Who are you calling a Caribbean Jerk?

It occurred to me as I set the chicken to marinade the name of what I’m making for dinner, Caribbean Jerk Chicken, consists entirely of insults.
Okay, so maybe “Caribbean” isn’t really an insult, but even so, fully two thirds of the name consists of insults.
The fact that I was thinking about this probably establishes pretty unequivocally that my mind is a strange place.
This is definitely the case: my mind IS a strange place, and I would speculate that it’s not at all like the Caribbean, or any other choice vacation spot.
Then again, while I do sometimes have brainstorms, my mind has never been known to have a hurricane, either.
In any case, the point is that my mind isn’t even a particularly nice place to visit, and yet I have to live there.
And I really do live there, possibly to a greater extent than most people, though not being other people, or being telepathic, there’s no way to say for sure, but my own experience, based on observation and what people have told me about themselves, indicates that most people don’t live as much of their lives internally to the extent that I do.
I suppose you could call me introverted, inwardly focused, or even self-centered (though honestly, I think that we all need to center ourselves around our “selves,” so it’s not necessarily a bad thing).
Narcissistic probably wouldn’t fit, since while I do tend to focus most of my attention on myself I’m not actually enthralled or enamored with what I’m seeing.
I suppose my inward focus stems largely from my solitude, as I have spent, and continue to spend, a good portion of my life alone.
All of my siblings are at least five years older than I am, and even my mother has often said that, while she realized intellectually that I was one of them, she’s always thought of me as being her “second family,” as if I were somehow separate from the others.
I don’t know that this opinion contributed to me being isolated from them, though I would say that I don’t think it did.
And honestly, it’s not that I was completely cut off from my brothers and sisters, it’s just that the difference in age made interaction sort of difficult at times.
The difference in age also meant that even before I started high school I was the only one left at home.
Being a weirdo left me isolated from my peers as a kid, and on into high school (for the most part).
Even when I was married I spent a great deal of my time alone, thanks to differing work and class schedules.
While at work I got along with most of the people I worked with, but that was pretty much the extent to which I socialized, as by that time I had gotten fairly accustomed to being alone.
Further, I had developed a pretty strong dislike of any sort of social interaction beyond the absolute bare minimum (like while at work, for example), and in general, I didn’t (and still don’t, though I’ve gotten a little better) like people.
Again, this stemmed from being habituated to being on my own, but also from my grade school experiences in which, being a weirdo and therefore an easy target, I learned that people are horrible, mean-spirited, and can’t be trusted.
Ah, the joys of childhood trauma…
In any case, as a married adult attending college full-time, I still managed to be extraordinarily solitary.
My wife, to a certain extent, helped keep me isolated, as she was willing to step in whenever possible and handle any human interaction for me. She would make phone calls, place orders for me at fast food restaurants, and so forth, allowing me to become even more isolated (and weird).
It was actually during this period that I first conceived of the “Jon Alarm.”
I was standing in the hallway before class, waiting for the students of the preceding class to exit the classroom. I leaned up against the wall to wait, and while I did that, some other student came and leaned against the wall next to me.
RIGHT next to me, even though he had an entire wall to choose from.
As he did this, it occurred to me that it would be very amusing if I had something like a car alarm that would go off, declaring, “STEP AWAY FROM THE JON! YOU ARE TOO CLOSE!”
But alas, my dream never came to fruition, and to this day I frequently suffer from invasions into my personal space, though in fairness my definition of “personal space” tends to be a bit broader than most (For example, wherever you are as you read this, you’re currently in my personal space. You’re in Cleveland? Too close. Estonia? Back up a little. The outer rim of the solar system? Give me some breathing room, dammit…).
When my marriage ended, I was well and truly alone, though without the benefit of having someone to handle human interaction for me, so that took considerable adjustment.
Beyond that, though, it was an entirely different kind of solitude.
Essentially, it was unbroken solitude. I couldn’t sit there alone with the understanding that at some point she was going to get off work and come walking through the door.
No, I was going to go to sleep alone, wake up alone, go grocery shopping alone, eat dinner alone…
At the time, circumstances were such that the handful of friends I had were largely unavailable, and my inadequate social skills effectively prevented me from making any new friends.
Upon reflection, it’s no wonder that in order to develop any sort of social life I had to make liberal use of alcohol as both a social lubricant and a reason to socialize in the first place.
It’s also no wonder that eventually I had to stop making use of alcohol…
And now I find myself alone even more than ever. I do engage in the occasional social interaction with friends from work, but at this stage in life, that usually involves a specific activity. When you get into your 30s you don’t spend a lot of time just “hanging out.”
So, as I spend all of this time with no one to talk to, it’s hardly surprising that I spend the majority of it knocking around inside the old gray matter.
What the hell else am I going to do?
And as the saying goes, no matter where you go, there you are.
It’s not as though my brain can be shut off, and even if I find myself totally engrossed in some activity, which almost never happens, I’m capable of multi-tasking, so it’s not like there’s any way to escape from my thoughts.
So I think about things like ‘Caribbean Jerk Chicken” as a potential insult to throw at the next obnoxious coward from the Bahamas that I encounter, though, as mentioned, such an encounter is unlikely to happen.
Still, as mentioned, my social skills have improved somewhat over the years.
Hell, I actually worked in Public Relations at one point, so that should say something (despite the fact that I did eventually get fired...).
I haven’t learned to like people any better. In fact, working in phone tech support for over a year made me like people even less, and I still think that they’re horrible, mean-spirited, and not to be trusted, but I’ve picked up some coping skills somewhere along the line, so I can deal with them a little better (though the ideal approach is just to avoid them as much as possible).
Anyway, after mentioning Jessica Alba’s willingness to play a stripper, and her unwillingness to get naked while doing so, I was thinking a lot about the grand tradition of actresses playing strippers and porn stars who never actually get naked.
Like Vivica Fox in “Independence Day.” She spends about five seconds on stage, fully-clothed, and then walks off to the dressing room.
Or Elisha Cuthbert in “The Girl Next Door,” in which she plays a porn star whose scenes are apparently always filmed at such an angle that none of her naughty bits are ever exposed.
Say what you will about how horrible “Showgirls” and “Strip Tease” were (and they really were), but at least the strippers in those movies actually took their clothes off.
I’ve seen a lot of strippers in my time, and I’ve never known any of them to stay fully-clothed for extended periods of time while performing. I would have to say it’s pretty likely that they wouldn’t keep their jobs long if they did, or at the very least they wouldn’t make much money.
In fact, it’s pretty much central to the profession, and indeed, the name, of stripping that strippers get undressed, so I find it odd that in Hollywood strippers typically wear more clothing than many Islamic women. Maybe the people who make the wardrobe decisions for strippers in movies are the same people who design exotic, science-fiction-y graphical interfaces for computer applications and operating systems…
Ah well, in any case, I can’t complain too much. After all, there are other problems with Jessica Alba’s role in “Sin City,” with her inability to act possibly being the least of them.
Like the fact that, despite her efforts to make herself appear to be your average blonde American girl, Jessica Alba is very clearly Hispanic, and as such, isn’t really the ideal choice to play a girl named Nancy Callahan.
But whatever; in “Fantastic Four” she will playing the non-Hispanic Sue Storm, opposite a COMPLETELY non-Hispanic actor portraying her brother Johnny.
I wonder if they’ll even bother trying to explain the disparity in the siblings’ ethnicities, or if we’ll just be meant to except it in the fashion that we accept that whole “Rainbow Coalition” family featured in those Verizon ads. If you haven’t seen the ads, they’re just sort of odd. Dad is a white guy, Mom’s Hispanic, the son is also Hispanic (and has this urban, street hood accent that doesn’t really fit in his suburban surroundings), the daughter is white, and the baby is black.
I’m not sure what accounts for the decision to feature such a family other than an attempt to be rabidly PC, but it just leads you to wonder what’s going on. Did they adopt one or more of the kids? Did mom have an affair or two? Is one or more of the kids from a previous marriage? You just don’t know, and the speculation that a lack of answers results in draws you away from the actual message of the ad.
I guess it’s supposed to reflect the diversity of America, and the changing face of the American family, but the whole thing just rings false (Pun intended. What do you mean you don’t get the pun? It’s Verizon. Verizon is a phone company. So, “rings” is a pun, and…oh, forget it!).
Anyway, perhaps in the filmed world of “Fantastic Four,” the Storm family is similarly diverse. Still, at one point they were considering Christina Milian for the role of Sue Storm, which, with a white actor playing Johnny, would have raised even more questions…
But back to Jessica Alba in “Sin City.”
Ethnicity aside, she just doesn’t have the right look for the role of Nancy (or for Sue Storm, for that matter), and seeing clips of her wearing an outfit almost identical to the one Nancy wore in about 90% of her appearances in various tales of Basin City (the actual name of the titular city) drives home the point.
Especially considering that the outfit that Nancy wore in the comics was limited to just the chaps, cowboy hat, boots and lasso…
Okay, dammit, I’ll admit it: I’m pissed that Jessica Alba won’t be showing her tits!
I mean, come on, so many actresses refuse to do “gratuitous nudity,” but will agree to it if it’s integral to the role. If she had that attitude, we’d be seeing the twins. After all, she’s playing a stripper. How much more integral to the role can nudity get?
*Sigh* Oh well.
So it’s Thursday again, which means that the work week is once again upon me.
I didn’t accomplish much this week other than a few Nagel pictures that I’m only somewhat pleased with.
Except for the Jessica Simpson picture. I really like that one, and have actually been working on another one, though I probably won’t finish that one tonight.
Next week is kind of iffy in the accomplishment department, as I’m most likely going to be getting a copy of Doom 3 this weekend.
I’m normally not too big on video games, but the original Doom was one that managed to draw me in, so it seems pretty likely that this time around I’ll be doomed once more.
I first played the limited play, shareware version of Doom ten years ago on my first computer (Which was, for the curious among you, a 33 MHz 486 with a whopping 4 MB of RAM and a 170 MB hard drive).
I got a full copy of the game in late 1995, which turned out to be excellent timing, as it was right after my marriage ended, so I had a lot aggression to let out…
Anyway, given the vast improvements in technology, both on the part of the game developers and in terms of my computer, I’m sure that the incredibly rendered graphics and intensely violent gameplay will pull me in, causing me to cast aside all other activities.
Maybe it’ll even pull me out of my own head for a little while…