Under the Green Desk Lamp…
I place my hand
Upon my brow
To face the morning mist
And pray this day
The sea does not
Have me upon its list.
-Brad OH Inc.
The Fisherman’s Prayer
1
Category Archives: Under the Green Desk Lamp
Dear Jeremy…
Under the Green Desk Lamp…
Dear Jeremy,
You’ve most likely heard of me. I’ve certainly heard of you. Since moving to this city, your name has followed me incessantly. I may hear it multiple times per week; other times it will be years apart. But without fail, your name will return to my mind, and I’ve come to accept I may owe you some level of apology.
You see, wherever I roam in this fair town of ours, I find myself periodically greeted by strangers who assume that I am, in fact, you. It was initially the source of much confusion, but after a few such instances, I came to accept that somewhere in this city I have a doppelganger—lucky bastard.
Yes, it would seem that after a lifetime of fairy tales and fantasy novels, it turns out I actually have my very own evil twin.
Except that it’s not that. Not quite. You see Jeremy, every time someone mistakes me for you; I inevitably hear nothing but high praise and endless compliments. People are thrilled to see me—or you, more accurately. I’ve been called a saint, a great friend, and a true philanthropist, all because I apparently look like you.
Actually, I suspect it’s you that looks like me, but that’s beside the point.
For some time, I was ok with this. I always assumed that one day I’d meet this double of mine, and had no doubt it could only end in mortal combat. But then the gears started turning, particularly on the ‘Evil Twin’ notion. The implications of the observation that everyone who knows you seems to adore you and think incredibly highly of your character were admittedly bothersome.
It wasn’t a difficult conclusion to draw; perhaps you weren’t the evil twin after all. Indeed, it’s more likely that title belongs to me.
And so I began to think. While strangers approached me on the street thanking me for the time you volunteered to help them with some overwhelming project, or provided a shoulder to lean on through a trying ordeal—what were you experiencing when people inevitably mistook you for me?
Once the question was asked, it could not be unasked, and I have since been burdened with a terrible guilt over the notion that my misdeeds may have been coming back on you.
I admit I’ve been a lousy twin, and I know it’s time to apologize. It’s hard to say exactly what the apology is for, as I don’t know precisely what you’ve experienced as a result of my indiscretions.
Undoubtedly, there have been more than a few slaps. But hey—women can be like that sometimes.
Presumably at least a few people have sought revenge for some perceived slight, but there can be no question those idiots deserved whatever perceived injustice they got. Mopey pricks.
I truly am sorry about the incident with the crazy carpet, and I cannot even begin to make account of the ordeal with the police horse. If you’ve suffered as a result of either, I honestly feel mildly perturbed.
If at some point you were confronted by a Minister who was offended by some action of mine—whether justified or not—I can see how it would be an inconvenience for your perfect character, although I can’t imagine it was that bad. The guy was a knob from the start, and you should honestly be happy he didn’t try to convert you. You owe me on that one buddy.
As a matter of fact Jeremy, I think your petulant whining is a bit uncalled for. If you’ve experienced hardship as a result of me, maybe you should turn that pathetic frown upside down, and realize that I’ve only served to make your sad time in this world a little more colourful.
Seriously Jeremy, you’re acting like a child, and I’m getting sick of it. I know you like to pluck scared kittens from trees and help old ladies across the street—but in doing so you’re fucking up the natural order of things. You’re also missing out on a lot of potential fun. So try to focus less on making me look so damn good—trust me, I’ve got it covered. Instead, why don’t you go unwind, have a bit of fun, and try to send some of that bad karma back my way? You might actually end up enjoying yourself a little, asshole.
-Brad OH Inc.
Bullying in the Supermarket
Under the Green Desk Lamp…
‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’ It’s an adage we’ve all heard. Whether from animated rabbits, or our own dear parents, the majority of children are taught explicitly that being unkind is not the way to act in our society.
I was at a conference a while back discussing bullying in middle school, with a particular focus on cyber-bullying. The attendees were often shocked at the examples of childhood cruelty being perpetrated by and against youth these days.
Photos—often explicit—are shared around, and entire websites are dedicated to insulting one another, spreading rumours, and generally making life miserable. There’s no doubt about it, it’s a hard world for a child to grow up in.
This is especially true when we are constantly telling them that the expectations of life are otherwise—that adult society functions on the basis of good social graces, of respecting your fellow man and avoiding hurtful language. If this is how people are expected to act, it comes as a special shock to find that your peers are so steadfastly determined to undermine such ideals.
It was these thoughts which weighed on my mind as I stood in line at the supermarket after the conference ended. How can children be so cruel, and how can we teach them to act better?
The question didn’t linger very long. It was rather rudely chased from my tired brain by the glossy magazine covers flanking me on both sides as I worked my way slowly toward the register.
‘Guess whose cellulite this is’, a headline would read, and a zoomed in box drawn from a woman on the beach would reveal the unsightly lumps on her bikini-clad ass. Some celebrity had the audacity to appear in public, without the assistance of airbrushes and digital photo editing to help her. The nerve!
A man was accused of cheating. A context free photo of him hand in hand with a woman rested above a headline bemoaning his lack of values, and lamenting the inevitable ruin of his marriage.
The headlines were legion, each one attacking some vice or speculating on some perceived flaw. Entire front page spreads were dedicated to the attempted outing of supposedly gay singers, surgeries gone awry, and teens who could not afford to have yet another child.
It’s no wonder, I thought, placing my items on the scarred rubber conveyor belt. How can we tell children to be nice to each other when the clear and undeniable truth is that we cannot manage it ourselves?
It’s a savage hypocrisy. A society so feral and filled with hatred that even political debates eschew all relevant discourse in favor of painting one another as sexual deviants and money-grubbing lechers.
So what are we left to glean from the broad disconnect between expectations and practice? Do we assume that our children are stupid? That they will somehow fail to notice the overt double standard? Will they just ignore that swindling and deceit are the clear pathways to success in the job market, and that even our leaders have no qualms about saying mean things if their PR managers tell them it will get their ratings up?
Perhaps it’s not the kids who are to blame. In a society that worships the rich, adores the callous, fetishizes fallen idols and encourages its people to hack their way through friends and neighbours to climb a rung higher on the ladder, maybe such horrid indecency in children isn’t the aberration we treat it as. If these are the values we truly hold, perhaps such kids are just proto-types of the new age.
It’s a necessary survival strategy—a natural evolution.
But if our hope is for such cruelty to cease—for kids to go to school and enjoy the company of their peers, to feel safe and supported by those around them—we may consider starting the change with ourselves.
-Brad OH Inc.
The Metaphorical Imperative
Under the Green Desk Lamp…
Here at Brad OH Inc., I’m often asked why I write. Certainly, it’s a difficult question to answer. For me, pleasure would be one acceptable response—whether it’s my own, or that of the visitors who read and enjoy what I’ve written—both are wonderful reasons to write. I’ve heard other authors answer this question as well, with such varied responses as: ‘to elicit emotion’, ‘to express myself’, ‘to make money’, and of course, the old go-to, ‘because it’s what I’m meant to do’.
They’re all true enough, and all equally vague in their own ways. But dealing with such questions, it’s hard to avoid a little bit of abstraction, and that’s ok. When you try to dig any deeper—questioning things such as purpose and meaning—it becomes a real existential quagmire.
To me, writing is a sort of religion. Scratch that… like so many religions, that’s already a bit narrow-minded. Limiting this explanation to writing is unfair… more broadly, art as a whole—or metaphor more specifically—is my religion. Let me explain…
As humans, we occupy a level of intellectual complexity reserved for us alone. As a result, we have many abilities which are entirely foreign to all other known organisms. One of the most obvious, and arguably the most significant, is mortality salience. More clearly put, this refers to our awareness of our inevitable demise. This awareness, as fully explored in Ernest Becker’s ‘Terror Management Theory’, creates an existential terror in us that is unknown in other animals. It also creates something else… a drive for meaning.
Not only are we the only known animals to perceive that we will ultimately die, we are also the only ones capable of creating meaning from nothing—metaphor. The power of metaphor is something which must not be underestimated: it can give us hope, it can inspire courage, and—as applies in the case of mortality salience—it can provide us with comfort.
What makes us so special? Why do we alone have these powers of perception and creation? Well, simply put: evolution. Our brains, under the pressures of natural selection, have slowly expanded in form and function to get us where we are today. Now, this is certainly not the endpoint of evolution, but somewhere in that incredibly drawn out process, we’ve developed the capacities for both language and abstract thought. These developments are among the most crucial to defining our humanity.
Ever since the dawn of complex language in the early prehistory of man, we have been using it to ask such questions as where we came from, what our purpose is, and whether we are serving that purpose well. This delves into some deep religious and philosophical territory, but I believe the important point here is that abstract thinking—the ability create or attribute meaning and connections where they do not naturally exist—serves as both the impetus and the solution for such quandaries.
In short, the ability to ask ‘Why’ exists within us because of our propensity for abstract thought, which is also the reason we are able to answer that question with, ‘Because…’. Our need for meaning and our ability to create it are one in the same.
Metaphor is God—and vice versa. Everyone finds it somewhere—religions, movies, bands, relationships—we idealize and apply significance to everything within the limits of our perception. The fact that some of the most popular metaphors are now held as absolute truth (and used to justify both miracles and atrocities) doesn’t negate their reason for being or their power, but rather only affirms both.
Being human, we all share a sense of wonder. Looking up at the night sky, pondering the nature of deep emotions such as love or hate, reflecting on the direction of humanity and where we are to end up… these are natural behaviours which result inevitably from our very ability to articulate them. Once a question is asked, it cannot be unasked. There is no satisfying the human urge for understanding; only an ongoing effort to satiate it.
I call it the metaphorical imperative. To provide meaning is both the result of, and a response to, our ability to think metaphorically. Every story, song, painting—all works of art—are sincere grasps for meaning. Their success, the extent to which they succeed in this goal, is simply a matter of how strong an impact they have on their audience.
And… that’s why I write.
-Brad OH Inc.
The Mayan Denouement
Under the Green Desk Lamp…
At Brad OH Inc., we value punctuality amongst the most important attributes for any business. That said, there is always room for some understanding and flexibility in allowing for extraneous circumstances. Nevertheless, at this point we feel it certainly clear that the Mayans are well overdue on their doomsday deliverance.
So here we are, another apocalypse come and gone. The morning of the 21st, you could almost hear the world sigh in relief… or was it disappointment? There have been many such events in the past—heavy handed claims that the world is certain to end, and doubtless there will be many more.
Humanity certainly carries an unhealthy obsession with the end times, and history would indicate that we always have. Whether it’s the passing of a millennium, the promise of a returned saviour, or the ending of a calendar cycle—any opportunity to imagine that the continuation of existence may be up for debate is a sure fire ticket to get people excited.
Like a child who’s learned to expect the worst from a young age—and thus conducts himself hedonistically in order to be certain his comeuppance is earned—we’ve been looking to these prophecies with careless disregard for a world which we continually assume is on the verge of ending.
It’s easily to sit idly by, expecting that some promised cataclysm will eventually come to wash away all meaning and accompanying responsibility. Here at Brad OH Inc., we find ourselves wondering just when humanity might stop waiting for a predicted doomsday that will never come, and start working to avoid one of our own creation. Of course, just what that might look like is a conversation for another time…
-Brad OH Inc.
A Christmas Gift from Brad OH Inc.
Under the Green Desk Lamp…
Here at Brad OH Inc., we’re always happy to celebrate the Christmas season, and never more so than this year! With 2012 being the first year Brad OH Inc. is open for Christmas, we thought it only appropriate to celebrate the occasion with a special gift.
Now, you all know the dedication Brad OH Inc. feels for each and every one of our readers, so of course we knew this present—our first Christmas gift ever—had to be especially memorable. Too often, gifts are chosen for the ease of the purchaser—accomplishing all their shopping in one fell swoop simply to have it over with. But we didn’t just want something accessible. No, that would never do for the adoring fans of Brad OH Inc.
Brad OH Inc. takes real pride in knowing our fans, and in understanding their wants and needs. As such, this occasion called for something especially considerate. It was no easy task…
The first thing to consider was the ages of our readers. Children are certainly easy enough to shop for—constantly straining their sticky fingers for whatever flashing doohickey is within their sight. But the mature, discerning patrons of Brad OH Inc. are not quite so easily placated.
As we age, it becomes more and more challenging to settle on what we want; most of us have our essentials covered, and it can be difficult picking out frivolous material goods. But the more significant stress is trying to figure out what to get everyone else—most of whom are enduring the same trials as we are.
In especially close relationships, a preferred solution to this conundrum is the gift card. They are convenient to purchase, and allow a degree of choice for the recipient. Amongst like-minded friends, the gift cards exchanged may even be for the same retailer. However, the stress then becomes a matter of what amount to trade; if two friends exchange gift cards for the same store, but one is given a larger amount, it’s a pretty unfortunate trade-off.
It’s clear then that the ideal in this scenario is to exchange gift cards to the same place, and of the same amount. Now, it’s not a stretch to wonder whether this is a futile exercise, or if there is at least some significance to essentially sectioning off some of our money towards a store we might enjoy—in proportion to the number of friends we have.
Sadly, another important consideration arises. As people continue to mature—eventually coming to raise a family—even the choice of store may change. An example would be a friend who once wished for a gift card to an electronics store growing to prefer one they could use to provide for their children. The ideal gift for these priority-driven folk may be one grounded moreover in flexibility. The most eloquent course then would be a simple exchange of cash—once again in equal amounts of course.
With this approach there is really no practical exchange of anything whatsoever—everyone can just keep their own money and use it to celebrate the season however they see fit. That might entail sharing a few holiday spirits with those same friends they are no longer burdened with shopping for, saving it for harder times, buying diapers, giving some to charities—whatever makes them happy.
Therefore, this year, after long thought and careful consideration, Brad OH Inc. is thrilled to have found the ideal gift for our readers… the perfect acknowledgement not only of their fervent dedication to our site, but also of their own unique considerations and concerns. So without further ado, everyone at Brad OH Inc. is happy to present its fans with their 2012 Christmas gift—nothing.
No one deserves it more than you!
-Brad OH Inc.
Brad OH Inc. 