Author: Emily Hulme

It would not be wrong to say today, like any other day, like yesterday and tomorrow and June 20, 1789, is just a day and nothing more, in no way significant–in fact, simply and thoroughly an established 24-hour time period filled with birth, deaths, break-ups, make-ups, biology exams and cancer diagnoses, riddles and solutions, extraordinary events and nondescript contingencies. It would not be wrong.

But, it would not be a very good description. And, if given the blunt choice at gunpoint, knowing my answer ought be very good and not simply mediocre, I should hope to say something more.

While not inaccurate, this in no way does justice to how we experience our role in history. Our experience of the past is not as a series of events, even: it is as a single moment, the one we call ‘now,’ filled with traces and echoes of what was. Some are explicit: the history textbook has no problem presenting timeline after timeline, translating the dimension of time into the dimension of space. Like all translators, the historians must wring their hands, suffering for each bit of cultural context lost as they whittle down the story of the Byzantine Empire into a choice collection of the most relevant facts.

But this is not the only way we experience history. In fact, perhaps it is the coded way which is more interesting: the styles of architecture we admire, the figures of form in art which were once innovative and now feel somehow stale, the idiosyncrasies of languages. If I may indulge one favorite example, one Italian word for a toilet, vespasiano, is directly from the name of the emperor who first began charging for the use of public toilets in Rome. Incidentally, some people also know him for this one big amphitheater thing he built, but his name is not attached to that relatively minor accomplishment.

Today, then, may very well be just a day, but we intuitively experience it as a singular opportunity rather than a part of the endless iteration of time. This particular day, then, is not yet decided. It could very well be the best day of your life.

Why does this matter? I may venture to say that it is the only opportunity you will ever have, no matter how meager it might be. Your vote may not count for much, but “not much” is better than nothing. “Not much” is worth fighting for, and certainly not to be thrown away, especially if “not much” is the all you have. Every great accomplishment–the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the Civil Rights movement, even the entire Bring It On franchise–has been a product of this “not much,” as well as every blistering failure.

So, then, let us suppose you find the idea that each day is meaningless, irritating. It is an uncomfortable spot, by my lights. Hardly a place to hang your hat, and certainly not where I’d wish to spend any time. It is fortunate, then, that this riddle–that is, the seemingly objective fact that each day is the same–has already undone itself. Not only is each day not the same–trivially speaking, they are each different–but the only way to make something significant by our own standards is to use the “not much” and make a “something.” No saint or sinner ever had anything besides this, and even though our acute awareness that today is merely a day and nothing more is not quite wrong; it simply is not telling the full story.

Contrary to popular belief, “spontaneity” is not fun. This belief, I think, mainly comes from romantic comedies; not only is it completely silly to consider parts of the most contrived plot lines known to mankind “spontaneous,” it defies common sense to think you would benefit from something you didn’t plan. Given the choice, we pick what works best and make it a habit. Spontaneous events, like rain in the middle of a sunny day or a stock market crash, suck mostly because they are not what we planned for when setting out one day wearing Rainbows to buy oil futures.

Prediction, then, is essential. There are time-tested ways to augur, but, like all old things, they only sort of work. For example, sometimes birds fly in patterns because Zeus told them to, but other times they are just maliciously screwing with you. Old women, preferably with crooked noses, once were a dependable source of information about the beyond, but nowadays greener pastures featuring all you can eat dinner at 4 p.m. have persuaded them to give up the trade in favor of bridge. Shamefully, modern fortune telling has been forced underground, exiled and marginalized. Our society simply does not provide an adequate demand for their skills.

Nonetheless, I am willing to fill this void and put my credibility on the line for the following predictions. In interest of transparency, I must reveal my methods, even if this takes away some of the magic: I am assuming things will be basically the same in the next year, only different. This is, I believe, the method used by the AT&T advertisers in their “You Will” series from 1993, which predicted such innovations as GPS and Kindle, although the amateurs screwed it up by calling them e-maps and e-books.

First of all, Gitmo will not be closed “one year after,” or one year and three days after. California will remain broke and still will not turn a budget in on time. Cheap beer will remain popular among college students, until a Seventh Heaven reunion episode decries the practice of “beer ponging,” leading to a precipitous decline in amoral student behavior. Cabo will be shuttered, but Vegas will remain popular among divorcees who went to college in what will be known retroactively as the “Dark Ages.”

MTV will begin playing music during daylight hours and Girls Gone Wild will be a documentary on the Discovery Channel about female zoologists searching for the elusive ice tiger in the Congolese jungle. Companies will continue to go putatively “green” when making cost-cutting measures and/or charging more for inferior products. Cash for Clunkers, however, will not be extended. The economy will recover, and Cabo will be reborn as an industrial city focusing on paper goods and seal lion pelts. You will graduate. Engineers will take us to Mars and, disappointingly, Martians will not be found. Never missing an opportunity, Glenn Beck will run a special on the program and either how it signifies that America is the best or that Barack Obama is a communist. Invited to travel with the astronauts, Glenn Beck will travel to Mars and be left there. Sarah Palin will take over his time slot.

The New York Times will begin charging for online articles in 2011, and critics will lament they have sold their soul to save their body. College students, in protest, will make a Facebook group in order to express their heartfelt anger. Rupert Murdoch will snicker.

As with all predictions, these require action to address their implications. I suggest you start saving up free copies of The New York Times on your hard drive and stuff an emergency kit with a keepsake photo of Glenn Beck, a couple cans of Keystone and a list of Facebook contacts. It will be something fun for your kids to find under your bed when you, too, are old and at the home playing bridge after eating dinner at four.

Once upon a time (and a very good time it was) men were happy and free, hardly paid taxes and almost certainly never swore. If they did wish to curse another, their tongues would revolt and instead they would mutter such invectives as, “May my foe live into blessed old age” or, “Let him eat cake, preferably with cream cheese frosting.” Such was the state of things until various and sundry market forces, etc. etc., led the people to determine the best course of events was to devalue the very currency of their souls. From this Golden Age, as Hesiod and Vergil et al. name it, man slowly sank to silver, then base iron. No conspiracy of either politics or alchemy has brought this spirit of unabashed human potential back as more than a passing shade, a slippery dream that is precisely a dream and nothing more.

Yet, it persists. Let us plumb history first to see how this has played out and then take account of how today we are still troubled by a past that never was. Fun fact to remember the next time a misguided news anchor decries the insidious effects of rap music and Grand Theft Auto: Hesiod already was lamenting the decline of the human race in the eighth century B.C. Cranky Roman senators complained about the same thing basically the whole time the Republic existed (which, for those of you who don’t think it matters, was longer than the existence of the United Sates). They then got a taste of occasionally brilliant, often megalomaniacal leadership under the Empire. Naturally, Edward Gibbon referred to this as the happiest period for mankind in history. Looking back, French revolutionaries took the Roman Republic as their model, despite the fact we know retroactively it had a 100 percent chance of leading to disastrous civil war. Obviously, their attempt for a Republic worked out much better under Robespierre, and did not immediately collapse into a state led by a single venerated military leader.

Only by the peculiar mixture of vainglorious self-consciousness and deliberate pattern blindness toward contrary evidence that characterizes the human brain do we suppose any of these ages support our conviction that heaven on Earth is possible. In short, to be malcontent with your age is what propels the entire human experiment forward. As one chemistry professor of mine put it, life is a redox reaction and equilibrium is death. There’s a good reason we “rest in peace” but live in anger, resentment, fury and ultimately in a state of constantly having hopes dashed.

For obvious reasons, the Golden Age must always be not now, or, at the very least, not here. Another planet might be acceptable, but it’s also fashionable for Americans to locate it on the European continent. Hence, we have the glories of European universal health care and civilized tolerance. One is at least partially true, but comes with the caveat of such glories as doctors’ strikes in Germany; to give just a little sense of scale, one deal in 2006 was reached after 12 weeks of striking in which up to 13,000 doctors participated. The other seems questionable in light of the ongoing rebuff of “Muslim” Turkey by the E.U. and the Swiss ban on minarets (seriously, have you seen the ads?).

So, then, what about going back to the simple ways of our ancestors? This is what et in Arcadia ego is all about–Arcadia is this mythical pastoral land where people are unsophisticated and by dint of this, happy in a way high-strung, latte-sipping New Yorkers can only envy. They have home births with midwives and eat organic only, which I needn’t remind anyone are all the rage now in such backwoods as Palo Alto. Of course, this comes with the deaths in childbirth and food shortages that are part and parcel of such traditions. In fact, I seem to have neglected that et in Arcadia ego is a memento mori, if we’re talking Latin phrase usage.

This all brings us to that distasteful phrase: “Ignorance is bliss.” In a baffling affront to human logic, presumably rooted in Romantic excess sown by a certain Rousseau, the Holden in all of us yearns for the “innocent” state before knowledge. This is, incidentally, also the infantile state. But not only is this not possible; it’s not even desirable. Since this phrase has gained currency particularly in situations where one person finds out their significant other has cheated, let’s take Tiger Woods’ many women/mistresses/girlfriends/paramours as our case study. Is the problem (a) that his wife found out, or (b) that he was cheating? Only in a perverted move toward blaming the victim does “ignorance is bliss” make sense. Knowledge was never the real problem.

Ovid’s number one rule of poetry is that the material must fit the meter.  Since this is a college paper in the Land of the Free, I took a little poll and direct democracy has prevailed in providing me a fitting topic, just in time for the forthcoming episode tonight: Jersey Shore.

For those living in a dungeon, Jersey Shore putatively follows the lives, loves, hot tub sessions (no bathing suit needed!) and alcohol-fueled rages of token natives of the Italian-American seaboard. The cast of characters is a motley crew. JWOWW, an orange-toned beauty, exclusively wears those shirts with the claw marks in the back. Snooki, orange-toned and shorter, I find the most fascinating, as the most self-aware: she declared on one episode: she is not “mature” enough for the program. Also, she was punched in the face by some dude, leading to an impromptu heart to heart with the entire cast. Angelina, an orange-toned girl of average height, was kicked off after she fell into a painful depression related to her boyfriend getting a divorce from his wife that was not her. Sammi “Sweetheart,” also an orange-toned girl of average height, is mainly notable for not getting punched in the face or having a married boyfriend. Also, her poofs (or is it pooves?) are not nearly as intimidating as Snooki’s; since the NY Times recently ran an article asserting that Stanford students use bikes as machines to assert our distinct identities, I feel reasonably confident about the validity of asserting that truly, the poof is what determines the character of the Jersey Girl. On the Shore, pooves and relationships are complicated, but skin tone is not.

I should also mention that there are boys, or “guidos,” on the program. Ronnie seems nice. One male cast member, according to my Wikipedia research, was once a male exotic dancer. That probably summarizes the matters of interest, since, should you ever meet a cast member, I am unconvinced that they would be particularly interesting. I have encountered washing machines that seem deeper. Indeed, the situations defying custom or common sense are the real meat of the show and the relationships that evolve during the most emotionally thrilling summer since Laguna Beach. In some sense, Jonah Goldberg says this better, though, than I. In his critique/diatribe about the show, he admits, “don’t get me wrong; it’s great television. But gladiatorial games would be great TV, too.” Of course, it’s neither here nor there that any particular gladiator be in the arena. It’s the fight that matters; and so it goes on the Shore. Ultimately, it’s absurd to ask where Snooki came from or is going; the narrative is all about the here and now. None are particularly colorful characters, but none need be.

Perhaps this is why Jersey Shore does best with people who, frankly, we perceive to have little direction in life. Anyone want to take a guess on where Snooki will be in five years? Working at a tanning salon? Picking up phones? Hosting her own reality spin-off? And, probably more fantastically for me and anyone I’ve ever watched it with, they don’t seem to feel obligated to think about their own lives this way. It’s an exotic land in which the word “career” would sound as foreign as “IHUM.” There is a delightful logical consistency to their concerns, insofar as they are principally short-sighted. Neither the characters nor MTV feel obliged to keep the word “planned” in their vocabulary. Planning, very well, could spell the end of the uncontrolled energy propelling the whole carnival of vices. Untouched by rational thought, this wild man isn’t found in the forest, but on the boardwalk. National Geographic, take note: developing a program featuring this foreign culture could prove quite lucrative.

Until then, we’ll have to rely on MTV to shock with their latest. The bizarre will always entertain and for the network that produces such masterpieces as “16 and Pregnant,” this is just another chapter in their Bible of popular diversions. Sarah Palin, take note.

Another quarter down and another break is nearly upon us. During these breaks, I always set my sights upon the same goal and I must admit, I’ve never quite achieved it. Maybe some people catch up on sleep or read for pleasure, but I find neither of these diversions particularly alluring. Instead, I try to watch enough television to catch my yearly average up with the average American. I don’t do this for the honor or the money, but simply for that indescribable elation I feel for fitting in with my kin, even in this small way. But this is not an easy goal, since I’m usually behind by break and this year in particular has snuck up on me. In order to make my yearly tally, I’ll have to watch about 78 hours of television each day and, frankly, after factoring in the time it takes me to amble from my bedroom and open the kitchen cabinet on six separate occasions only to be disappointed, I’m going to be pretty busy.

Even though I don’t watch that much at school, TV does satisfy me, in its way. The Food Network tells me what to eat, TLC tells me how to dress and the History Channel teaches me about UFO cults and feral children. This season, though, I won’t be watching nearly as many Gilmore Girls reruns because some especially promising political issues are on tap for nuanced debate over the next few weeks on FOX and MSNBC. I’ll be tuning into the following, in hopes that someone wins, someone loses and someone goes home crying to their mom when Nancy Pelosi shoots them “the look”:

Health care: After six months of watching this slow-motion car crash, will the President finally get the Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Festivus gift under the metaphorical tree, or will the Blue Dog scrooges deny him reform in a direct affront both to Democratic leadership and the spirit of the season? Will the public option be in the stocking? And will it be the robust Godiva option, or the crappy Russel Stover version that gets thrown away as useless on the 26th?

Afghanistan: The commander-in-chief (also known as ditherer-in-chief in Cheney parlance) made an announcement this Tuesday, but we still have all of December to hand wring over Europe’s commitment to the war before the international conference in London. Since there are approximately zero “good” options and a lot of “sort of OK” ones, perhaps the only guarantee is that rhetoricians will have a heyday. Predicted frequently used terms: “throwing our allies under the bus,” “dither” (seriously, you could play a drinking game<\p>–<\p>take a shot for every op-ed you read on Afghanistan with this word in it), “back his oratory with a stick,” “a million dollars per troop per year,” and “what would Sarah Palin do? Gosh darn that she’s not in office.” OK, maybe not that last one.

Marijuana: Attorney General Eric Holder, relieving the anxieties of those who smoke pot to relieve their anxieties (and sundry other ailments), has declared an armistice, if you will, in the “War on Drugs,” insofar as the feds will no longer use random and irrational terror as a method of controlling marijuana distribution. While you might suspect the raids became prohibitively expensive after Southwest jacked up their Fun Fares from D.C. to California, it’s most likely because Miss New Jersey “outed herself as a stealth marijuana user to treat her asthma.” Activists, reasonably, are interpreting this as a call to fight for full legalization so we can tax it and, in turn, have enough money for our school systems to start teaching students about the respiratory system again.

Gitmo: Looks like Obama reduced, recycled and reused his 2009 New Year’s Resolution into being his 2010 Resolution. How fun!

Global Warming: Speaking of recycling, just when it seemed like things would go swimmingly with Mr. Obama traveling to Copenhagen on a mission to save the world from carbon emissions, some hackers fished up thousands of e-mails and documents from a environmental research center purportedly filled with titillating stories of lies, damn lies and statistics engineered by scientists to make warming seem more urgent. Putting aside what seems to be the Republican Party’s new penchant for information acquired through morally questionable schemes, on-the-fence Democrats can’t be too enthused about supporting still stagnant legislation designed to cut domestic emissions. It might just take divine intervention to snatch this bill from the jaws of death, but, in a pinch, maybe Al Gore will do.

A packed schedule to be sure and I hope you’ll join me in watching other people procrastinate. It’s one of the few times I don’t feel guilty about procrastinating myself.