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04:21:2002 Entry: "Corrupted"
Corrupted
Dammit...what the heck is holding up this dang refinancing? We're not closing today after all. This sucks. Cousin Dave is just not moving fast enough. There's no reason this should take so long just because he's out of state, what with email, telephones and overnight package deliveries (which I'm sure the company can afford).
Plato seems to be getting better. Not as much pain it seems. More spasticity, which is good in this case.
I watched the first part of the Westminster Dog Show last night. A Boxer placed third in Working Group, and an Affenpinscher got first for Toy, but no other really cute dog (according to my own personally opinionated Dog-O-Meter) placed. And of course a Poodle got first place for the Non-Sporting Group. The Poodles are the Russians of the Winter Dog Olympics. I swear, it's rigged.
I came onto the Olympics late while the Canadian figure skating couple were completing their free skate presentation. According to what the reporters were saying, they skated a seamless set, whereas the Russians had four mistakes, yet the Canadians got the Silver and the Russians Gold. My eyes were welling with tears watching Jamie Sale as she was crying; I know exactly how she felt, when you know you deserve something that someone else beats you out of for no reason other than some so-called "judge" determines you're not worthy.
That's why I never enter contests or try out for anything else where there's a competition that depends on someone's opinion of you. Who needs that? Who needs a popularity contest? And you know that's what it was for the skaters...not a popularity contest for them as people or individuals, but a popularity contest for the Russians as a whole who have a tradition of gold medals in this sport. Although I do enjoy watching the Olympics, there's still a part of me that enjoys the competition of the sports that rely purely on endurance and speed as the sole determinants of winning, when there's no subjectivity or "judges" involved. You're either the fastest skater, or you're not. You medal or you don't, and you are the sole determinant of the outcome, not someone else who doesn't think you deserve it.
Competitions that involve any sort of subjective determination are a sham. Maybe 2000 years from now we'll look back on that and see how barbaric it all was.
Back in 1971, my parents and I moved to Colorado. We rented an icky little ranch house in an icky little neighborhood near the icky little grade school I attended. Having moved from upstate New York, Coloradoans seemed very different to me. Everything seemed very different to me, including the weather. I thought Colorado would have lots of snow, but it was nothing like the Syracuse region of New York which always seemed to have three feet of snow for me to build forts and caves with. Then one day it snowed a lot, and after the storm, all the kids in the neighborhood went outside. I didn't know many people there, I was the new kid. So while a bunch of neighborhood kids made a group-project (read: Communist) giant bunny-shaped snowman, I started constructing my own (read: Maverick Lone Wolf Artistic Entrepreneur) snowman in my own front yard. Not one to fancy the amorphic three-blob snowman, I made mine into a popular cartoon product endorsement character of the day...W.C. Fritos. Remember W.C. Fritos? FritoLay's version of W.C. Fields, he came in different colors in packages of snack pack Fritos in the form of a pencil eraser. I collected pencil erasers in the shapes usually of animals, and W.C. Fritos was a delightful edition to my collection. I still have several of them, not one was ever used to erase, though...they're all pristine. After the bunny snowman mob was finished, a photographer for the local paper came by and shot a picture of them with their monster. I have no idea why there was a photographer there, whether a parent called the paper, or if he was just cruising the streets looking for snowmen. After he shot the pictures, I went over and asked him to shoot mine. Now this was quite an achivement as I was very shy at the time. He shot pictures of mine, or at least he pretended to. The bunnykids got their picture in the paper; I was not included. Another case of sticking it to the outsider. One of the mothers of some of the kids commented to my mom later that she was just amazed how I had completed that snowman all by myself in such a short time. My mom was impressed at my sense of humour about using a cartoon character. I wasn't just a dumb bunny.
About a year earlier, I was in a spelling bee. I was a finalist among a handful of competitors. I had to spell "arithmetic." I spelled it right, but some judge determined I spelled it wrong. I couldn't believe it. I broke into tears and cried through the entire finish of the bee. Had I spelled it wrong, I would not have cried. But I had spelled it right, and the judge misheard me.
It's all such B.S. It's all rigged, it's all corrupt.
Even when I won a first place-painting category award in college at the Creative Arts Symposium (a competition for undergrad and graduate student artists attending Colorado universities and colleges that was usually held at Colorado State), I'm sure I got it because some of the little student "assistants to the judges" were oohing and aahing over my "Nazi Preppie painting" (titled "The Fourth Reich")...they saw it in the studio when I was working on it, they were familiar with it, unlike the anonymous paintings that came in from other colleges.
It's all such a sham, isn't it?
I'm not even going to get into the Oscars, or Grammys, or any other award or alternative award program.
It all seems to take the beauty and art out of all of it, doesn't it? It all becomes about making a something to get an award, not making something because you want to create your own vision/words.
I should've named this journal "Uncorrupted."
2 Comments
Yes, but it's funny to win a contest, at least those arranged by Lee!! ;o) And once I won a disco dance contest and got ten very disturbing cd'es, I used them as frisbee ;o) I want to believe I won these contests because of my skills, not because the judges was corrupted ;o) In your cases I can see they was though, maybe you were just not the right type sweet candykid with babyvoice, they mostly win.
Posted by Nico @ 02/12/2002 02:28 PM CST
Anytime your progress depends on the good opinions of other people, you're bound - to be held back or to succeed - depending on the opinions of people you have little control over.
Unless, of course, bribery or block-voting is involved.
I watched the Olympic competition and also think that the Canadians deserved to win. I hope the investigations lead to the resignation of corrupt judges and that the gold is awarded to the Canadian pair. The Russian pair went through a lot, sure (she had near death accident, big hole in skull etc) but they did not do better in spite of greater difficulty in program.
Posted by Jane @ 02/13/2002 12:03 PM CST