would love to have a third option that is an interesting and complex non-alcoholic drink that isn't just a pint of sugar water.

The label takes its inspiration from the image of a mermaid. The designer says this creature reflects the dual usage of Rocktails. Is it a fish or a lady? It's whatever you need at the moment. I find it striking but subtle. All too often I see design work that is way too clever. Designers try to throw every idea and color they have into one application and it comes out aggressively messy. This packaging is upscale and smart like a wine bottle, but also sober and modern like an ice-tea. It is not trying to be a teenager, it is trying to be a 30 year old.

The rising popularity of craft brewers and smaller wine producers has created a new market for good graphic design. The world of soda is mostly dominated by mega-corporations such as Pepsi, but Rocktails shows that there is a niche for non-alcoholic intelligent bottle labels. I feel thirsty just thinking about it.