IPO is Not a Business Term - 2/27/2014

It's difficult to find something to write about tonight, so I'm going to take the standard cop-out of talking about the fact that I can't think of anything to write about.

I actually have a theory about writer's block, or creative jam, in the more general term. The human brain can do three things (all organisms do these things, but creativity comes from the brain). It can input, process and output.

Input is everything we take in through the senses. Sights, sounds, conversations, books, movies, music, all of it. Processing is just thinking, considering, pondering, digesting all of the things we have taken in. Output is the final result, our completion of the process by putting something back into the world that wasn't there before.

Thing is, these three operate in cycles. There are times I want input. I read, watch movies, examine the skyline, listen to music, just enjoy everything I can that is in my vicinity. There are times I want to process. Some of the most fun I have ever had was lying in my bed, eyes closed but not asleep, just thinking for hours on end.

And there are times for output. Times I sit down and the words just flow out of me, when everything works and it all comes together in that moment of flow that can seem to last indefinitely. Those are some of the best moments.

And watching these cycles, seeing them move in different individual patterns, watching how they affect me. All the different variations on what I want to do in any given moment, all circling around three simple needs.

And if you view things this way, see the times when creating is difficult, it makes it much harder to get stuck. The stuckness of writer's block or creative jam comes from fear. Fear comes from not understanding. If it's part of the natural flow that my words are not easy today, then I know they'll be back when I'm ready for them to be. Writer's block stops being an end, and become simply part of a larger dynamic that I can work with, that is always changing, and that will never stop moving me forward.

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I Don't Want to be a Contender - 2/26/2014

So, we are all different, in some way. What I would like to know is why does different always seem to lead to contention? We talk about the strength of diversity, but don't seem to understand what that means.

Diversity is brown hair and blond hair and red hair. Diversity is dark skin and lighter skin. Diversity is male and female, tall and short, gay, straight and in between. Diversity is every human being expressing their humanity each in their own way.

And that continues into the ideas of culture, philosophy, religion, politics and every other aspect of human endeavor. The presence of different, sometimes uncomfortable ideas is a good thing, and should be celebrated as enthusiastically as we are beginning to celebrate the other, more obvious differences between us.

Unfortunately, every time we start talking to each other, those differences seem to breed fear, anger and defensiveness. Why is it not possible for people to discuss ideas, traditions, understandings and perspectives without feeling threatened by those that are different?

I don't know the answer to that question, but if you are someone who has different ideas, different cultural and spiritual values, I'd love to hear from you. Every now and then, it's wonderful to discuss these things in a way that doesn't lead to arguments about right and wrong, but to broader perspectives and understanding each other and ourselves. I might not agree with what you say, but I will do my best to find some value in hearing you say it.

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Leather - 2/25/2014

She wore leather. Not like a glove, but heavy and loose, like armor. She wore it not to look good, and therefore she did. It was old leather, scarred and impregnated with sweat.

She wore it for the fire, and for the hammer. Today was a fence, twisted spikes six feet long, to be set into earth as a way of dividing here from there. The owner of the fence will twine ivy around each one, to offset the harshness of iron, but here they are gray and clean.

She walks inside, her stride nothing short of devastating. A bucket of water turned over her head to quell any lingering sparks before she steps inside. Dripping, she enters our sanctum.

Outside, she is rough, strong, muscled. Here she is lithe and elegant. Outside is the forge, where she makes things of metal that serve basic purposes, things of function, things of clear form and purpose.

In here, where she pulls off her boots, sheds her leathers, in here, she makes things of beauty and elegance. Things without purpose, save to catch the eye and the mind. Things that shine and sparkle and confuse. Things for herself. The forge is for selling and others. Inside is for her.

I watch her as she moves past me, leaving a trail of clothing until she climbs naked up stairs long worn by her bare feet. I watch, as I have done before, savoring the scent of hot metal and burned skin, savoring the strength of her and the play of her hair as she turns to smile wickedly at me.

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What is a Game? - 2/24/2014

I was taking a class a couple of years ago, and the question came up “What is a game?”

It's an amazingly hard question to answer. We all know what games are, and what we consider to be a game, but actually defining it is as difficult as defining art. Since the question came up in the context of “Are games art?”, that is an apt comparison.

This is as far as I have gotten. A game is a social structure, a means by which certain actions taken by the people involved are measured in some way. The actions permitted, and the ways in which they are measured, comprise what we think of as the rules of the game.

And that includes both the explicit rules of the game being played and the culturally implicit rules affecting how the players choose to behave in relation to the game itself, and to each other. The game involves the explicit rules. The metagame involved the implicit rules.

But there are many things that fall into that definition. Politics, conversation, business, almost any set of human interactions can be defined this way.

There are certain features common to games, most notably things like equipment, restrictions on location or field of play, certain patterns of allowed behaviors such as turn-taking, betting, possession of a certain right-of-way or token, many others.

And these restrictions are almost exclusively artificial, and are often arbitrary. The size of a chessboard, the number of cards dealt, the rules under which scoring can occur (if it does). All of these are balanced choices existing on a spectrum between the most efficient and the most challenging. Golf balls are designed to fly. Golf clubs are over-engineered crooked sticks that are terrible tools for moving a ball in a controlled fashion. It is the artificiality of the rules and the equipment that creates the sense of game.

In short, a game is something where we place limitations on ourselves and attempt to reach some sort of accomplishment within the strictures of that set of limitations.

Why do we find this fun? Who knows. Maybe part of it is that the real world gives us plenty of challenges that we may or may not be able to overcome. By practicing with games, we learn how to approach challenges, how to examine the resources we have available to us and how to make those resources bring us achievement and accomplishment.

I am a gamer. I put myself through strange and pointless challenges all the time, simply because it's fun. Gaming has taught me many things, not least of which is the value of games themselves.

Play a game or two now and then. You might be surprised.

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A Good Night at Cinetopia - 2/23/2014

So, I went to say 3 Days To Kill today with my family. I am not a Kevin Costner fan, but this was pretty good.

It's interesting to see, though, how much Luc Besson's experiences as a French director and writer influenced the way the movie was told.

First, it is a fairly complex movie. Not technically, but dramatically. It's not a movie about figuring out what's going on, or a complex heist or con movie where nothing is what it seems. Everything in this movie is exactly what it seems. The complexity arises from a much more believable and everyday source. Costner's character finds himself in a situation where he has to balance a number of different requirements on his life.

Where I see the European influences in Besson's work is in the way that he uses the different visual, character and emotional beats. They are mostly slower and longer than an American director or writer would make them, and lead to a somewhat looser feel than one might expect from the basic synopsis of the movie (here's the link at IMDB if you like spoilers).

In a less complex movie (say, without one of the major threads), that pacing would have worked quite well. As it was, the movie was about 20 minutes too long, and too many of the beats go on just long enough to lose their impact slightly.

But that's my take on it. I am fairly certain that someone raised on European cinema would feel differently. And someone raised on Bollywod different still.

It is really fascinating to see someone like Besson do so many different things (remember The Fifth Element?) while coming from such a complex history in his various fields. I look forward to seeing more from Besson, just to see what he decides to do and how he does it.

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A 100% Guaranteed Return - 2/22/2014

So what about the other side of identity? I talked last night about the whole (slightly silly) concept that a person's identity in society is defined pretty much by what they can get other people to agree to.

But the internal identity, that seems not quite so silly. I've spent most of my life trying (and sometimes succeeding) to answer that basic question 'Who Am I?' It's an important one, and one that I feel far too many people refuse to ask, or at least ask seriously.

Most people seem to take a few basic words, a few simple descriptors, and use those to answer the question. They then proceed to live lives based on those answers as if such a complex and powerful question could be answered with just a few words.

I have been through therapy and done a great deal of soul searching in my 45 years. It has always paid off in terms of understanding myself better and improving my ability to live life (in some cases, to live at all).

Whoever you may happen to perceive yourself to be, you should listen to the words running through your head all the time. You should pay attention to the situations you find yourself in, and see if you can understand why you're there, why you react the way you do. The better you understand your own motivations, thought patterns and emotional states and responses, the more balanced, fulfilling and 'happy' a life you will lead. I put that last in quotes because there seem to be more definitions of 'happiness' than there are people on the planet.

In any case, if you've never spent an hour just listening to yourself, watching yourself behave, or discussing these things with someone (professional counselor or not), you just might be surprised at how valuable that time is.

Whether you're a scientist, a spiritualist, a person of faith or an out and out nihilist doesn't matter. What matters is that the only investment a human can make that always (ALWAYS) provides a high return is to pay attention. It would seem that paying attention to yourself would be the wisest place to start, no matter which direction you might be facing right now.

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I Am Who I Say I Am, Right? - 2/21/2014

There is a concept I work with on a daily basis which is badly misunderstood. It is the concept of identity. Part of my job is acting as gatekeeper for people's medical records. In that role, I have to verify the identity of the person I'm talking to.

The assumption that modern society makes is that identity is something concrete. That there is, in some sense a way of proving that one person is that particular person and nobody else.

There isn't.

I possess a few pieces of paper that, when presented in the proper way, will allow me to behave as if I'm legally the person I have always (well, almost always) claimed to be.

But there really isn't anything that proves I am who I say I am. There are some people who will stand up and say that's who I am, and that's the ultimate meaning of what we think of as identity. Whether it's family, friends, or an expert stating that my documents are all in order, it's other people agreeing that I'm me that's important.

I'm not talking about an internal sense of 'who am I' here, obviously. I'm talking about identity in the cultural sense, where one takes on a particular role and is recognized as being a particular person, with the rights and history associated with that person.

Everything we think of as proof is simply ways of causing people we don't know to accept that we are who we say we are. For most of history, that didn't require any kind of proof unless one was claiming to be nobility. For the average person to prove who they were in, say, the 13^th century, they pretty much had to get people they knew to speak on their behalf. If they knew you as John Woodcutter, and would say as much, then you were John Woodcutter.

Even though you'd been born Nathan Carter three villages away.

The point is, who you are considered to be by society at large is only who you are able to convince people you are. Every form of proof that you can come up with can be faked, gamed or stolen. Identity isn't any deeper than a couple of pieces of paper and some other humans supporting your case (or rejecting it).

This is, oddly enough, one of the basic initial threads of the Lensman series, by E.E. 'Doc' Smith. One of the great early pieces of space opera, and founder of many of its tropes. What was the biggest problem the cops had in policing the solar system? Proving they were cops.

Anyway, a bit of a ramble, but then, this guy Michael, I mean I, yes, it's definitely me typing this, anyway, he tends to pontificate a bit, so it all works out.

467

Enough - 2/20/2014

Feeding the world is not a moral question. We should. It is not a question of sufficiency. There is plenty of arable land in the world to feed everyone, with a surplus. It is largely a question of logistics and the will to do so.

So why don't we?

The answer is money. Not that there isn't enough of it, or that we can't get it into the right hands, but that we are stuck on money at all. Money is a representation of scarcity, which, when discussing the ability to fulfill basic physical needs, only exists now as an artificial construct intended... to make sure that the money keeps going round.

Every economy (in fact, the entire concept of economy) is based on scarcity. Barter, coinage, all kinds of trader are built around the idea that there is less than enough to go around, that some people can have something, and others can't.

But this no longer applies to certain things. Food, clean water, shelter, education and medical care can all be supplied worldwide. We have not chosen to do this yet, largely because of the inertia of the concept of money.

So what would happen, what terrible consequences would there be, if we changed our ideas about economies, about money, about scarcity?

Well, we in the First World (peal of trumpets) would have to suffer the indignity of watching people around the world find themselves eating regularly, living in actual homes, living free lives full of potential. How awful.

And there are suggestions of very interesting side effects. People who are well-fed seem to breed less often, which would result in a natural population control. People who have opportunities, education and a safe place to sleep at night tend to commit fewer crimes, participate in more positive social activities, and even (heaven for fend) give back to their own communities, and those of other people.

It's almost like, if we stopped being societally selfish, and actually, I don't know, took care of each other, we might find that the world in which we live improves.

Has anyone ever suggested that we stop being jerks? Ever? Seems to me it must have been said, once or twice, down the millennia.

How about we try listening?

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This 42nd Post is in No Way Significant, Mr. Adams - 2/19/2014

I had a realization some time ago, when working on my first novel. I kept trying to figure out where it started. Every time I thought I had a beginning point, I realized that there were things that came before that I wanted to explore as well. When I went back to those, there were still more points earlier on that drew me further back.

And I came to realize that all stories are always in medias res. No matter where you start, there is something that came before. Some element of the backstory that continually becomes a story itself. The threads of any plot, character or situation stretch back before the moment that the storyteller begins, as they must, in order for a context to exist when the story does begin.

Hence, The Silmarillion.

Which actually goes to show that the selection of the actual starting point of the story being told can be of more than a little significance. Darth Vader's revelation that he is Luke's father would have had far less impact if one had watched the prequels before A New Hope.

It also becomes an interesting point of psychology. Since there is no true beginning or end in the human mind, the concept of the beginning of everything is almost impossible to comprehend. Every culture tells stories about what came before the beginning of humanity, based on the assumption that there is always something before.

But Stephen Hawking said something interesting, once (and only once). He said “Asking what happened before the beginning of the universe may well be like asking what happens one mile north of the North Pole.” His point is that, while the words and the sentence seem to make sense, the actual question does not. It assumes referents which are not valid, and therefore becomes meaningless.

So we face that dichotomy. We cannot truly understand or accept what lies outside of our experiences, even when we know that there is something literally beyond our understanding or experience. I think that may be one of the fundamental forces in the human mind that drives us to tell stories, to experiment with ideas until we come up with one that says what we want it to say, and lets us see what is either there or not there.

How perfect that everything humans do seems to come back to trying to resolve an irresolvable tension.

401

The Rodney Dangerfield of Artforms - 2/18/2014

Let's talk about webcomics for a minute. Webcomics are a clear descendant of both the comic book and the comic strip. However, they are different from both.

Both printed formats require a publisher, and said publisher is going to have certain requirements as to content, acceptability and so forth. Printed comics must be acceptable to their audience and follow certain basic conventions that make the publisher money.

Webcomics have neither of these requirements. A webcomic artist can build whatever they choose, and the only real limitation is whether they can afford to maintain a domain name and keep the work going. If that work interests an audience, then the artist can continue, possibly indefinitely.

There are a number of them out there (nobody's really sure how many), but it's definitely in the tens of thousands, if not more. Art ranges from the spare to the lush, and the writing ranges all across the board in terms of quality and consistency. But they are usually pure expressions of a single artist or small team (rarely more than two people).

And they work. There are a few webcomic artists who have begun to make a living doing nothing else. There are also Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade who are turning it into something of an empire, with not only merchandise, but a series of video games and their own gaming convention (Pax).

They are also exploring new kinds of storytelling, with new themes, plots and devices, and opening up entirely new realms of what can be told in a sequence of panels, drawings and words. The official term is now Sequential Art, and you can get a degree in it.

To those of you who may never have dipped into this very different world of storytelling, I highly recommend doing so. Here is a list of a few of my favorites.

xkcd – written by a mathematician with a distinctly sarcastic sense of humor, this one is great for thinkers

Schlock Mercenary – a space opera/comedy comic written by someone who knows his physics... and his amorphous blobs

The Devil's Panties – Jennie Breeden's semi-autobiographical comic

Questionable Content – Jeph Jacques' slice-of-life twenty-something relationship comic... plus psychotic little robots

Something Positive – Randy Milholland's brilliant, morbid, funny-as-hell take on life, with lots of philosophizing, and the most beautifully sad piece of sequential art I have ever seen (you'll know when you get to that page)

Dominic Deegan – a pun-filled fantasy story about a grumpy seer, his cat, his apprentice, his family and saving the universe, repeatedly. A completed comic, and well worth the read from beginning to end.

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Something Worth Dying For - 2/17/2014

I went to see Monuments Men with my family yesterday, and was blown away by it. Easily the best movie I've seen in a long time. It poses a question, quite explicitly, that is the reason that it took eighty years for that story to be told.

Is a piece of art worth a human life?

This question is posed directly to one of the characters, and he gives his answer. But the question is really being asked of the audience. Is a pretty swirl of paints or a carefully crafted piece of stone really something that a person should be asked to sacrifice themselves for?

It's an interesting question. Art is not, pretty much by definition, a necessity for the immediate continuation of life. Water, food, shelter, these things qualify, but art does not. Art is what we do when there is a need for something that nothing else can fill, but humanity goes on with that need unfulfilled.

Another person, that is something worth giving up one's life for. An ideal, a way of life, the righting of an injustice, these are things for which one should sacrifice. This is a tenet of almost every civilization that has left its mark on the world.

So is a statue worth dying for?

Some would say (and I am one) that it is. That a statue can represent all of those things. The life of the artist. The ideal that the piece represents, and the ideal of art itself. The fact that a given work of art is the crystallization of a way of life.

Every statue, in every circumstance, no. But the ideal of art, as realized by individual pieces, yes. Men and women have died for these things in the past, and will do so in the future. Their choice to make this sacrifice means that art is worth dying for, that this part of humanity is truly a part of us, and that, in some cases, it is more important than just being something aesthetically appealing.

Art is the speaking of one person to many, across time and independent of language. It is worth lives, it is worth deaths, it is the central essence of humans being human.

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A Sampling of Mostly-Useless Trivia - 2/16/2014

So, today is Sunday. A pretty easy day of the week to figure out why we call it that. Sunday, the day named for the Sun (that's the big bright hurty thing hanging in the sky that we all avoid). Monday, a slight alteration of Moon Day.

Some of the others are pretty straightforward, too. Friday – Frey's Day or Freya's Day (depending on which variation of tradition you follow). Thursday? Named for the blond guy in the movies... you know... Luke Skywalker. No, wait. Thor, that's it. Thursday from Thorsday (I would not want to live in a world with a Skywalker Day. Vader would just be insufferable once a week.)

Wednesday is always fun to spell, isn't it? And yet, it seems to be an unnecessarily complicated respelling of Wotan's Day. Wotan is another name for Odin, and apparently the British lexicographers thought that Odinsday was just too clear and easy.

But what about Tuesday? That one's a little more obscure. Turns out there was a god of war amongst some of the Germanic tribes a while back. So Tuesday is really War Day. Or something like that, since this god was not only a god of war, but the head of the pantheon and the creator god, as well. Messed up people came up with that bunch of gods, I can tell you. Now pausing for spears of lightning to pierce my skull....

...aaaaaand nothing. So I guess we don't have to worry about him anymore.

Tomorrow: where the hell do mathematicians and physicists get their naming conventions from?

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P.S. - the way to find out why words are the way they are is to Google the word and “etymology” - protip of the day.

287

A Thought on Beating Serials - 2/15/2014

So this is the 38^th day in a row I've done one of these, which I consider pretty impressive for me. I've actually gotten to the point where I do feel the need to complete one before I go to bed.

It's also gotten me thinking about extending the process. I've written a few pieces about the island in the fog, and I do want to continue those. But not on a daily basis, like this. After all, this blog is about putting words down every night, regardless of their content or quality.

What I'm thinking is this. Once a week, I write one beat in that story. Sort of a call-back to the serials of the pulp days. And not just one, but three (to start with), one updating Monday, one Wednesday and one Friday. Different stories, each built one small piece at a time, with the intent of keeping them going for as long as I can.

Not sure about it, yet, and I'm going to consider for a while before starting it up, but I think it might suit my writing style very well, which is kind of burst-oriented, and tends to work in terms of beats and scenes, rather than plots and threads.

So, the ones I've got in my head are the island, a horror story I've worked on some on my Kindle (as that was how the main character was writing it), and some kind of science-fiction piece, since that's my favorite genre. Maybe the Kevyn Murder thing I've had thoughts about for a while, or maybe try to write up something about Nemo (a Champions character I am very fond of).

But that's a maybe/maybe-not thing right now, and it's really time for me to head to bed. I will speak in all of your various directions on the morrow.

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Walking - 2/14/2014

She walked past

trailing skulls and the petals

of defunct roses

I felt her footsteps in my eyes

on my spine

and over my shoulder

The world moved beneath me

like diamonds on thunder

grinding into new continents

And I woke

and woke again

and woke once more

Still, she was there

What dream,

I thought,

stays here

when waking

will not wake me

and reality

will not come forth

And so I turned

and walked away

because I knew

that this was

what was

to be.

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Euclid was Wrong - 2/13/2014

That's a straight line. There is nothing more artificial in the universe, and it doesn't even really exist. The line above appears to be straight, but only to within the tolerances of our eyes to resolve the variation of the pixels on the screen which you are viewing this on. It's also subject to the curvature of spacetime, which we can't see because we're being curved by it as well.

But it's important to us. The universe itself doesn't even contain the idea of a straight line. Everything radiates, follows the curve of space, or is fractally complex on some level or another. Spheres (well, oblate spheroids), ellipses, spirals, globs, blobs and randomness, all over the place.

But a straight line? Nowhere to be found (except before a punchline, ba-dum-bum).

The closest thing you can find anywhere that isn't made by a person is the horizon. Even the apparently smooth lines at the edges of crystals fall apart into fuzziness when you look at all closely at them.

So why are we obsessed with straight lines? Straight lines, right angles, parallels and perpendiculars, grids and honeycombs, regularity, predictability, orderliness... none of it natural, and not all of it really useful.

So maybe it's the alarm triggers we're trying to turn off. A straight line must be artificial, and if it's one we put there, then it can't possibly be a threat. The right angles remind us that we're in a human space, and that, along with other cues, tell us that we're safe.

The chaotic, the spherical, the curved, the fractal, that's nature. The straight line is strictly human.

Maybe it's time to find some kind of balance between the two. To allow some of those curves and strange shapes to come back into our lives, to let ourselves be natural humans, instead of just humans.

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Violence in- agggh-choke-bleed... - 2/12/2014

So I downloaded Designer X's Violence: The RPG the other day. It's intended as a satire of the current state of gaming, and begins with a vicious (and well-written) diatribe on the tendency towards violence in gaming as an acceptable moral stance without consequence.

It's also just a little bit over the top.

I will not argue that there is no violence in gaming. I have certainly participated in enough. Between tabletop, console and computer, I've probably killed, knocked-out or 'arrested' enough people, animals and monsters to populate a good-sized city. And it's been a lot of fun.

But to say that all gaming is focused on violence is to ignore large parts of what really goes on. The entire line of Sim games (beginning with SimCity and culminating with The Sims) are about resource management, and include violence only in the most cursory way. A classic SimCity challenge was to build a city that could survive an attack by a kaiju. But mostly it was about building cities, seeing them grow, and keeping them going.

Casual gaming accounts for a lot of games, as well. Tetris began the trend, which has cascaded into entire websites devoted to puzzle-solving, non-violent games that even become the structure around which social networks are built.

Tabletop RPGs definitely descended from wargames, which themselves descended from training procedures developed for military academies and for actual warfare. But the role-playing can, and often does, take precedence over the wanton violence.

One of the best sessions I ever ran was a Shadowrun campaign set in Denver. For about three hours, two of the players had their characters running around trying to find a wedding present for a third player's character. No violence, no thefts, no crimes, just a group of people “pissing around” (our in-house term) with characters and situations having fun.

So to Designer X, I say I agree with you, but you really do have to take a step back from what you're looking at and recognize that gaming is a lot more than just the most visible parts of it.

That said, I will probably run at least one session of Violence: The RPG, just to check it out. Might be an interesting mix with Paranoia, or Toon. Hmmmm.....

379

Just Here - 2/11/2014

So a friend asked me on Facebook how I'm doing. And I had to think about it. I realize I really don't know. Not in a bad way. This isn't depression or unhappiness, or even a negative state, I just realized that my response to that question is just a sort of neutrality.

It's not tranquility, or peacefulness. It's not happiness or sadness, joy or pain, just in between everything.

But at the same time, it's not the dismissive apathy or boredom I've known in the past. I'm not uncomfortable, not angry, not finding fault with everything. I'm just sort of... here.

So then the question becomes, if one is here, and here is neither a good place nor a bad one, should one move on? And if so, how and to where?

But, you know, I think I'll let myself stay here for awhile. This is a place that feels like maybe a respite from having to push so hard just to keep going.

In my head there's a place I'd like to live. It's set into a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, somewhere on the Central or Southern Oregon Coast. In this mood, I'd like most to sit, wrapped in a blanket, watching storms roll in over that ocean. Not do anything, not think anything in particular, no music, no background noise, just me and the storm, each of us drifting in our own way.

Yeah, I think I'll see if I can stay here, like this, for just a while. I like that.

256

Creating Context and Why - 2/10/2014

So if context is what gives meaning, what is it that creates context?

Context exists as a collection of relationships between objects, people, events and ideas. It exists both in time and in space. The relationships between these entities moves forward in time and changes from moment to moment.

Context also exists entirely in the mind of the entity perceiving the environment which contains and communicates the context. A stone perceives no context, nor does a photon. But a person, a dog, in some sense even a tree, perceive that collection of elements that creates a context.

But, as humans, we are primarily concerned with human contexts. History is the study of context, and most people are concerned with creating it in their own lives. The assembly and decoration of homes is an exercise in context, as is clothing, which is context that we carry with us.

And this takes us back to iterative design (the glove and so forth). Each version of the glove existed in a different context. One context dealt with high winds, another with cold and high humidity, a third with working in water, or riding a horse, or smithing plowshares. The lists of contexts goes on.

It is this sense of creating a context, and the manner in which different contexts merge in space and time that drives each of us into the next moment. The purpose of creating our own context is to give us the tools to alter the context of others, to change their understandings and perceptions, their relationships with each other, their environments and themselves, in such a way that the context we desire comes forth. Or that their context is reduced, or comes to include us, or interacts with ours.

In the end, each of us is more than a body, a mind, a spirit, a heart. We are also the context that we bring with us, the set of relationships that tie us together, with other humans, with the physical environments, with our ancestors and our descendents. It is those contexts that form societies and the world as a whole.

351

Mr. Text, You Have the Con - 2/9/2014

The other thing I find fascinating that so few people seem to pay conscious attention to is context. What something means, whether it is an image, a statement, a piece of clothing or a tool relies almost entirely on the context in which it is presented.

For example, if you jam your middle finger in a door, and the doctor asks you to show it to her, this is part of a medical procedure and means “is it supposed to be turning green, doctor?”

If, however, you are an English (British?) long-bowman retreating across France just before the Battle of Agincourt, showing that middle finger to a Frenchman means “you haven't caught me, and I can still shoot back”.

Do it on the freeway, however, and it takes an entirely different tone.

And so many things are like this. Why is the nunchaku a weapon taught in any martial arts school? It is widely considered (as I understand it) to be mediocre at best in combat. But, in the context of Japanese-occupied Okinawa, it was something that anyone could carry and use to defend themselves with. Why was this important? Because the Japanese passed a law that said only Japanese persons could carry weapons. The nunchaku were actually flails intended for use as agricultural tools, and you really have a hard time taking tools away from people who are just trying to farm. It's one reason that the quarterstaff was so big in Europe for so long. You try denying your peasants or serfs the right to carry... a stick.

I think Teddy Roosevelt would have done just fine in Okinawa, come to think of it.

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Reinventing the Everything - 2/8/2014

So there's a thing that fascinates me. Every now and then I look at something (my new gloves most recently) and think about the long series of inspirations that was necessary to result in the object that we take for granted.

Some time back in history, somebody wrapped some animal hide around their hands to keep them warm. Or for some other reason, and they found that warmth was a result. Later, after basic sewing had been invented, wraps became pouches. As sewing became more sophisticated, someone added a thumb, allowing for basic tool use while still protecting the hands.

With higher levels of sophistication, the mitten became the glove, reducing the protective value (mittens are warmer than gloves), but allowing for even more tool use. Materials became available, and people experimented with alternatives. The glove went from simple protection to item of fashion, and equipment for soldiers. Thin leather, boiled leather, chain maille, leather with metal plates, leather with roughened surface for greater grip, fingerless gloves, plastic, rubber, latex, Gore-Tex®¹ and a few hundred other possibilities.

Over the millennia, thousands upon thousands of people looked at the basic problem and came up with new solutions. Refinements bringing broader and more specific functionality to something we consider so simple. Today, one can buy gloves for nearly any purpose, from surgery to tablet use to sports and work. Gloves come in numerous shapes, sizes, materials, colors and prices.

But to see that chain of inspiration, the constant re-examining of possibility. To know that there were many failures along the way, gloves that simply didn't work for one reason or another, or that were found to be too expensive or unwieldy or otherwise not wanted. This is fascinating to me, this absorbs me a times, trying to see history in a single object, to see the human mind at work across vast spans of time.

Design and engineering are forms of communication, in a way. The gloves we have now are the result from thoughts had before the written word began, and we can hear something of what that engineer so long ago had to say every time we gird ourselves against the world.

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1Gore-Tex is a registered trademark of W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc

Somnistry - 2/7/2014

Sleep. Such a pretty word. You can say it short or long, chop it clean or pull it out into something like taffy. It's my favorite word, at the moment. Thinking of curling up in my blankets, a little music to white out the other noises... eyes closed into a calm darkness... drifting inside my head...

And nobody has figured out exactly why we do it. Don't really know what dreams are for, either. But mammals do it, birds, reptiles, marsupials sleep (the koala is a champion sleeper). Not sure if fish do, but I know dolphins and whales spend a certain amount of time in the flukes of Morpheus (the original, not the Laurence Fishburne character).

There are hypotheses, of course. Physical and mental maintenance cycles, a way to get through a non-optimal part of the day-night cycle with reduced bodily resource consumption, a period in which the leprechauns can make shoes without us hovering over their shoulders, all sorts of possibilities.

But right now, it's the snow that makes me think of sleep the most. It's beautiful out there, smooth and white (where it's not torn up by cars and footprints), so bright even normal people can see well, and looking like blankets and pillows and soft restful dreams. I'm wondering why Rip van Winkle was never heavily associated with snow. Seems like the kinds of imagery that would go together.

And faerie tales tend to feature lots of sleeping...

… think I'll go find a few of the Fey and see what they're doing these days.

'Night.

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200 Words - 2/6/2014

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Sudsy Knees - 2/5/2014

There are memories of my mother that I will always carry. Mostly little things, but one or two extended sequences that have stuck with me. This is my favorite.

We used to own a small house in Waldport, Oregon. Most of any given year, we rented it out, but there were always a couple of weeks or a month when we could use it ourselves. Since my sister and I were still in school, and Mom was working on the same schedule, the three of us would go and spend time there in the Summer. Dad would come along as he could, vacation schedules permitting.

The house was about a hundred yards, give or take, from the Alsea bay, which led out to the ocean. A nice little beach with a sometimes breathtaking view of the bridge. I especially like watching it in the fog.

One somewhat cloudy day, Mom and I went walking on the beach, following the sweep out towards the bridge and past it to the ocean beach. I don't remember what we spoke of, but it was one of our great conversations, rambling all over, touching on many subjects. Us and the birds and pretty much nobody else.

Waldport is up on a cliff overlooking that bay and the ocean. We walked beneath it, heading out along the sand for a mile or more. We were maybe half a mile from the closest steps back up into town when it started sprinkling. A rather pleasant end to the walk, we agreed, a nice, gentle little bit of rain to prod us back into town.

Gentle it did not remain.

By the time we got to the stairs, running, by then, it was beyond a downpour. The drops were coming down hard enough to sting, and it was almost like walking through a wall of water. Seeing was difficult, and we were both completely soaked within a minute or two.

And laughing the whole way.

We struggled to the top of the steps, blinking rainwater out of our eyes constantly, and stood gasping just a bit under a very large tree that was planted at the top of the cliff. Mom looked down and noticed something at my knees, pointed and started laughing again.

The rain had been coming down so hard that it turned the minute residue of laundry detergent in our jeans sudsy again. This delighted both of us, and we must have laughed about it for four or five minutes straight. Long enough for the rain to slack off and let us walk wetly back into town and home.

Till the day she died, we could say “sudsy knees” to each other and draw a smile. It still draws one from me. When I am at my last, I think that is the memory I will seek out.

Goodbye once again, Mom. I love you still, sudsy knees and all.

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A Nice Bolognese - 2/4/2014

My mother Diane was born in 1936. I'm not sure what city or town that was, but she was raised in Livingston, Montana. It was a train town in the first parts of the 20^th century, which meant it was a peculiar mix of the rural and the urban (not by today's standards, but still...)

There was Wilcoxson's, that made root beer floats, Reuben sandwiches and candy breakfasts for kids' birthdays. Dan Bailey's fly shop, now semi-world-famous in its way. The Blakeleys, John and Francis Comer, the Woodhulls and so many more people I've only heard of.

My mother grew up smart, and her father (Frank) was wise enough to push her to go to college for a proper education. Remember that he was born in nineteen-zero-something, and was extremely unusual for having this attitude at the time.

At a time when (like it or not) most women went to college to find a husband, my mother went and got herself two Master's degrees. One took her to Munchen, Germany for a summer. The other took her to Hawaii, where she met a certain gentleman who ended up following her to Potsdam, NY as her husband. Strangely enough, this gentleman became my father.

But all of that is history, milestones in a long life.

My mother made spaghetti. A wonderful bolognese sauce that my whole family has come to know well. She knitted, she read, and she loved helping people answer their questions (30+ years as a professional librarian). She was kind, she was generous and she was forgiving. To pretty much everyone but herself, although I know she got better about that over the years.

I could talk with her, about anything. Unless it was about something real, practical, out in the world, we never became contentious. We could explore ideas without trying to figure right and wrong, just examining perspective and possibility. I've never met anyone who understood me intellectually better than she did.

And, this being written just after midnight, one year ago today, I watched her die.

Goodbye, Mom. I love you, I miss you and I will carry you with me always. You were all the best things a human can be.

Sleep well.

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Into the Fog - 2/3/2014

This is the edge of the island. Above, below and forward, fog and something that is neither darkness nor light. The rock is exposed beneath my feet, the moss and fern-things stopping a pace or so short of this edge.

I've stood here many times, pissing into the fog, or watching a leafy bundle of shit fall away into this nothing that isn't nothing. And I've stood here other times, yelling, screaming, praying at the top of my lungs for someone or something to come here.

But nothing and no-one ever has.

You can feel nothingness, after a while. A sort of pervasive lack, a quality of the self, the air, the stone, and time itself. This is not, I think, a place. This is something else between is and is not, some kind of existence which does not exist.

And all of this is simply delaying myself from what I know I will do. Something I have contemplated more than once. Something I have not done because it cannot be taken back.

But now there is whatever wails, out there, down below, closer than any light has ever come. And there is something beneath the wailing, almost silent, a hiss.

Rain, striking leaves, I think. Coming from below. Rain falling on leaves that are not up here on my island. Rain falling on leaves and something... someone(?) wailing in the dark.

3.. 2........ fuck it.

I push outward, hard.

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The Suffocating Fish is a Dance, not a Dramatic Device - 2/2/2014

Dear Hollywood and whatever city it is that makes TV shows,

     There was a time when fish out of water comedies were funny. There really was. That time has passed by about 40 years. Stop with this garbage.

     Yes, the person in a brand-new environment is an easy dramatic tool. It allows the audience to come to understand the environment through the actions of the fish. However, by this point, it is mostly lazy. Exposition and revelation can be handled in many more ways than by plunking down someone in the middle of an unfamiliar situation and following their difficulties in adapting to it.

     Yes, it can also be well done (extremely well, in fact; see Due South), but unless you are going to do it extremely well, don't bother. The bumbling idiot that doesn't seem to comprehend that their surroundings have changed, and seems to be totally unfamiliar with the basic human function of adaptation and learning, or who refuses to fit into the new environment, is a thing that really happens. So are car chases. Neither one should be used casually in a piece of fiction.

     The times that this trope is used in a divisive situation simply makes things worse. When the fish is in fundamental conflict with the out-of-water situation (woman in a man's world or vice versa, conservative vs. liberal, etc...) one side or the other simply ends up being parodied to the point of unbelievable characterization, which completely kills the value of telling the story in the first place.

     Now, don't get me wrong. There are dramas (and some comedies) that are entirely about that conflict, at which point, the trope is being used appropriately (and sometimes well). Questions of social integration and prejudice are legitimate places for this trope to show up. But as the basis for an ongoing source of tension in a story which otherwise does not concern itself with such things just gets tired, old and boring fast. Not to mention insulting to its audience.

     When New Character shows up in Unfamiliar Situation, it works. When, three episodes/sequels/books later, New Character is still incapable of dealing with Unfamiliar Situation, we have a fail.

     The classic in the genre is The Odd Couple. OCD Felix moves in with slovenly Oscar and hilarity ensues. But the humor resolves itself within the context of the play/movie. The entire arc is displayed, including a scene which is both funny and touching which has Felix and Oscar yelling at each other about how they admire and respect each other, and how much each values their friendship.

     As an arc, fish out of water and its related situations can work. But if you don't resolve it, if the characters refuse to adapt and change because of the Unfamiliar Situation, then you aren't telling a story. You're telling a series of jokes or anecdotes that happen to use the exact same characters.

So, Hollywood, how about treating me like I can handle something a little more complex than this?

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On Being Faithless - 2/1/2014

OK, so let's tackle a difficult subject. Specifically, that which lies beyond the everyday. I consider myself, at heart, a scientist. But I have had personal experiences that collectively lead me to believe that there is something going on other than what can be measured in scientific terms.

I am not a person of faith and never will be. There are reasons for that, but mostly because faith is not in my nature. Whatever path I walk, it will my own search, and my answers will never lie in the philosophical or spiritual constructs of others. I will take pieces from them, ideas that suit me and that make sense in my understanding, but to entirely accept the worldview of someone else and try to make it my own, is not me.

So what is there? Is there a divine presence of some kind? A god or gods, an overmind, a tao, karma, magick, an akashic field, or a great lion who speaks to young British girls?

I honestly don't know. What I do find is that I cannot accept the existence of any being I have ever heard described as being God. All of those descriptions (and I warn you in advance that this statement will offend some of you) are far too narrow and limiting.

Whatever role one may see God in, be it Creator, Designer, Judge, Mover, Ruler or otherwise, these are human roles, and the faces we put on these versions of the divine or supernatural are human faces.

If there are such beings out there, I find it impossible to accept that they exist with anything we would understand as human-like emotions and motivations. While applying these to anything that might (or might not) exist beyond the observable puts a layer, a mask, in between us and what really is there. Maybe that mask is correct, but I don't think so.

So to whomever or whatever might be out there, I'd really like to buy you a cup of coffee sometime and discuss the possibilities inherent in cross-existential experiences.

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