How To Keep From Turning Into Your Parents
Will you turn into your parents? Some licensed clinical social worker says maybe yes, maybe no, you can probably avoid it if you (I hope you’re sitting down because this answer will shock the fuck out of you) go through therapy to change the patterns blah blah blah, it’s always “talk about your problems and do some work on yourself” with these people. “Please,” they say as the meter runs, “go on about all these things that have also happened to every other fucking person in the history of our species, nothing could be more fascinating.” But I digress. The parent-turning-into thing, what’s the deal with that?
People generally tend to pay more attention to the qualities that were most burdensome growing up. For example, if your father was very impatient, and would become quick to frustrate, you may now consciously desire to be more patient and go with the flow more easily so you don’t embody this same quality. However, you may find yourself reacting impatiently or frustratedly as a natural unconscious reaction to things…. The issue of carrying on negative traits of our parents (and it should be noted that the impact of siblings here is often understated) is when we lack self-awareness. When people are in stable, relaxed states, it’s easier to control who we want to be. But when we become activated in some way, it can be easier to lose track of the desire to act differently than what we’re already used to. For example, if you’re a parent who grew up with a yelling and punishing parent, and your child does something that triggers you, it may be your first reaction to yell and punish, unless you’re able to regulate yourself to consciously change the response.
So a couple of important things to take away here: 1) Yes, you will turn into your parents, but only the bad parts of them, and only when you are at your weakest and least attentive, so unless you are prepared to remain in a permanent state of vigilance against becoming dismissive, hypercritical and panicky (plus quick to anger when drinking) you should probably just accept the fact that pretty soon you’re gonna be your mom and even though they say there’s something you can do about it, let’s be honest, there’s no real hope for you, but 2) You can also blame a sibling, if you have one!
Look, we all know that turning into our parents is just a thing that happens as we age, like feeling wistful for moments in the past that seemed unremarkable at the time but compared to the constant trauma parade our lives have turned into now make us feel like we would be in heaven on earth if only we could get them back, or sore joints at the end of the day. There’s no avoiding it, so just relax and let the transformation occur, if it hasn’t already. I want to leave you with some good news on this, so here it is: Eventually everyone dies, including you, and no matter who you take after it’s going to stop at some point. For you, at least. God knows what you’re going to do to your children.
Photo via Shutterstock
The Avengers Take Brooklyn
by Awl Sponsors
This post is sponsored by Target
In case you haven’t noticed, The Avengers are everywhere lately. In order to gear up for the upcoming Avengers: The Age of Ultron, we made our way to the Atlantic Center Target in Brooklyn, New York to play around with the latest slate of action figures, toys and gear. What happened next surprised even us.
First things first. To get in to the Avengers spirit, we hulked out at Barclays Center — decked out in a Hulk mask and Hulk gloves.
No one seemed to notice. I guess stranger things have happened in NYC.
Once we were fully hulked out, we infiltrated Target to meet up with our fellow Avengers.
After getting distracted in the electronics section, we eventually fled with our new action figure friends to Prospect Park, where they honed their skills on a treacherous mountain peak.
Oof. Looks like Iron Man needs to break out his Hulk Buster armor…
After an hour of messing around rigorous training, we decided to catch a view of the NYC skyline. As it turns out, Hulk Buster armor DOES makes an appearance during a surreptitious rooftop meeting with Thor.
What could they be discussing?? I mean, something top secret probably.
Epic shot.
Batroc the Leaper watches from above while playing…an imaginary violin?
…until he’s inexplicably dangling upside down by giant Hulk hands.
After that we were all pretty tired. We decided to call it a day…
But it was a pretty fantastic day overall.
What happens next? That’s up to you. And FYI: Avengers gear isn’t JUST for adults. Kids like The Avengers too. So pick up your Avengers gear at Target and go nuts.
A Poem by Shauna Barbosa
re the dentist and his new family
Teeth person will not eat beef unless the mother cooks it.
The I would like to say: Fuck your baby.
Mother will make beef if son buys it.
A teeth person walks about the quad on what a person is suspected to walk upon.
A person of teeth. Teeth own a person.
I am doing well. I am having a baby.
Some sets of teeth walk. Teeth person,
I have had dreams about your baby. Teeth on carefully.
The I once a baby, now a dent in the corner of a $1500 laptop, precious technology.
Communicate a stain that would be refused by the local favourite dry cleaner.
Teeth person taught you ruin.
Exit without having entered.
List what you know about teeth person other than teeth person will not eat beef unless mother cooks it.
Teeth person once walked upon, on, with tongue to say: I want an artist.
The mirthful artist wonders,
Did teeth person ever declare: I want a bank teller?
Teeth, bank teller, baby.
Show the I those teeth. Show the I that money.
Shauna Barbosa’s poems have appeared in the minnesota review, A Bad Penny Review, Sundog Lit, and PANK. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Bennington College. You can find her at shaunabarbosa.com.
You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor, Mark Bibbins, at poems@theawl.com.
The Internet Is So Horny Right Now
Winter is over. It’s green outside. And bright. Alive. Warm. Warm enough to force tiny beads of sweat out of the pores of your lower back, to stale the air in the office, to make it acceptable to order iced coffee. And the internet is ready to fuck.
Gizmodo is throbbing.
BuzzFeed wants you to eat its ass while you ask it questions about boning.
Lifehacker wants you to use a data-driven vibrator on it, after hours.
New York’s The Cut lives to fuck.
Matter is trying to get laid with Tinder because it has been empowered by frexting.
Wired emailed us to let us know it discovered the female orgasm, with science.
The Message this week is dicks.
And Vice? Well, Vice is always horny, and always was.
The Tab Randomizer
Reader Yoz Grahame made a tool that combines our random-tab recommendations into a single tab randomizer. Try it! May your next new tab be better than this one.
New York City, April 28, 2015
★★★★ A wash of warm sun and a puff of cool breeze balanced out one another. Gem-like details sparkled on adults’ serious running sneakers and a little girl’s decorated shoes. A pear tree stretched its luminous canopy far out over Broadway. Blue daylight showed through the slowly turning joint of the drive shaft of a truck not quite stuck in traffic. Two men cut up a split-off pear branch; the ruins of blossoms carpeted the sidewalk and street. The afternoon moon was as white as the little shreds of cloud near it in the sky. Pure whites and shadow grays met on the blue of the evening sky. The Flatiron stood up against them, promising the detail of its sunny side to the pedestrian crossing from east to west, and then delivering it. The sharpness of the numbers on the clock of the Metropolitan Life Tower was more startling than even the gold of its crown. Details of walls and furniture rose from the interior depths of the black slab of the New York Merchandise Mart, complexities to rival the intentional decoration of its neighbors.
My Daughter, Brand Ambassador
Except for a few cute and funny “I love daddy!” onesies, the first year of my daughter’s life was largely ad-free. We avoided dressing her in clothing or shoes with logos or words printed on them. It’s not so much that I want to avoid #brands, it’s that I don’t want her to be a walking advertisement. I buy her plenty of cute jackets and sweatshirts at the Gap, but none with “GAP: 1969” emblazoned on them.
Once the year mark passes, things startt to change. It’s subtle at first, and it goes hand in hand with exhaustion-induced laziness. I have become less meticulous: I relented and had to admit that the pajamas that said “Later” with an alligator (her favorite animal, according to me) were so cute I would break my own rule to purchase them for her. I couldn’t resist buying her a cheap nylon set of Wonder Woman PJs, cape and all. Then I bought her a pair of Nike tennis shoes, conspicuous “swoosh” and all. I felt bad but also simply had to buy the Keith Haring-branded leggings, although I felt that Keith Haring himself would have been somewhat ambivalent if he had known he was designing baby gear from the grave. “Me too, Keith,” I thought as I paid for the leggings, throwing in the matching t-shirt, the words “Dance All Day” across the front, right above Mr. Haring’s iconic signature.
But it quickly gets worse once you invite the brands in the front door, and now I am powerless to stop it. I don’t even care, I sometimes tell myself. About a month ago, on a rare trip to Target, we purchased a tiny Frozen coloring book for Zelda. Didn’t even really think about it. She can’t color yet, but she loves the book, carrying it around in her little hands, turning its pages one by one, chewing on the edges of the book in her zombie-walk, as if to say: “Give me more Disney: I must have Disney.”
It’s not as if I were raised to rebel against brands: My first birthday cake was Tweety Bird. I loved Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street. I still love Sesame Street! And yet, I don’t want every purchase I make to signify compliance in the world of licensed merchandise. Did my rejection of the hospital’s diaper choice (Pampers) also suggest a rejection of the Sesame Street characters printed on their asses? Only if you think I prefer Winnie the Pooh, whose characters are on all Huggies diapers. I don’t really care about either, and Zelda is still too young to know the difference: I just think that Huggies makes better diapers.
There are, I have noticed, ways to try to avoid branded baby essentials: One of them is to avoid the middle price point. You can go a little higher, and buy the slightly more expensive, organic diapers. I tried this. The plain unbleached white of the Seventh Generation diapers appealed to me, until I found that they leaked nearly every time. The Honest Company (that’s the one owned by Jessica Alba) makes the cutest diapers anyone has ever seen: colorful stripes, strawberries, chevron! “Why has no one ever really done this before?” I asked my husband in amazement as I swaddled Zelda’s bottom in fashionable, ad-free bliss. Those leaked too. And they were so expensive. You could also go cheaper: You’ll get generic “characters” on ones made by CVS, Target, or Amazon — which were amazing and never leaked, but were suddenly and sadly discontinued, so I simply went back to the Huggies, Winnie the Pooh and all.
What is the point? My daughter doesn’t know who Cinderella is. Not yet, anyway. And that’s what makes me sad about the brands: They know that it’s just a matter of time, so they start early. I can keep my daughter from seeing television and movies. Her toys and books and games don’t need to be billboards for Frozen or How to Train Your Dragon 2, because she doesn’t know what those things are. But any day now, she’s going to ask for them by name. She’ll go off to school with her adorable, European Fjallraven Kanken backpack and someone will make fun of her “generic” bag, and she’ll come back to me, asking for an ugly pink piece of crap with the latest Disney movie vomited all over it. And, like Kim Kardashian relented and got North a rolling Frozen suitcase — which sticks out like a sore thumb against the child’s stark, health goth wardrobe — I’ll give in. I’ll shoot over to Target or whatever big box hell is nearby, emerging an hour later laden with brands. Brands. Everywhere.
What matters is that Zelda is safe and happy and healthy, and has a bag — any bag — to tote her crayons and books (iPad) around in. But brands, when they’re aggressively after the malleable and limited real estate of a child’s mind, still make me shudder. I know we won’t do ourselves any favors in bowing to the temple of the branded backpack. We might think we’ll save money — This My Little Pony backpack costs one third of that Swedish thing! — but we’d be kidding ourselves; she’ll want another in six months, when a new movie or TV show arrives. And that’s the power of the brand, especially for children. The thirst for brands, once whetted, is a gaping hole that can never be sufficiently filled. Soon enough, Zelda will have her chance to be a walking, talking advertisement for SOMETHING which doesn’t exist yet, but will likely feature a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white girl in a dress.
“Who gives a shit!?” I’m tempted to ask, “Brands never hurt ME after all.” But when I look back at my childhood, I have to be honest: brands DID hurt me. I lived in an affluent suburb with a large family. My parents couldn’t afford a new Swatch or Air Jordans or Hypercolor or whatever shit the eighties were shovelling at us full force. And that bothered me when I was very young. Because brands, to a great extent, are how we form and state our identity. Your Louis Vuitton wallet says something. It’s vague and meaningless but it says something. And this brand obsession, whether it’s in the form of cheap or very expensive goods, it starts early: It starts with the fucking Frozen backpack. So as much as I want to be fun and easy going, as much as I want to throw up my hands and say, “Oh, who cares if Zelda wants a Cinderella t-shirt,” it bothers me. I don’t want her sense of who she is to be formed by Coca-Cola or Apple or Disney. FUCK BRANDS.
Everyone I know is beside themselves with excitement for the new Star Wars movies. I shrink away from getting too caught up in the hype, because I know their release dates will strike when the iron of my daughter’s mind will be newly warm and pliable, not to really be shaped by whatever lesson the movies will project, but to buy: the pajamas, the action figures, the lunch box (if they even still make lunch boxes?). Sure, I guess I’d prefer it be Star Wars — the new main character is a woman, at least — to some other, likely more gendered brand, but still the unavoidable truth is out there: My daughter is a brand ambassador in the making.
Photo modified from an original by thelittleone417
Introducing Tab Therapy: A Palliative Treatment for Terminal Internet
In theory, the internet is diverse and vast bordering on infinite. In daily practice, it can be a sad parade of numbing, over-targeted content that is consistent only in its decreasingly subtle hatred for the reader (that’s you). Is your internet starting to feel claustrophobic? Are you in an abusive relationship with your feeds? Do you dread every tab you open? Are you in denial about these things?
Try tab therapy!
A friend of mine told me that every tab he opens — every CMD/CTRL+T, every click of the button — automatically directs him to a random Wikipedia page. This sounded great: a brief detour through something unexpected that might be good, or at least sort of interesting, before the inevitable arrival at something bad. And it turns out it is.
It’s easy to set up. In Chrome, install this extension:
Then, add this URL:
Right here:
This, it turns out, is a fairly common trick; here you will find instructions for Firefox, as well as a link that only includes “featured” Wikipedia pages, in case you’re not interested in seeing hundreds of four-sentence Wikipedia articles about small towns in other countries (why not?).
But why not take this further?
Some more options for new tabs:
A random Earth View in every tab (this is its own extension).
A random query in Wolfram Alpha. Copy this URL:
A random fullscreen GIF. Copy this URL:
A random Ask Metafilter question. Copy this URL:
An image from Flickr (also its own extension).
A random subreddit (not technically porn but also not not porn, this one may not actually make your internet “seem better.”) Copy this URL:
A random actor from IMDB. This one is weirdly unsettling! Copy this URL:
A “Random Website” from a list that seems to have been made at least ten years ago, probably more. V good. Copy this URL:
A random WikiHow article (this is the best one, do this one). Copy this URL:
Random Urban Dictionary entry. Copy this URL:
A random GIF from Wikipedia. Copy this URL:
Random Street View. Copy this URL:
Random Esperanto Wikipedia article. Sure! Copy this URL:
http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciala%C4%B5o:Hazarda_pa%C4%9Do
Yahoo Answers newest questions. Excellent page. Updated constantly:
There, fixed. You’ve taken back your new tabs from the anxious, needy internet monkey perched on your back. Your internet now makes no sense in a way that at least makes sense!
Update: Reader Yoz Grahame has made a tool that combines most of these options into a single new-tab randomizer. It is EXCELLENT. Just copy this URL:
http://cdn.rawgit.com/yozlet/randomrandom/master/randomrandom.html
Urine Escapee Represents All New Yorkers
“An auto mechanic who collected Nazi memorabilia and was once busted for firing a pistol at a picture of his mother-in-law has become an unlikely champion of the right for straphangers to flee pee in a subway car.”
— Greatest city in the world.
New York City, April 27, 2015
★★★★ A sky of solid rippling gray became one of open clear blue in the time between waking up and the morning viola lesson. A disc of wan reflected daylight reached the floor of the practice room through the round window, revealing the yellow in the fluorescent light all around it. Another hour or so and there was another sky, a flotilla of white clouds in all shapes and sizes. Enough leaves were out to dapple the sunlight. Early afternoon had yet still a new sky over it, gray and mottled. A woman walked out into Broadway and stood with her back to traffic, taking pictures of a huge pothole. Blossoms rocked stiffly back and forth in a burgeoning wind. A porthole of blue appeared in the gray, and then more new blue asserted itself to the north. Then pieces of every different sky were in place at once, high and low clouds drifting and changing color as golden light spread from the open parts in the west.