Oh, hi!

Brief update on life:

• Phil started a new job at the beginning of the summer. He is the head of the custodial department at a mental hospital. Being a government employee is frustrating, but he is doing well despite that and comes home with very interesting stories. Ask him about Jesus belly-bumps and toga day. Good times.
• I am rocking 3/4 at Twinfield Union School again. I'm now the "lead teacher" of the team. The other two teachers are in their first and second years of teaching...That's new, but I like being the one who knows things. I'm also revamping some elementary school-wide procedures for student interventions in spite of teachers saying, "Well, we've always done it this way..."
• We bought a new car. Having monthly car payments on a nice car make us feel like grown-ups. Yes, being in debt makes us feel mature. What does that say about the world?

Short Story Satire, and Alliteration

I've recently become fed up with a common trope in fantasy literature: "being captured for a favor". It always goes the same way: Group of heroes is ambushed with overwhelming force, then brought at gun/sword-point to the ruler who... asks for a favor. Usually a big one that coincides with the group's quest anyway, and generally works toward their aim of saving the world. It's not quite as overused as the "capture and escape from the bad guy's lair" but it's pretty close, and I find it a lot more infuriating, so here's my satirical short story about it. Enjoy.

The Travelers

The wizard Ohfunuk sighed to himself. He'd been sent to examine the Seal of Shinivit and noticed that it had deteriorated considerably since he'd last seen it. He tried using his magic to find out how much longer it would last, but since magic wasn't an abacus, he had to go talk to those nerdy tax people the king employed and make them do the math. The news wasn't good: two weeks and Shinivit would be free if they didn't do something. Heart heavy, he went to see the King.

The King blanched, stewed, and did other things that cooks do to vegetables, upon hearing the news. “Certainly you can do something, wizard,” he said.

“I'm afraid not, sire. You see, you made me court wizard because we were friends, and not for my talent. You may recall that in the 'notes' section of my last report card at wizard school, it said that I sucked at magic so bad I shouldn't be allowed near broken branches, much less a wand,” the wizard replied.

“Oh, yes. That may have been a mistake, now I think on it a bit. Is there no one else who might aid us?”

“Sire,” the Captain of the King's guard said, “I received word just yesterday that a mighty sorceress and her companions are traveling through our kingdom as we speak. I've no doubt they could aid us.”

“How fortuitous, bring them here at once,” the King said, then added what he and many other rulers have become famous for when conscripting travelers for service to the crown, “and be a total dick about it. Full, unwarranted aggression.”

“As you say, sire,” the Captain replied.

The Captain and his men left the castle at once, and laid an ambush for the traveling party. They leaped out at them, swords drawn, shouting obscenities, and a few of the Captain's men even struck members of the sorceress's party. Taken completely by surprise, the mighty sorceress didn't notice that the ambushers were all dressed as guards, and she completely lost her shit and killed them all with a single spell. Fearing retribution for killing a bunch of the King's guards, the group fled to a different kingdom. This ended up being a good move because no one else could reinforce the cracked seal of Shinivit, and not long after the group fled, the seal broke, releasing Shinivit who destroyed the entire kingdom.

Save your kingdom – Don't be a dick.

Free Test-Drive

I think anecdotes are a great way to understand people. I don't feel very understood most of the time, which apparently is a peril of my personality type, according to the Meyers-Briggs test which assigns you the four letters. I can never remember my four letters for very long, and I suspect that it has something to do with how everyone can remember theirs, so whenever I tell someone mine, usually right after the test, they tell me theirs, and their initials get sent through the mixer along with mine and before long all the certainty about my letters is gone. I do remember some of the write-up, however, because it described something I'd noticed about myself but hadn't been able to properly elucidate. Socially, it stated, I am a chameleon. Rather than enter in to a situation and just being myself, it stated that being myself actually means blending in to whatever scene I happen to be a part of. As a consequence, it continued, I feel often that most people don't really know or understand me. All of that is true, and I've spent a great many years feeling misunderstood, or not understood at all, and disingenuous. Since being told that I'm a chameleon, I've made some peace with the idea that I change based on my surrounding as a response that is, apparently, natural to my personality type. It's a bit strange, and a little confusing, to wrap my head around it, though. I used to wonder, am I the person I am at home, or the person I am at church, or with my friends, or at school? The answer is, apparently, yes.

I started off talking about anecdotes, and I have one I'd like to share, because I think I need to get it out, and maybe, if you're interested in doing so, you might understand me a bit better. Steph suggested, just a short while ago, that as something fun and free to do, we could go out and test-drive cars. I believe I saw something like this on one of those lists that are popular on websites like Pinterest and Tumblr, telling you how to have a nice free/cheap night out on the town. Those types of lists are fine, so far as they go, but stuff like test-driving vehicles when you have no intention or financial means of buying one makes me feel profoundly uncomfortable. I said this to Steph, who was confused by my reaction. I told her that I felt like requesting a test-drive was initiating a social-contract. You there, car salesperson, in return for allowing me to drive your vehicle around, I promise to consider purchasing said vehicle. It seems to me that it's a pretty clear ethics violation to request that another person hold up their end of the bargain when I know I won't hold up mine. This is why I know I would never be a "successful politician". You have to say that you're going to represent people in exchange for their votes, with no intention of representing them. You also have to be good at misdirection. When people say, "You're not representing us!" to you, you have to then point at someone else and claim it's their fault, then you can be re-elected. I haven't though of a way to misdirect a car salesperson yet, if we were to try do the free test-drive thing repeatedly. That's another reason I wouldn't be a successful politician, they've still go us arguing about whether or not climate change is a real thing, instead of us talking about the pollution problem in general. What I'm saying is that we're all car salespeople who haven't figured out that the people who keep coming back to take free test-drives of our votes have no intention of honoring their end of the bargain.

Glory, and the Distrust of Intelligence

I just stumbled on an article written in response to an article that someone stumbled upon. The initial article, which caused this glorious chain reaction, was written to remind us that 2014 is the 100th anniversary of World War 1, and that war is glorious. Presumably, the author felt that he needed to remind us that war is glorious. It's easy to forget, in these days of roadside bombs and an ever-growing list of civilian casualties via drone-strikes, that we're on the highway to glory. From what I understand, the man who wrote this article both supported, and dodged the draft for, the Vietnam War. That strikes me as odd. One would think that a guy who found something glorious, and openly supported it, wouldn't object to participating. I've spoken at some length with my grandfathers, both of whom are World War 2 combat veterans. I've also spoken with my father, who served in Germany during the Vietnam War, and with friends and family who have or are presently serving. I've searched my memories as best I can, and as best I can recall, when discussing their service, I've never heard one of them use the world 'glory' or any synonyms to describe their service, not even when it was warranted. My maternal grandfather carried a wounded comrade back to safety while being shelled somewhere near Zerf, Germany, and was wounded while doing so. He still has the shrapnel they removed from his back, on a key-chain. My next door neighbor plugged a breach at the base he was stationed at while under insurgent attack. Neither mentioned glory, and neither, it must be said, appeared overly eager to talk about what they'd done. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that front, but I do have a suggestion. I believe why they didn't mention glory is because they didn't do it for glory. They did it for themselves, and for each other, and for their country. To keep themselves and their brothers alive, and to keep our country free. Glory, then, or at least this guy's version of it, must be reserved for those who love war, who support war, and whose foxholes are entirely metaphorical.

The 100th anniversary of WW1 reminded me that, come June 6th, it will also be the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy Beach, and that August 6th and 9th of next year will be the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. This reminded me of a newspaper article I found in a dresser we purchased up in Enosburg Falls, VT. It was dated in the late 1940's and was celebrating the advancements of nuclear technology, and the minds behind it. It occurred to me that such an article wouldn't be written today, and for two reasons, one of them good, the other bad. The good reason is tact. It seems wrong to me to be celebrating a technology that just a few years prior you'd used to kill somewhere between 150,000 and perhaps nearly 250,000 people [source]. The bad reason is that, for some time now, we've stopped celebrating intelligence, or at least scientific intelligence. You could argue that we still celebrate financial intelligence, in the case of Donald Trump, or musical intelligence, in the case of Simon Cowell, but I'm not buying it. Neither of those guys would be half so popular if they weren't so provocative. They aren't famous for their smarts, only for their snark.

I cannot help but wonder about all the brilliant scientists out there today, the modern equivalent of yesterday's Einsteins and Teslas, staring at their slashed funding and feeling the weight of the public's distrust of their intelligence. Do they wonder what happened? Or are they smart enough that they already know? Perhaps they prefer their place deep in the background. It's certainly possible. The names Einstein and Oppenheimer will be forever linked with the creation of the most destructive weaponry the world has ever seen, and maybe that's something they'd rather like to avoid. But maybe, just maybe, we have to consider the idea that our distrust of intelligence has stifled the voices of the brilliant, and we are, consequently, putting the brakes on our future.

Pants, Love, and Empathy, and Metaphors

I think we should talk, you and I. I think we should talk about pants, and we should talk about love, and we should agree beforehand that I'm going to ramble off in to other topics and write lots of run-on sentences. Stephen King spoke of, in his book "On Writing", an author who uses a lot of sentence fragments in his writing, stating that the author used a lot of frags because he heard a lot of frags. It seems I have the opposite problem. The aforementioned author heard too many periods, I don't hear enough. I suppose that's why there are copy-editors. Copy-editors are, of course, people who hear the sound of themselves correcting the work of people who are, in some cases, insanely rich. In correcting my own work, I can attest to the fact that it doesn't sound like a wealthy person's work being corrected. I could, I guess, alter the settings in windows to play a "ka-ching" noise every time I pressed the letter 'e'. 'E' is the most commonly used letter in the English language, according to Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal character, Sherlock Holmes.

But I said we were going to talk about pants, and love, and it seems to this point I haven't talked about either. In this particular case, I have to tell you, pants is a metaphor. Love isn't, or at least I won't be using it as one, just pants. Why pants? Because they're so much the same and so varied and they can almost all carry things, even the ones with girl pockets. I've considered, over the years, what it might be like to be female, and I've decided that it sounds a lot more difficult in most ways than it is to be male, owing in part to girl pockets. Carrying things is important, of course. Having been a janitor and a smoker, though both those things aren't presently true, I understand the value of being able to carry a lot of things in my pants. That sounds dirty and I just considered editing it out, but I've now decided that's okay, because it might not sound dirty in your head. Anyway, pants here is a metaphor for your views. It's good to wear pants, because they offer protection from the elements and allow you to carry things in a practical matter. It's also good to have views, because you should have things you stand for. Standing for things gives us a sense of identity, and a sense of direction in our lives.

In case I lost you, here's a math problem. Metaphor Pants = views = identity + self-direction.

In case you were wondering why I decided to use pants as my metaphor for views, it's because your pants, like your views, probably don't fit me, just like mine probably don't fit you. Understanding this is the beginning of empathy. Don't do unto others as you would have them do unto you, do unto them what they would have done unto them. I very much enjoy video games, and I enjoy receiving them as gifts. Steph does not enjoy video games, and it is through my empathy that I know, consequently, that she would not appreciate them as gifts despite my own preference. Video games are also excellent value for money. A $60 video game can, frequently, take over 30 hours to complete, meaning it offers entertainment for just $2/hour. Compare that to a movie you purchased for $15 that's only 90 minutes long. I won't even mention a trip to the movie theater. Books are also excellent value for money, especially ones you get from the library, though I encourage you to buy my books if I ever publish any.

Now we need to talk about love, because sometimes people's views on some topics seem to not have it, or not as much of it as they should have. The main reason for this, I think, is because of a lack of empathy. When we express our views, we sometimes lack the empathy required to realize that while we think we're expressing our views on a thing, what we're actually doing is expressing them about people. It might sound like you're saying, "Pokemon is stupid," but what the people who enjoy Pokemon hear is "People who like Pokemon are stupid". People don't make decisions about what they like, so it's hardly fair to criticize them for liking it. When I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the television series, I didn't say to myself, "I'm going to really like this, regardless of what it actually is". I grew to enjoy it, because it spoke to me, like good art does to people. Nor did I decide to fall in love with Stephanie. This last bit has been a metaphor too.

So go out into this world with your pants. Remember, they won't fit most other people. That's okay. I was taught, and likely you were too, that we're all the same. That was a lie, a well intentioned lie, but a lie just the same. We're all different, and that's okay. I learned early on that anything my parents made a big deal out of telling me was just the same as another thing, whether that was a group of people being just like me, or some new bit of food being just like one I already liked, or anything else, that meant it was different. I never saw the need for the obfuscation, and I don't see it now either. Wear your pants, people, and wear them with empathy, empathy borne of love for one another. Because every person you've ever met could be you. A slightly different set of DNA, some different parents, and that's you. Empathy.

Of House Elves and Social Justice

J.K. Rowling had, and I expect still has, a lot to say on any number of topics told through the Harry Potter series. Her messages on love, the nature of good and evil, on sacrifice and duty, are difficult to miss. What wasn't so obvious, at least to me, was what she was saying with House Elves. Unlike so many of the other topics, there was no grand gesture, no plain lesson, but she devoted a goodly portion of the series to this subplot, so there must be something to it. After years of occasional mulling, I think I understand it, at least to a degree. What she was after, I think, was to convey some fairly harsh truths.

1. How a group feels about a thing doesn't change what a thing is. House Elves live in forced servitude - slavery. That they cheerfully endure this doesn't make it something else. Pay attention to how your feelings changed about the situation as you found that, with few exceptions, the House Elves were really okay with it. It's just the way they are, of course, so this slavery must be okay. It's the good kind. Only it's not, because it's slavery.

2. Otherwise good people can hold profoundly ignorant opinions. This is told through any number of characters, but exemplified best through the character of Hagrid. He insists that freeing the House Elves would be doing them an unkindness, and he consequently refuses to contribute to the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. That Hagrid is the least educated individual, and the closest thing to a bumpkin the stories contain, is likely not coincidental. That we discover in the same book, "The Goblet of Fire", that he has to endure plenty of prejudice himself speaks to how blind and lacking in empathy we can all be when confronted with the plight of another race.

3. In a broader extension of point 2, we have to talk about privilege. In the world of Harry Potter, wizards are the privileged class, and how that affects them can be plainly seen when it comes to House Elves. Hermione is determined at one point to gain access to the kitchens. Fred and George are agitated at the thought, proclaiming that her talk of freedom might put them off their cooking. In fact, it's only Mr. Weasely, Remus Lupin, and Dumbledore who seem to have any sympathy for Hermione's cause. Why? Privilege. To quote another blogger (the blog is here): "These social justice bloggers need to calm the fuck down," said the young white male blogger, bewildered and angered that anyone could take issue with a world that suits him so perfectly.

4. Boycotting is ineffective as a means of protest. There's a period of time when Hermione refuses to eat anything prepared by the House Elves, but quickly realized that wasn't going to matter. In the same way that the Walton family doesn't care that I refuse to shop at Walmart, the House Elves had hundreds of other mouths to feed. Mouths that didn't care or weren't even aware of their slavery.

5. Real change takes time. Apparently Rowling has alluded to Hermione, years after leaving school, as a member of the Ministry of Magic and that she has improved things a lot for House Elves. Change takes time, perseverance, and a powerful will.

Steph and I are doing well. We're staying Vermont over Christmas. I hope this find all of you well, and that you have a happy holiday season.

The Ramblings of a Writer Waiting for Reviews

Clarice Lispector once said, “Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?" and sometimes I think about this a lot. I remember laying on the couch and opening up Twitter on my iPad and seeing that something was going on in Newtown, Connecticut, and the tears that came when I learned what that was. I remember the staggering disbelief when the explosions went off at the Boston Marathon, and then I noted this last week that the shooting at LAX only elicited a sigh and a thought of gratefulness that only one person had been killed. Am I monster? Perhaps I have finally become, as all the so-called experts during the rise of violent video games in the 90's put it, desensitized? I won't rule those two out, objectivity is in short supply when analyzing oneself, but I don't think so. I think the human ability to cope is elastic, and that elastic stretches a great deal under very little weight at first, and then less and less, until it snaps, and maybe this is my way, and probably the way of many others, of avoiding that break. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

It was announced today that former Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett has CTE [link]. Given that he retired when I was only 8-years old, I never got a chance to watch him play, but it made me wonder how long it will be before the players I grew up watching will start being diagnosed. Individuals I revered and so badly wanted to be when I played football in middle and high school. It made me think about getting older, and the price of getting older, which seems to be watching the titans of our youth topple like so many dominoes.

Now, to move away from my super-depressing thoughts and on to some family updates. Steph is doing very well and seems to have largely adjusted to her new school district, though I suggest not asking her about report cards. Our friends Hilary and Chris, back in Colorado, have a new baby girl (rumor is she still has that "new baby smell"). Currently, my book is in the hands of its first readers. I'll be collecting their feedback and doing a second revision and then I'll need to send it out to a new crop of readers and a few of those who already read it once for some comparative analysis. I also have a story entered in Gemini Magazine's Flash Fiction contest [link] and I'm hoping to hear something on that any day now.

I hope all of you are doing well. [Insert obligatory remark about updating this blog more often here]. Take care and enjoy yourselves.