If Children Really Are Our Future, Then We're Completely F***ed

Yes, I know. It's a pessimistic title. But in the last two weeks, my faith in humanity (especially that portion of humanity that is younger than me) has been severely eroded.

You see, I just recently started yet another random part time job, to complement the work with the bitchy blond girls (who now seem more dumb and annoying than actually bitchy) and the occasional temp gig I pick up. My new part-time job is working for a social networking website, kind of like MySpace but not. I'm not going to name names.

My job is two-fold. First, I remove images and videos that are inappropriate (i.e., pornographic, or containing nudity, excessive violence, or foul language). Secondly, I respond to users who want to know why they've been flagged for inappropriate behavior. So basically, I look up all the things they've been flagged for and summarize for them why they were flagged.

I've only been doing this for two weeks, and I am already completely appalled and horrified. These kids (because I'm sure the average age of the site can't be more than 15 or 16) are so mean to each other. They gang up on each other. They say horrible, nasty things to each other. I've never seen so much swearing, and sexually explicit (and often violent) language, and racial slurs, and straight out hate speech.

And then there's the spelling and grammar. If the above weren't appalling enough, then I'm also faced with the fact that apparently, no one under the age of 20 knows how to spell, or how to use a comma or a period, or voice a thought that is even remotely coherent. And here I had hoped that the education system wasn't as defunct as I feared. . . .

When I was in school, we studied political philosophy. I don't remember much about it, honestly, but I remember having to read Thomas Hobbes. I always thought that Thomas Hobbes seemed like such a gloomy pessimist--the premise of his book The Leviathan is, after all, that men are inherently brutish and bent on destroying one another. That seemed kind of bleak when I was 20 years old.

But now, after only 2 weeks of managing inappropriate user content, I think Thomas Hobbes nailed it on the head. If the kids on this website are any indication, then the life of man (and woman) is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Violent Tendencies, Manifesting as Dreams

I had a dream last night about getting into a full-on bitch fight with one of the blond girls from my office. There was slapping and hair-pulling (and she was doing a lot of crying) and then I got her into a headlock. Oh, and we were in an airport and Lindsay Lohan (pre-needing rehab LiLo, with red hair and a little bit of meat on her bones) was there too.

I'm pretty clear on what this all means. The blond girl in the dream is the queen bitch blond girl from my office. All of the rest of them I have decided are really nothing more than benignly annoying but mostly nice, but this one is trouble. She gives me this fakey-fake smile while simultaneously shooting daggers with her eyes, and she always has some sort of passive-agressively snotty comment for me. Who knows what I ever did that's got her panties all up in a twist, but it ever came down to an actual fight, I would definitely win. And it wouldn't be because I was pulling her hair.

Angel Island

Because it would be completely criminal not to take advantage of the kind of weather we're having here in the Bay Area, I convinced my friend Helen that we were both in need of a little day trip to my favorite (not so touristy) tourist spot in the whole area: Angel Island.

The island has had quite a history, serving as the "Ellis Island of the West" for incoming Chinese immigrants in the early 1900's, holding people while immigration officials determined whether they had a legitimate right to enter the country. Later it was used as a processing center of German and Japanese prisoners of war during World War II.

Besides being historically interesting, the island is also just plain gorgeous! If you hike to the top of the island's Mt. Livermore on a clear day (as we did), you have an amazing 360 degree view of the Bay Area. While at the top, Helen and I took the time to enjoy a fantastic picnic lunch, complete with a bottle of red wine. We felt a little sheepish about boozing it up in the middle of a hike until the guys sitting next to us busted out their own bottle of wine. And a bottle tequila which they had already mixed with Margarita mix. And 4 boxes of girl Scout cookies. No water, and no real food of any kind, but they were definitely ready to drink. At least Helen and I managed to cover all of the food groups and brought water!

Enduring Love for the Bay Area, or Why Global Warming's Not So Bad

I know I shouldn't say that. Global warming is terrible, but let's just discuss for a moment, the following:

1) It is March 9th.
2) If I look out my window, I can see (and smell) cherry blossom trees, daffodils and tulips in bloom.
3) The temperature for the next 7 days will be 67, 72, 75, 72, 76, 78 and 75. With no rain. (And for anyone who suffered through the two straight months of rain last year, you know why I think this is awesome.)

I can't tell you how happy I am not to be stuck in ice storms or blizzards or in places where the windchill might still drop the temperature below zero. I can't tell you how happy I am that I live in a place that is already in the middle of spring. When it's June and it's unusually hot and we haven't gotten enough water and everything's setting on fire, I will be sad. But for right now, all I want to do (and all I plan to do) is spend as much time outside in it as is humanly possible. Seriously. I might start camping out on my balcony.

Holy Crap

Last night, something not that unusual for the Bay Area happened: we had an earthquake. We live on a fault line, so that's really not that unexpected. Apparently, there are earthquakes practically every day; it's just rare (every few months or so) that one is big enough that you actually feel it.

So here's why last night's earthquake freaks me out:

A) It's the second one I've felt in a little more than a week.

B) It was pretty big.

Now, it wasn't huge. No one was injured, and there was no major property damage reported. But it lasted longer than any earthquake I've felt yet--a good 15 seconds, while most just last a second or two--and it was strong enough that it actually knocked a picture off my wall.

I know earthquakes aren't like hurricanes or blizzards. It's not like you can see them coming. It's not like there are signs that one is approaching. I know that more frequent small earthquakes does not necessarily mean that a big one is coming. But it still gave me pause. Because a big one is coming, eventually. We all know that. And I just hope to hell I'm either not here, or ready, when it does.

I had a friend who was the earthquake safety manager (or some such title--I don't quite remember) for her floor at work. She had a big checklist of necessary supplies that she had to make sure they had in case the big one hit. One of the supplies was giant-sized industrial strength garbage bags. When I asked her what those were for, she told me they were for wrapping up dead bodies so they wouldn't rot in the open and contaminate the air. Shit. I'm not even kidding about that.

Hey Carrie, want to send me that list of earthquake supplies? Might be time to stock up. And I can't tell you how much I'm kicking myself for never watching the earthquake safety video that was a permanent part of my first apartment in Oakland--it was the only video in the whole apartment and had been for years. And not a single one of us watched the damn thing.