Children of the Rennaissance (Man)

I have determined to guide my children toward more focus in their interests, the better to improve their chances for success in a competitive world. At 17 and 11, they have both done a pretty fair job of confining their excellence to a narrow range.

My emphases in parenting continue to come from an effort to compensate for my life failures, and my kids are showing signs of stress from pushing back as I force their noses to the proverbial grindstone. I’m beginning to feel a little slimy for the way that I love them more as they progressively succeed in being everything that I’m not. My friend Ed says that our jobs as parents is to pass our neuroses on to our children, but as I think about it, perhaps some of these neuroses that we pass on are directly analogous to our own, but specifically opposite.

Of course, we don’t control, nor can we predict the path of the pinball, especially when the glass is removed from the pinball machine, and the ball is exposed to wind and rain and deus ex machina. Okay, let’s stop right there. I am dangerously close to the slippery slope of Nurture v. Nature where it becomes more compelling, but less interesting.

This begins for me with the personal notion that I have too little focus of interest and capability. At a time in my life when I can do anything that I desire, I desire to do anything. It seems that there is nothing that catches my eye that doesn’t catch my fancy. I could do that. I used to take comfort (even misplace pride) in the notion that I was a polymath. Yes, I’m good at just about everything I do, but there’s always someone close at hand that is better at any one of those things (but worse at everything else). In a bar chart world, I have a lot of bars, but there are no peaks on the chart.

It’s not too late for me. My persistent optimism allows for a long lifespan, and even for the prospect of many happy years as a mere brain floating in a beaker.

Lust among the sawdust

"Real Estate Porn" garners 17,000,000 hits (exactly?). I hadn't noticed it before now, but are all of the Google hit counts coming in at rounded numbers?

It doesn't matter if I'm tinkering or engaged in a full-fledged home improvement project, my workshop is a welcome haven from important stuff. It's productive (mostly) and gratifying (the simplicity of a thing to show for time spent) and I get a little better at it every time I screw something up (my daughter is a learner's permit driver – so many mistakes ahead, but the only way to truly learn).

I tune my TV in the workshop to DIY or HGTV, and I get some really great tutorials on projects around the house. How to remodel kitchens and bathrooms, tile floors, fix plumbing, beautify the landscaping, and so on. I also get a full dose of Real Estate porn. It's not so much the houses themselves that garner my lust, rather it's the details, the components of renovation that evoke the irrational desire. And I feel dirty afterward. I didn't know that I could feel that way about a granite vanity top. And those faucets. There was a time I would have walked right by a Pfister without a second look.

The whole business of advertising creating a desire is old news. Madison Avenue is good at what they do, and the most restrained among us will occasionally make a buying decision under the influence of even the most transparent devices. But they are not all so transparent. Disgregarding the discredited (and ultimately ineffectual) subliminal ads of the late 50's, do the sophisticated ads of today tap into our psychosexual responses for even the most asexual of products? It turns out that this notion is hotly debated in the biz. The supposed modern mechanisms are called sexual embeds, which are hidden sexual images or words hidden in ad copy with the thought that they will stimulate associations in the consumer that will lead to product purchases. Hotly debated or not, won't the advertisers err on the side of "maybe is good enough for me" when they have to decide whether or not to include a sexual embed? That being the case, we are possibly bombarded with many more suggestive sexual images and messages than we believed (or believed possible). I'm no prude, but I have a little sympathy for parents who are prudes, because I can't imagine trying to shield my kid from all of the sexual imagery out there these days. I have to believe that the cure would be worse than the illness in this case. You'd essentially be opting (your kid) out of the Information Age.

I may have a thing for Real Estate porn, but the kids are compelled by the real thing. I check the history on my son's web browser, and so far his tastes seem pretty innocent (a relative term by modern measures), but it's just a matter of time. I think that I was about his age when I found my father's stash of Playboy magazines. Let me pause here while I recall that moment more deeply.

I'm back.

And I've wandered a bit. My original intent for this post was to discuss the actual costs of home remodeling projects and how those costs and component prices are dealt with on the home improvement television programming. "We wanted to spend something under $25K on our kitchen remodel." I would venture to guess that it's a small percentage of the viewing audience that really has that kind of budget. If that's the case, then these shows are stimulating a lot of unfulfilled desire.

Which brings us back to Playboy.