People like to say stuff like "It all boils down to this" and then they throw out whatever their particular favorite scapegoat is. Hatred. Intolerance. Ignorance. Greed. Original sin. Lack of patriotism. Homosexuality. Whatever.
However, the basic underlying fundamental issue of all human problems is none of these things.
It's that there are way too many goddamned people out there who will not do what I want them to.
You know who you are, too.
Check yourselves.
* * * *
Now, I posted the above in an attempt to be humorous. But honestly, the above is, probably, one of the major contributors to most human conflicts -- not the idea expressed by the post, but the attitude that the post embodies.
Dig it -- I get aggravated with your shit just as much as you get aggravated with my shit. And you can substitute any one particular proper noun for either or both parties in the above sentence. The LGBT community is aggravated with Orson Scott Card's nonsense. Wall Street Bankers are currently affronted by the temerity of Senator Elizabeth Warren daring to ask them some real questions about financial regulation. (Who the fuck does she think she is? Doesn't she know they pay her salary?) The Tea Party is sick to death of that uppity Negro Barack Obama. Karl Rove has had it up to here with the Tea Party messing up his plans for a permanent Republican majority.
And 'Joliet' Jake Blues hates the Illinois Neo Nazis.
And on and on and on and on.
A lot of crap annoys me too. I would like to tailor a virus that would remove forever from our television screens the horrifying social carcinoma that is reality TV. I would enjoy it if the Tea Party would launch itself into orbit on jets of its own concentrated bile. I think we should probably airdrop the entire membership of the Westboro Baptist Church into the Andes mountains, preferably without parachutes.
But I don't get to do that. And it's right that I don't get to do that, because while all these things are aggravating, none of them are actually causing me real, demonstrable harm. They annoy me. They aggravate me. They infuriate me. Sometimes they even hurt my feelings. But they are not shooting at me, menacing me with broken beer bottles, spreading roofing tacks in my driveway, vandalizing my property, setting fire to my furniture, or assaulting my children.
They're just talking.
I read stuff on Facebook that says, like, 'Kanye West should be banned from the Grammies for life'. And I go, 'yeah, Kanye West is a douchebag and he acts like a douchebag and if I were running the Grammies I'd probably refuse him admittance at the door'. But what did he do? He got up and acted like an asshole. He... talked.
Yeah, he made a lot of people mad and probably hurt Taylor Swift's feelings and I'm not saying that was okay, but I am saying, maybe we want to stop and think before we start saying "He did something that made us mad and hurt someone's feelings, so now he must be banned for life".
One of Robert A. Heinlein's nuttier beliefs, while alive, was "an armed society is a polite society". Heinlein genuinely believed that if you want people to be civil, you needed to legalize dueling. His reasoning, if one can use such a grand word for such an obviously completely emotional non-thought process, was that if there are possible consequences to being impolite, then people will stop being impolite... or, at least, there will be considerably less impoliteness, because rude people will get shot and then they won't be rude any more.
Now, think about that. When you boil that down to its basics, what Heinlein (and quite a few others I've read over the years who agree with him) is saying is, if someone is rude to me, I should be able to shoot that motherfucker.
It should be legal to murder someone because they said something that pissed you off.
This is madness. If you can't see that it's madness, then you probably need to stop reading this essay, because you're probably wishing that you could legally shoot me for offending you, and there's just no talking to you.
A great many people seem to feel this way... not that, you know, they should be able to haul out a gun and murder anyone who offends them in any way, but that, you know, they SHOULD be able to take otheractions against such people. That 'hate speech' -- which means, pretty much, anything that offends any one particular person or group of people who have the ears of a majority of legislators -- should be illegal. That boycotts should be organized to keep writers with controversial political opinions from being published in certain venues.
That homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to teach, because, presumably, their 'gay cooties' will get on our kids.
If any of these things seem ludicrous to you, and you are a reasonable and mature and fair minded person, then ALL of these things should seem ludicrous to you.
If you're offended by the notion that gay people shouldn't be allowed to teach (or marry each other), but you think it's just great to try to put pressure on a major publisher to not publish work by an author whose political views you intensely dislike... you're a hypocrite.
It's hard to really, really genuinely support freedom of speech. Freedom of expression. Equal access to the law. Equal opportunity. It really is. For most people, there's always a "Yes, but". I'm all about freedom of speech, yes, but... not for the Illinois Neo Nazis, because I hate them. I'm all for equal access to opportunity, yes... but... not for Orson Scott Card, because he's a bigot and I hate him. I'm all for equal access to the law, but... not for homosexuals, because it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
And I'm a firm believer in complete freedom of expression, but, you know, let's get real... the Westboro Baptist Church is a bunch of douchebags, and Kanye West is an asshole, so, you know, let's find a way to shut those guys up.
We would all like to live in a world where no one ever does anything to offend or irritate or annoy or anger us. We would all like to go through our lives and never ever ever under any circumstances encounter or perceive or in any way interact with anything that makes us feel threatened or affronted or alienated or in any way uncomfortable. We'd all like that.
But if we're adults, we don't expect it. We know it's not reasonable to expect everyone else in the world to make our feelings and sensibility a priority in their day to day existence. We understand that we really cannot presume to tell other people how they can dress, where they can go, what they can say, what they're allowed to think.
As a grown up, I understand that I have to take some responsibility for my own emotional responses to things, especially when my emotional response is something along the lines of outrage or repulsion. Essentially, my dividing line is a simple one: if I don't think someone is deliberately trying to offend me, and they're not actually causing me or someone else I care about harm, well, then, I try hard not to lose my shit.
On the other hand, if someone is deliberately trying to provoke or offend me, well, the onus shifts. Those who choose to behave in a manner that they have calculated will probably inflame the passions of others should not be surprised when their efforts are successful. Making someon else love, admire, or respect you is often difficult; making someone else really really REALLY pissed off at you is easy.
But, again... as a grown up, I have to take some responsibility for my own umbrage.
If you're coming at me to cause me physical harm or death, or to damage or harm my legitimate possessions and/or interests, then I have a right to take action to stop you, or to expect the society I am part of to take action on my behalf to protect me.
But if you're just talking shit and pissing me off, well... not so much.
Even if you're doing it on purpose, hoping to piss me off... well, that's on you, but, it's also on me. I need to be a grown up about it.
We need to stop talking so much about ways to keep other people from offending us. We need to work on not being so easily offended.
At least, if we genuinely want to live in a free society, we do.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
AVENGERSing
Watching AVENGERS again.
Cap's introduction is entirely wrong. It's fun and full of nifty dialogue, which are Whedon's trademarks. But it's just not right.
First thing: Cap is in a gym, pounding a heavy bag. We get all these flashbacks from the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie, plus one brief scene we hadn't seen before showing someone waving some kind of sensor over Cap's unthawing body and saying "This ...guy is alive!" At that point, Cap loses his temper and hits the heavy bag so hard he breaks its chain and sends it flying.
The flashbacks are okay, except for one thing: Cap would be thinking about Bucky's death. That's what would make him hit the bag so hard he sends it flying. At that time in Marvel continuity, all Cap ever thought about when he had time to brood was Bucky's death.
The dialogue is all right... "When I went under, we were at war. I wake up, they tell me we won. They didn't tell me what we lost." That's okay; all of Stan Lee's characters in the Silver Age eat, drink, and breathe self pity. But Cap would have mentioned Bucky, and he would have been thinking about Bucky.
Beyond that, though, the whole scene is... weird. The boxing gestalt is Daredevil's, not Cap's. Leaving that aside, why all the heavy bags lined up on the floor? This essentially says, Cap knows that he's going to keep breaking bags, so he lines up a lot of them so he can keep punching them and punching them and punching them. Apparently, this is how he spends all his time. That's not right at all for Cap. No matter how out of his time and alienated he's feeling, Cap is an intellectual... a man who's primary weapon is his brain, not his fists. He was a 'little guy' all his life; at this point in his experience arc, he's been a super competent fighter, a very physical soldier and superhero, for maybe a few years. He's not going to spend hours smashing heavy bag after heavy bag... that's something a jock would do. And Cap wouldn't do it anyway, if for no other reason, out of respect for someone else's property.
And why does he pick up the next heavy bag in line and carry it out with him, along with his gym bag and the folder Fury has brought to him? Does he need a heavy bag back at his apartment? Seriously, what the fuck?
I know Whedon is trying to quickly demonstrate Cap's martial abilities and somewhat superhuman strength along with some character points, but this scene doesn't really do any of that. A better scene would have been Cap in a SHIELD armory somewhere, assembling and disassembling some modern weapons, while a SHIELD instructor stands there, astonished at how fast Cap learns and how incredible his dexterity and hand-eye coordination are.
Or, even better, Cap sparring with some young SHIELD agents, throwing three or four of them around at once while bounding around the room off the walls and various pieces of equipment... and then some young hero worshipping kid asks for a demonstration of how he throws his shield, so Cap says "Not a problem" and tosses his shield so it bounces off six different things and comes back to his hand... turns around... and the young agent who asked him to do it looks like Bucky. And we get the flashback of Bucky dying, plus a few others, maybe. Then Cap just turns and walks out of the room, leaving everyone behind him going 'WTF'? And then Fury comes up to him in the hall.
Anyway. Hindsight is always 20/20, I guess.
Cap's introduction is entirely wrong. It's fun and full of nifty dialogue, which are Whedon's trademarks. But it's just not right.
First thing: Cap is in a gym, pounding a heavy bag. We get all these flashbacks from the CAPTAIN AMERICA movie, plus one brief scene we hadn't seen before showing someone waving some kind of sensor over Cap's unthawing body and saying "This ...guy is alive!" At that point, Cap loses his temper and hits the heavy bag so hard he breaks its chain and sends it flying.
The flashbacks are okay, except for one thing: Cap would be thinking about Bucky's death. That's what would make him hit the bag so hard he sends it flying. At that time in Marvel continuity, all Cap ever thought about when he had time to brood was Bucky's death.
The dialogue is all right... "When I went under, we were at war. I wake up, they tell me we won. They didn't tell me what we lost." That's okay; all of Stan Lee's characters in the Silver Age eat, drink, and breathe self pity. But Cap would have mentioned Bucky, and he would have been thinking about Bucky.
Beyond that, though, the whole scene is... weird. The boxing gestalt is Daredevil's, not Cap's. Leaving that aside, why all the heavy bags lined up on the floor? This essentially says, Cap knows that he's going to keep breaking bags, so he lines up a lot of them so he can keep punching them and punching them and punching them. Apparently, this is how he spends all his time. That's not right at all for Cap. No matter how out of his time and alienated he's feeling, Cap is an intellectual... a man who's primary weapon is his brain, not his fists. He was a 'little guy' all his life; at this point in his experience arc, he's been a super competent fighter, a very physical soldier and superhero, for maybe a few years. He's not going to spend hours smashing heavy bag after heavy bag... that's something a jock would do. And Cap wouldn't do it anyway, if for no other reason, out of respect for someone else's property.
And why does he pick up the next heavy bag in line and carry it out with him, along with his gym bag and the folder Fury has brought to him? Does he need a heavy bag back at his apartment? Seriously, what the fuck?
I know Whedon is trying to quickly demonstrate Cap's martial abilities and somewhat superhuman strength along with some character points, but this scene doesn't really do any of that. A better scene would have been Cap in a SHIELD armory somewhere, assembling and disassembling some modern weapons, while a SHIELD instructor stands there, astonished at how fast Cap learns and how incredible his dexterity and hand-eye coordination are.
Or, even better, Cap sparring with some young SHIELD agents, throwing three or four of them around at once while bounding around the room off the walls and various pieces of equipment... and then some young hero worshipping kid asks for a demonstration of how he throws his shield, so Cap says "Not a problem" and tosses his shield so it bounces off six different things and comes back to his hand... turns around... and the young agent who asked him to do it looks like Bucky. And we get the flashback of Bucky dying, plus a few others, maybe. Then Cap just turns and walks out of the room, leaving everyone behind him going 'WTF'? And then Fury comes up to him in the hall.
Anyway. Hindsight is always 20/20, I guess.
ARGO fuck yourself
Saw ARGO last night. The setting of the film and its political nature immediately and irresistably led to me comparing it it to Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, and the comparisons were not kind to ARGO.
It may simply be that the entire cast of ATPM was enormously superior to the entire castd of ARGO; we're talking Redford, Hoffman, Robards, Holbrook, Warden, and Balsam vs the likes of Ben Affl...eck and Tate Donovan here, after all. (To be fair, John Goodman and Alan Arkin are fine actors; it's probably no coincidence that they created the only memorable characters in the entire movie.)
Or it may just be that Ben Affleck is an incompetent director. For a movie like ARGO to work, we have to give a shit about the characters, and we just don't... everybody is a cipher except for Affleck's main character (and wasn't he brave, reserving that central role, the heroic young CIA exfiltration expert, for himself; god knows a lesser actor than Ben Affleck could easily have fucked up such a challenging and nuanced part) and, as previously mentioned, the Goodman and Arkin bits.
Goodman and Arkin make their guys work simply because Goodman and Arkin are so charming; Affleck's character rises (to the extent that it does) to maybe two and a half dimensions simply because Affleck reserves all the nifty, heartwarming characterization bits to himself, leaving the six people trapped in Iran to such brilliant characterization displays as desperate gazes while doing the washing up after dinner, and heartfelt, moaning protests of "It won't work, you're just going to get us killed", repeated over and over again when Affleck's character finally shows up to save them.
That these people don't know Affleck's character and don't trust him to save their asses is obvious and sensible; the moment where Affleck's character wins their trust by revealing his real name, rather than his cover identity, to them is pure cornball and completely unconvincing. A better director might have made us believe it by getting better peformances out of his actors; Affleck seems to feel certain we'll buy it because, well, he's Ben Affleck and he's just that fucking awesome.
Whatever the case may be, ARGO didn't convince me or persuade me or pull me into it, and, frankly, the third grade level history lesson regarding the American foreign policy blunders that led to the hostage crisis, and the impact that crisis had on American politics, was just insulting to my intelligence. Over the course of this movie the Presidency actually changes from Jimmy Carter's hands to Ronald Reagan's... but the movie doesn't even mention this. I mean, seriously, an in depth movie about the Iranian hostage crisis, and it doesn't even note when Carter leaves office and Reagan takes over. That's just mind boggling.
Overall, I have little doubt this thing will win Best Picture... we are, after all, the culture that loves Honey Boo Boo and FAMILY FEUD.
It may simply be that the entire cast of ATPM was enormously superior to the entire castd of ARGO; we're talking Redford, Hoffman, Robards, Holbrook, Warden, and Balsam vs the likes of Ben Affl...eck and Tate Donovan here, after all. (To be fair, John Goodman and Alan Arkin are fine actors; it's probably no coincidence that they created the only memorable characters in the entire movie.)
Or it may just be that Ben Affleck is an incompetent director. For a movie like ARGO to work, we have to give a shit about the characters, and we just don't... everybody is a cipher except for Affleck's main character (and wasn't he brave, reserving that central role, the heroic young CIA exfiltration expert, for himself; god knows a lesser actor than Ben Affleck could easily have fucked up such a challenging and nuanced part) and, as previously mentioned, the Goodman and Arkin bits.
Goodman and Arkin make their guys work simply because Goodman and Arkin are so charming; Affleck's character rises (to the extent that it does) to maybe two and a half dimensions simply because Affleck reserves all the nifty, heartwarming characterization bits to himself, leaving the six people trapped in Iran to such brilliant characterization displays as desperate gazes while doing the washing up after dinner, and heartfelt, moaning protests of "It won't work, you're just going to get us killed", repeated over and over again when Affleck's character finally shows up to save them.
That these people don't know Affleck's character and don't trust him to save their asses is obvious and sensible; the moment where Affleck's character wins their trust by revealing his real name, rather than his cover identity, to them is pure cornball and completely unconvincing. A better director might have made us believe it by getting better peformances out of his actors; Affleck seems to feel certain we'll buy it because, well, he's Ben Affleck and he's just that fucking awesome.
Whatever the case may be, ARGO didn't convince me or persuade me or pull me into it, and, frankly, the third grade level history lesson regarding the American foreign policy blunders that led to the hostage crisis, and the impact that crisis had on American politics, was just insulting to my intelligence. Over the course of this movie the Presidency actually changes from Jimmy Carter's hands to Ronald Reagan's... but the movie doesn't even mention this. I mean, seriously, an in depth movie about the Iranian hostage crisis, and it doesn't even note when Carter leaves office and Reagan takes over. That's just mind boggling.
Overall, I have little doubt this thing will win Best Picture... we are, after all, the culture that loves Honey Boo Boo and FAMILY FEUD.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The anti social contract
I understand when people who are already established in a profession refuse to help others get a foothold in that profession. I get all the reasons. They don't owe anybody anything. They made it on their own, so should other people. They only have a finite amount of time, they can't read everything that people would like them to, they can't offer individualized feedback, they have their own li...ves and their own livings to make.
I even get that, hey, everyone is struggling these days and why should someone who is already established in a desirable line of work help someone else who might someday be competing with them? That's not one that I've heard any veteran author offer me for why he or she won't help me, but I'm sure it's something that occurs to at least some of them, and hey, of all the reasons, that's the one I can have the most respect for. If you're having a hard time getting paying work in a business you wan to stay in, why would you help someone else come up and grab some of the little work you're getting? I get that. I do.
As to the others: If you genuinely feel you don't owe anybody else anything, hey, that's great. And if you genuinely made it on your own, without any mentoring from someone more successful than you are, without specific feedback and/or tips, without someone inside the industry opening a door or a window for you to help you out of that slush pile, then, hey, you're right. You don't owe anyone else shit. You worked and you submitted and eventually someone recognized your talent and you have reaped the reward for it.
All of which means, you got enormously lucky. You won that one in a million sweepstakes; somebody who actually had the power to say 'yes' instead of 'no' actually read your unsolicited work, under an unknown byline, and said 'hey, this is good shit'. And you deserve your success... but please understand, you got lucky. Because that didn't happen a whole lot even back in the day... and I'm not convinced it EVER happens anymore. EVER.
I study the marketplace and any time one of my favorite authors gives an interview advising how they got their first big break, here's what I notice: they weren't in the slush pile. No, they weren't. They may have written a ton of unsolicited shit and submitted as an unknown for years... but whatever it was that they first sold, if they sold it in the last twenty or thirty years, wherever that breakthrough came from, it came because they'd managed to make a contact inside the industry. Somebody told them "Okay, here's how you get this in front of the right guy" or "Okay, I'll make a phone call" or "Yeah, this is good, but you'll never get noticed in the pile... let me walk this upstairs and put it on someone's desk".
So if you got in on your own, without an agent (which are now impossible to get without an established track record of publication, which is an interesting Catch-22) or a friend inside the publisher's office or a mentor reaching out on your behalf or giving you vital inside information (like, for example, "The guy who is writing and editing POWER MAN/IRON FIST and DAREDEVIL just got told he has to stop writing one of them, he's going to keep DAREDEVIL, so he needs a new writer for POWER MAN/IRON FIST right NOW", which is a real world example of inside info that launched the career of one of comics most successful and widely revered writers) or some other kind of help from someone already on the inside... fantastic.
You're absolutely right... you don't owe anyone anything.
But at least admit... you got astonishingly lucky. And maybe stop and reflect on how frustrating it is for those of us who can't seem to win the lottery the same way... or, maybe... the industry has changed since you managed to bootstrap your way into it. (Like, for just one of many things, it is now impossible to get an agent to represent you until you have been published.)
Now, if you got in because someone helped you, then you have no right to say, you don't owe anyone anything. You of all people should understand the value of that helping hand. And if you have no time to help a brotha or sista out, then at least take a moment to reflect on what your life would be like if the person who you your first break from had felt THEY had no time for you.
You might be sitting across the aisle from me at the call center, feeling awfully aggravated when every veteran author on Facebook keeps telling you, over and over again, I don't have time, I don't owe anyone anything, I made it on my own, hey, just keep trying!
When you know perfectly well that, if only they could find the time, if only they would make the effort, if only you could get them to read that story, to make that phone call, to give you that invaluable bit of info, to walk that manuscript upstairs and put it on the right desk, to even put a lousy positive blurb on your Amazon page and in their Facebook feed... they would transform your entire existence.
What's most aggravating of all? The world hasn't really changed that much. You've always needed help to get in. Mary Steenburgen's editor character in THE HELP, a movie that is set in the early 60s, advises Emma Stone's author character that if she can't get a finished manuscript in by the end of the year, then it will go in "the pile... and you don't want to be in the pile". One of my favorite authors got her first break because a friend of hers who worked for a publisher told her that her STAR TREK novel was too good to be a STAR TREK novel and she should rewrite it as an original story... and pointed her to somebody else she knew at another publisher. Had SHARDS OF HONOR gone into the slush pile by a then unknown Lois McMaster Bujold, it would probably still be sitting there, and she might be working in a canning plant somewhere. And the world would not have Miles Vorkosigan, which would be an immeasurable loss.
But, fortunately, her friend was not too busy to help her. Just like my one time college buddy's friend who worked as Marvel's Direct Sales editor was not too busy to advise him that Denny O'Neil suddenly had an urgent need for a POWER MAN/IRON FIST writer.
This is how the industry works. Maybe it hasn't always worked that way, but it certainly has for much if not all of my life. You're not going to break in out of the slush pile. 'Just keep trying' isn't going to work. You need someone to help you.
It's a pity that everyone is too busy, and no one owes anyone anything.
Now, any established author that I am FB friends with, who takes the time to read this all the way through, is going to be mortally offended by this. Because they DON'T owe me anything, and how dare I insinuate otherwise? Who the hell am I to judge them?
My response to that is, if you're an established author and you're reading this on Facebook, I'm somebody who buys your writing and enjoys your work. That's who I am. And you certainly don't mind me judging you when my judgment is "I think I'll give this guy some cash."
Plus, why the hell do you care what I think about you anyway? I'm just some whiney jerk you don't even know.
And you don't owe me anything.
So don't worry about it.
I even get that, hey, everyone is struggling these days and why should someone who is already established in a desirable line of work help someone else who might someday be competing with them? That's not one that I've heard any veteran author offer me for why he or she won't help me, but I'm sure it's something that occurs to at least some of them, and hey, of all the reasons, that's the one I can have the most respect for. If you're having a hard time getting paying work in a business you wan to stay in, why would you help someone else come up and grab some of the little work you're getting? I get that. I do.
As to the others: If you genuinely feel you don't owe anybody else anything, hey, that's great. And if you genuinely made it on your own, without any mentoring from someone more successful than you are, without specific feedback and/or tips, without someone inside the industry opening a door or a window for you to help you out of that slush pile, then, hey, you're right. You don't owe anyone else shit. You worked and you submitted and eventually someone recognized your talent and you have reaped the reward for it.
All of which means, you got enormously lucky. You won that one in a million sweepstakes; somebody who actually had the power to say 'yes' instead of 'no' actually read your unsolicited work, under an unknown byline, and said 'hey, this is good shit'. And you deserve your success... but please understand, you got lucky. Because that didn't happen a whole lot even back in the day... and I'm not convinced it EVER happens anymore. EVER.
I study the marketplace and any time one of my favorite authors gives an interview advising how they got their first big break, here's what I notice: they weren't in the slush pile. No, they weren't. They may have written a ton of unsolicited shit and submitted as an unknown for years... but whatever it was that they first sold, if they sold it in the last twenty or thirty years, wherever that breakthrough came from, it came because they'd managed to make a contact inside the industry. Somebody told them "Okay, here's how you get this in front of the right guy" or "Okay, I'll make a phone call" or "Yeah, this is good, but you'll never get noticed in the pile... let me walk this upstairs and put it on someone's desk".
So if you got in on your own, without an agent (which are now impossible to get without an established track record of publication, which is an interesting Catch-22) or a friend inside the publisher's office or a mentor reaching out on your behalf or giving you vital inside information (like, for example, "The guy who is writing and editing POWER MAN/IRON FIST and DAREDEVIL just got told he has to stop writing one of them, he's going to keep DAREDEVIL, so he needs a new writer for POWER MAN/IRON FIST right NOW", which is a real world example of inside info that launched the career of one of comics most successful and widely revered writers) or some other kind of help from someone already on the inside... fantastic.
You're absolutely right... you don't owe anyone anything.
But at least admit... you got astonishingly lucky. And maybe stop and reflect on how frustrating it is for those of us who can't seem to win the lottery the same way... or, maybe... the industry has changed since you managed to bootstrap your way into it. (Like, for just one of many things, it is now impossible to get an agent to represent you until you have been published.)
Now, if you got in because someone helped you, then you have no right to say, you don't owe anyone anything. You of all people should understand the value of that helping hand. And if you have no time to help a brotha or sista out, then at least take a moment to reflect on what your life would be like if the person who you your first break from had felt THEY had no time for you.
You might be sitting across the aisle from me at the call center, feeling awfully aggravated when every veteran author on Facebook keeps telling you, over and over again, I don't have time, I don't owe anyone anything, I made it on my own, hey, just keep trying!
When you know perfectly well that, if only they could find the time, if only they would make the effort, if only you could get them to read that story, to make that phone call, to give you that invaluable bit of info, to walk that manuscript upstairs and put it on the right desk, to even put a lousy positive blurb on your Amazon page and in their Facebook feed... they would transform your entire existence.
What's most aggravating of all? The world hasn't really changed that much. You've always needed help to get in. Mary Steenburgen's editor character in THE HELP, a movie that is set in the early 60s, advises Emma Stone's author character that if she can't get a finished manuscript in by the end of the year, then it will go in "the pile... and you don't want to be in the pile". One of my favorite authors got her first break because a friend of hers who worked for a publisher told her that her STAR TREK novel was too good to be a STAR TREK novel and she should rewrite it as an original story... and pointed her to somebody else she knew at another publisher. Had SHARDS OF HONOR gone into the slush pile by a then unknown Lois McMaster Bujold, it would probably still be sitting there, and she might be working in a canning plant somewhere. And the world would not have Miles Vorkosigan, which would be an immeasurable loss.
But, fortunately, her friend was not too busy to help her. Just like my one time college buddy's friend who worked as Marvel's Direct Sales editor was not too busy to advise him that Denny O'Neil suddenly had an urgent need for a POWER MAN/IRON FIST writer.
This is how the industry works. Maybe it hasn't always worked that way, but it certainly has for much if not all of my life. You're not going to break in out of the slush pile. 'Just keep trying' isn't going to work. You need someone to help you.
It's a pity that everyone is too busy, and no one owes anyone anything.
Now, any established author that I am FB friends with, who takes the time to read this all the way through, is going to be mortally offended by this. Because they DON'T owe me anything, and how dare I insinuate otherwise? Who the hell am I to judge them?
My response to that is, if you're an established author and you're reading this on Facebook, I'm somebody who buys your writing and enjoys your work. That's who I am. And you certainly don't mind me judging you when my judgment is "I think I'll give this guy some cash."
Plus, why the hell do you care what I think about you anyway? I'm just some whiney jerk you don't even know.
And you don't owe me anything.
So don't worry about it.
Friday, December 21, 2012
And the bomb drops down
Some thoughts on surviving the Apocalypse:
I'm not going to.
This is a rough thing for anyone who has grown up as steeped in pulp fiction -- superhero comics, Doc Savage novels, the science fiction of Robert A. Heinlein and Dean Ing and all those other good After The Bomb shock jocks -- to admit to. But it's the simple truth.
You see those people on THE WALKING DEAD? Yes, every single one of them except Darryl is a disfunctional asshole I'd walk a mile to avoid (well, I liked Dale, too, but he's gone now). But here's what they aren't -- they aren't fat, like me. They aren't legally blind, like I am without heavy duty corrective lenses. They aren't dependent on medication, like I am on allergy meds and Prilosec. And, apparently, they don't fly into a panic and run screaming into a tree or a wall or an abandoned vehicle, like I would if a horde of slavering Undead, or even one, came shambling at me out of the trees.
Also unlike me, they have useful, practical skills. They can operate, maintain, and repair complex machinery, like motor vehicles, generators, and firearms. They can shoot straight, move quickly and quietly, think quickly, and keep their heads when all around them are flipping their shit. None of this remotely describes me.
I am a child of civilization. I am a dreamy, imaginative sort. I do not like snakes or rats or bugs or wearing wet clothes or being dirty or the sight of blood (especially my own). I am a picky eater. I enjoy reading and watching movies and eating pizza and cuddling with my wife and occasionally my youngest daughter, who has not yet outgrown the occasional snuggle with her folks. I love hot showers, and central heating/AC, and soft places to sit and lie down and sleep, and blankets, and doors that lock.
I'm not going to survive the Apocalypse. I'm just not. And here's a news flash:
You're probably not either.
I don't care how many guns you stockpile, I don't care how much canned food and bottled water you have in your basement, I don't care how carefully you have reinforced all your locks and windows and checked all the sightlines from your front and back porches. I don't care. You, also, are a child of civilization. You may have wonderful vision (although few of us do), you may be flat stomached and wiry as hell, you may not get sinus miseries in the spring and the fall and the summer and any time except the dead of winter, you may not be diabetic or have high blood pressure or bad acid reflux or any of the many, many other chronic conditions we take effective medications for now.
Nonetheless, you are a child of civilization, and you are not prepared for the Apocalypse, no matter how much you kid yourself you are. You are not ready to kill. You are not ready to fight tooth and nail. Youa re not ready to make tough decisions.
You know how I know this?
Because if I know you, you are a nice person, and nice people are not going to prosper after the Apocalypse. Only really violent amoral sociopaths are going to do well after the Apocalypse. You know. Uncivilized sorts.
I'm not going to survive the Apocalypse.
That's okay. I don't want to. Life in the ruins of Western Civilization will be a waking screaming horror for someone like me, and, I suspect, someone like you... but more important, I don't think the Apocalypse is going to happen.
Why not?
I'm a child of civilization... and I have faith in its inherent resilience.
But if I'm wrong, I won't be for very long.
I'm not going to.
This is a rough thing for anyone who has grown up as steeped in pulp fiction -- superhero comics, Doc Savage novels, the science fiction of Robert A. Heinlein and Dean Ing and all those other good After The Bomb shock jocks -- to admit to. But it's the simple truth.
You see those people on THE WALKING DEAD? Yes, every single one of them except Darryl is a disfunctional asshole I'd walk a mile to avoid (well, I liked Dale, too, but he's gone now). But here's what they aren't -- they aren't fat, like me. They aren't legally blind, like I am without heavy duty corrective lenses. They aren't dependent on medication, like I am on allergy meds and Prilosec. And, apparently, they don't fly into a panic and run screaming into a tree or a wall or an abandoned vehicle, like I would if a horde of slavering Undead, or even one, came shambling at me out of the trees.
Also unlike me, they have useful, practical skills. They can operate, maintain, and repair complex machinery, like motor vehicles, generators, and firearms. They can shoot straight, move quickly and quietly, think quickly, and keep their heads when all around them are flipping their shit. None of this remotely describes me.
I am a child of civilization. I am a dreamy, imaginative sort. I do not like snakes or rats or bugs or wearing wet clothes or being dirty or the sight of blood (especially my own). I am a picky eater. I enjoy reading and watching movies and eating pizza and cuddling with my wife and occasionally my youngest daughter, who has not yet outgrown the occasional snuggle with her folks. I love hot showers, and central heating/AC, and soft places to sit and lie down and sleep, and blankets, and doors that lock.
I'm not going to survive the Apocalypse. I'm just not. And here's a news flash:
You're probably not either.
I don't care how many guns you stockpile, I don't care how much canned food and bottled water you have in your basement, I don't care how carefully you have reinforced all your locks and windows and checked all the sightlines from your front and back porches. I don't care. You, also, are a child of civilization. You may have wonderful vision (although few of us do), you may be flat stomached and wiry as hell, you may not get sinus miseries in the spring and the fall and the summer and any time except the dead of winter, you may not be diabetic or have high blood pressure or bad acid reflux or any of the many, many other chronic conditions we take effective medications for now.
Nonetheless, you are a child of civilization, and you are not prepared for the Apocalypse, no matter how much you kid yourself you are. You are not ready to kill. You are not ready to fight tooth and nail. Youa re not ready to make tough decisions.
You know how I know this?
Because if I know you, you are a nice person, and nice people are not going to prosper after the Apocalypse. Only really violent amoral sociopaths are going to do well after the Apocalypse. You know. Uncivilized sorts.
I'm not going to survive the Apocalypse.
That's okay. I don't want to. Life in the ruins of Western Civilization will be a waking screaming horror for someone like me, and, I suspect, someone like you... but more important, I don't think the Apocalypse is going to happen.
Why not?
I'm a child of civilization... and I have faith in its inherent resilience.
But if I'm wrong, I won't be for very long.
Monday, December 10, 2012
George Bailey Lassoes Heartbreak
Watching IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE every year has always been a Christmas tradition for me, and it's one my wife enjoys, too. So we watched it again last night.
I cannot count the number of times I've seen this movie. We used to book it every year when I was on the campus Cinema Board, so I probably saw it five times while I was going to college actually projected on a movie screen in a theater, and, of course, I've no doubt seen it at least another fifteen times on videotape and DVD.
As with that other great classic movie of its era, CASABLANCA, the appeal of this film is entirely emotional... there is simply no internal logic to the movie at all.
Just as one random example... one of the earliest scenes in the film shows George Bailey at the age of 11, saving his obviously much younger brother Harry's life when Harry falls into an icy creek while sledding. A few weeks later, George heads in to work at Gower's drugstore and we see Mary and Violet waiting for him at the counter. George has been clearly identified by heavenly authority as being 11 at this point in the narrative, and both Violent and Mary seem to be pretty much the same age, while Harry was obviously much younger... nearly a toddler, which would make since, as Harry is supposed to be around 4 years younger than George, which would make him 7 when he nearly drowns. However, when the narrative flashes forward to Harry's high school graduation, we find out that Mary is actually the same age as Harry -- 18. We know brother George is 4 years older than Harry and, in fact, George's contemporary, that jack ass Sam Wainwright, announces loudly that he has just graduated from college in that same scene. So, apparently, Mary was 7 years old when she declared in George's deaf ear that "George Bailey, I'll love you 'til the day I die". Which simply makes no logical sense at all.
Yet the movie is so overwhelmingly powerful on an emotional level that stuff like this just doesn't matter, and, in fact, I had to watch it around thirty times before I realized it. It wasn't until around my 12th viewing that I realized that the guy who eggs Mary's obnoxious date at the dance on into opening up the floor and dumping George and Mary into the hidden swimming pool is Mary's older brother Marty... who is, clearly, some kind of manic depressive psychotic, as he has, just prior to this, begged George to dance with his sister, as a special favor to her ("you'll give her the thrill of her life"). Apparently, Good Marty wants to make his sister and his friend happy, but when Bad Marty sees them having a wonderful time, he thinks "That tramp! I'll show HER!" What a nut job!
Anyway, this time around, I noticed something else for the first time. You know that really corny sequence where George and Mary are walking around in the borrowed clothes after the swimming pool mishap, and George throws a rock at the old Granville House, and Mary asks him what he wished for, and George says "Oh, not just one wish, Mary, but a whole hatful!" and proceeds to detail how he's going to 'shake the dust of Bedford Falls off of his shoes and SEE THE WORLD!'
And Mary gets this peculiar look on her face and starts looking around for a rock to throw so she can make a wish, too.
I realized as I watched that this time that what Mary is thinking at that moment is:
"And now... I must crush his dreams... forever!"
And she does, too.
I cannot count the number of times I've seen this movie. We used to book it every year when I was on the campus Cinema Board, so I probably saw it five times while I was going to college actually projected on a movie screen in a theater, and, of course, I've no doubt seen it at least another fifteen times on videotape and DVD.
As with that other great classic movie of its era, CASABLANCA, the appeal of this film is entirely emotional... there is simply no internal logic to the movie at all.
Just as one random example... one of the earliest scenes in the film shows George Bailey at the age of 11, saving his obviously much younger brother Harry's life when Harry falls into an icy creek while sledding. A few weeks later, George heads in to work at Gower's drugstore and we see Mary and Violet waiting for him at the counter. George has been clearly identified by heavenly authority as being 11 at this point in the narrative, and both Violent and Mary seem to be pretty much the same age, while Harry was obviously much younger... nearly a toddler, which would make since, as Harry is supposed to be around 4 years younger than George, which would make him 7 when he nearly drowns. However, when the narrative flashes forward to Harry's high school graduation, we find out that Mary is actually the same age as Harry -- 18. We know brother George is 4 years older than Harry and, in fact, George's contemporary, that jack ass Sam Wainwright, announces loudly that he has just graduated from college in that same scene. So, apparently, Mary was 7 years old when she declared in George's deaf ear that "George Bailey, I'll love you 'til the day I die". Which simply makes no logical sense at all.
Yet the movie is so overwhelmingly powerful on an emotional level that stuff like this just doesn't matter, and, in fact, I had to watch it around thirty times before I realized it. It wasn't until around my 12th viewing that I realized that the guy who eggs Mary's obnoxious date at the dance on into opening up the floor and dumping George and Mary into the hidden swimming pool is Mary's older brother Marty... who is, clearly, some kind of manic depressive psychotic, as he has, just prior to this, begged George to dance with his sister, as a special favor to her ("you'll give her the thrill of her life"). Apparently, Good Marty wants to make his sister and his friend happy, but when Bad Marty sees them having a wonderful time, he thinks "That tramp! I'll show HER!" What a nut job!
Anyway, this time around, I noticed something else for the first time. You know that really corny sequence where George and Mary are walking around in the borrowed clothes after the swimming pool mishap, and George throws a rock at the old Granville House, and Mary asks him what he wished for, and George says "Oh, not just one wish, Mary, but a whole hatful!" and proceeds to detail how he's going to 'shake the dust of Bedford Falls off of his shoes and SEE THE WORLD!'
And Mary gets this peculiar look on her face and starts looking around for a rock to throw so she can make a wish, too.
I realized as I watched that this time that what Mary is thinking at that moment is:
"And now... I must crush his dreams... forever!"
And she does, too.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
The black rabbit
You know, I'm a negative bastard... or so it would seem from what I post on the internet. I nit pick, I criticize, I bitch and moan endlessly about all sorts of shit that displeases, annoys, or offends me, and there is indeed all sorts of shit that rises to that apparently very low standard.
I should be more cheerful. I should. I have a wonderful wife and tremendously excellent daughters and good friends many of which I do not see anywhere near enough (like Mark Gibson and his inestimable family, who are so tremendous as to be nearly as tremendous as my family) and I've got a job which provides excellent benefits and the opportunity to be screamed at thirty or forty times a day by strangers for shit that isn't my fault and that certainly reasonable enlightened adults wouldn't scream at anyone about.
I should be more upbeat.
But then I walk into the break room to get some lunch and nobody else is in there but FAMILY FUED is blathering from the TV so I grab the remote and switch it to something else, anything else, please, God, I'll take the fucking Kardashians for the few minutes I'll be in here over the goddam wretched appalling excrement-encrusted consensus celebrating conformity rewarding FAMILY FEUD... and I haven't made it to the vending machines which are thirty feet away before someone else has come into the room, shrieked in horror upon discovering that the TV is not tuned to FAMILY FEUD, and hurled their bodies across the room towards the remote, gibbering in dismay that they may have to spend as much as four seconds of their break or lunch period without the slick urbane inanities of Steve Harvey or the emotionally retarded dimwittedly risque topics he so smoothly exploits each and every weekday.
Has there ever been an episode of this show where at least one contestant did not smugly preen and posture about their involvement with their local church? Has there ever been an episode where some homely woman did not squeal in glee when her homelier mate or disfunctional family member managed to match "my wife's butt" with a topic like "things a man would like to eat off" as if this were the very apex of drollery and finely pointed wit in human experience? Has there ever been an episode where the two teams of contestants did not all appear to be bovinely unconcerned with anything beyond how much money they could make wringing their barely functional brain cells for the most obvious semantic and thematic linkages conceivable and then announcing them in the most unctious, smarmy manner they could manage?
What the fuck is wrong with the culture I inhabit, that we enshrine this show as an object of daily worship, and yet not one American high school graduate in ten can even formulate a coherent written sentence any more... much less an original thought?
I should be more cheerful. I should. I have a wonderful wife and tremendously excellent daughters and good friends many of which I do not see anywhere near enough (like Mark Gibson and his inestimable family, who are so tremendous as to be nearly as tremendous as my family) and I've got a job which provides excellent benefits and the opportunity to be screamed at thirty or forty times a day by strangers for shit that isn't my fault and that certainly reasonable enlightened adults wouldn't scream at anyone about.
I should be more upbeat.
But then I walk into the break room to get some lunch and nobody else is in there but FAMILY FUED is blathering from the TV so I grab the remote and switch it to something else, anything else, please, God, I'll take the fucking Kardashians for the few minutes I'll be in here over the goddam wretched appalling excrement-encrusted consensus celebrating conformity rewarding FAMILY FEUD... and I haven't made it to the vending machines which are thirty feet away before someone else has come into the room, shrieked in horror upon discovering that the TV is not tuned to FAMILY FEUD, and hurled their bodies across the room towards the remote, gibbering in dismay that they may have to spend as much as four seconds of their break or lunch period without the slick urbane inanities of Steve Harvey or the emotionally retarded dimwittedly risque topics he so smoothly exploits each and every weekday.
Has there ever been an episode of this show where at least one contestant did not smugly preen and posture about their involvement with their local church? Has there ever been an episode where some homely woman did not squeal in glee when her homelier mate or disfunctional family member managed to match "my wife's butt" with a topic like "things a man would like to eat off" as if this were the very apex of drollery and finely pointed wit in human experience? Has there ever been an episode where the two teams of contestants did not all appear to be bovinely unconcerned with anything beyond how much money they could make wringing their barely functional brain cells for the most obvious semantic and thematic linkages conceivable and then announcing them in the most unctious, smarmy manner they could manage?
What the fuck is wrong with the culture I inhabit, that we enshrine this show as an object of daily worship, and yet not one American high school graduate in ten can even formulate a coherent written sentence any more... much less an original thought?
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Schadenfrude Claus
If the Mitt Romney nomination and the political campaign that followed it demonstrates any one thing with crystal clarity, it is the deeply held belief on the part of the Republican Party's uppermost hierarchy that all they have to do to win an election is nominate a good looking, smooth talking white guy.
On some level, at least some of them (not Rush, but Karl Rove, probably) are aware that a good looking, smooth talking white guy will piss some people off, if that's all that's there... especially if the smooth talk is almost entirely smoke and bullshit. As it absolutely was with Romney, and generally is with any Republican candidate to a great extent ("morning in America", "family values", "compassionate conservatism"... what the fuck does any of that even MEAN? Republicans are masters of emotionally loaded phrases that, upon any kind of semantic analysis, have absolutely no real meaning at all).
But while they realize that there is a part of the electorate that will not be fooled by slick sounding bullshit, and will not be automatically charmed by a big toothy grin plastered all over a good looking Caucasian face, they have not yet fully grasped that that part of the electorate is now large enough to actually elect someone else. They simply cannot comprehend that we now live in an America where your candidate (lying thieving not particularly bright scumbag that he was) can snatch up 60% of the white male vote... and STILL FUCKING LOSE.
It's like these guys have watched so many episodes of MAD MEN that they no longer really dig that it's a period piece... and, you know, fictional. Because by God, they ran Don Draper for President, and 60% of American white guys voted for him... and he LOST. WTF, America?
But they have a genuine quandary. The Tea Party originally intended to be a third party, and Karl Rove ran from one end of the country to another passing out candy and handjobs to keep them inside the Republican tent. So there they are... and they've absolutely poisoned the well. Republican candidates for ANYthing are now faced with a horrible dilemma... they can appease the Tea Party and get past the primary... but then they'll lose the election, because the Tea Party is nuts. Or, they can try to take some kind of sane, reasonable position on the issues people really care about... and have the Tea Party denounce them as heretics, which will destroy them in Republican politics.
The Repubs HAVE to let the Tea Party go; they're crazy and they're no longer even remotely helping. But if they lose that 12%, they have no way to make it up with moderates and undecideds... unless they substantively revamp most of their policies. Which they really don't want to do.
I say, Christmas came early and Santa was packing a big bag of schadenfrude.
On some level, at least some of them (not Rush, but Karl Rove, probably) are aware that a good looking, smooth talking white guy will piss some people off, if that's all that's there... especially if the smooth talk is almost entirely smoke and bullshit. As it absolutely was with Romney, and generally is with any Republican candidate to a great extent ("morning in America", "family values", "compassionate conservatism"... what the fuck does any of that even MEAN? Republicans are masters of emotionally loaded phrases that, upon any kind of semantic analysis, have absolutely no real meaning at all).
But while they realize that there is a part of the electorate that will not be fooled by slick sounding bullshit, and will not be automatically charmed by a big toothy grin plastered all over a good looking Caucasian face, they have not yet fully grasped that that part of the electorate is now large enough to actually elect someone else. They simply cannot comprehend that we now live in an America where your candidate (lying thieving not particularly bright scumbag that he was) can snatch up 60% of the white male vote... and STILL FUCKING LOSE.
It's like these guys have watched so many episodes of MAD MEN that they no longer really dig that it's a period piece... and, you know, fictional. Because by God, they ran Don Draper for President, and 60% of American white guys voted for him... and he LOST. WTF, America?
But they have a genuine quandary. The Tea Party originally intended to be a third party, and Karl Rove ran from one end of the country to another passing out candy and handjobs to keep them inside the Republican tent. So there they are... and they've absolutely poisoned the well. Republican candidates for ANYthing are now faced with a horrible dilemma... they can appease the Tea Party and get past the primary... but then they'll lose the election, because the Tea Party is nuts. Or, they can try to take some kind of sane, reasonable position on the issues people really care about... and have the Tea Party denounce them as heretics, which will destroy them in Republican politics.
The Repubs HAVE to let the Tea Party go; they're crazy and they're no longer even remotely helping. But if they lose that 12%, they have no way to make it up with moderates and undecideds... unless they substantively revamp most of their policies. Which they really don't want to do.
I say, Christmas came early and Santa was packing a big bag of schadenfrude.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
The way things ought to be
Having a discussion with the Romney supporter in the cubicle across from me.
"What do you know about disaster relief?" he asks me.
"I know your boy wants to privatize it completely," I respond. "Private disaster relief means a lot of rescued rich people."
He shakes that off. "Yeah, I don't think disaster relief should be privatized," he says.
"Maybe not," I say, "but that's what you're voting for. Plus, no gay marriage."
He shakes that off, too. "I don't care about that stuff." He then explains to me that marriage should simply be a religious ceremony, but anyone should be able to enter into a civil contract.
I tell him "Okay, I agree, basically, but whatever you think, you are voting against marriage equality for non heterosexuals."
He shrugs. "No, I'm voting against Obama's economic policies. I don't think we can afford another four years of them."
When I asked what policies he means, he shrugs again. "When I ask myself, 'am I better off now than I was four years ago', I have to say, 'no'."
I hear this argument all the time, and it infuriates me, since it is generally coming from someone on the right, and on the right, everyone claims to be patriotic... except when it comes time to vote against the darkie, in which case, it's all about them, and Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Then.
I ask him if he's a patriot, if he believes in the greater good of the United States of America. He says of course. I say, "And you honestly believe that a guy who made millions of dollars buying American companies, putting their assets in his own pocket, shutting them down, and sending those jobs overseas, is the best guy to run our country?"
He blinks, but he's not fazed. "That's not how it would be," he says. "Look... we just can't afford for more years of Obama's economic policies. What's he done about the federeal bureaucracy?"
"The federal bureaucracy?" I ask him. "Like FEMA?"
"No, no," he says. "It's these public worker unions. They're ridiculous."
"Oh my god," I say. "First it's Obama's economic policies, and then it's the public unions. Just tick on down that list of Fox talking points. Look, dude... if your'e voting for Romney and you make at least six figures, I get it. You're evil and selfish, but I got you. But you're poor, like me. If you're voting for Romney, you're just..." and I substituted, not saying 'stupid' at the last second... "misinformed. Badly misinformed. And you ARE voting for privatization of disaster relief, and continued legalized bias against non heterosexuals. "
He shrugged.
"What do you know about disaster relief?" he asks me.
"I know your boy wants to privatize it completely," I respond. "Private disaster relief means a lot of rescued rich people."
He shakes that off. "Yeah, I don't think disaster relief should be privatized," he says.
"Maybe not," I say, "but that's what you're voting for. Plus, no gay marriage."
He shakes that off, too. "I don't care about that stuff." He then explains to me that marriage should simply be a religious ceremony, but anyone should be able to enter into a civil contract.
I tell him "Okay, I agree, basically, but whatever you think, you are voting against marriage equality for non heterosexuals."
He shrugs. "No, I'm voting against Obama's economic policies. I don't think we can afford another four years of them."
When I asked what policies he means, he shrugs again. "When I ask myself, 'am I better off now than I was four years ago', I have to say, 'no'."
I hear this argument all the time, and it infuriates me, since it is generally coming from someone on the right, and on the right, everyone claims to be patriotic... except when it comes time to vote against the darkie, in which case, it's all about them, and Are You Better Off Now Than You Were Then.
I ask him if he's a patriot, if he believes in the greater good of the United States of America. He says of course. I say, "And you honestly believe that a guy who made millions of dollars buying American companies, putting their assets in his own pocket, shutting them down, and sending those jobs overseas, is the best guy to run our country?"
He blinks, but he's not fazed. "That's not how it would be," he says. "Look... we just can't afford for more years of Obama's economic policies. What's he done about the federeal bureaucracy?"
"The federal bureaucracy?" I ask him. "Like FEMA?"
"No, no," he says. "It's these public worker unions. They're ridiculous."
"Oh my god," I say. "First it's Obama's economic policies, and then it's the public unions. Just tick on down that list of Fox talking points. Look, dude... if your'e voting for Romney and you make at least six figures, I get it. You're evil and selfish, but I got you. But you're poor, like me. If you're voting for Romney, you're just..." and I substituted, not saying 'stupid' at the last second... "misinformed. Badly misinformed. And you ARE voting for privatization of disaster relief, and continued legalized bias against non heterosexuals. "
He shrugged.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Blah blah blah
One of my favorite writers thinks I suck.
Yeah, it's true.
Well, no, it's not, either. I am vast, I contain multitudes.
I'm Facebook friends with one of my all time favorite sf writers, whose name I will not mention here to protect me from snoopy search engine related recriminations of which I want none. This guy has been very friendly to me in the past and he actually read some of my fiction. He read one of my short stories that I was very proud of ("No Good Angel", you can probably read it yourself by clicking a link on my sideboard) and his response was 'mehhhhh'... he indicated that he wasn't surprised it hadn't sold, as it hadn't grabbed him. On the other hand, he said, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had sold. He could see it going either way.
Now, look... I know this guy is a working author and he did me an enormous favor reading the story. And he didn't say it sucked. So when I say 'one of my favorite writers thinks I suck', I'm being whiney and melodramatic. I get that. Still.
Anyway, sometime later he bought one of my novels off Kindle (ZAP FORCE) and I never heard anything back about whether he'd even read it or not. I mean, six months went by and he didn't say a word. Then, in a completely unrelated thread (well, I was bitching on FB about how apparently I just suck as a writer and I should just give up the dream) he mentioned that he had "really liked" ZAP FORCE. And offered to do a blurb for it.
Now, weeks later, he's finally done the blurb:
""If you love Silver Age comics, and what decent person doesn't, D------ M------ has recreated what you love in 'Zap Force.' It's nostalgic, it moves fast, and you can almost see the colored pages as you read. Tons of fun."
This is like when you're trying to fix your homely cousin up with a date. This is the "he/she has a great personality" blurb. Notice (as anyone else reading it will instantly) that at no point does he use any genuinely positive descriptors. He never says "great" or even "good". He doesn't mention my writing abilities at all. He advises that my book is 'nostalgic' and 'it moves fast' and 'you can almost see the colored pages as you read'... and finally, he says it is 'tons of fun'.
What he doesn't say is that it's a good book, that it's well written, that the author knows what he's doing, that the author has a great style, that he loved the characters or the story or the dialogue... he doesn't say any of that, and my guess is, he doesn't say it because, well, none of it is true. He didn't like it. He doesn't think I'm a good writer. He's simply not going to say so... any more than you're going to tell your homely cousin "I can't get a date for you, dude, you're ugly as shit".
Now, I've recently reread ZAP FORCE and I think it's a terrific little novel. It does indeed move fast, it has awesome characters, terrific dialogue, it's funny and it's witty and it has a great plot and stuff blows up in it real good... and that's the kind of blurb I want from the people who read it. Especially when they are one of my favorite authors in the world.
A mediocre blurb like that isn't fooling anyone, and it isn't going to help me. It's not going to help my morale and it's certainly not going to help my sales. It's very much as if he thinks I'm a child, or at least, an idiot; like I can't see, from that blurb, what he actually thinks of my abilities.
Or maybe he is pretty sure I can see what he actually thinks of my abilities from that lackluster blurb that he sent to me in a Facebook message rather than posting into his own stream or on his own page.
Maybe he's just letting me down as easy as he can.
I think I'd rather he just said "you suck".
* * * * *
Here's how you blurb someone's book if you really like it:
""D.A. Madigan crams more classic pulp tropes into one story ('A Dish Best Served Cold') than 'Kenneth Robeson' managed to shoehorn into 181 Doc Savage novels. If you like your pulp extra pulpy with a big slug of purple stirred in, D.A. Madigan is the writer for you."
OR
"They don't write 'em like that any more... D.A. Madigan is a consonant connoisseur of all things pulp, and an absolute master of the form. His dialogue sizzles, his plots move fast, his heroes are noble and his heroines are hot. If you don't find your favorite pulp story ever somewhere in this anthology, you don't love pulp fiction."
OR
"ZAP FORCE is pure pulp from start to finish -- hard hitting heroes, villains that rant and rave with the worst of them, evil aliens, capes & cowls, zombies & werewolves, particle beams & explosions, all mixed up with the most kick ass fight scenes Jack Kirby never drew -- if you dig that kind of thing, this one should be on your Christmas list."
Unfortunately, if I want this shit done right, I have to do it myself.
Tales of the Nebula: the Purple Pulp Fiction of D.A. Madigan
ZAP FORCE #1: ROYAL BLOOD
Yeah, it's true.
Well, no, it's not, either. I am vast, I contain multitudes.
I'm Facebook friends with one of my all time favorite sf writers, whose name I will not mention here to protect me from snoopy search engine related recriminations of which I want none. This guy has been very friendly to me in the past and he actually read some of my fiction. He read one of my short stories that I was very proud of ("No Good Angel", you can probably read it yourself by clicking a link on my sideboard) and his response was 'mehhhhh'... he indicated that he wasn't surprised it hadn't sold, as it hadn't grabbed him. On the other hand, he said, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had sold. He could see it going either way.
Now, look... I know this guy is a working author and he did me an enormous favor reading the story. And he didn't say it sucked. So when I say 'one of my favorite writers thinks I suck', I'm being whiney and melodramatic. I get that. Still.
Anyway, sometime later he bought one of my novels off Kindle (ZAP FORCE) and I never heard anything back about whether he'd even read it or not. I mean, six months went by and he didn't say a word. Then, in a completely unrelated thread (well, I was bitching on FB about how apparently I just suck as a writer and I should just give up the dream) he mentioned that he had "really liked" ZAP FORCE. And offered to do a blurb for it.
Now, weeks later, he's finally done the blurb:
""If you love Silver Age comics, and what decent person doesn't, D------ M------ has recreated what you love in 'Zap Force.' It's nostalgic, it moves fast, and you can almost see the colored pages as you read. Tons of fun."
This is like when you're trying to fix your homely cousin up with a date. This is the "he/she has a great personality" blurb. Notice (as anyone else reading it will instantly) that at no point does he use any genuinely positive descriptors. He never says "great" or even "good". He doesn't mention my writing abilities at all. He advises that my book is 'nostalgic' and 'it moves fast' and 'you can almost see the colored pages as you read'... and finally, he says it is 'tons of fun'.
What he doesn't say is that it's a good book, that it's well written, that the author knows what he's doing, that the author has a great style, that he loved the characters or the story or the dialogue... he doesn't say any of that, and my guess is, he doesn't say it because, well, none of it is true. He didn't like it. He doesn't think I'm a good writer. He's simply not going to say so... any more than you're going to tell your homely cousin "I can't get a date for you, dude, you're ugly as shit".
Now, I've recently reread ZAP FORCE and I think it's a terrific little novel. It does indeed move fast, it has awesome characters, terrific dialogue, it's funny and it's witty and it has a great plot and stuff blows up in it real good... and that's the kind of blurb I want from the people who read it. Especially when they are one of my favorite authors in the world.
A mediocre blurb like that isn't fooling anyone, and it isn't going to help me. It's not going to help my morale and it's certainly not going to help my sales. It's very much as if he thinks I'm a child, or at least, an idiot; like I can't see, from that blurb, what he actually thinks of my abilities.
Or maybe he is pretty sure I can see what he actually thinks of my abilities from that lackluster blurb that he sent to me in a Facebook message rather than posting into his own stream or on his own page.
Maybe he's just letting me down as easy as he can.
I think I'd rather he just said "you suck".
* * * * *
Here's how you blurb someone's book if you really like it:
""D.A. Madigan crams more classic pulp tropes into one story ('A Dish Best Served Cold') than 'Kenneth Robeson' managed to shoehorn into 181 Doc Savage novels. If you like your pulp extra pulpy with a big slug of purple stirred in, D.A. Madigan is the writer for you."
OR
"They don't write 'em like that any more... D.A. Madigan is a consonant connoisseur of all things pulp, and an absolute master of the form. His dialogue sizzles, his plots move fast, his heroes are noble and his heroines are hot. If you don't find your favorite pulp story ever somewhere in this anthology, you don't love pulp fiction."
OR
"ZAP FORCE is pure pulp from start to finish -- hard hitting heroes, villains that rant and rave with the worst of them, evil aliens, capes & cowls, zombies & werewolves, particle beams & explosions, all mixed up with the most kick ass fight scenes Jack Kirby never drew -- if you dig that kind of thing, this one should be on your Christmas list."
Unfortunately, if I want this shit done right, I have to do it myself.
Tales of the Nebula: the Purple Pulp Fiction of D.A. Madigan
ZAP FORCE #1: ROYAL BLOOD
Sunday, October 28, 2012
The Wrath of Doc
I used to game with a bunch of guys in Syracuse, and sometimes some of us would get together to go out and see movies, too. They very quickly learned (right around the time STAR TREK III first hit the theaters) not to ask me how I felt about the movie we'd just seen. The last time they did it was, in fact, after we all watched STAR TREK III for the first time. We were all walking out and they were gibbering like idiots about how wonderful it had been, the best Star Trek yet, and quoting "Don't call me TINY!" over and over again... and one of them, I think it was Gary, said "Hey, you're kind of quiet, what did YOU think?"
So I said "Well, for starters, when the best line in a movie is 'Don't call me TINY' and it's supposed to be funny because it's a little Asian guy saying it... that ain't good. Also, next time one of you repeats that idiotic piece of drivel, I'm going to throw up on your shoes. No lie."
After which, I proceeded to dissect the moronically plot free morass that was STAR TREK III: "There was a moment," I began, low, my voice almost reverent, my tone deliberately pitched to inspire confidence, "a shining moment of wisdom and truth in the Star Trek franchise... a moment when Hollywood itself opened its corporate eyes and said 'Hey, you know what? People get older. They mature and move on. They get promoted, they grow, they change, they take on new roles, new responsibilities. They age, and others come along the trail that they've blazed, walking in the footprints they've left, bringing their own skills, their own strengths, their own peculiar ways of doing things, to the tasks that will always be there, the roles that will always need to be played.' There was a time when a great and classic franchise accepted that entropy happens and we all get older, but it ain't all bad; there was a time when yesterday's titans and heroes gracefully passed the torch, after one last grand adventure, to the sons and daughters of their bodies and spirits, when they handed over the baton of frontline duty and entrusted the guardianship of the universe to newer, younger, fresher hands. There was a moment when that happened, and it was wondrous and moving and for that one brief shining instant, the two dimensional, almost cartoonish near caricatures that were Kirk and Spock and Scottie and McCoy and Sulu and Uhura became truly human and three dimensional and far more than the sum of their parts."
And I paused, for a great crowd had gathered 'round to hear my mighty rolling words. And I let my voice come back up, and I continued:
"And then Paramount sobered up the next day, said 'What the fuck were we THINKING?' and greenlighted a movie that completely destroyed that moment, that went back and pissed and shit and vomited all over that wondrous shimmering transcendent moment, that did its best to kill that unique and glorious moment so dead that no one would ever remember it had happened, by rooting out every last new, innovative element of that franchise which that moment had introduced and murdering them, butchering them, blowing them straight to hell and oblivion with retarded bullshit plot devices like 'protomatter', completely trashing the greatest heroic sacrifice in the history of heroic fiction with what had to be the most ridiculously contrived and hopelessly dumbass resurrection stunt since the Jackal cloned Gwen Stacy, and proving once and for all that the good of the many never ever EVER outweighs the good of the few or the one, if the few are stockholders in Paramount Pictures, and the one is a Leonard Nimoy terrified he'll never ever have another part. And that glorious moment when James T. Kirk was an Admiral and Spock was his Captain and the Enterprise merely a training craft and that was *okay*, it was *all right*, because the galaxy was still vast and the frontier was still final and other heroes and heroines were standing ready to boldly go where no one had gone before... that moment was gone forever, beaten down, broken, burned to ashes and trampled underfoot into the muck of mediocrity. And once again, then and forever, galloping around the cosmos was a game for the old, the tested, the true, the guaranteed box office."
And my voice became a naked flame as I spat: "Star Trek III sucked so hard I thought the movie theater had suffered a hull breech. The characterizations didn't exist, the dialogue was drivel, the plot was so utterly vacuous as to make the admittedly nonsensical plot of STAR TREK II look like Shakespeare, and if William Shatner had chewed the scenery any harder he'd have gone into toxic shock from an overdose of paper mache and spraypaint. That movie was sheer shit from back to front, start to finish, top to bottom, and now I feel like I need to take my brain out and have it dry cleaned."
Okay, I may not have said all that quite that eloquently, but I said a lot of it, as we drove in Gary's car back from the movie theater.
And they never asked me for my opinion of a movie again.
So I said "Well, for starters, when the best line in a movie is 'Don't call me TINY' and it's supposed to be funny because it's a little Asian guy saying it... that ain't good. Also, next time one of you repeats that idiotic piece of drivel, I'm going to throw up on your shoes. No lie."
After which, I proceeded to dissect the moronically plot free morass that was STAR TREK III: "There was a moment," I began, low, my voice almost reverent, my tone deliberately pitched to inspire confidence, "a shining moment of wisdom and truth in the Star Trek franchise... a moment when Hollywood itself opened its corporate eyes and said 'Hey, you know what? People get older. They mature and move on. They get promoted, they grow, they change, they take on new roles, new responsibilities. They age, and others come along the trail that they've blazed, walking in the footprints they've left, bringing their own skills, their own strengths, their own peculiar ways of doing things, to the tasks that will always be there, the roles that will always need to be played.' There was a time when a great and classic franchise accepted that entropy happens and we all get older, but it ain't all bad; there was a time when yesterday's titans and heroes gracefully passed the torch, after one last grand adventure, to the sons and daughters of their bodies and spirits, when they handed over the baton of frontline duty and entrusted the guardianship of the universe to newer, younger, fresher hands. There was a moment when that happened, and it was wondrous and moving and for that one brief shining instant, the two dimensional, almost cartoonish near caricatures that were Kirk and Spock and Scottie and McCoy and Sulu and Uhura became truly human and three dimensional and far more than the sum of their parts."
And I paused, for a great crowd had gathered 'round to hear my mighty rolling words. And I let my voice come back up, and I continued:
"And then Paramount sobered up the next day, said 'What the fuck were we THINKING?' and greenlighted a movie that completely destroyed that moment, that went back and pissed and shit and vomited all over that wondrous shimmering transcendent moment, that did its best to kill that unique and glorious moment so dead that no one would ever remember it had happened, by rooting out every last new, innovative element of that franchise which that moment had introduced and murdering them, butchering them, blowing them straight to hell and oblivion with retarded bullshit plot devices like 'protomatter', completely trashing the greatest heroic sacrifice in the history of heroic fiction with what had to be the most ridiculously contrived and hopelessly dumbass resurrection stunt since the Jackal cloned Gwen Stacy, and proving once and for all that the good of the many never ever EVER outweighs the good of the few or the one, if the few are stockholders in Paramount Pictures, and the one is a Leonard Nimoy terrified he'll never ever have another part. And that glorious moment when James T. Kirk was an Admiral and Spock was his Captain and the Enterprise merely a training craft and that was *okay*, it was *all right*, because the galaxy was still vast and the frontier was still final and other heroes and heroines were standing ready to boldly go where no one had gone before... that moment was gone forever, beaten down, broken, burned to ashes and trampled underfoot into the muck of mediocrity. And once again, then and forever, galloping around the cosmos was a game for the old, the tested, the true, the guaranteed box office."
And my voice became a naked flame as I spat: "Star Trek III sucked so hard I thought the movie theater had suffered a hull breech. The characterizations didn't exist, the dialogue was drivel, the plot was so utterly vacuous as to make the admittedly nonsensical plot of STAR TREK II look like Shakespeare, and if William Shatner had chewed the scenery any harder he'd have gone into toxic shock from an overdose of paper mache and spraypaint. That movie was sheer shit from back to front, start to finish, top to bottom, and now I feel like I need to take my brain out and have it dry cleaned."
Okay, I may not have said all that quite that eloquently, but I said a lot of it, as we drove in Gary's car back from the movie theater.
And they never asked me for my opinion of a movie again.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Lies about money
Oh, and: Don't buy this bullshit the learned conservative wonks are now trying to spew about how this deep concern they have about Obama's reckless increase of the deficit. They'll roll out ominous, fulsomely rotund phrases like "You can't keep spending money that doesn't exist", but Republicans, and Mitt Romney in particular, have absolutely no problem spending money that doesn't exist... unless it's happening with a Democrat in the White House. It's not about whether the money 'exists' or not (and if you're that concerned with fiat spending, you need to be voting for Ron Paul, as he's the ONLY viable Presidential candidate who wants to put us on hard currency again). It's about two things: What We Spend It On, and Who Gets The Credit.
I'm not a registered Democrat. I tend to vote Democrat because I'm a progressive liberal and I want my tax dollars spent helping everyone, and where I would prefer my tax dollars do not get spent is on hurting (much less killing) people unnecessarily. Republican/conservatives are EXACTLY the opposite; at the base of every Tea Party hissy fit is their perception that (a) they have to pay any taxes at all and (b) that their taxes might conceivably be spent helping out somebody who does not look like them (black welfare queens in New York City) or behave like them (gay people in New York City and/or San Francisco).
However, Republicans/conservatives will, grudgingly, pony up some tax money (they'll still cheat, mind you, but they'll send in something) as long as it goes to jailing, killing, or otherwise harming people who neither look nor act like them.
Poor conservatives are primitive, tribal, bigoted people. They love Rush Limbaugh because he tells that that this is not only okay, but it makes them cool and patriotic and better than those goddam commie dope smoking hippie liberal assholes. Rich conservatives are deeply tribal, too... they have absolutely nothing but contempt for anyone who doesn't make as much money as they do and who didn't go to the same prep school... and while they really don't give a shit what anyone thinks of them, when they do, they enjoy writers like Ayn Rand, who extol the virtues of selfishness and being a complete prick with wonderful sounding phrases like "Productive Men" and "job creators". Mostly, though, they don't give a shit because they're RICH. To them, America is a place where the rich are a noble class that is above the law... just like every other culture, nation, country, and authority structure in human history. And they are desperate to keep it that way.
These are the people who are voting for Mitt Romney. The vast majority of them (the poor ones) don't like Mitt, but they hate Obama, because they have been convinced by the tiny minority of very rich conservatives that Obama is Other. They do not have to convince these folks that Obama is not on their side and that he will not help them, and that's good, because it isn't true, and it CERTAINLY is true of Romney. No, all they have to do is make these people feel that Obama is Not One Of Them. Because poor conservative Values Voters will NEVER ever under any circumstances vote for someone who is not a member of their tribe.
The tiny wealthy minority will vote for Mitt because he is one of them, and they know it. He's got their back. He'll keep the help in line, God love him.
The poor conservatives are simply toxically, willfully stupid, spiteful, petty, hateful people. The rich conservatives are utterly selfish, mean spirited, trollish, glassy eyed haters who simply can't stand the thought of living in a world where someone who makes less money than they do might ever be able to give them shit without dire consequences. Either way, this is a hateful, poisonous mob, not a thoughtful segment of the electorate.
I'm not a registered Democrat. I tend to vote Democrat because I'm a progressive liberal and I want my tax dollars spent helping everyone, and where I would prefer my tax dollars do not get spent is on hurting (much less killing) people unnecessarily. Republican/conservatives are EXACTLY the opposite; at the base of every Tea Party hissy fit is their perception that (a) they have to pay any taxes at all and (b) that their taxes might conceivably be spent helping out somebody who does not look like them (black welfare queens in New York City) or behave like them (gay people in New York City and/or San Francisco).
However, Republicans/conservatives will, grudgingly, pony up some tax money (they'll still cheat, mind you, but they'll send in something) as long as it goes to jailing, killing, or otherwise harming people who neither look nor act like them.
Poor conservatives are primitive, tribal, bigoted people. They love Rush Limbaugh because he tells that that this is not only okay, but it makes them cool and patriotic and better than those goddam commie dope smoking hippie liberal assholes. Rich conservatives are deeply tribal, too... they have absolutely nothing but contempt for anyone who doesn't make as much money as they do and who didn't go to the same prep school... and while they really don't give a shit what anyone thinks of them, when they do, they enjoy writers like Ayn Rand, who extol the virtues of selfishness and being a complete prick with wonderful sounding phrases like "Productive Men" and "job creators". Mostly, though, they don't give a shit because they're RICH. To them, America is a place where the rich are a noble class that is above the law... just like every other culture, nation, country, and authority structure in human history. And they are desperate to keep it that way.
These are the people who are voting for Mitt Romney. The vast majority of them (the poor ones) don't like Mitt, but they hate Obama, because they have been convinced by the tiny minority of very rich conservatives that Obama is Other. They do not have to convince these folks that Obama is not on their side and that he will not help them, and that's good, because it isn't true, and it CERTAINLY is true of Romney. No, all they have to do is make these people feel that Obama is Not One Of Them. Because poor conservative Values Voters will NEVER ever under any circumstances vote for someone who is not a member of their tribe.
The tiny wealthy minority will vote for Mitt because he is one of them, and they know it. He's got their back. He'll keep the help in line, God love him.
The poor conservatives are simply toxically, willfully stupid, spiteful, petty, hateful people. The rich conservatives are utterly selfish, mean spirited, trollish, glassy eyed haters who simply can't stand the thought of living in a world where someone who makes less money than they do might ever be able to give them shit without dire consequences. Either way, this is a hateful, poisonous mob, not a thoughtful segment of the electorate.
Swiftboating
I'm going to say this, and castigate me as you will: I like Taylor Swift's music. And the reason I like Taylor Swift's music is because she is one hell of a lyricist.
I can enjoy a song that has incoherent lyrics, as long as they are evocative and have at least some clever word play in them (this pretty much sums up nearly every Blue Oyster Cult song, at least, the ones written by Sandy Pearlman, and seems to comprise everything Adele writes, too... "set fire to the rain"? "Rolling in the deep"? does anyone know what these phrases actually mean? ). I can dig a song that has dumb ass, simple minded lyrics ("Dance the Night Away" and "Jump" by Van Halen are among my all time guilty pleasures). I can even enjoy a song that is about absolutely nothing except cheap, meaningless, mindless vices, like pretty much 90 percent of the stuff recorded by the Rolling Stones.
But for me to truly enjoy a song, it has to be written well. It doesn't have to be deep or meaningful (Jeff Webb and I used to say that we both loved Pink Floyd, but we couldn't listen to more than four sequential tracks by the band without wanting to kill ourselves) but it has to have a style, the words have to work together, they have to be memorable and evocative and the song has to either make some kind of narrative sense (to the extent that it actually tells some sort of story) or it just has to be so overwhelmingly powerful that it doesn't need to (like Springsteen's "Thunder Road"). But beyond all that, there have to be phrases that slap me up side of the head, grab my attention and hold it, that stick with me, that I can roll around the corners of my skull for hours afterward with a big, admiring grin on my face, thinking "God, I wish I'd written that".
I left work early Thursday because my voice was pretty much shot by this chest thing I've got going on right now. The bus back home from up there wasn't going to show up for another three hours, and while I'd have preferred to just stay at my desk and surf the Internet until then, that seemed like it would just piss my boss and other co-workers off if they saw me doing it. So I left and not wanting to spend fifty bucks on a cab ride home when the bus trip would be free (my wife and I are both working, but the words of House Madigan are "Christmas is coming" and this time of year, that's more true than it usually is), I trekked over about half a mile to a Culver's at the corner of Interstate and Preston. Got a coke and some chicken and sat down with my Lovecraft compendium (the gigantic black leather bound one that all my black co workers kept smiling mysteriously at last week, until one of them finally asked me if it was The Bible, and I had to deeply disappoint him by telling him no) to kill 180 minutes or so.
Now this Culver's is the only fast food franchise in the entire city of Louisville where every employee is as white as Mitt Romney, and similarly, it's the only one that plays country music. I'd gotten my nose deep into "The Thing On The Doorstep" (which is excellent; fully mature Lovecraft in absolute control of his form, and probably the inspiration, in many ways, for King's CHRISTINE), having absolutely tuned out whatever drivel was coming over the speakers (I'll listen to some country; Emmylou Harris will always get my attention, and that song about 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu is another guilty pleasure of mine, but for the most part, while it's generally not as offensive to me as rap/hip-hop, still, I'll selectively dis-perceive the vast majority of it in a big way, given the opportunity)... when abruptly I was hauled out of Lovecraft's wonderfully eldritch tale of hideous trans-possession by awful evil wizards by the realization that Taylor Swift was singing "Mine" -
"...I was a flight risk with a fear of fallin’..."
And then, yes, a decently written stanza about laying on a couch, nice imagery, okay, but then she swings into that recurring chorus:
"Do you remember, we were sitting there by the water?
You put your arm around me for the first time.
You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter.
You are the best thing that’s ever been mine."
'A careless man's careful daughter'... that's fucking nails, right there. That's the true gold, that's diamonds and rubies and pearls. That one beautifully evocative wonderfully rhythmic fantastically well wrought phrase... that's one that stays with me.
And then she does that sneaky little, heart-grabbing reverse in the last chorus, when the female narrator has walked out the apartment crying and the guy she's singing to is chasing her out onto the street and she thinks he's about to break up with her, but instead:
"You said, "I remember how we felt sitting by the water
And every time I look at you, it’s like the first time
I fell in love with a careless man’s careful daughter
She is the best thing that’s ever been mine."
And you know, I just want to cry, because goddamit, this girl... woman... person... human entity... this one right here... she can WRITE.
Goddam, I wish I'd written that.
And it's not uncommon for her. The cascade of images in a little nothing song like "You Belong With Me" -
"She wears high heels, I wear sneakers
She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers"
is so deft it approaches brilliance, and she makes it look easy... casual.
Oddly, the other lyricist Swift reminds me most of is Billy Joel. But where Joel's lyrics are mostly about affluent entitled douchebags whining about the ennui and disappointment of their easy easy lives and how hard it is to be rich when you're sensitive, Swift writes about genuinely likable people with recognizable emotions that you don't really honest to God wish would just kill themselves by the end of the song. (I'm sorry. I love me a lot of Billy Joel songs, but his narratives are all about rich, cocky pricks who are pissed off because while the world will constantly fellate them, sometimes it spits instead of swallows. He'll occasionally throw together an exception to this rule just to try to stake out some street cred, as with "Allentown" or "Goodnight Saigon", but it's obvious that his heart is really with the dissipated whiner sniveling his way through "I've Loved These Days" and "Summer Highland Falls", or the braying jackass strutting and crowing his way through "Uptown Girl" or "You May Be Right".)
So, anyway... I enjoy listening to Taylor Swift's songs. The woman can write. Even if, apparently, she can't maintain a relationship for shit.
I wish I could write as well as she does.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Rejection, and what comes after
No finer way to start my day than finding this in my email box:
"Thanks for submitting "The Pyramid of Skulls," but I'm going to pass on it. It didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid. Best of luck to you placing this one elsewhere, and thanks again for sending it my way."
Back in around 2003-2004, I made a hard push to finally break through and get something published in a real market. I had about half a dozen stories I considered professional level; I spent about eight months, all told, submitting hard copies of each story, in turn, to several different magazines... MAGAZINE OF FANTASY &SF, ISAAC ASIMOV, WEIRD TALES, ANALOG, BLACK GATE.
Everything wound up rejected. Everything I submitted to one particular venue wound up rejected by the guy who sent me the note above, which is virtually identical with all the other notes he has ever sent me. 'It didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid' is a phrase that is going to haunt my nightmares, I fear.
When I realized, after I'd submitted "The Pyramid of Skulls" to a particular online venue day before yesterday, that this guy (he has a very distinctive name) was now the publisher/editor there, my heart literally settled a centimeter or two closer to my colon. There's no way this guy even reads the stuff I submit to him; when I was living in Tampa, I once put a story (a damn good one) in the mail to F&SF on a Saturday, and found it back in my mailbox the following Saturday. That's the round trip from Tampa to New Jersey, and back, in five business days. There's simply no way he even read more than the top sentence of that story before scrawling a signature across one of these cutesy, maddeningly unhelpful and infuriatingly arrogant little rejection notes ("it didn't quite work for me"... what the fuck is that?) and stuffed it back into my SASE before tossing it on his OUT stack. In fact, my guess is, he didn't read more than the return address before flipping it to the reject pile... having noted, with lightning quick professionalism, that this was from an unknown nobody whose name on the cover wouldn't sell any additional copies for him.
I know I can't take these things personally, and I don't. But "The Pyramid of Skulls" is a damned fine story, and so are the other stories I submitted out back then (I reread most of them, and posted links to them from FB, yesterday). And the absolutely certain knowledge that, had any of these stories gone into any of those magazines with a "by Stephen King" or "by Joe R. Lansdale" byline on them, they would have been snapped up as fast as they were otherwise rejected... I don't take it personally, because it's not personal, it's just how the business works... but it aggravates and frustrates and exasperates me no end.
"The Pyramid of Skulls" is a fucking wonderful story, and I'm proud of it, and now I'm pissed off all over again.
He didn't say 'send more', though, so at least I'm excused from ever trying him out again.
I do, actually, realize I'm whining in a most unbecoming manner. I do, actually, understand that I cannot be objective about my own writing, and when I look at an issue of this mag I was just rejected from, and read the stories that he has accepted, and say "My stuff is absolutely as good as this stuff, or better", well, I don't get to make that call.
But I don't think he actually read this story before he rejected it, and say hey and by the way... this is my LIFE, here. This is what I've wanted to do since I was 12, and this is yet another example of why I don't get to do it... because the people in positions of absolute authority over this crazy business only have so many spaces to publish stuff in, and only so much time to wade through unsolicited submissions, and if what ends up getting published every month is stories by their long time friends and podcast partners, and stories by authors with reputations and followings whose names will bring in additional sales, well, that's just how it is. Sorry, buddy. This might be a Nebula award winner, but I don't know your name and I don't have time to really read this thing, I've got two hundred other nobodies to kick in the kidney before I can go to lunch today, so, you know, 'it didn't quite work for me'.
This shit just aggravates me. It really, really does.
So, today has started out shitty, and, you know, thanks, Mr. Big Shot, for taking the time to reject an excellent short story without bothering to read it. I appreciate your efforts on my behalf.
* * * * *
Heh. So I just responded to this morning's rejection note:
""Thanks for sending me your rejection note in re: my story "The Pyramid of Skulls," but I'm going to pass on it. It didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid. Best of luck to you being less of a tool, and thanks again for sending it my way."
Before anyone types the word 'unprofessional' into a reply window, please consider the following:
(a) I AM unprofessional. I'd like to be professional, but buttweeds won't let me. So, whatever, this is how that's going to be for a while, I guess.
(b) If we're going to have a discusson regarding professionalism anyway, let's start with, professional editors/publishers who reject manuscripts without reading them. If that's professional behavior, then so is calling them a tool for doing it with a snotty little note about how something 'didn't quite work for them'.
I'll probably add more to this later.
* * * *
So I just read two of the stories available for free at the e-mag I was just rejected from. The first, by the long time business partner and I guess close friend of the toolneck that rejected me, frankly sucked. The second... was interesting, and had flashes of real style, and a genuinely original premise. But it wasn't any better than "A Pyramid Of Skulls".
It's how these things go, I guess.
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Re: PYRAMID OF SKULLS
So, writing PYRAMID OF SKULLS was interesting. (To me. I have absolutely no expectations that this 'process' post will interest anyone else at all... in fact, I might as well post it on my old blog. Maybe I will.)
I'd been restless, lately, with a feeling I've come to recognize over the past forty years or so as "I want to write something". I've found various useful (or, bad, depending on how you look at it) substitutes that more or less satisfy this feeling over the years... running my RPG is probably the best. But playing a detail heavy game like ARKHAM HORROR is sometimes enough of a fix, too.
But, mostly, when I feel like I want to write, what's best is, to sit down and write.
Sometimes I have a story idea that is banging around inside my skull, picking up velocity until I get it outside of me. Other times, though, the feeling is more general... no real story concept, but, I just want to write. Something. Anything.
This, I've found, is the impulse that tends to produce interesting story frags. I used to have a big manila folder of these, some from as long ago as 8th grade... but I lost it during one of my many moves. Which is too bad, there were a lot of hilarious three or four page Star Trek parodies in there that used to amuse some of my classmates in high school no end.
So yesterday I had this feeling, and I was at work and had no real ideas at all for what I wanted to write, but I wanted to. So in the hour or so I had before my shift started, I opened a Notepad window and started typing.
All I had was a title... the rather Conanesque PYRAMID OF SKULLS. I had no idea what it was or where to start the story or how it would get eventually so some pyramid built out of skulls, but I just started typing.
My opening paragraph went something like this:
"As Kordek Axehand came around the last curve of the River to the north of Bearfang Bay, he could see that the main gate leading through the city wall was jammed with a sherdak caravan."
I had no idea who Kordek Axehand was, and while the story was clearly going to be set in the backdrop of my long running fantasy RPG (Bearfang Bay is one of many cities situated along The River where various parties of Player Characters have wreaked havoc over the last quarter century), I still had no clue what Bearfang Bay had to do with a pyramid of skulls, or how Kordek Axehand was going to be involved with a pyramid of skulls.
Hell, I didn't even know what a 'sherdak' was, except that it was big.
I typed on the story until my shift started, then kept typing on it between calls all day. I had about 3,000 words of it down when my shift ended. By then I knew what a sherdak was (it's a mammoth). I knew more or less who Kordek was at that point, and had introduced a buddy for him, some obnoxious little puke named Gafeq the Sunfingered. And I'd started to get an idea of the shape the story would take, and how the pyramid of skulls was going to come into it.
I typed another thousand words or so last night. Today, I sat down and finished the story. It comes in at just over 7000 words, so I did about another 3000 today. In the course of it, I found myself continually surprised by where the story was going. In the end, I was probably as astounded by how that story got to the pyramid of skulls, and what happened when it got there, as I hope any readers the story may eventually have will be.
I generally start writing a story, regardless of length, without having any clear idea how it's going to come out. This is the first time, though, that I sat down with an empty word processor window and just started typing and an entire coherent narrative came out.
If I were interviewing myself, and I asked myself "Where do you get your ideas?" I would have to honestly answer, "I have no fucking clue".
Monday, July 02, 2012
The smartest man in the room
Okay. So today I found out two things... well, more than two things, several things, so let's just knock them out:
I'm officially out of training after this week, and today I had a sit down with the guy who will be my new boss. In these situations, I'm always hoping my new boss might be someone I could actually talk to about stuff... someone with a sense of humor and proportion about work, someone who might actually agree with at least a few of my (always) heretical and blasphemous opinions about our shared workplace.
In this case, I was really hoping I'd get a boss who believes, as I do, that it's a really, really bad idea for customer service reps to try to sell things to customers. I think this is a bad idea for one simple reason: customers hate it. I hate it, when I have to call customer service for something and they try to sell me some kind of upgrade, and I've done time at enough call centers to say with absolute authority, there is not a single customer in the thousands I've spoken with who called customer service hoping to be shilled, and while some are more tolerant of it than others, and a few will even buy what you're selling if you pitch it right, none of them are happy you're pitching to them and most of them are actually aggravated about it.
But my new boss is, of course, a True Believer; he looked at me with his big earnest puppy dog eyes and explained to me that technical proficiency of the troubleshooting process was only 33% of my job, and customer service was only 33%... the other 33% is sales. And he meant it; he actually sat there and wrung his hands, bemoaning the fact that each of us is asked, in our initial job interview, if we have a problem with selling, and each of us answers "no, of course not"... and yet, so many of us seem to really need to be pushed to doing it more than perfunctorily when we get on the floor.
Now, I wanted to say, "Look, dipshit, there isn't a single person working in this building who would be here tomorrow if we won the Powerball. We NEED these jobs. It's not hard to figure out what the guy on the other side of the table wants to hear when he asks you 'do you mind selling'... or the consequences for giving him any other answer. We're going to lie. We're not going to in any way feel ashamed of it. Get used to it... and get used to the fact that, having been forced to take a job we really don't want to do, we're only going to do the parts of it we really, REALLY don't want to do really, really reluctantly."
But what I actually said, very quietly, was "To be fair, what I was asked was if I minded pitching on every call, and I said I didn't. And I don't." That's a lie, too... I hate pitching on every call... but I never agreed to sell a goddam thing. If I wanted a sales job, I could have had any number of them, that pay much better commissions, at nearly any point earlier on in my life. Even in the worst economic conditions there are always sales jobs going begging; it's because sales jobs suck and hardly anybody wants to do them.
I'll pitch on every call, because that's what they require of me on this job... but I don't care if I ever sell ANYthing.
He also, at one point, mentioned that, 'as my father must have told me at some point in my life, you get out of something what you put into it'. I said, again very quietly, that I did not have a father. He waved that off... "Well, your father, your coach, your uncle... somebody."
What a douche.
I also discovered that the guy who has been training my class for the last five weeks has never taken a call at this call center. Excuse me... he's taken three calls. Total.
Plus, he was telling some anecdote to my new boss about how one of the people in my class told him after a grading session "Well, but, the score isn't always everything", and he had replied "No androgyny, dude, I can't handle androgyny". This baffled me, so I asked him, "Do you mean ambivalence? Or subjectivity?" He snapped his fingers and said "That's it, ambivalence." I said, "Do you know what androgyny means?" He said "Apparently not." I said "It means being effectively without distinctive sexual characteristics at all, or, having the characteristics of both genders." He said, "Oh, yeah."
This guy's been training me to do this job for the last five weeks.
There are a great many things that are annoying about this job... what do I expect? It's another call center job. It has great benefits, though, and we really need the money, so... I guess I'll just have to learn to put up with it.
I'm officially out of training after this week, and today I had a sit down with the guy who will be my new boss. In these situations, I'm always hoping my new boss might be someone I could actually talk to about stuff... someone with a sense of humor and proportion about work, someone who might actually agree with at least a few of my (always) heretical and blasphemous opinions about our shared workplace.
In this case, I was really hoping I'd get a boss who believes, as I do, that it's a really, really bad idea for customer service reps to try to sell things to customers. I think this is a bad idea for one simple reason: customers hate it. I hate it, when I have to call customer service for something and they try to sell me some kind of upgrade, and I've done time at enough call centers to say with absolute authority, there is not a single customer in the thousands I've spoken with who called customer service hoping to be shilled, and while some are more tolerant of it than others, and a few will even buy what you're selling if you pitch it right, none of them are happy you're pitching to them and most of them are actually aggravated about it.
But my new boss is, of course, a True Believer; he looked at me with his big earnest puppy dog eyes and explained to me that technical proficiency of the troubleshooting process was only 33% of my job, and customer service was only 33%... the other 33% is sales. And he meant it; he actually sat there and wrung his hands, bemoaning the fact that each of us is asked, in our initial job interview, if we have a problem with selling, and each of us answers "no, of course not"... and yet, so many of us seem to really need to be pushed to doing it more than perfunctorily when we get on the floor.
Now, I wanted to say, "Look, dipshit, there isn't a single person working in this building who would be here tomorrow if we won the Powerball. We NEED these jobs. It's not hard to figure out what the guy on the other side of the table wants to hear when he asks you 'do you mind selling'... or the consequences for giving him any other answer. We're going to lie. We're not going to in any way feel ashamed of it. Get used to it... and get used to the fact that, having been forced to take a job we really don't want to do, we're only going to do the parts of it we really, REALLY don't want to do really, really reluctantly."
But what I actually said, very quietly, was "To be fair, what I was asked was if I minded pitching on every call, and I said I didn't. And I don't." That's a lie, too... I hate pitching on every call... but I never agreed to sell a goddam thing. If I wanted a sales job, I could have had any number of them, that pay much better commissions, at nearly any point earlier on in my life. Even in the worst economic conditions there are always sales jobs going begging; it's because sales jobs suck and hardly anybody wants to do them.
I'll pitch on every call, because that's what they require of me on this job... but I don't care if I ever sell ANYthing.
He also, at one point, mentioned that, 'as my father must have told me at some point in my life, you get out of something what you put into it'. I said, again very quietly, that I did not have a father. He waved that off... "Well, your father, your coach, your uncle... somebody."
What a douche.
I also discovered that the guy who has been training my class for the last five weeks has never taken a call at this call center. Excuse me... he's taken three calls. Total.
Plus, he was telling some anecdote to my new boss about how one of the people in my class told him after a grading session "Well, but, the score isn't always everything", and he had replied "No androgyny, dude, I can't handle androgyny". This baffled me, so I asked him, "Do you mean ambivalence? Or subjectivity?" He snapped his fingers and said "That's it, ambivalence." I said, "Do you know what androgyny means?" He said "Apparently not." I said "It means being effectively without distinctive sexual characteristics at all, or, having the characteristics of both genders." He said, "Oh, yeah."
This guy's been training me to do this job for the last five weeks.
There are a great many things that are annoying about this job... what do I expect? It's another call center job. It has great benefits, though, and we really need the money, so... I guess I'll just have to learn to put up with it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
An incomplete list of stuff I've created in the last 20 years or so
MISERABLE FICTION OF THE EARTH (mostly):
NOVELS: [* = not yet written]
Universal Maintenance
Universal Agent*
Universal Law*
Time Watch
Endgame
Earthquest
Earthgame*
Warren's World
Warlord of Erberos
Return to Erberos*
ZAP FORCE #1: ROYAL BLOOD
Novellas
The Fear Masters
Memoir:
In The Early Morning Rain
Short Stories:
Positive
Good Cop, Bad Cop
Leadership
Talkin' 'bout My Girl
No Good Angel
No Time Like The Present
Pursuit of Happiness
The Last One
Return To Sender
Halo
Primogenitor
The Drowned Scroll
A Dish Best Served Cold
Power 2 The Peepz
DOC NEBULA and THE GREAT MAGNETIC TRAIN CAPER
The Eldritch Horror From Beyond The Nether Void
Leadership
Machinations
The Servo-motor That Rocks The Cradle
Alleged Humor:
Ask A Bastard!
On The Road Again
Meeting of the Mindless
Star Drek
Fan Fic:
The Captain and the Queen
A Day Unlike Any Other (Iron Mike & Guardian)
DOOM Unto Others! (Iron Mike & Guardian)
Starry, Starry Night(Iron Mike & Guardian)
A Friend In Need (Blackstar & Guardian)
All The Time In The World(Blackstar)
The End of the Innocence(Iron Mike & Guardian)
And Be One Traveler(Iron Mike & Guardian)
MISERABLE CARTOONS OF THE EARTH:
DOC NEBULA'S CARTOON FUN PAGE!
DOC NEBULA'S CARTOON FUN, PAGE 2!
DOC NEBULA'S CARTOON FUN, PAGE 3!
WEIRD WAR COMICS COVER ART.
ULTRASPEED!
Help Us, Batman...
JLA Membership drive
Don't Leave Us, Batman...!
Ever wondered what happened to the World's Finest Super-team?
Two heroes meet their editor...
At the movies with some legendary Silver Age sidekicks...
What really happened to Kandor...
Ever wondered how certain characters managed to get into the Legion of Superheroes?
A never before seen panel from the Golden Age of Comics...
BOOM!
MISERABLE ARTICLES OF THE EARTH:
Buffy Lives! Her Series Dies! And Why I Regard It As A Mercy Killing..
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, MARK EVANIER & ME: Robert Heinlein's Influence on Modern Day Superhero Comics
KILL THEM ALL AND LET NEO SORT THEM OUT: The Essential Immorality of The Matrix
HEINLEIN: The Man, The Myth, The Whackjob
BILL OF GOODS: The Words of A Heinlein Fan Like Nearly Every Other Heinlein Fan I've Ever Met, But More Polite
FIRST RAPE, THEN PILLAGE, THEN BURN: S.M. Stirling shows us terror... in a handful of alternate histories
DOING COMICS THE STAINLESS STEVE ENGLEHART WAY!by "John Jones" (that's me, D. Madigan), & Jeff Clem, with annotations by Steve Englehart
JOHN JONES: THREAT OR MENACE!
FUNERAL FOR A FRIENDSHIP
Why I Disliked Carol Kalish And Don't Care If Peter David Disagrees With Me
MARTIAN VISION, by "John Jones, Manhunter from Marathon, IL"
WHEN TITANS CRASH or "SURRENDER, ROBOTBOY": A Scathing, Vitriolic Attack on Wolfman's Finest
FREAK OUT: THE FUNKIEST SUPERHUMANS OF THE SILVER AGE Part 1. Marveling
FREAK OUT: THE FUNKIEST SUPERHUMANS OF THE SILVER AGE Part 2. DC Means Deranged Creation
METAPHYSICS FOR METAHUMANS Part 1: I Need More Power, Scottie
METAPHYSICS FOR METAHUMANS Part 2: Things That Make You Go Zoom
METAPHYSICS FOR METAHUMANS Part 3: Worlds of Wonder
METAPHYSICS FOR METAHUMANS Epilogue: You Will Believe A Man Can Fly
I HAVE A DAYDREAM: Why ‘Childish’ Is An Insult In Our Society
TARNISHED GLORY: DC Resurrects the Silver Age... sort of...
THE EVIL THAT MEN DOODLE: The Influence of the Writer/Artist Singularity on Modern Comics
DIAL H FOR HAWKMAN: A Look At The Essential Absurdity of Superhero Comics
(Not That There's Anything Wrong With That)
THE WORD FOR WORLD IS CONTINUITY
COMIC BOOK NOTION: Bradford Wright's Historical Fantasy About Funny Books
CRAPPING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS: The Comics Pro I Hate The Most, And Why You Should Too
CONTINUITY ON BIZARRO-EARTH
HEY, KIDS, COMICS! part I: Absurd and Childish Elements Of Superhero Comics, and Why I Like Them Anyway
HEY, KIDS, COMICS! part II: Absurd and Childish Elements Of Superhero Comics, and Why I Like Them Anyway
HEY, KIDS, COMICS! part III: Absurd and Childish Elements Of Superhero Comics, and Why I Like Them Anyway
THE ELECTRIC SWORDSMEN: Explaining Why There Can Be Only One
SORCERERS, SWAMP THINGS, SANDMEN, AND SOPHIE: The Stream of Consciousness Running Through Four Occult Superhero Comics - Chapter 1
SORCERERS, SWAMP THINGS, SANDMEN, AND SOPHIE: The Stream of Consciousness Running Through Four Occult Superhero Comics - Chapter 2
NO EVIL SHALL ESCAPE MY DICE: Running A Green Lantern In A Sensible Superhero World
AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE... RE-VISIONS: Exploring What The Hell Is Up With The Android Avenger
PRAYING FOR THE END OF TIME: The Annoyances of Internal Entropy In Ongoing Imaginary Universes
OF GOOFS AND GROVERS: Putting the Soup in Super, the Uh in Ultra, and the HAI! In Hyper
PANTHER IN MOTION: The Leap From King to Priest
TEN FEET SMART: Super Scientist Henry Pym's Tale To Astonish
FOUR COLOR CARNALITY: A Study of Superhuman Sensuality
TOOL OF THE TRADE: What Continuity Is, Isn't, And Shouldn't Ever Be
BOOK OF THE DEAD: Who And What Crisis Killed (besides my childhood, DC's Silver Age, and good writing in general in comics for ten years)
SLAYER'S HANDBOOK: The Metaphysics of Buffy-Earth (Expanded) Part 1. Data
SLAYER'S HANDBOOK: The Metaphysics of Buffy-Earth (Expanded) Part 2. Analysis & Speculation
COUNTDOWN TO SENILITY: Part 1 The Best Superhero Comics Of All Time
COUNTDOWN TO SENILITY: Part 2 The Honorary Mentions List
COUNTDOWN TO SENILITY: Part 3 The Little Tales That Were Not There
BREAK: REFLECTIONS OF THE MANHUNTER - An In Depth Analysis of Avengers Forever
THESE GO TO ELEVEN: Why America's Best Comics Is No Idle Boast
CRIME AND NO PUNISHMENT: The Criminal Justice Non-System In Superhero Comics
OKAY -- WHO HAS BEEN MESSIN WIT MY LASER?!? :The Politics of Powerlessness
WHY SAVING THE WORLD DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BORING
YAKKITY YAK -- DON'T TALK BACK: How I Survived CBEM
THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF ROLEPLAYING
This doesn't include my newest novel, HIGH SCHOOL OF THE DAMNED (for young adults), any of my probably several million words of blog posts, certainly doesn't include my prolific commentary on various other websites over the decades... but still. Even incomplete, this is a good hunk.
Amazing that I've never been paid for any of this stuff.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Musings on A GAME OF THRONES
So I've started rereading A GAME OF THRONES, and... it's like... hmmm... I never really noticed all these hints and portents before, but... is it possible that Jon Snow is Ned Stark's bastard child... by Ned's sister, Lyanna Stark? Is that the dreadful guilty secret he's lived with for the last fourteen years? Is that why Ned has never told anyone who Jon's mother is, why Ned won't even tolerate discussion of the subject? Most importantly, is it why Ned's response to learning that Cersei's kids were the product of incest was so bizarrely compassionate?
When you think about it, Ned's attempt to give Cersei a chance to run away with her and Jaime's kids is very strange. The typical response to children born of incest in Westeros is one of disgust and horror, and while Ned is certainly an unusually honorable man, and one could argue that he is even an unusually compassionate man, still, there's nothing in his character to indicate that his views on incest should significantly vary from his cultural norm... and certainly, there is nothing in his experience with Cersei and her children to cause him to want to save them, and, in fact, he has excellent reason to despise Cersei and, at the very least, Joffrey. Upon finding out that the kids are not Robert's, but are, in fact, the product of an incestuous union, why should Ned go out of his way to try to keep them from being killed by Robert's wrath?
Yeah, yeah... Ned has clearly been deeply troubled by the manner in which the youngest Targaryen children were slaughtered by the Lannisters, and so he grits his teeth and says "I don't kill children" to Cersei... but on the other hand, if Ned has no special reason to feel empathy for children born of incest, it seems like he might well feel that Tywin Lannister having to watch as Robert Baretheon murders his son and his daughter and his grandchildren is justice, or, at least, karma... and Ned is big on justice.
So, again... why is Ned so deeply moved that he goes out of his way to give Cersei -- a woman he despises -- a chance to take her kids and run, before he goes to the king, a man he loves as a brother, and tells him the truth about the parentage of Cersei's children?
The prevailing theory among fandom seems to be that Jon Snow is actually the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaeryen; that Lyanna and Rhaegar fell in love and ran off together, and that the general belief that Rhaegar kidnapped and raped her hundreds of times over a course of months is mistaken... and that keeping the truth secret, while pretending that Jon Snow is his own bastard child, is what Ned promised Lyanna he would do, as she died in his arms, presumably as a result of complications arising from childbirth. Yet Martin makes it clear over and over again that Ned still thinks about Lyanna, and his promise to her, every day and night of his life... that his promise, whatever it may have been, is somehow tied to some guilty secret that has wracked him with remorse every since. However, on page 381 of my copy of AGOT, Ned thinks a peculiar thing: "For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not."
Now... if a day hasn't gone by in fourteen years that Ned hasn't been haunted by his promise to his sister Lyanna, and that promise has to do with concealing the fact that Jon Snow is Rhaegar Targaryen's son... how in the name of God are we supposed to accept that "for the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen"?
If, on the other hand, Ned and Lyanna were lovers, well, it accords well with Ned's passionate devotion to Lyanna's memory, his absolutely unwillingness to even discuss Jon's parentage (even, or especially, with Robert Baratheon or his wife Catelyn), and his strange sympathy for Cersei's relationship with her brother and the children that relationship produced.
What prompted all this musing in the first place is a strange remark Tyrion Lannister makes to Jon the first time the two of them speak: "You have more of the north in you than your brothers." How can this be if Jon is half Targaryen? In fact, how can Jon have more of the north in him than his brothers... and in fact, Jon is frequently said to look much more Starkish than any of his siblings but Arya... unless both Jon's parents are actually of the north?
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STAR WARS isn't science fiction. Science fiction explores the ways that science can change how humans live... the impact ...
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So this Boy Scout, couldn't have been older than eleven, is holding up this kinda chubby looking Scotch Pine. It was.... ehhhh... okay...