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I Like This Pope

As a Catholic who has rebelled against the political structure of the Church, I gotta say this new Pope is giving me a lot of hope. Francis is turning out to be a rebel in his own right, shunning the trappings of power and putting the focus squarely back on Jesus, where it belongs.

Mood music:

The latest example: Pope Francis skipped a concert over the weekend where he was to be the guest of honor. On the surface, some could see it as a snub, the act of an ungrateful person. But cut through all that and the message he was sending is clear: He’s going to focus on the people’s business, not spend his hours drinking in all the pomp and opulence the Church likes to bathe itself in.

Here’s how Reuters descrbed the no-show:

Minutes before the concert was due to start, an archbishop told the crowd of cardinals and Italian dignitaries that an “urgent commitment that cannot be postponed” would prevent Francis from attending.

The prelates, assured that health was not the reason for the no-show, looked disoriented, realizing that the message he wanted to send was that, with the Church in crisis, he — and perhaps they — had too much pastoral work to do to attend social events. …

The day before the concert, Francis said bishops should be “close to the people” and not have “the mentality of a prince.”

It’s also worth noting that since his election on March 13, Francis hasn’t spent a single night in the papal apartments, which is known for its grandeur. Instead, he sleeps “in a small suite in a busy Vatican guest house,” according to Reuters, “where he takes most meals in a communal dining room.”

The Reuters story notes how the bishops were left disoriented by the no-show, with one Vatican source saying, “We are still in a period of growing pains. He is still learning how to be pope and we are still learning how he wants to do it.”

The Vatican may indeed be struggling to learn how Francis wants to do things. But I think he sent them a clear message. As for Francis learning to be Pope, I think he’s got it figured out. It’s just not the way the old, complacent power structure wants it. My prayer is that they will learn and fall in line.

A lot of evil has attached itself to the Catholic Church over the years, and I’ve struggled to stay faithful. I do so by always remembering that my beliefs are centered on Jesus and how he gave sinners like me another chance to get things right. My faith has never been tied to the random and intolerant rules of the Holy See.

The sex abuse scandal tested my faith, as has the often-hateful messages toward gays.

You could say I need a pope like Francis. I hope this fresh approach of his continues.

Pope Francis
Archbishop Rino Fisichella reads a message from Pope Francis before a RAI National Symphony Orchestra concert in Paul VI hall at the Vatican. (photo credit: Reuters)
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Paula Deen and the N-Word

I’m not a fan of cooking celebrity Paula Deen. When I first heard The Food Network fired Deen for using the N-word in the past, I figured she got what she deserved. But part of me feels sorry for her.

Here’s one of three apology videos she made:

http://youtu.be/tDOezlc52z0

According to various news reports, including an item in The Huffington Post, Deen’s troubles stem from her admission that she used the N-word in the past. She said so as an attorney  questioned her under oath last month. “Yes, of course,” Deen said. “[But] it’s been a very long time.” Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, are being sued by a former manager of their Savannah, Ga., restaurant — Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House — who is accusing them of racism. From the HuffPost article:

The ex-employee, Lisa Jackson, says she was sexually harassed and worked in a hostile environment rife with innuendo and racial slurs. During the deposition, Deen was peppered with questions about her racial attitudes. At one point she’s asked if she thinks jokes using the N-word are “mean.” Deen says jokes often target minority groups and “I can’t, myself, determine what offends another person.” Deen also acknowledged she briefly considered hiring all black waiters for her brother’s 2007 wedding, an idea inspired by the staff at a restaurant she had visited with her husband. She insisted she quickly dismissed the idea.

If the accusations are true, Deen deserves the blow to her reputation, because it suggests she’s not being entirely truthful in that she and her family have no tolerance for racial slurs. But many of us would also be two-faced if we took joy in her predicament.

I’ve never cared about a person’s color, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. All that has ever mattered to me is that people be good to each other and live their lives with generous hearts. But as a young and stupid kid, I’d sometimes use the word for sheer shock value. It was the same attitude that made me think it would be cool to walk around wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt.

I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of angry hip-hop in which the artists used the N-word constantly. One of my favorites was Ice T’s band Body Count. This song gives you a pretty good idea of what unfolds throughout the album:

The songs were a reaction to how they dealt with racism, but my attitude was that if they used the N-word, I could. Racism never had anything to do with it.

Back then, I thought it was a big joke. In my drunken moments, I would play the most violent songs on the album (“Cop Killer” and “There Goes the Neighborhood”) and cackle myself blue. My attraction to that album illustrates what an angry person I was back then. I was spiritually adrift.

As I got older and matured, I got over it. Today, I hear the N-word and it makes me sick. I know the pain that word has caused so many good people, and it shames me that I once used it like it was nothing.

Having learned the lesson long ago, I can’t help but wonder if Paula Deen reached the same conclusion at some point — that racist language is intolerable. I hope so. The reaction against her is a sign that our society has become a lot more intolerant of racial hatred. It shows that society has evolved.

But we’re not done answering for the past.

In any event, I don’t her entire career should be destroyed over something she said decades ago, when a lot of us were using the same language.

Paula Deen

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Vice’s Suicide Spread Has a Right to Exist

Vice magazine created a shitstorm by publishing a photo spread of models depicted as famous female authors at the moment of their suicides. I’m all for freedom of expression and would never advocate banning such things. But as an art fan I can offer my critique: This spread was utter crap.

Mood music:

Vice pulled the feature down from its site after a public outcry, but the print version is still available and the magazine got the desired attention in the process. That’s what magazines like Vice are all about — doing shocking things for attention. In radio, that’s what shock jocks do. Fine.

But as someone who lost a dear friend to suicide and has watched many good, talented souls lose the battle against depression and insanity, it seems like all we have here is a glorification of brilliant lives gone to waste. The photos include a model portraying Virginia Wolf at the moment she fills her clothes with boulders and drowns herself. The “Last Words” feature also recreated the suicide of Beat poet Elise Cowen, who jumped to her death from the window of a building her parents were living in at the time.

Though the spread has been removed, the photos also appear with an article on the controversy in the publication Jezebel.

When I say this spread was crap, I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who admittedly gets set off about suicide. But that’s a personal opinion. If people want to create this kind of art, that should be their right.

As well, once something is published, the publication ought to stand by it. Pulling the spread was stupid. If you’re not willing to stand by your art, you’re a coward. I offered my critique. Others should be able to do so as well.

I don’t know if there’s a lesson in here. I’m not one to tell people how they should express themselves. That would be hypocritical of me.

As for the question of whether the spread glamorized suicide and possibly inspired future acts of self-demise, I’m not really worried about that. Art depicting that kind of darkness has always been out there. That’s a staple of the heavy metal music I love so much. People may find that kind of art cathartic or they may not. But neither the art or the artist is responsible for what people do because of that art.

Instead of banning art that glorifies suicide, we need to keep coming up with better suicide prevention tools. Fortunately, there’s a lot of activity on that front, including movements in the tech industry to provide suicide prevention training and forums for those experiencing job depression to make sense of their lives and relate to the pain of others.

As long as such prevention and education activities persist, we have a fighting chance to gain an upper hand over depression, even in the face of art that makes suicide look glamorous and cool.

Vice Fiction Edition

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The First Victim of 9/11

I’ve been studying up on Akamai Technologies’s history since starting work in the InfoSec department earlier this month. One of the coolest and most moving lessons has been a study of company co-founder Danny Lewin, who died aboard Flight 11 on 9/11 when terrorists drove it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Mood music:

Lewin is actually considered the first casualty of that terrible day because he was killed during an attempt to stop the hijacking. I wrote about it in “InfoSec Central To Lewin’s Legacy” in the Akamai Blog. Check it out!

Thanks.

Daniel M. Lewin

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Waiting Is the Hardest Part

One of my biggest struggles has always been impatience. I hate waiting, whether it’s being stuck in a long line at Starbucks or getting adjusted to life’s changes. Since I recently started a new job, the challenge has grown particularly steep in recent weeks.

Mood music:

It’s all good, really; I’m enjoying the new job. But I’m always obsessed about where I want to be in the process, and that has made for a world of hurt in past jobs. That hurt is usually all in my head, thoughts that run wild and make me sick or irritable.

The normal thing to do is take it a day at a time, learn the ropes and realize that it takes several weeks to start hitting the right groove. But that’s not me. I come in with a long list of what I want to accomplish and get bummed out if I haven’t burned through half the list after the first two weeks. If I write 5 blog posts, I feel like I should have done 10 or 15 by that point. If an idea for a new web page isn’t live a month after I’ve laid down the first design, I start to feel adrift.

If I were a carpenter instead of a writer and editor, I’d be bummed out about not getting an entire house built in the first month.

The reality is that a person usually has plenty of time to get acclimated. Some jobs ramp up faster than others. When I worked in a record store in my early 20s, I only had a few days to learn the ropes. By the end of the first week, I was expected to be restocking shelves and working the cash register.

But that’s retail. In the world of writing and editing, the ramp up is a longer process, especially when you’re doing the job in a setting that is not based on an editorial operation.

What I need to do now is going to take time. Relationships must be made and solidified. Ideas have to go through multiple channels for review. That’s as it should be. Push things through too fast and you’ll create a legacy of half-baked works. Push too hard on people you’re just getting to know, and they’re not going to want to work with you much.

So I’m working on taking the new job a day at a time. Doing so should be easy. My new workmates have made me feel welcome and comfortable.

My only enemy is in my head. He’s an old adversary, and I suppose he’ll always be there. It’s an enemy born of false and impatiently conceptualized expectations. He pushes me to move fast and recklessly. But I can’t let him win.

I’ll be working the coping tools hard in the coming weeks as I find my footing. Waiting is hard. But more often than not, it’s necessary and you have to accept it.

And so I’ll continue trying.

Cracked Glass
Photo Credit: W J (Bill) Harrison via Compfight cc
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Coffee Withdrawal as a Mental Illness

Get this: The latest version of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), has added caffeine withdrawal to the list of mental illnesses.

Ridiculous, you say? I did at first. But on further reflection, it makes sense.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/p5em6PisRyk

Those who know me are well aware of my ability to consume large amounts of caffeine. I drink coffee all morning and, when possible, I switch to Red Bull in the afternoon. I know it’s an addiction, but I gave up just about everything else, so I cling to it unapologetically.

But I have quit it at various times in the past, and I remember what the first few days were like. The headaches. The fatigue. The depression. Yes, I did feel depression.

It makes perfect sense. Consider that when you suffer mental pain, it usually becomes physical pain, and vice versa. If you’re deprived of a substance you’re addicted to, you will fall into a depression. I was depressed as hell when I first gave up flour and sugar, and the real cigarettes I eventually replaced with e-cigs. With that in mind, the APA’s move makes perfect sense.

But I do feel the need to throw cold water on the idea that the sufferer should be treated like a victim. A lot of articles about this topic drop lines like “It’s not your fault.” The thing is, it is your fault.

True, I wasn’t necessarily in my right mind when I chose to binge eat and get tanked on bottles of wine. I certainly wasn’t in a healthy mental place when I sought comfort in cigarette smoke. But each time, I had a choice: I could do it or not. I gave in to weakness each time, and when I gave up the other things and suffered withdrawal, it was indeed my own damn fault.

That’s fine by me, since these experiences make us human and, ideally, we come out stronger and in better control of our actions. But let’s see this for what it is: mental illness triggered by one’s inability to control the intake of addictive substances. A self-inflicted wound.

From there, the APA’s move could lead us to some useful action items for dealing with the withdrawal.

Coffee

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Superman Was There When I Needed Him Most

Tonight I’m doing something I never do. I’m going to a midnight movie premier, for Man of Steel. I’m no night owl, so this ought to be an adventure. But Superman has always been important to me.

It seems ridiculous, having such devotion to a fictional superhero. But to be honest, the Man of Steel came into my life at a time when I really needed a superhero, even if he was from a world of make-believe.

It started in 1978, the first time I was hospitalized with a mystery disease that robbed me of a lot of blood and strength. Back then, Crohn’s Disease was still a rare thing, and the doctors were feeling their way around in the dark when it came to treatment. I spent six weeks in a hospital bed, and the TV was my only solace. That’s when I discovered the Superman series from the 1950s. I got lost in the images of the man in red, white and yellow, outrunning trains and speeding bullets.

When I got out of the hospital that December, Superman: The Movie had just come out, and we went to see it. I was hooked. I identified with the hero’s feelings of being a misfit, trying to fit in somewhere. I’ve since watched that movie thousands of times.

Right after my third six-week hospital stay, Superman II came out. I saw it opening day. I saw all the Superman films that followed. Some were pretty terrible, but I didn’t care. By then, I was hooked.

We’re often taught that it’s silly to spend too much time buried in fantasy. But if the fantasy gets you through difficult times, I say so be it.

This new movie is supposed to be a radical departure from the Superman stories we’ve grown familiar with. It’s supposed to be darker, edgier. Sounds like a fun couple of hours to me.

The Man of Steel has always been there in my time of need. Seeing his latest movie at midnight is the least I could do to return the favor.

Man of Steel Movie Poster

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Black Sabbath and the Sick Bed

Wherein the author stays still and rocks out.

Only a week into the new job, I got blasted with the stomach bug from Hell. It started coming on Monday night and kept me up all night and in bed all day Tuesday. Those who know me will tell you I get up before 5 a.m. and am usually working by 6. To spend a whole day in bed is unthinkable.

Yet that’s what I did. The bed and then the couch. And I had the company of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, three of the four original members of Black Sabbath.

Mood music:

They just released their first album together since 1978. The whole thing is available for free on Spotify, so I figured why not? I wasn’t going to be able to do anything else.

Wow. They really nailed it. Made being sick a little less frustrating. That’s what music does for me, helps me cope with life’s unpleasantries.

When I listen to a new album from an old band, I always start thinking about the musicians’ back stories. Ozzy’s battles with drugs and booze are legendary at this point, and Iommi just spent a year fighting cancer. I recently read a Guitar World interview with him on the subject. His diagnosis came after he found a lump in his groin. The timing was typical: He said he had been having one of the best years of his life, with Sabbath gearing up to make a new album. Treatment was hard, but he kept going. He put his pain into riffs for the new album, and let me tell you, those riffs are ferocious.

People don’t always think of this particular power of music: The musician goes through illness and other adversity and uses the songwriting process as therapy. The music then gets listened to by a guy thousands of miles away whose stuck in bed for the day.

It’s a poetic cause and effect.

As I write this I’m sitting up in a chair. Not yet fully over the bug, but the music has given me a nice shot of energy and allowed me to get something useful done.

In fact, I’m going to go play my guitar. I can’t riff like Iommi can, but it’ll feel good all the same.

Black Sabbath 13

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A Benevolent Dictatorship

My kids learned a new term this weekend: benevolent dictatorship. It’s Erin’s way of describing the way of the household. We’re the parents, we make the rules and the boys don’t get to move the goal posts around. For the sake of Erin’s sanity and my own OCD management, it’s become necessary that the children understand this.

Mood music:

Kids will be kids. Our boys leave their dirty clothes all over the floor and Lego pieces are in just about every room waiting to be stepped on. They have the uncanny ability to sweep the kitchen floor without catching a single speck of dirt and the living room furniture is always at some weird angle. They don’t do this stuff to be mean. Any parent will tell you similar stories.

But my OCD is rubbed raw these days as I adjust to a new job and the resulting changes it brings to the family dynamic. I come home and pick up all the messes they make. I can’t help myself. Seeing chaos in the form of messy rooms makes my mind chaotic, which brings on a craving for order that makes me run myself ragged.

It’s not good for me and it’s not good for Erin, who then ends up having to take care of three kids instead of two, as I revert to an angst-filled teenager in my moments of OCD overdrive.

So we had a family meeting this weekend and laid down the law. We increased their chores lists and told them their allowance will get docked every time they protest having to pull their weight. But we softened the blow by giving them both a raise. All in all, they took it well. They even seemed eager to get on with it. But we know the blowback is inevitable. They are just kids, after all.

I’ve never been particularly good at enforcing the rules. I don’t like to yell at the children, and I often choose the path of least shouting as a result. But I do it at my peril.

Lately, I’m realizing that I can’t be the passive parent anymore, because it leads to me cleaning up every bit of destruction in the kids’ wake and they don’t learn the value of being on the hook for certain responsibilities. If I let them be irresponsible, I’m doing them more of a disservice then when I have to raise my voice. And I’m learning that the yelling isn’t necessarily a disservice.

That’s become part of my education in OCD management: learning how to be a hard-ass without being an asshole.

If I can master it, I’ll be in better mental health. Erin will be in better mental health. And the kids will grow up to be men who have the discipline and thick skin to make their dreams come true.

Or so I hope.

Duncan, Sean, Bill

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Look Out Honey, ‘Cause I’m Using Technology

It’s a miracle I’ve survived a decade of writing about information security in my day job, considering how technologically inept I can be.

As I try to set up a new analytics tool for this blog, get accustomed to the daily use of Skype and install work email on my Android, I find that my OCD is off the charts. I keep hearing this in my head:

“Look out honey, ’cause I’m using technology!
Ain’t got time to make no apology.”
—The Stooges, “Search and Destroy”

The Skype and phone issues are actually no big deal, but the analytics tool is making me crazy. There are a million plug-ins so you can better access your site metrics, and all are advertised as easy to use. I’ve downloaded one after the next, carefully following the instructions, only to have them all fail.

Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. I have to admit that’s an accurate statement. I once spent an entire afternoon freaking out over a VPN that kept dropping. That was two jobs and several years ago. I’m much better at dealing with such things now, but I still have smaller explosions.

The answer to these ridiculous episodes is to walk away, to do something else and try again later. But for all my progress in recent years at managing the more disruptive OCD episodes, I have yet to master that one. There’s a chance I never will.

Yet I continue to succeed in the world of technology from a career standpoint. I actually love playing with new tools and programs and have gotten pretty good at doing it, especially on the smartphone. I like to access the guts of the machinery and learn what makes it all tick. And when I figure it out, I feel pretty fucking brilliant.

My big problem is how I can get when I can’t figure it out.

Fortunately, people around me continue to save me from myself. Erin is a natural at setting up and managing all the feeds and coding that drives me to distraction. A friend at work was generous with his time when I needed help configuring some of the programs I’ll now be using daily.

Eventually, I’ll figure out the analytics tools, too.

Until then, I’ll try not to go off the deep end.

Scotty and the Mouse