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A recent Cracked article, 5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation, got passed around by my Gen-X peers. It’s a hell of a read, and another reminder that some of the most insightful pop-culture analysis comes from what was formerly a low-rent MAD Magazine.

You need to read the piece to fully appreciate how thoroughly we’ve set the stage for our spectacular, slow-motion failure. Worse, we can’t pin this one on a papier-mâché donkey or elephant. It’s a game of follow the leader where everyone’s lined up and walking in a circle. I certainly played my part. I fancy myself a free thinker, but I parrot enough shit masquerading as faux-profound to be culpable.

Occupy _______

One reason why I’ve become so enamored by the Occupy Wall Street movement can be symbolized by – hands-down – the best quote in that article, a virally circulated (though unattributed) conversation:

Me: I just get so pissed off by the older generation.
Therapist: Why?
Me: Because when I grew up, we were force fed the idea that if we didn’t want to be ‘flipping burgers at McDonalds’ then we better go to college.
Therapist: And?
Me: And now we’ve gone to college, have degrees, can’t get a damn job, and the same people call us entitled assholes because we refuse to flip burgers!
Therapist: Touche.

Here’s what we did wrong (along with my personal take), but please, read the original piece.

1. We made our youth ashamed to take jobs that involve manual labor.
   The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. That’s a quote from John Gardner, by the way. Remember that flipping burgers bit above? It’s a fancy way of saying that we’ve scorned commoner work. That’s for serfs. We’ve gone all job-snob on the backbone of our nation’s infrastructure.
2. We implied that college would naturally lead to a good job.
   Which resulted in flooding the educational market. We, sometimes subtly, sometimes arrogantly, expressed that laborous work is only fit for the likes of Jimbo Jones. With tons of kids in college – many of whom would probably love to be tradesmen - we generated educational inflation that gave rise to diploma farms.
3. We added seven years to being a teenager.
   What did we expect? They’re living at home longer because they have to go to school. Hell, even if they’re employed, that’s no guarantee they can cover their expenses. The pathetic man-child archetype is a common, modern gag for a reason.
4. We created the notion that entertainment has no monetary value.
   Napster. Torrenting. Yeah, we have our reasons. Rationalizations are readily on hand. And yeah, it drove the technologies that my family now rely upon for entertainment, namely NetFlix and Hulu. But it’s been harrowing, difficult, and a big legal hassle. Feeling entitled? Yeah, I’m feeling entitled. I did my part to wreck the entertainment industry, just like the industry itself did theirs.
5. We removed every reason possible to go outside.
   We used to go outside, not because we were really concerned with our health, but because that was the only place to do fun stuff. Hell, I’m from among the first generation of computer users. I experienced this first-hand without the internet. I spent late nights typing ship-routes into my local BBS’ game of Trade Wars. That and a lousy diet go hand in hand. We accidentally developed technologies – industrial food processing loaded with salt and sugar, and wicked cool video games (among others) – that would make it very difficult for you to motivate yourself to keep in shape and eat right. Now we have an obesity epidemic and record levels of diabetes.

Your welcome

So that’s the five, and it makes me queasy. We’re deep inside a spectrum of a yet-to-be-written date-range that describes this period. It’s hard to see social change from the inside. Some are for this thing, some against that other thing, but it feels like so much flailing of the arms while careening into a deep hole.

When the eventual reckoning materializes, we’ll wrench our guts, stick to our guns, and accept or oppose the new values-package, whatever it ends up looking like. The next technological/infrstructural New Deal will be argued about for decades, just like the last one.

The generational component cannot be understated, even though I’m far from understanding it. All I know is that the largest birth cohort in American history appears to have gone off its nut, and many of us who came after it are scratching or nodding our heads, respectively.

I feel as though a bunch of institutions, through no fault of their own, have set up a complex path of dominoes that they wish to admire in some pristine, untouched state. A bunch of jobless, desperate, and increasingly angry toddlers are stretching their flicking fingers, though, and I have no good answers for them. Only an “I’m sorry” before I watch more of the things fall down.

A few weeks into my Fitocracy fitness regimen, I got an achievement: I Seem to be lost.

It was a reward for running 20 miles over the course of using Fitocracy. Naturally, I got slightly philosophical. Why yes, I do seem to be lost.

American physical fitness styles are a special kind of lost. We love our nutty diets and way-too-specific exercise regimens guaranteed to make you lose 30 pounds in 2 days and create washboard-stomachs in 20 minutes. There’s a lot of shit-wading to do before discovering the only regimen that works reliably for everyone: Eat less and exercise.

I’ve been doing that for a while, but now I’m running like a nut. This is ironic because, after golf, it was the outdoor activity that I scratched my head about the most. I mean…you’re just run. What the hell?

Now I realize that it’s about much more: rhythm, endurance, focus, breathing, and injuries.

We were once the greatest endurance runners on earth. We didn’t have fangs, claws, strength or speed, but the springiness of our legs and our unrivaled ability to cool our bodies by sweating rather than panting enabled humans to chase prey until it dropped from heat exhaustion. Some speculate that collaboration on such hunts led to language, then shared technology. Running arguably made us the masters of the world.

So how did one of our greatest strengths become such a liability? “The data suggests up to 79 percent of all runners are injured every year,” says Stephen Messier, the director of the J. B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University. “What’s more, those figures have been consistent since the 1970s.” Messier is currently 11 months into a study for the U.S. Army and estimates that 40 percent of his 200 subjects will be hurt within a year. “It’s become a serious public health crisis.”

That’s from The Once and Future Way to Run, by Christopher McDougall. He breaks a few things down: It’s not about whether you’re barefoot, have fancy sneakers, or special surfaces. It’s about form.

The author mentions the running habits of the Tarahumara Indians, who incorporate a soft stride – landing on the balls of their feet – rather than landing on their heel. It’s such a simple thing, but it makes such a world of difference, and no fancy gimmicks are required.

Giving earlier-me a break

I’m fond of bashing earlier-me. There’s so much in my past to shake my head at. Clumsy interpersonal relationships, lack of focus, laziness – the accounts would unfurl onto the floor like Santa Claus consulting the naughty list. But: Every now and then, I discover something that changes the shape of the stories I tell about myself.

In youth, for almost a decade (though not completely consecutive), I studied the martial arts. It was a rare form of Karate called Uechi Ryu. My father and I both studied together. Before quitting, I attained my second degree black belt; but whatever. I did well enough, I suppose.

To be brutally honest, though, compared to most of my peers, I was somewhat sloppy, less motivated, less confident, and more timid. Sure, there were plenty of times that I gave it my all, but there were so many lazy moments that I can only blame on adolescence and my anti-rose-colored glasses.

I often lament earlier-me, but I have to believe that I was a better student than I remember. Hell, I failed my first black belt test, re-trained and then obtained it on the next go round. I could have just quit in frustration, right?

Reality trumps stories

Here’s the thing. I have some very potent memories of the following:

• The smell of feet. The shoe room at a martial arts studio is a scent I’ll not soon forget.
• Being drenched with sweat. Form be damned. If nothing else, I got one hell of a workout. Even my lousy diet couldn’t defeat the fact that I was getting some excellent cardiovascular workouts on a regular basis.
• I was always standing on the balls of my feet. To this day, I have strong calves and leg muscles. This is because Uechi Ryu requires that you never be truly flat footed. Some of the Kata stances may appear that way, but all pivoting happens on the balls of the feet, and all movement happens right there – at the front of the foot.

Which brings me back to that running thing. How those Indians run? Yeah, that’s how I run. I hadn’t even realized it until I read the article. All those sparring exercises, all those jogs around the dojo, all those countless other exercises I can barely remember… we pivot on the forefoot and keep the pressure off our heels.

I often remark about humanity’s cognitive failures. It’s nice to reflect that sometimes, purely by an accident of history, you can do the right thing. I wonder what other aspects of current-me were born in earlier-me that I so often carelessly disregard?

Protesting, picketing, agitation – all that stuff – well, it’s been with us for a very long time. Though the authorities among us would prefer that we were solemn, quiet, and dignified, the truth is that solemnity doesn’t do a hell of a lot to change things.

Assuming that this picture is not apocryphal, it serves as a reminder that damned near everything we take for granted – all those thoroughly normal, uncontroversial things in life – well… they were controversial.

Apparently, you just have to look back far enough. We hold on to so many normal things, unaware that the most trivial among them was a thing to be fought for. It’s something worth keeping in mind among the very important protests happening at the moment.

If anyone has more information about this picture, I’d love to learn more.

With a few exceptions, the story of my life has been one of instant gratification. Blame society, blame parents, blame myself, blame my own unique cocktail of Reasons. In the end, I’m just lazy, but in a general and common way.

I’m lazy enough to put off what I know will help me today. But I’m not so lazy that I haven’t taken the odd side-class or put genuine effort into learning stuff. Nothing new, there.

I’m sure it’s familiar to many of us. Lately, the thought surfaces because so much of my time has been filled with the structured pursuits of a modern, American father. Unless you’re hanging out at Moe’s Tavern every night, life is very fucking busy. And if you’re hanging at Moe’s, why are you married?

A job became a career. A hobby became a pursuit. And general healthfulness evolved into the focused variety. The question, as always, is how long can I maintain?

The line graph of pursuits over the course of my life swerves up, down, and all around. Consistency has not been my friend. We fight from time to time. It’s a dysfunctional marriage with the part of myself sitting on a beanbag and horking chips in my mouth while Adult Swim is airing content.

But screw that guy. I care more about Future Me. That’s the Me that’s just a dream; an odd idea. I’ve neglected that guy for a while.

On the fitness front, I’ve been using Runkeeper and Fitocracy to keep data in front of my face: this is what you’re doing. Don’t quit this, you lazy ass.

Professionally, my work’s task-lists in front of my face to an insane degree (more on that in the future). I track what’s coming and what I’ve done. Again, it’s as if to say: don’t screw around; look at all that work you did yesterday.

But no pats on the head, yet. Or ever. How much of this is a function of crises-driven life-stage anxiety? Each of us stares into the void differently. Moreso, though, each of us is a different person staring into the void. There are multiples of multiples; plenty of ways to fear, and cope with, the anticlimax at the end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I’m perfecting the art of busying myself until that end. I’d like Future Me to look back on Present Me with a little more fondness than I have in the past. That requires tools, bits of inspiration, and well grounded advice you can’t find in a Time fluff piece.

But, if you want to get a firm handle on why it’s so damned hard to reach our dreams, watch this. It’s three and a half minutes long, and beyond educational.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The universe is expanding. We know that much. But we don’t know why, since the gravitational force of all these galaxies should be pulling things together. Albert Einstein used what he considered to be a cheat: the cosmological constant, which was a fancy way of Einstein saying “the universe is in equilibrium, but I don’t quite buy how or why.”

Well, time passes and the engine of discovery continues to fire. A nobel prize was recently awarded to a few proud eggheads who think they’ve discovered dark energy.

The concept of dark energy emerged in 1999 as a way to explain the fact that the expansion of the universe, once thought to be slowing ever since the big bang about 13.7 billion years ago, was accelerating. That resurrected the idea of a cosmological constant, introduced by Einstein more than 80 years ago as a “fudge factor” to explain why the universe then appeared to be in equilibrium, rather than being pulled together by gravity.

A few years later, however, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was not in stasis, after all, but was expanding. There was no “constant.” Einstein condemned his own idea as “my greatest blunder.”

But in the 1990s, astronomers found ways to use supernovae as cosmic “standard candles” whose luminosity could be analyzed to track the history of the universe’s expansion as far back as 9.8 billion light-years.

That led to the 1999 discovery that the expansion of the universe was accelerating rather than slowing. There had to be some “repulsive force” overcoming the gravity that should have been causing the universe to come together.

Astronomers called the force dark energy, and “it mimics the cosmological constant,” said Michigan Technological University astronomer Robert J. Nemiroff. Einstein may have been right after all.

(The Washington Post, January 12, 2006)

I can’t do this subject a lick of justice, so watch this video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Einstein may have been right all along. Pretty cool stuff. It’s just like science to get our hopes up, dash them, get them up again, dash them again, and then get our hopes up again. The process may seem annoying, but I find it to be a hell of a ride.

Now, let’s sit back and wait for the 42,000 revisions of this observation over the next 500 years. Science!

I almost forgot it’s Coming Out Day. It’s the day when we celebrate tolerance, acceptance, and George Takai. I only wish he could have been the first openly gay captain in Starfleet.

Anyway: Here’s John Waters on the subject – as warm and funny as ever. Apparently, coming out is square.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Back in my temping days, I wasn’t what you’d call organized. I may have been in the top tier of the temp-pool, but my assignments rarely required exceptional organizational skills. I was a geek, typed fast, and did my my job. That was enough. Sure, I was good.

But, I keep this in perspective. Kelly Services was generally content when workers showed up on time, sober, and wearing pants. The bar was set pretty low.

Well, this job requires organizational skills at a magnitude I never would have predicted. In the beginning, I didn’t have them. I was years into my job and nearly halfway into my thirties before I finally figured it out.

Focused on Words

Do this: Think of some important thing. It’s happening next week. It’s a thing you need to write down. In any complex job, there are hundreds of things like that. Sometimes, long-form writing or editing is the important thing. It all amounts to a few words you need to capture.

All our whiz-bang technologies can help. Smartphones take dictation, allow you to manage calendars, keep up on email, and blah, and blah, and blah. But, unless you have an expensive smartphone (likely built by Apple), expect delays, crashes, and general frustration. Notebook PC’s are great, too. But, even with an SSHD, they’re slow to start and besides, now you have to deal with an Operating System. I hate those things. 

I have to get my thoughts down, like, now. I don’t have time for booting things, and…what the hell is this dialog box? No, I didn’t want that.

I would prefer to write with a stick on wet beach-sand before using my netbook or android to take down notes. I don’t have much time. Too much can go wrong. All I have to worry about, with the former, is the rising tide.

But, the main reason to avoid my smartphone and netbook is that they provide instantly accessible distractions. Games. Internet. Mucking around with an interface. There’s too much to do other than write.

Capture and File

Assuming I don’t want to live only with a yellow tablet and a pen, I ask three questions when considering any new tech:

1. How easily can I capture my thoughts?
2. How simply can I file them?
3. How basic is the tool?

For a while, nothing passed the test. My Moleskine and favorite pencil were just fine. However, two technologies insinuated them into my life that I can no longer do without.

Livescribe Smartpen

In the brief time I’ve owned my Livescribe Echo smartpen, it has become an invaluable tool. Why? Because now I can take notes, capture audio, and everything’s synchronized. Those notes can be digitally saved, and I can even create a PDF that embeds everything inside. It’s a little hard to fully appreciate without seeing it in action, but check out this video.

If you attend meetings, I can’t stress just how powerful this tool is. You never need to bring a laptop again. Just write down the keywords, capture everything, and then produce notes after the fact. There’s no racing to keep up with things because it’s all recorded.

Sure, you say, it can do all that. But, there’s got to be a lot of work on the backend to make it look as easy as in that video. Nope. At least, not yet. I’ve encountered no problems extracting data from the smartpen. I can even cut the audio (it’s in simple MP4 format) if that’s my desire. It’s stupidly easy to select the pages I want, and then save it as a PDF. It integrates with Google Docs and Evernote, too. The key here is that you don’t get caught up in snags after using it.

Alphasmart Neo

I used to type on my netbook when out and about, but then I started to feel like a sucker. Remember all that talk of mine about distractions? Oh neat! I can get on the internet! I should check my email. Now Facebook. Ooooh, it’s Windows. I wonder if I can get DOSbox to work…

To hell with that. The Alphasmart Neo can’t do that. It has no 3G. It has noWiFi. It has no games. It has only a lone USB jack and an infrared comm port (that I’ve never used). All you get are a few lines of LCD text to view. You can’t bold. You can’t italicize. Shit, man, all you can do is write.

The keyboard is almost full-sized and has a pleasing tactile response. It runs on AAA batteries that last longer than your Kindle. If you need to write something…say, after taking all those cool notes, there’s no better option. Other Alphasmart models let you do more, but avoid them. The point is to finish that paper, not play solitare.

Screw Convergence

Convergence is the word everyone talks about. A little thing that goes in your pocket, that does everything? Meh. What gets me excited are dedicated tools with a single purpose, executed beautifully.

When the objective is to remain on task, the last thing you need is a piece of technology that does everything. It’s a bug, not a feature.

Since I’m consolidating my blogging efforts, let me establish some basics. I’ve been an administrative assistant for the last eight-plus years. Before that, I lived the life of a wandering ronin. I’m sorry, a temp. I get those confused. I presume that both involve a lot of light typing.

Over the years, my abilities have evolved. The geek within me ensures that I sprinkle a dash of computer nerd on everything. This has produced some unique DIY attempts to fix annoying problems. Some fail, but others succeed. I’ll be sharing some of those.

In my world, this basic administrative aid is married to science, working as I do at a research lab. I’m an scientific, admin-assisting, grantwriting, manuscript proofreader, uh, jack of all… Hey, what the hell am I?

What the hell I’m not

A receptionist or secretary. I’ll take generic old “Assistant” over any of that. It at least has the benefit of being accurate, rather than unintentionally insulting. No offense to those roles; we all have our place. But, with hard work, I sidled my way out of those roles, and since I don’t answer the phones or live at a filing cabinet, it doesn’t seem fair.

That said, I can’t blame people for what amounts to labeling errors. As a title, Administrative Assistant is so vague that it’s practically useless. Across and within organizations, the duties of an AA are insanely context sensitive and vary wildly.

In addition to familiar sounding paperwork tasks, I also help coordinate grant submissions and do proofreading and layout for submitting manuscripts to publishers. Visit payscale.com and search to your ass off. you won’t find a job listing that matches more than two or three of my core responsibility. Perhaps I haven’t struck upon the perfect alchemy of keywords, but I’ve sure tried a lot of them.

Leah Verre posted a link to “So You Want To Be a Producer.” It’s a great episode of Extra Credits, and while it addresses what game producers are expected to do, I was surprised to discover just how much of those same skills are required to be a good admin assistant. Give it a watch for some bonus perspective.

Personally, I’ve learned to slightly de-emphasize the Administrative part. Then I put ASSISTANT in all-caps. Let the word “Coordinator” roll around in your head and you begin to get the picture. We are process-focused and try to see the full trail that links beginning to end.

The hacking part

It’s possible to be a completely competent AA without employing any special tricks. I know more than a few old school admins, with basic computer skills, who burn through work as fast (or faster) than their younger, tech-saavy counterparts. They’re experienced and have perfected the art of doing one damn thing after another, plus, they aren’t sneaking in Farmville sessions (amazing how that affects overall productivity).

AA’s are on the banks of a river, and each stepping stone leads to the next, and that’s how we cross the river. Heads’ down, we look at the next stone in the line. We focus on the horizon only when we must think strategically. Otherwise, we lose our focus and get bogged down in worry and minutia. We zoom out, then zoom right back in because each project has a hundred subtasks. We change our frame of reference as the situation warrants.

My aim is to fuse that old-school single-tasking with tech that just works. Over the course of an average year, I’ll try a few new things out. Many won’t make the cut. This is because my core questions are: Does it work? Is it fast? What’s the point, exactly? If the answers are no, no, and huh?, then it gets the boot.

So, The Long Game will change once more. It’ll be all the usual mystification about the cosmos and our species’ collective cognition issues. But, it will also include process tricks, neat desktop tools, and really sweet pens. It’ll have a dash of Lifehacker, but aimed at we science AA’s. More on that in my upcoming posts.

As a precondition for access to content at The Long Game, you are required to take the following ethics and sensitivity training course. Our apologies for omitting this requirement, as unforeseen administrative milestones took precedence.

For each of the following hypothetical situations, please select one or more appropriate choices. After you have completed this short sample battery, you will be sent, via U.S. mail, the additional 430 page survey. Completion of this course is not optional. Please post your answers in the comments below.

#1 : Sexual Harrassment

Jill returns from a meeting and needs to find out the status of a financial report evaluation that was conducted by Arthur. After informing him that the evaluation is needed immediately, how should Arthur respond?

1. “Almost done, sweetcakes. Sit that pretty ass down and I’ll get these evals to you immediately.”
2. “I’d be happy to go over the evaluations. Why don’t you make yourself useful and check us in at the motel across the street. We only need an hour.”
3. “I am nearly completed with these evaluations. After which, I am happy to deliver them to you promptly, and in a completely non-threatening manner.”
4. “I’m not wearing pants.”

CORRECT ANSWER(S): 3. It is vital that we treat people civilly, demonstrate that we value their time, and refrain from sexual innuendo no matter how hard it hurts.

#2 : Violence in the Workplace

Recently, a few of the staff learned that Annie suffered through an ugly break-up. Others have learned that her ex-boyfriend is making threatening phone calls to her at work. After a very disturbing conversation wherein her ex- threatened to “deal with this, myself”, a few of the staff tossed around some ideas for dealing with this problem. Which are the most appropriate?

1. Kindly ask the ex-boyfriend to refrain from shouting so much when he’s talking to Annie as others are trying to work. They can’t think straight over the alternating sounds of shouting and sobbing.
2. Form a vigilante group and hunt the ex-boyfriend down. Later, string him up and set fire to his genitals.
3. Give Annie some voice-masking equipment so she can make threatening phone calls back to her ex-boyfriend. This way, she can freely threaten arson and increase her self confidence.
4. Inform Human Resources of what is happening. Ask that they inform security and/or hire The Equalizer.

CORRECT ANSWER(S): 4. It is vital that the appropriate channels are used when something of this nature occurs. In the mean time, 1 is useful if deadlines are looming.

#3 : Antisocial Behavior

Andrea returns from lunch to find her office-mate, Jim, in a curious state. His window is open, and a row of cinder-blocks is arranged on the sill. A filmy ball gag rests in a pool of spit on his desk blotter. Next to that is a blood soaked carving knife and a hacksaw. A slow trickle of blood is flowing from his desk’s mini-fridge. Andrea is concerned that this might be a sign of inappropriate behavior. What should she do?

1. Inform Jim that it is against company policy to install mini-friges at a desk.
2. Inform Jim that it is not appropriate to dismember the front office secretary, and then cut her into cubes and stored in his mini-fridge.
3. Gently inform Jim that the temporary staff are not to be stripped naked, gagged, and ritually hazed.
4. Politely request that Jim exercise proper attention to cleanliness and sop up the errant blood dotting his cubicle.
5. Tell Jim to be a little bit more careful when dropping cinder blocks out the window and on to the neighboring middle school playground.
6. Inform Human Resources that Jim is exhibiting broadly anti-social tendencies. Also be sure to inform HR that he mutilates live cats in the cubicle. The tortured feline screams and fountains of blood are somewhat distracting.

CORRECT ANSWER(S): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. It is important to obey company rules and keep distractions to a minimum in order to be more sensitive to the needs of others in the office.

What Have We Learned?

We’ve learned that, if we work together, we can work harmoniously in large organizations. With the proper use of stale, boilerplate, hypothetical situations, we can effectively fix these problems. Additionally, we’ve learned that online ethical training courses are like a crash course in elementary comedy writing.