Electrolicious

Ariel’s technique to ensure that your boss treats you like a toddler (ie, “Just ignore this behavior, I’m sure she’ll get bored and stop”) while keeping yourself thoroughly amused (and highly productive!):

Creat a evil executive alterego (i.e. execunym) and proceed to harrass people with communications like the ones below.

Shane [my boss who called in sick today],

Feel better soon. That said, don’t think I’ll forget this “illness” come review time!

Regards,
Paul

Coder: trying to find the pages to update
Designer: can i do anything to help?
Coder: very difficult
Coder: it’s just a very complex/disorganized setup
Psychotic Copywriter: Coder,
Psychotic Copywriter: this is Paul, here.
Psychotic Copywriter: We ALL think this project suxors.
You are not alone.
Coder: Paul Stallings?
Psychotic Copywriter: Although I will remember this whining,
Psychotic Copywriter: come REVIEW TIME!
Coder: thank you for the support
Psychotic Copywriter: Regards,
Psychotic Copywriter: Paul.
Coder: Paul
Coder: happy to know I will get a review
Designer: paul is the best
Coder: I feel a new sense of motivation
Coder: and dedication to the company

PS: It really works!

PPS: I understand if you don’t find this funny.

A few weeks ago, I was at a cocktail party where it was drunkenly revealed that all of us in the room were second generation. For those of you just joining us here in 21st century America, first generation immigrants are the ones who do the immigrating. Second generation immigrants are the children of those immigrants. Pretty simple concept.Strangely, however, of the cocktail party attendees, only one of us had non-American born parents. The rest of us fell formed a cultural group descended from a special kind of alien. We are the offspring of a unique kind of American cultural immigrants, the children of people who abandoned the ways of their native upbringing and started anew in the land of opportunity. Our parents came from a culture as foreign to us as a distant country: the suburbs of mid-century America. This second generation? We’re the children of Baby Boomers who abandoned the ways of their parents and became hippies. And, as Hendrix once sang while our folks were contemplating moving to a commune, we’re comin’ to get ya.

The thing about both hippies and genuine immigrants is that a lot of changes happen between the first and second generation. The sneakiest thing about second generations is that we don’t always look like our parents — we’re subversive that way. First generation hippies birthed themselves from the cultural confines of the American suburbs and can be reactionary, intoning “I am NOT THAT which I came from, so I claim this NEW mind frame — and must make it known,” as they strip their khakis and don their free-flowing cotton clothes. First generation hippies tend to be recognizable and vocal (and in the worst of cases, righteous). They’re breaking out of a paradigm, out of the repressive culture in which they were raised, and as any paradigm-breaker can tell you, it’s a loud and ugly process. Whether you’re new to a country or lifestyle, there are some bumps on the road. Sometimes you make an ass of yourself. But like most immigrants, the transition and hard work is done for the good of future generations.

And like many second generation immigrants, hippy children take their parents’ hard earned perspective for granted and feel less of a need to parade their ideologies as visually or vocally. Oh, of course I’ve always had a choice between shaving and not shaving. Oh, of course whole grains are better for you — did you really think Wonderbread was healthy? Oh, of course women and men are equal. Jeez, Mom. THEN what happens? (Answer: Katie Roiphe.)

Realistically, second generations are by their very nature somewhat thankless and privileged. We didn’t know how hard it was in the “old country” (in this case, mainstream 1950s America), where women were expected to grow up, tease their hair, pop out babies and fetch hubby’s slippers. We never experienced the horrors of being forced into polyester clothes or traditional careers. We’ve grown up with the worldview that the environment is important, natural foods are better, women are equal, and men can cry. Yawn. Next?

Also, like many second generation immigrants, we’re a little intolerant of first generation immigrant peers. Sometimes I get exhausted when yet another yuppy kid from my high school decides to sell the SUV, get a dog, and move off the grid. I mean, yes, it’s wonderful. I’m so glad they’re making that choice, but I was raised with that shit already figured out, and processing someone else’s awakening can be tedious at times. See? There’s that thankless sense of privilege; that tedious arrogance. I apologize, but regardless of how intolerant or impatient it may make me sound, I have been known to get irritated when friends dive into some new spirituality while espousing the power of wheatgrass. I have been known to and mutter under my breath, “Ok, ok, I get it, I get it,” while thinking to myself, “God, this is tiresome. But their kids will be really cool!”

Sometimes the pendulum swings: as a second generation teenager, all I wanted was to get as far away from my parents’ values as possible. I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and was fastidiously uninterested in drugs (”Ew, pot? Pot is for old people!”). My first boyfriend drove a truck, wore a baseball cap, and lived in a house with white carpets and a hot tub. His background was everything mine had never been: conservative, suburban, and unbelievably interesting. While my bedroom was a refurbished school bus parked outside the log house my parents built, my boyfriend slept under vertical blinds, with a sliding glass door and a patio outside. So cool! While my parents made tofu burgers and talked about women’s healthcare, dinners with my boyfriend and his divorced dad included meatloaf and football games. Riveting! Finally, I was tapped into the real America, not the strange backwards underground I’d been raised with. I loved it!

I had several years of these exploratory mainstream studies. During college, friends amazed that I’d never had ribs took me to a mini-mall where they watched, fascinated, as I struggled with my bib and tried to figure out how to eat around the bones. I tried not to talk too loudly or crassly, I drank beer, I bought a car on credit (an absolute crime when your father’s job involves promoting public transit), I moved to California, and I even got a job at a law firm. (I would eventually learn that one of the lawyers I worked for defended corporations against environmental groups. That may have been the pendulum swinging its farthest.) Even when I got wacky and experimented with substance abuse, it was with synthetics.

After a few years, however, my upbringing got the better of me. I’m certainly not the only person approaching 30 who’s realized with a touch of horror that I’ve become more like my parents than younger me ever could have ever anticipated. More often than not, that’s how it goes. Plenty of second generation immigrants find themselves strangely acting out in ways their parents would love. With hippies, think of the Boomers trading in their VW buses for Beemers in the ’80s. Well, the ’90s saw me trading in my conservative boyfriend for a vegan raised by lesbian college professors. I quit my job at the law firm and became a writer. Despite the fact that second generations grow up in a cultural environment so drastically different from their parents, it’s almost terrifying to see how easy it is to end up with all the parental ideologies firmly entrenched. It’s almost as if going back to vegetarianism wasn’t a choice — I was genetically compelled!

With a few exceptions including agnosticism and leg waxing, my pendulum returned to my parent’s side of the clock case. I do believe, however, that this swing may have contributed to my arrogant impatience of my first generation hippy friends. My 20s were spent realizing that I actually agreed with many of my parents’ ideals. This is in stark contrast to my first generation hippy friends who spent their 20s figuring out that they disagreed with many of their parents’ ideas; that in fact Wonderbread isn’t a food group.

Naturally, when discussing a second generation, it’s impossible not to think of the inevitable third generation. My childhood was full of mocking my parents and adoring my grandparents. My paternal grandmother would let me watch all the TV I wanted — which stood out in stark contrast to my parents, who tyrannically tried to limit me to only an hour a day. (My parents won out on that front: I don’t even own a television, now.) My maternal grandmother would sneak over bags of candy (which contained what even as a child I knew was called refined sugar) which I hid under my bed and rationed to myself like a junky. While my mother made me yogurt from scratch in the kitchen, I would be up in my bedroom tweaking out on refined sugar courtesy of my Grandma/Drug Courier. Eventually, either as I grew up or as my parents’ ideals saturated my young, impressionable mind and took it over like a fungus, my grandparents lost some of their appeal. When my grandmother referred to the people in the condo downstairs as her “loud colored neighbors,” I think the coffin was sealed: I was sure I wasn’t my like my parents, but I was also sure I definitely wasn’t like my grandparents either.

As for the third generation of hippy immigrants, who can tell now which way they will turn. Will the lessons of their grandparents be lost on these youngins? Will the pendulum swing yet again, and will this third generation resent their parents (me and my compatriots) for not respecting the first generation enough? “Grandma told me cool stories about new age rituals, Mom. Why don’t WE ever do new age rituals? And Grandpa told me about rock music festivals outside! Why do we always go to those indoor techno parties? This sucks. I’m staying with Grandma for the weekend.”

And to that I’ll probably say, “Fine, Miss Phoenix Megapixel Stallings, you go do that. Just don’t try sneaking any of that fucking wheatgerm back in here with you!”

If you’ve got bandwidth to spare, click here and download that enormous file.

Then go to minute 20:00.

Then listen: I’m clearly becoming more sappy, because this song almost made me cry. Why? I think this is why, but I can’t be sure and all I know is that 15 year old song + Ariel misty-eyed at work = sappy. Can baby angel greeting cards be far behind? Fear for me. Or just fear me. Or something.

A: Well, look at that: someone found my website by searching for “DRE’S HOOKERS LIST.”
A: Really?
A: Yup.
A: You’re number one on my list, baby.

sniff. He always says the sweetest things.