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.