Here Be Owls - 5/30/2014

So, next week I start living on the other half of the clock. Working night shift again, and looking forward to it.

There's a different feel on a night shift. You're largely responsible for everything a day shift person is, but you have a lot less support. The volume of work tends to be lower, but rushes and surges still happen, and you have to deal with them. You also have to have a strong sense of judgment as to what is important and what isn't, because calling up supervisors and management has to be done only when necessary.

It leads to a certain mentality. I'm not sure about other types of work, but IS (or IT, or ITS or whatever you like to call it, the computer squad) tends to attract non-standard personalities in the first place, and night shift support tends to attract the most non-standard ones.

Yes, I definitely fall into that category.

What you get on night shift are the people who are competent, but either less social or otherwise willing to give up certain aspects of 'normal' life for some reason. For a long time at my last job, it was the chance to go to school. Now, it's the chance to spearhead and prepare for a new level of support that we will be providing.

Of the geeks, we are the most maverick. The least susceptible to management and the least needing of supervision. If you want to find both the best and worst people on an IS team, look to the night shift. That's where we'll be.

264

Streaming Consciousness - 5/29/2014

Where was I? That's a question I seem to be asking myself a lot lately. Constant interruptions, frustration, breaking me away from where I am and finding myself in a different spot trying to get back to where I was without losing track of where I'm going tired of this tired of never having five minutes to follow the thread into the interesting parts of the day and wailing on a dark saxophone at the dawntimes in the green dry wet forest stretching away along blues found behind the seat and called up from a terminal in Sri Lanksa outside of a mini-mart where Soylent Bob and his buddy the orangutan comb their hair smoking nails and selling little baggies of something that only resembles what it is but isn't quite yellow stone emperors withholding temporary positions of power and nepotizing the dead for votes in Chicago when Mayor Daley is in town.

But then again, elephants don't really work like that in grad school. Mostly you can't get them to stop quoting Kafka in the middle of your lecture on amorphous algebraic matrices. Which is why Duke University got four of them for their varsity badminton team last spring.

200

Makery - 5/27/2014

Make is an interesting word. It's an integral part of some classic phrases. You can make both love and war, and some people do both at once. You can also make peace, although this can be interpreted in more than one way. The Joker said he made art until somebody died.

What are we making today? But are we really making anything? The implied meaning behind the word is to create something that did not exist prior to our efforts. But all of the elements of that thing had to exist previously. We can combine, reshape and transform, but can we really make?

There are also variations on the basic meaning. To make time is to engage in an activity in such a way as to make progress. Usually applied to travel, it also frequently applies to seduction. Making is (along with nearly every other verb) used in certain situations to describe the eliminatory functions of the mammalian body. We can be on the make, we can make things up (were they down before we made them up?), we can make things over, but not under. We can make believe, but it's pretty hard to make doubt, unless you're good at arguing.

We frequently make mountains out of molehills, which must piss the moles off pretty badly, to suddenly have to dig several thousand feet farther than they expected just to ruin your lawn. Although maybe moles can make point-five past lightspeed, if they need to.

We make jokes, we make fun, we make silly faces. We make mistakes (all. the. freaking. time.) but not often enough do we make amends. We make friends and enemies, and sometimes we can tell the difference. We make signs, sigils and wards, and then throw salt over our shoulders to make the evil eye go away.

We make money, and banks make money, but they're the ones creating it by the magic of compound interest. We just earn it by making things or making sure that other people get their things, one way or another. Sometimes, of course, we make a mess of things, and then we have to make a new resume.

We can make noise or music, and people disagree greatly on which is which (unless you're an acoustician, in which case you can make people yawn by talking about white and pink noise). Of course, yawning makes other people yawn, and may make the temperatures of their brains rise or fall (we're not really sure yet, but I'll make a note to figure it out).

And, of course, practicing the art of making babies is just about the most universal hobby there is.

443

In Memory - 5/26/2014

Today is a day of memories.

Is it that we want war? Of course we do, it is part of us. But we also wish to leave it behind, to stop finding in it what we believe to be the solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Regardless, there are always those in harm's way. They go there because harm, whether imposed directly or unintentionally by humans, or caused by the simple actions of the natural world, will be there.

They wear many uniforms. Soldier, sailor and pilot the most thought of, and most duly honored. But also those who keep the peace, who guard the oceans, who fight against fire and accident, who rush into the fray to bring healing. All of these people serve, here and elsewhere, and all should be remembered this day, living and dead.

All of these people, one way or another, fight against the entropy that would eventually consume humankind. Whether for good or for ill, they lay down their lives in the belief that their sacrifice, and those of their brothers and sisters, will make the world a better place. Some are right, some misguided, many somewhere in between.

But it is not whether they were right or wrong that means we should remember them, but that they stood against what they believed was the line of darkness. Foes that fought for awful causes, or who were misled by those who sought their own power, for them we should feel sorrow that their lives were wasted. For those that fought to preserve, to build, to ensure what we now understand as a better way of life, we should feel pride that these people found us worth saving, worth fighting for.

To everyone who has gone into harm's way, I say thank you. On this day, let your memories shine forth as the best part of humanity, the part that can find something greater in the world than itself, without losing sight of the nature of what we are, and why that is worth fighting for.

340

Beating My Head - 5/25/2014

So some of you may have noticed I haven't been posting to Beat by Beat Serials for the past two weeks. That is not accidental and is not an indication that I have lost interest. It is an indication, however, that only one of the stories is really working for me (Singers) and I'm not quite sure how I want to proceed.

Nemo and Fog just are not gelling. The characters aren't, at least, and that's critical for me. Nemo is based on a character from one of the tabletop RPGs I play (Champions, to be specific), and is really not suited to this format as I currently have him/her/it set up. I need to re-think the whole thing and re-approach.

But that leaves the question of what, exactly, am I going to do with the Wednesday and Friday spots. I have ideas for other stories, but I'm no more certain of them, and I don't want the whole thing to become a revolving door kind of thing where I just start various stories until I get bored with them. The whole purpose is to develop discipline.

However, there is a point at which the story must be put away for a while. That is perfectly legitimate. Many writers have projects they work on from time to time, hoping that they will find the key that turns the story. I hope that I will with Nemo and Fog, but haven't got them at this time.

So Singers will be coming back, and I may just tell it two or three days a week, or I may do something else with Wednesdays and Fridays. Experimentation is the key here, and I” m going to do what I can to find a way to make this format and this style work for me.

300

An Alice List - 5/24/2014

I would like to do certain impossible things before I die. Here is a list of a few.

1. Build a really big bathtub and give the earth a good scrubdown.
2. Acquire a dragon as a pet/companion/mentor. Keep it in my pocket for my eventual mugging.
3. Build a waterslide that runs from the Sea of Tranquility to Rio de Janeiro.
4. Buy a drink for everyone who doesn't want one.
5. Mediate a romantic relationship between an electron and a positron.
6. See what happens when two medusae look at each other.
7. Ride a solar flare.
8. Beat Zaphod Beeblebrox for the Worst Dressed Sentient in the Galaxy competition.
9. Meet at least three different Cheshire Cats.
10. Conduct a sunset, a night sky, and a sunrise.
11. Build a power source that runs entirely on bubble gum and muzak and produces backrubs as its only byproduct.
12. Breed a turkey shaped like a Klein Bottle.
13. Sing an aria entirely below 12 hertz.
14. Write a joke that will stop a 12-gauge round at 10 meters.
15. Translate Cyrano de Bergerac into Lojban.
16. Play catch with ball lightning.
17. Swim the Chunnel.
18. Fold a tesseract from a single sheet of paper.
19. Proceed to live in said tesseract.
20. Resurrect all the greatest musicians in history. Make them play a symphony on the kazoo.

230

Plaid Time - 5/23/2014

It's amazing what temporal cues you can pick up from fiction. I'm watching some randomly bad movie right now, and the smooth, suave operator is wearing a plaid jacket. Not the classic red/black plaid, but a white/green/black affair. At the time (early 70's) it would have been considered a certain kind of stylish, I suppose.

Science fiction is where it glares the most. I remember reading a short story about two men who were testing a new propulsion system that allowed ships to go very close to a star. They nearly died because they didn't read the mimeographed instruction manual that they were given (not even any training!).

And the funniest part is that I know I'll look back in ten years and marvel further about how easy it is to spot things written/filmed in the 2thousand-teens. Everything will be “not-quite-black-leather” and Matrix references.

Of course, when considering what science fiction thinks 2024 will be like and what it will actually be like, who knows. Some things are coming true and are becoming truer with every passing day. A 3-D printer is just a nanobot without the nano (or the automated factory shrunk down to the desktop). When monitors disappear into glasses, how will that actually affect things? Vacuum trains and solar-powered roadways producing electricity (a whole new meaning to the word gridlock). Maybe the proper beginnings of a space elevator? Or will that be the cold fusion of the 21^st century?

Time is an interesting thing. There are so many places it could go, and only one it will ultimately lead us to (depending on the accuracy of certain theories of existence). What will tomorrow be like, and how will it seem inevitable in retrospect?

286

A Note to the Passionate - 5/22/2014

Vegetarians. Stop.

I don't mean stop being vegetarians, that's your choice and can be a good one, if you do things right. But stop trying to make vegetarian versions of foods that are usually made with meat and trying to make the carnivores like myself believe it's something it's not.

Vegetarian chili is not chili. By definition, chili has meat in it. Beef is an integral ingredient, and telling me I'm going to be eating chili when there's no beef in it sets my expectations incorrectly. I will come to it expecting chili, I will be disappointed. Not because what you've made is bad, or unpalatable, but because my taste buds will zig expecting a zag.

If you must serve me something attempting to be chili, don't call it chili and don't tell me it's chili. Call it “Xobaxa Terricana”, or any one of a thousand other made-up names. Lentil stew (if it uses lentils), tomato-bean casserole, leftover soup, whatever.

That means that I can come to this experience with no more expectations than I might otherwise have, and enjoy the experience because you are not trying to force something into a mold that does not properly hold it.

Meat is not vegetable and vegetables are not meat. There are meatless cuisines worldwide that do wonderful things with vegetables, grains, fruit and all the other possibilities. But they are wonderful because they do not try to make vegetables do meat things, they let the ingredients be themselves.

So let the ingredients be themselves, and do not concern yourself with tofu dogs, fake hamburger patties (which can be quite good, I'll admit) or any other such things. You are a vegetarian, be a vegetarian and convince me with the wonderful things that vegetarianism can do, not with attempts to make it something it isn't.

And yes, this is more a meditation on that basic concept than any arguments directed specifically at a particular dietary lifestyle. If a thing is a thing, let it be that thing. If it is not that thing, let it be not that thing. Find the joy and beauty in things by coming to them without preconceptions that if it is in some way like something else, it must be similar in other ways, as well.

378

Ship or Collection? - 5/21/2014

So I'm going to try some writing prompts for when things are a little slow to result in inspiration. Tonight's is whether I'd rather be deck hand on a ship or librarian at a prestigious university.

While I don't care much about the prestigious part, nobody who knows me will be surprised to find out that I would choose librarian over deckhand. While I can appreciate the traveling life of the deckhand, the purity of keeping a ship afloat and moving, I prefer the idea of building a library, a collection of books, and helping people find what they need in them.

Part of it, of course, is my mother's influence. She was a librarian for over thirty years, everywhere from grade schools to universities to public libraries and taught Library Sciences for a time. There was a certain glow on her face that came up whenever she talked about being on the Research desk. To her, the best part of the job was someone coming in looking for an answer to a question she never would have thought to ask for herself. In helping them find their answer, she found part of the answer (or more) for herself.

I think it was that moment of discovery, of hearing someone frame a question for the first time that she enjoyed most. I think I would enjoy most the finding of answers, of knowing such a place well enough to feel where the answer to a particular question is. Of building something that could perform that task of answering questions and supplying information to the people who need them.

268

Moments and Perks - 5/20/2014

So I'll be moving back to the night shift next month. Very much looking forward to that. Day shift is good, but it's stratified. Night shift is for cowboys and mavericks. I suspect it will be an interesting group of people I find there.

It started with me doing some basic training last night. Two hour-long talks with people who really aren't looking forward to adding to their workload. Not that night-shift service desk is really all that demanding in terms of volume.

Most of the time.

One thing that people don't get about a night shift is that usually, they're quiet. But when the storm hits, it hits hard and you have to execute judgment much more quickly and with far less immediate support than during prime business hours. It requires a willingness to endure long hours of what amounts to boredom and pepper it with instantly jumping into a fire because you're there specifically to do that.

At times, it means that everything is falling apart in the worst possible way, and you have to coordinate information and get it into the hands of the people who can fix things. At the same time, you have to communicate back with the people who are experiencing the problem (users) and make sure that they know that things are well under control, even while the building seems to be falling down around them.

It's not a glorious job, but it does have its moments, and its perks.

247

Cartography - 5/19/2014

One can get lost in stories. The funny thing is, the best way to find out where you are is to get lost. As you do so, over and over, you build maps in your head, learn the terrain, find landmarks. Soon, by being lost, you're found again, and the number of places you're found increases.

The number of places you're lost never gets smaller, though.

Choosing to be lost, so that you can find yourself again is an excellent way to learn. It's how I do most of mine. I dive into something sort of sideways and end up looking out on new territory. That's what writing is for me, to launch myself into something that I have no idea what it is or where it's going, and discover my way.

I suppose that's part of my problem. I like diving into the water and swimming, I like finding new mountains to guide my course by. But when I've gotten the major landmarks, when I know where I am, it's about the details, then. What course does this stream take, exactly. Not that there's a stream there, but what is its specific shape? That interests me much less than knowing that the stream is there, that mountain is there, and the gorge leads this way.

There are people who will spend their entire lives mapping a few hundred meters of that gorge. I just want a general idea, so I can draw my maps. Maybe that's why I find myself wandering from mental place to mental place, never really settling in to do the details. Maybe that's why this format works for me. It's not about details, it's not about knowing whether the hero's hat is russet brown or sorrel brown. To me, it's enough to know the hero is there, and has a hat on.

307

Distraction - 5/18/2014

Lady D

caught me for a couple of days

pulled my mind

out of my path

onto a different one

just for a bit

one to share

to walk along

that is not just mine.

A different D

caught me just now

leaning happily out the window

with a slapping branch.

It seems that things are swirling

that I am not where I thought I was

not who

some good

some not

others looming as either-or

not set

but ones I want.

To remain steady here

on this path

in this orbit

is the challenge

is the walk

is the ride.

Dune 17 - 5/15/2014

A worm is ridden

Galaxy astride wasteland

Faithful find empire

The Wurst - 5/14/2014

Let us speak now of the hotness of the doggai. Possibly the noblest of foods, if only because it comes from the humblest of all possible humble origins.

When you butcher an animal, there's a use for everything. It's either meat for the table, for the dogs, or raw materials for something else (leather, for example). But even the most fanatically careful butcher is going to end up with extra little bits. Some are just scraps of meat or other tissue that are inevitable byproducts of hacking at an animal carcass with a knife. Others are small organs or specialty meats that are often small and require some kind of preparation to make them tasty.

Now there's one organ in particular that, once removed, requires a LOT of work to make safe to eat. That's the lower GI tract, specifically the intestines. An elastic tube several meters long that is filled with partially processed organic matter. Organic matter that is slightly toxic and suffused with bacteria and other things that are straight-up bad for you (in a not fun way).

So, remove from animal, clean and boil. and boil. and boil. Eventually, you end up with something that is perfectly safe to eat and quite useful for holding significant amounts of ground, mashed, chopped or otherwise altered organic matter.

And thus was the sausage born. Meat in tube form. Chunks of animal flesh mixed with fats, herbs, spices, and whatever else may seem like a good idea. The Unnatural Banana. Re-invention of the worm into something a little more tasty and slightly less likely to die in the sun on the sidewalk.

Fitter-in-a-bun. Holder-of-the-mustard. Profit margin for the meat-seller. Seventh-inning-special. Cured. Smoked. Fermented. Done-other-things-to. Meat modified from it's simple state into something mysterious and variable.

Pepperoni. Frankfurter. Salumi. Pate. Merguez. Lap Cheong. Kamaboko. Chorizo. Sai ua. Sucuk. Bangers. Kielbasa. Currywurst. How many others?

I don't know and I don't care. I just know that there aren't many foods that put such a smile on people's faces, mine included.

338

The Art that is not Art - 5/13/2014

Tips on the art of the practical joke.

First, practical jokes are never funny. There have been zero practical jokes truly worth laughing at in all of human history. None.

Second, practical jokes are very funny in concept. They usually involve a complex engineering challenge, and are more often a way of demonstrating ingenuity rather than any real sense of meanness of spirit or desire to humiliate.

However, they are never funny in real life.

For every bucket perched above a door, there has been a long session of drying out the carpet. For every cow somehow herded up to the second story of a house, there has been a shovel that had to be burned (and probably the occasional house or two). Scares, shocks and surprises have generated punches, heart attacks and police reports.

Now I will admit to having an imagination that appreciates that artistic side of such things. The complete dismantling of a car to be reassembled (working) atop an inaccessible building is an impressive feat. But, like a bank robbery, it does have its victims and its consequences.

So, as a request, should you feel the desire to involve me in this kind of thing, either as a planned exercise or as a moment of impulse, please do not. I do not appreciate that humor, will not respond the way you want me to, and will not consider it “all in good fun”.

And no, of course I'm not talking about anyone specific. That would be silly.

251

Strange Hamlet - 5/12/2014

So one of my supervisors, Mike Jett (3 of my supervisors are named Michael, all 3 go by Mike), pointed out something interesting to me today. Strange Brew, starring Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis as Bob & Doug McKenzie, is a retelling of Hamlet.

That's right, the toque-wearing hose-heads are really Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, loosed upon the wilds of Canada. Max von Sydow (of all people), plays the Claudius analog. Lynne Griffin plays the female Hamlet equivalent. Not sure who plays Yorick, but Mel Blanc voices Bob & Doug's parents.

And don't forget that the family name that Max and Lynne share in the movie is Elsinore.

I suppose every story is some other story in disguise, one way or another. Most science fiction being produced now is either variations on the Arthurian legends (such as the Transformers), or Frankenstein's Monster (Terminator series) or rewrites of magical child myths (pretty much any of the YA stuff out there).

There is the classic quote that only 12 plots exist (or 1, or 30 or some other number). I suppose it depends on how you define each one, how you slice the diamond, what facets you look at. Maybe that's why I like character so much more than plot. Because there are more than 12 characters in fiction, quite a few more.

220

Career Choices - 5/11/2014

Supervillains. Seriously. There are a few of you I understand (Magneto, for instance), but most of you are either really bad at being a supervillain or really don't understand the whole idea.

First of all, the costumes. Heroes wear costumes because they want people to recognize them. So, apparently do supervillains, which is about as dumb as it gets. At the very least, change it up so that the bank teller doesn't twig to who you are before you even walk in the door. Even if your costume is some kind of armor, tone it down a little. Camouflage exists for a reason.

Second, re-consider your crimes. Money is made by criminals in one of two ways. Either you take the money directly (mugging, bank-robbing, con artistry), or you provide a service suited to your talents. If what you're best at is being really strong and tough, consider a career as a mercenary if the formal military (which would take you in a heartbeat) isn't an option. If you're fast or can fly, then special courier might be for you (human organs probably preferred). If your thing is that you can control fire or electricity, then the Fire Department or the local utilities monopoly might want discuss putting you on the payroll.

Thirdly, if you are motivated by rage, phobia, obsession or compulsion, consider trying therapy to work these out before you take up a life of crime. If nothing else, you'll be more effective at it, and spend less time in prison/asylums.

In short, the life of a supervillain is mostly one of watching some obnoxiously moralistic optimist in spangled tights beat the daylights out of you on a regular basis. Really think before you decide that punching bag is a good career choice.

295

Joy to the Word, the Loud is Calm - 5/10-2014

We often say that things 'roll off of our tongues', to mean that particular things are enjoyable to say in some fashion. This, of course, is different from things 'falling out of our mouths', which is not so good.

Some words I enjoy saying because of the sounds they require. Rhyme basically works like this, but I've never been fond of it. 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is perhaps the finest example of something that is fun to say just because it is.

Why do we find pleasure in the sound of a word, or in the contortions of the mouth and tongue that are required to say it? My mom taught me: 'Marseydotes n doseydotes n liddulkidseydivey, a kidduleedivey to, wouldn't you?” It's really fun to say, and moreso when you realize it's actually

Mares eat oats

and does eat oat

and little kids eat ivy

a kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?

(kid = baby goat as well as human child, in case you weren't aware).

There are other words that merge the physical pleasure of mouth contortions, sound and meaning. My favorite of these is callipygian, which means 'having well-formed buttocks'. I like the feel, the sound and the meaning of that word (as well as women who are, themselves, callipygian). There's also the fact that it's an utterly unnecessary and totally beautiful word to have in a language. Nonsense, silliness and perfection, all in one place.

237

Plastic Fuzz - 5/9/2014

There's that moment

when the brain fuzzes over

dipped in plastic

the eyes cross

and find other lights to see

the will sags

and the flesh rebels

against wakefulness

against function

against forward

or backward

or sideways

when the self

simply wants

to lie

and rest

and find the focus

that has run away

into a dim fog.

There is a time

when doing

becomes done

when making

becomes made

and when stars move

behind clouds

as if waiting

not to be seen.

There is a breath

that carries all of this

a name that pulls this into

a tired little grin

no less sleepy

and needing of rest

but calm

and finding of reason

within the fog

and fuzz

cracking the plastic

and shows us

that coming back to life

will happen

with one dawn or many

when forward

backward

sideways

will happen

again.

145

An Obsolete Term - 5/8/2014

Someone just used a word in the movie I'm watching that has become almost completely impossible.

Incommunicado.

When was the last time you were out of communication, literally unreachable, for more than a few minutes? Probably a very long time ago.

Between cell phones, e-mail, voice mail, the internet, video conferencing and all the rest of it, it's effectively impossible to separate completely from the people around us. Think about what you'd have to do to get away, really away.

You'd have to notify those closest to you. Many of them would be upset by the idea that they couldn't reach out to you at a moment's notice. You'd have to let them know where you're going and how long you expect to be gone. There would have to be some compelling reason for you not to take at least some form of communication with you, even if you wouldn't expect to be able to use it.

You'd need to set an “Out of office” auto-response on all of your e-mail addresses, or at least those likely to be used by people who you would choose to respond to. You'd need to explain to your employer that you really won't be available if an emergency should come up.

And then you'd have to find someplace to go. The ocean's no good, because you can't go anywhere on the seas without GPS and a radio these days, even if you wanted to risk it. Most islands are at least moderately inhabited, or inhospitable in the extreme.

There are such places, of course, but getting to them is difficult. You would have to figure on walking in, or going by bicycle. Anywhere there are roads, there are people and communication. So this is not really something available to most. Serious hiker/survival types only.

But you will find yourself out there, somewhere, watching a sunset because you have no need of doing anything else. No other humans to call you away from what you seek to see. It's a nice idea, and one that appeals to me, some.

I think I'll find a way to do that, on a small scale. Turn my phone and router off. Stay home with the TV off, just me and paper and books. Lay in a stock of goodies, figure out some way to simulate a roaring fire in my apartment, and cut away into incommunicado.

398

Why? - 5/7/2014

Veni

There was a world

beyond the horizon

of stone

sand

river

tree

people

music

laughter

and it called my name

though it had never met me

I could not but come

and see

Vidi

Beyond that horizon

now

I look

and find those

that called me

rich and poor

wise fools

and dancing eyes

places and names

that never were

where I was

I see forests of maybe

made into is

Vici

And now it is mine

but why?

Why did I step on this soil

and turn it into something it was not?

Why did I drink its waters

and make them my own?

Why did I take wonder

and beat it into my own image?

The steward is lost

the eye without judge

in making everywhere

home.

Someday, a Conversation - 5/6/2014

Someday I will have a conversation with another human being, it will go something like this.

ME : <says a full and complete sentence, perhaps two, specifying an idea>

THEM : <replies only once I am finished. Communicates clearly enough that I know when they are finished>

This will repeat, back and forth. There will be no stumbles, interruptions, talkings-over. Neither of us will push the other in regards to anything, neither of us will feel either rushed or lagging in the conversation.

I talk with customers all day on the phone. Today, it took a person 2 minutes and 30 seconds by the clock on my phone (which counts the seconds I am on each call) to tell me “I lost my username and password to log in.”

One hundred and fifty seconds to transmit information that can be encapsulated in 9 words. And it could have been reduced to “I can't log in”, which is 4 words. 4 words worth of communication that took 150 seconds to say. The average person, in conversation, speaks roughly 100 words per minute (some faster, a few slower). That means this person took about 250 words to say 4. That is not efficient.

Which is still better than the people that, when I'm trying to tell them how their temporary password is spelled, interrupt me to ask how their temporary password is spelled. I can usually predict these, though, because they've interrupted me or talked over the top of me several times already before we get to spelling the temporary password.

Half of conversation is listening. The other half is speaking. The final half is thinking about what you're going to say, and the fourth half (maybe the fourth 35%) is balancing all of this with your conversational partner.

Which means that conversation really does require a lot more attention than we tend to pay it.

314

I Got a Rock - 5/5/2014

There is a visceral calmness in holding a stone. I found one today that I'm going to keep. It's flat, round and sort of oblong, the perfect shape for holding in one's hand. I intend to worry it for a few decades.

That's the real meaning of that word, by the way, worry. To rub without significant force, in an idle or incidental way. A rope tied to a dock will worry against it as the boat to which it is attached rises and falls on the water. Worry is not an emotion of wrinkled brow and fear, it is that long-term irritation of something against the soul.

And perhaps that is what a worry stone is for. To take that rubbing of thoughts and feelings and hold them for us. A stone can be worried for far longer than a human lifetime and show little effect besides polishing.

I think that we have used stones long enough that their use has seeped into our genes. The stone I found is not suited to taking an edge, but it would make a fine head for a club or hammer. Picking it up makes me feel the same way it must have made my ancestors feel a quarter of a million years ago. A bit safer, a bit more right to be carrying a tool. The original multi-tool.

My last one (given away years ago) was a straight grey, which polished under my fingers into a glossy charcoal color. This one has more of a beige/brown tone to it. Possibly with a little green, I'm not sure. I look forward to discovering what it will look like in a decade or so.

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Sympathy for the Writer - 5/4/2014

There's an interesting balance that has to be struck when working in a fictional universe. I talked last night about the choices Peter Parker might make were he to be interested in putting an end to the problems he constantly complains about. Those choices are at the crux of how one builds a fictional universe.

In order for the reader to become immersed in a story, there must be sufficient similarity between themselves and the characters and their world for sympathy to occur. The farther those characters and that world is from the world the reader knows, the less sympathy can be created.

And so those of us who create fictional worlds may want to come up with things that are entirely unknown, to explore impossibilities, inhuman psyches and the realistic extrapolations of those. And many of us do.

But for our fiction to reach an audience, the world and the characters we write must resonate with our readers. We must put together people and realities that do not bend so far away from what exists around us that people become lost.

Why do so many fantasy empires resemble historical ones? Because it creates a structure within which the reader can come to understand the characters. The farther that society moves from the historical version of reality, the more time the reader spends simply trying to understand the world which the characters inhabit. Take it far enough and the story is about the world, not the people in it.

Which is fine, and which has been done in various ways both well and poorly. But it is this basic struggle that means that Peter Parker will not make those decisions that could actually resolve his problems. If he becomes the source of a true cure-all for the physical maladies that often define the human condition, then the world he inhabits (indeed, the entire Marvel Universe) becomes utterly unrecognizable, as 'normal' humans simply disappear from the stage, replaced by people who are, at the very least, healthy to a degree we cannot understand.

And this is why Space Opera champions both starships and swordplay. This is why comic book superheroes never really seem able to change the world around them (the villains never can, either, at least not permanently). If their world deviates too far from ours, the audience falls away in confusion, until we are only talking to ourselves, on a journey into places that allow us to find immersion and sympathy because they are our places.

For instance, I once spent an evening (quite enjoyably), trying to figure out exactly how a three-mile wide bed of fungus would perceive the world and what its thoughts would be. I can't turn it into a story that would make sense to anyone but me (yet), but it was an interesting experiment and taught me a lot about how to think like someone not myself.

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A Letter to Peter Parker - 5/3/2014

Dear Peter,

You are an idiot. Most of the time, you are written as a brilliant scientific mind in the Marvel Universe, which has more than a few geniuses running around in it. Reed Richards has been impressed by you at times, along with a number of others.

Your body has been changed by a remarkable accident. You are fully aware of this, and in a unique position to study yourself in a scientific and controlled manner. In most incarnations, one of the first things you notice is that your eyesight has improved, along with your other senses. You possess strength, speed, reflexes and flexibility that would make an Olympic athlete weep. You heal from wounds that would kill others in hours, if not instantly.

And yet, you constantly juggle a lack of money and a difficult social life with your pursuits as Spider-Man. So here's what you need to do. First, stop whining. Second, write a proposal, get a grant, get a loan, sell a few pictures of Spidey to real media outlets that would actually pay you real money instead of the pittance that the Bugle provides.

Second, establish a lab. Hire only people you truly trust, and do the critical work yourself. Don't let them know that it's your tissue they're studying, just get the study going. You have the potential to figure out how to stop real problems, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Hodgkins' diseases. To change the way people deal with age and infirmity. To change humanity for the better, all without going around wasting your time and talents stopping muggers and car thieves.

Yes, some will get away that you might have stopped, and there might be a few threats out there that you have to pull out the tights to deal with. But your talents and your opportunity are worth far more to humanity than slightly safer streets in one city.

Grow up, be a man and put away your power fantasies. Your responsibility is not to individuals who face violence in the street, it's to everyone who faces reality every day.

Sincerely,

Someone who understands that your decisions are based on dramatic tension and not reality and therefore realizes that there would be no Spider-Man comic books without the fundamental misunderstandings you make about yourself.

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A New Word - 5/2/2014

So I'm going to try something in my other blog (http://beatbybeatserials.blogspot.com/) for the Singers story. English lacks a non-gendered general pronoun equivalent to he or she. So I am going to try using “ke” to represent that pronoun as a way of Singers to refer to each other without implying gender.

I do this because they are asexual. Their reproduction is performed the way they do everything else, by Singing. There is neither male nor female involved. The progeny is not carried by either, and does not even appear at the location of the parent. I haven't explored their nature fully, but this is a set aspect of it.

I choose ke as something that sounds similar to he or she, but is clearly different and separate. Non-gendered does not, in this case, mean a mix of the two, but other. It is intended to rhyme with he and she to maintain a linguistic pattern with which readers are familiar, but to be sufficiently different so as to be clear.

I will use kes (keez) for the possessive, equivalent to his or hers. For the plural, I will simply use “they” in its traditional English sense. Ke will also stand, obviously for him or her. It will be an interesting experiment, and I think it may be quite successful.

Most of the proposed variations on the non-gendered English pronoun seek to combine the two into something like “hir” or “hirm”, neither of which works well to the English-speaking tongue. By retaining a similarity but separating from the soft-sounding “h” and “sh” with the hard “k” will, I think, provide the needed differentiation without being too artificial.

In any case, let me know what you think when it starts to appear.

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Falling Down Very Slowly - 5/1/2014

I was thinking about architecture today, for some reason, wondering why some buildings just seem to have odd problems that nobody can ever seem to fix. Weird things, like a particular vent making a lot of noise, or certain windows sticking sometimes.

And the thought occurred that an architectural plan is like a battle plan. It never survives contact with the enemy. The enemy being, of course, reality.

You can study the ground, the type of soil, the weather, the bedrock, everything present before the building is put up. You can study the intended use of the building, local power and utilities, roads and a thousand other things.

You do all that and put together the building plan. But you can't study which lot of concrete is going to be slightly off-spec, and will set, hold and wear slightly differently. You can't study exactly how the rain is going to fall, or how the drainage will change over time. You can't predict the precise expansions and contractions of the frame during construction, and how this will affect the final structure. You can't know exactly what human beings will inhabit the building, how they'll walk or make use of hallways, elevators, stairs and so forth. You can't predict how the load on local utilities will change over the years, how traffic patterns will alter the sonic profile of the landscape, what natural disasters will have an effect even if they never touch that building.

It also occurred to me that buildings aren't built to stand up. They are built to fall down so slowly that one eventually gets sick of waiting and knocks them over. Building structures to last forever fails to recognize the reality of entropy. Building them to last for shorter periods recognizes the fact that, for the most part, the needs of the people who will be using them are going to change. Maybe some buildings should last forever, but most are really temporary structures over any serious length of time.

Idle, weird thoughts on the nature of buildings, I suppose, but new concepts to me.

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