Yesterday on the Internet: The Handmaid's Tale

           

I don’t recall how I got dialed in to this show, but it’s the best thing I’ve watched in a long time. To be fair, I watch very little television, and I consider that a good thing, as the very precious commodity occurs almost never in the light switch known as a week.

            It’s so freaking good, though, and of the many reasons why, one cannot be overstated: We are, in this country, insanely close to this setting being a real possibility. And if that doesn’t alarm you then you should probably consult a psychiatrist.

            At this point I don’t have any intention of being an expert on the program, so the chances of me botching a detail or two are pretty high. And as of right now, I’m only toying with starting over with episode one of the inaugural season for the purposes of constructing a per-episode feature.

            The skinny is more or less this, though: The United States as we know it has been taken over. Repossessed, restructured, and refashioned. The government has been overthrown and the nation (or at least a part of it) is being run by a collection of dictators and authoritarians that have basically instilled martial law.

            The biggest takeaway, literally and figuratively, is basic human rights. As in, they’ve been stripped and reconfigured to only include straight males, most of whom are white.

            Women have been categorized into three sectors: the fertile, those whom cannot bear children, and the rejects. The fertile, handmaids, are assigned to a high-ranking official: commanders. They live in the home with the official and his family, and they are forced to participate in a ceremony in which the handmaid lies on the marriage bed, arms clutched by the wife, while the commander pumps repeatedly until his proverbial load is dumped in the handmaid. It is, by definition, rape, and is periodically referred to as such in the program. It’s not what one might normally picture, however, if that concept is a thing you’ve either envisioned, experienced, or witnessed. It’s all in the name of procreation, which, in a sense, makes it even creepier than the definition of rape you might’ve previously had.

            Anyway, the handmaid then delivers this baby and it becomes the child of the commander and his wife. The women whom cannot bear children are called Marthas. They serve as maids, butlers, assistants, housekeepers, etc. Slaves, basically. Unlike the rejects, who have been deemed rebellious, gay, criminal, what have you. They are sent to these mines where they’re harvesting something that basically dumps radiation into them and they die, which, once it’s over and done with, is probably a blessing considering how horrific the conditions are and the treatment is.

            The people that commit crimes or behave inappropriately, i.e. express homosexuality, a desire to change gender, or anything outside the norm, get masked in cloth and murdered. They are hung and placed on a wall, displayed in the square like sausages in an old-time butcher shop. It is nothing shy of horrific.

            And in fact, most of the show is horrific. It’s dark. It’s wickedly intense, frightening, and stressful to watch. The positives in this environment appear with four-leaf-clover frequency.

            The show’s protagonist, June Osborne, displays a first-hand example of what life in Gilead (the new United States) is like. The initial episode shows her, her husband, and their daughter fleeing the country. They’re making a proverbial run for the border (in this case Canada, not Taco Bell) when they become separated. Her husband escapes; June and Hannah do not. From that point on the program centers on June’s varying tolerance of her new normal, how she combats it and in many instances, how she is consumed by it. The level of horrible she experiences is almost impossible to stomach and in a number of circumstances she doesn’t have it as bad as some of the other handmaids.

            When I first discovered The Handmaid’s Tale two years ago, I consumed season one in two sittings. It’s that good. Waiting an entire year was brutal, but proved worth it. Season two did not disappoint. Stakes were upped, worse got worser, and the balance of hopelessness versus possibility was suffocatingly perfect.

            Marking off the calendar days for the current season to start felt akin to trying to get the last couple of doses out of the shampoo bottle, but once it was here, it was great to be back.

            Season Three has had a couple of valleys in the sense that I, on a couple of occasions, wondered if the writers and producers had painted themselves into a corner where new variations of the same theme were going to turn the show stale. Where these trajectories periodically dipped, however, the ensuing peaks have more than made up for what might’ve been construed as monotony, perhaps all of which was by design.

            And now we’re on the cusp of another wait, as only one episode remains.

            Anyway, yesterday’s episode (12 of 13) followed a wild episode 11 and kept up the intensity. Serious shit is taking place within the primary-character circle, and the way they have the season planned to end has likely got most viewers on the edge of their seats. I mean, that’s how these things go, right? Big to-do in a season’s closer, get you mentally committed for next year.

            I’m not a television expert, but this has got to be top-notch production. The acting rings with real emotion, the selected scores scar, delight, and sometimes taint with irony. And again: The very-real, very-frightening possibility of this world shifting from construed to the shelves of non-fiction is alarming and unsettling at best. The environment of The Handmaid’s Tale is the very reason why those that preach inclusion are in perpetual clash mode with those that do not.

            If you haven’t gotten on board, now’s the perfect time to do so. You’ve got the better part of a year to indulge in three seasons of remarkable television. And hey -- Who doesn't love having their life surrounded by terrifying, omni-present, indecipherable citizen's-band-radio garble?

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXVI: 125-101

I don't imagine we're beyond all of the summer heat just yet, but last evening and this morning provided some calm, cool air here in the sticky midwest.

Here's entry #36.

Thanks for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXV: 150-126

These things...they come and go in waves.

Happy Sunday.

Thanks for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXIV, 175-151

In the beginning of this project I joked about how hard it would be to avoid repetition by the time I got to the end, and that's turning out to be true in every sense. I'm doing everything I can to try and think of the real things, the important things in life, and instead of coming up with stuff, I'm probably coming across as a 21st-century, idiot, American male.

At this point, though, my sole focus is split into two tiers: a) the perspective gained from starting this series, and b) finishing it.

As I chisel away at the remaining few, I'll make an effort to try and get outside of myself.

As always, thanks for reading. 

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXXI: 250-226

Last post for July.

Hope everyone's enjoying their summer.

Thanks for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXV: 400-376

As the evening winds down, a new week begins, and the seventh month of working on this project comes to a close, I can't help but think about how much work we -- as people -- have to do to make this world a better place.

I don't understand how we got to where we did.

I don't understand why people hate, why they fear things different from what they value.

I don't understand the crime, the damage, and the pain some inflict upon others.

Somewhere -- I think -- in this mix called life lies an imbalance of energy.

We have to fix it.

We can't go on degrading, killing, and being unjust.

In a small meeting a couple of weeks ago, the president of my company suggested that we -- as sales people -- should focus on what we can get as opposed to that which we cannot.

It didn't hit me at first, but later, I realized that I've directed a lot of my energy in the direction of the cases I can't get (or haven't gotten yet, I always think) instead of focusing on the ones I can.

This feels analogous to the human experience, and now that I think about it, a lot of what Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching. We should focus our energy on what we have, not that which we lack.

I'll get down off of my soap box now, but I think this starts with giving thanks.

This project has shown me the abundance of things for which I am grateful.

As always that begins with my ability. It includes my time, my computer, my mind, my paper, my printer, my Internet connection. It involves my dictionary, my pen, my family, my friends, and it involves you, the reader.

Thank you.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXIV: 425-401

Nothing should feel weird at this point, but I gotta say it feels odd to knock out another hundred. I feel grateful that things to be grateful about keep rolling in as I post these. I even had a few rain down on me while editing this section, so, depending on how long my children nap, I made get two up today.

Having typed that I expect to hear one or see the other within the next six minutes.

Anyway, I've found -- here in the last couple of months -- that my biggest challenge hinges on the proverbial practicing of that which I preach. Like before lunch today when my son's fatigue and hunger dictated his behavior. I grew short with him and bordered on mean.

Treating him that way measures as the opposite of fair. It's short-sighted and lame of me, and I'm stuck in this rut of recognizing it after the fact instead of just before it happens. Perhaps I need to practice graciousness instead of worrying about writing about it.

Thanks, as always, though, for reading, and send me vibes of strength and patience. I need little else in life right now.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XXIII: 450-426

Three June entries already. May be hope for this thing after all.

Thanks for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XIX: 550-526

One more post and I'll no longer be able to talk about approaching the halfway point. After that I'm sure I'll reinvent a dozen different ways to refer to the proverbial home stretch.

The publishing of this entry puts me near the five-month mark in terms of the scope of this project and calling it overwhelming would be understatementish.

The hope -- as I begin to chisel away at the second tier -- will be to gain an appreciation of the challenges that others face in their lives, be they intentional or otherwise. I also have noted a bit of a perspective shift with regard to my own thinking and I wish for that to continue to develop.

If you're new to the series, you can find previous installments in the archives, and if you're curious about the impetus for starting it, it's this lady. To be fair, I haven't read what she wrote; I only know of her book through secondary sources, but the idea sounded pretty righteous. You can read a little bit more about her idea here.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part XI: 750-726

So it's taken two months to get one quarter of this project written, edited, and posted, which means it should be a wrap by late August.

I'm not gonna lie: That sounds awful.

I started this series because it felt like the right thing to do. It felt like we don't give thanks enough for all of the awesomeness we have. Once I got it off the ground, I saw its existence as a means for forcing myself to establish a consistent writing schedule, which started to happen a few weeks ago, but saw a setback this week.

When I got that schedule rolling, it occurred to me that training myself to have the necessary discipline to maintain such a schedule could give me the confidence to work on a larger, non-blog project, like a novel.

Now, though, as I prepare to click "Publish" on the 11th installment, and I think about having to do this through two additional entire seasons without working on anything else, I feel that nasty, this-is-threatening-to-become-a-chore rumble in my gut, which defeats so many purposes on so many levels.

My hope is that after getting this up, napping, showering, recharging with some friends and my wife this evening, and getting some sleep tonight, I'll feel refreshed about the whole thing again in the morning, or at least by the next time I sit down to work on it.

Anyway...As always: Thanks for reading.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part X: 775-751

I'm not sure if a correlation lies between these two things or not, but brevity and dudes I like both seemed thematic in this installment. Draw your own conclusions.

Only thing I'm drawing looks like a pie chart that says I'm a quarter of the way through this thing.

Whee!

Seven Hundred Seventy-Five: the Benevento Russo Duo

            Marco Benevento and Joe Russo employed keyboards, drums, technology, and occasional guests, and in doing so made more meaningful music than most modern four- and five-piece outfits have recorded in their dreams. They managed this via four studio(ish) albums in a 42-month stretch, and never included a single lyric. The Duo’s unique riffs harnessed electronic emotion and tossed it around the studio with the control of a lariat-clutching roper. I’ve never been exposed to a two-piece rock outfit before, and never did I imagine that a pair of classically trained dudes could convey feeling via instrumental jams. Wicked cool. Short-lived, but wicked cool.

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part IX: 800-776

As I put the finishing touches on this installment two things occur to me: 1) I still have some 30 posts to go; 2) I'm going to need to Google Roman numerals soon.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Eight Hundred: Pandify?

            I log on to Spotify about once a year. I don’t get Spotify. I can’t find anything I want to listen to, and it takes me like 10 minutes to make any of the stuff offered play. With Pandora, I create a station and, as the songs play, I say whether I think they suck or not, and Pandora adapts. Pandora and I get each other. Easy peas-y, library fees-y.

            Right now my Pandora’s broken, though, so thanks for being around Spotify. I totally wanted to wake up this morning and listen to a whole album by The Decemberists. What is this, The Glee Club?

One Thousand Gratitudes, Part II: 975-951

Here, then, is the second installment to this series. The idea of posting one per week might take me til May before this thing wraps, so who knows what things will look like this time next month. Again, no value in the order of appearance; these gratitudes appear as they came to me. The first installment is here; the original idea here.

Nine Hundred Seventy-Five: Mike Gordon

            The Phish bassist is one of the most unique human beings I’ve ever observed. Having studied interviews conducted with him, print pieces he’s written, songs he’s crafted, his onstage mannerisms, his tweets, and having met him and talked to him once, I think this guy is one of God’s finest works. I believe he is -- and has been for some time now -- the finest working bass player in rock, and if there’s only one more thing I can say about him it’s this: The way he bobs his head with most every note shows that he is in tune with the magic happening around him and his bandmates; he has, in fact, surrendered to the flow, and for that, the audience lives a richer life.

Nine Hundred Seventy-Four: tractors (John Deere, and otherwise, but mostly John Deere)

            I’ve only driven my late Grandpa Beck’s Craftsman, and that was probably 30 years ago. I know I’m not unique in this but I love John Deere shit. All of it, man. All of it. The small units, the big rigs, models, mugs, bibs, key chains, all of it. I love them, what they do, what these machines represent. I’ll probably never own one, never live on a farm, and never even have a riding mower, but I like the idea of all of those things. I’m not infatuated with the idea of humans conquering the earth, but the notion of the amount of fertile soil on this planet being so vast, so gigantic that we keep building bigger and bigger machines to help us harvest its fruits is pretty cool. The idea of a John Deere machine so big that my family could sit and eat dinner inside one of its tires both frightens and intrigues me, and as weird as that might sound, I’m grateful for it.

Because It Was On: The Karate Kid

          This is either the initial installment of a new series that will effectively waste a lot of people's time, or it is a one-timer. Either way, without directly doing so, it's about good, old-fashioned American laziness and our tendency to vaporize precious ticks of the click by zoning out in front of the tube, even if what's on is crummy. Even if what's on is crummy and we've seen it before. Even if what's on is crummy, and we've seen it before, and we freaking own a copy of the thing. That last piece isn't the case here, but it has been on countless occasions. It's the ultimate dose indolence when, nestled in a dusty box or bin in our basement, is a copy of the original form of a movie, but, out of sheer stubbornness and lethargy, we will sit through an edited version of it -- with commercials -- because, well, getting up and being productive is entirely too much work.

                 When we got Google Fiber this summer I never anticipated being in a situation where I was on the couch struggling to find something to watch on TV. If I’m flipping channels -- which is maybe twice a month -- I’m toggling between two or three programs, irritated that the commercials airing during each are doing so at all of the wrong times. Last Saturday, however, I was a solid three-quarters through the guide and the feeling came over me that I might be forced to find something else to do. It’d been a long day, a long, emotional week, and I wanted nothing more than to find something mindless -- or some decent comedy -- to which I could doze and arise at six a.m. to root for Team Sweden in the gold-medal game.[1]