Rejection and what comes after

Dear D.A:

Thank you very much for letting me see "Clowns." We regret that we cannot make use of it at this time.

All submissions will be examined as promptly as possible, and if suitable, will be paid for on acceptance.

Many manuscripts are rejected because of fundamental faults.  Check these things:
—Since Analog is a science fiction magazine, we consider only science fiction stories—that is, stories in which some aspect of realistic science or technology plays an integral part.  We do not publish fantasy or stories in which the science is only peripheral.
—Science fiction readers are problem solvers!  Stories with downbeat endings, in which the characters have no hope of solving their problems, are strongly disliked by Analog readers.  In a good SF story, the characters strive to solve their problems—and even if they fail in the end, they go down fighting, not whimpering.
—Good fiction demands strong, believable characters who face powerful, intriguing problems.  Without these, there is no story, no matter how fascinating the ideas or scientific background may be.
—Some plot ideas have been so overworked that it’s virtually impossible to wring a fresh story from them.  These include “scientific” retellings of biblical tales, time travelers who unwittingly change their world when traveling into the past, UFO stories, and stories in which the “alien” world turns out to be Earth.
—Write about what you know.  Analog writers should be able to do sufficient research to get their facts straight, and they should be keen enough observers of people to write realistically about them.
—Please don’t ask for individual criticism.  With hundreds of submissions per month, it is physically impossible to answer them all personally.  Many writing errors are quite subtle, and extremely difficult to define clearly in a sentence or two.

Sincerely,
-------
Editor

267 Broadway, 4th floor
New York, NY 10007
E-mail: analogsf@dellmagazines.com
www.analogsf.com

* * * *

Okay.  I originally posted this rejection note, which I got yesterday for a short story I submitted early in October with the understanding I'd hear something about it in five weeks, on my other FB account.  The one with my real name on it.

Of course, I also posted my honest and unedited response to it, which, the world being what it is, would accomplish nothing but get me in trouble.  Honesty is a virtue rather like intelligence; everybody says they respect it, but in fact, most people despise it.

Over here, though, well, let's try this again:

First, it's possible the short story I submitted might suck.  I cannot objectively judge my own writing.  Whether it sucks or not, though, I can objectively judge my writing in comparison to the writing quality of other short stories published by various venues that have rejected my writing, and by that comparison, I will say this:  this short story is as good as most of what Analog publishes.  It's better than a lot of it.  And had this exact same short story been submitted by Stephen King or George R.R. Martin, I'm sure it would have received a very different response, along with a nice fat check.

But it is what it is.  That's just how any business goes, and I'm not feeling particularly pissy about that at the moment.  However, there are a couple of things in this boilerplate rejection note that do... well... IRK me, just a tiny bit.

First?  Well, let's start  here:

"—Science fiction readers are problem solvers!  Stories with downbeat endings, in which the characters have no hope of solving their problems, are strongly disliked by Analog readers.  In a good SF story, the characters strive to solve their problems—and even if they fail in the end, they go down fighting, not whimpering."

First, I'm a science fiction reader, and,  yes, I'm a problem solver when I need to be, but so are pretty much all humans, so, y'know, big deal.  It's hardly a defining characteristic.  Now, the editor of Analog is certainly in a better position than I am to state what 'Analog readers' like and/or dislike... but despite that, I flatly do not believe the statement 'stories with downbeat endings, in which the characters have no hope of solving their problems, are strongly disliked by Analog readers'.  For one thing, this would mean Analog readers are all a bunch of whiney little pissy pants crybabies, and I doubt that's true.  For another, it would mean that there is no Analog reader anywhere on this planet that enjoyed ON THE BEACH or 1984 or  "It's a GOOD Life" or "The Cold Equations" or anything H.P. Lovecraft has ever written or who watches and admires THE WALKING DEAD.  All of these are examples of works of fiction that are downbeat, in which the characters have no  hope of solving their problems, and in the case of the literary works, they are all enormously popular classics of the genre, and in the case of THE WALKING DEAD, it's like the most popular TV show since THE FUGITIVE.

Science fiction readers are imaginative, tough minded sons and daughters of bitches.  Any paragraph which defines them categorically as the sort of people who only like stories with happy endings is not only stupid, it's bad writing... the kind that any self respecting magazine editor should reject out of hand.   And when that paragraph is part of a rejection letter purporting to (pompously and condescendingly) explain just why a rejected submission might have been rejected... wow.   I mean... WOW.

Second:  If indeed the reason why the person who sent me this rejection note can't offer me individual feedback is that "Many writing errors are quite subtle, and extremely difficult to define clearly in a sentence or two", then he or she has no business editing a church newsletter, much less Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine, a long standing flagship in the SF magazine field.  Because another way of putting that is "I can't tell you why I don't like your story, because I don't really know, and if I knew, well, I can't really articulate it".  And that's not somebody who should ever have the authority to accept or reject another writer's work, because, frankly, that's not someone who knows how to write.

The short story I submitted is indeed a downbeat story.  It's a tale of an Earth that has been conquered by aliens, and what life under alien rule is like.  Now, the editor who sent me this note would have me believe that such a story is only acceptable to Analog's readership if it features doughty protagonists named Chip and Biff and Cathy who invent some sort of infra-wave projector in their basements that causes all the alien overlords to suddenly EXPLODE!!!  In my short story, the aliens are frightening and horrible and inexplicable; they can't be fought or even resisted, it's impossible to even comprehend them, and apparently, they're eating people and will keep eating people until there aren't any people left to eat.  My story is about what it's like living in a world like that... how people behave when they, essentially, have no hope.  It's a downer, but it's competently written and, I believe, emotionally and intellectually effective.

And, again... submitted under a more famous byline, I'm sure it would have received a very different response.

Whatever the case, I didn't really expect the story would be accepted.  I hoped, and where there's hope, there is, inevitably, disappointment.  I wish the publishing game wasn't as hopelessly rigged as it is these days against unknown newcomers; failing that, I wish I knew someone who worked for a publisher, or was better at kissing ass than I obviously am.

But, as I've noted, it is what it is.

The Dark Knight Retards

So, Facebook suggested I friend someone.  And, in a moment of weakness, I did it.

So this guy posts about how much he likes Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and BATMAN: YEAR ONE, stating that really, the only thing he didn't like about both books was how he felt Miller 'demeaned' the character of Selina Kyle by making her into a hooker.  Everything else about the stories was hunky dory, sez this fella.  But Selina Kyle as a sex worker?  Nope.  Rubbed him the wrong way.  Seemed kind of degrading for the character.

I posted a long reply stating that degrading and demeaning established characters is what Miller does, and that in my own view, Selena Kyle got off lightly... in fact, unless we presume that a woman being retconned into a prostitute who takes no shit from her male clients and who can punch the living shit out of her pimp any time she wants is somehow 'demeaning', then I'd say that Miller really didn't do Selina Kyle much harm after all.

On the other hand, Miller did take a heroic protagonist (Batman) who, at one time, had been depicted as being one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and altruistic human beings in the world, and turned him into an emotionally damaged, borderline psychotic, fetishistically sadistic facebreaker with all the intellectual capacity of a radish.   He transformed Superman into a narcissistic government yes-man, Green Arrow into a raving lunatic, and the remainder of DC's superheroic pantheon into cowards who retreated from the world at exactly the moment when it needed them most.

To my mind, Selena Kyle's transformation from a bored jet set thrillseeking kleptomaniac divorcee to a sex worker who was selling sex because that's what she wanted to do, who could in no way, shape, or form, be regarded as any sort of victim, who was doing exactly what she wanted to do until she discovered something she wanted to do more, and who upon making that discovery, punched out her pimp and proceeded to move on to the next thing, which was not only extremely difficult and dangerous but which she also excelled at... that's only 'degrading' or 'demeaning' if you're the sort of reflexive, unthinking person who automatically presumes that a woman having a sex life of her choosing is, by definition, fallen and somehow objectionable.

Selina Kyle got off lightly.  Yeah, she went from 'respectable' to 'slut/bitch', to use the particularly twisted and biased terms of the Patriarchy, but she remained competent, sane, intelligent, capable, strong, and, given that she refused to abandon young Holly when she left their mutual pimp for greener pastures, compassionate.  Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, lost three quarters of his IQ score, 90% of his areas of expertise, nearly every bit of compassion he ever possessed for anyone except, apparently, a random black street thief, an old homeless woman, and Jim Gordon's infant son... and every last bit of his sanity.  Superman and Green Arrow were similarly de-heroized and stupefied.  Again... that's what Miller DOES.  It's ALL he does.

When I pointed this out to this fellow, his response was, essentially, two fold:

(a) he didn't think Selena being a sex worker was demeaning, he thought prostitution should be legal and hookers were great and... um...  well... something else, but, anyway, in DARK KNIGHT RETURNS Miller made her old and fat!  Yeah!  So there!

PLUS

(b)  he hadn't intended his post to be any kind of forum on Frank Miller's abilities as a writer.

Which, as I understand it, is essentially saying "Hey, I was just saying how much I like Frank Miller's writing on DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and BATMAN: YEAR ONE.  I didn't invite anyone to DISAGREE with me or anything!"

Well, I shan't disagree with him again.  Friending him was a mistake, but it's a mistake I have rectified.

Milestone

Got my driver's license today.  Took me long enough, right?

Favorites

Occasionally I am asked, what is your favorite novel? Your favorite SF novel? Your favorite fantasy novel? Your favorite mystery novel? What is your favorite comic book?




People never differentiate on the 'comic book' question. There are as many different genres of comic books as there are anything else, but, to be fair, I generally only read superhero comics.



However, as it happens, one o...f the few non superhero comics I've ever read is, in fact, my favorite, or, at least, the BEST comic I've ever read: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's FROM HELL.



If I had to pick a favorite supehero comic, it would be hard. Maybe CAPTAIN MARVEL #38. Or FLASH #123. Or GIANT SIZE AVENGERS #2. Or HULK #168. Or SUPERBOY #195, which featured the awesome Legion of Superheroes back up story "One Shot Hero". Or possibly even Alan Moore's fantastic two part "Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?"



As to favorite novels:



Science fiction - LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny. But Heinlein's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY would be a really close second.



Fantasy - probably DEATH OF THE NECROMANCER by Martha Wells. Or something by Barbara Hambly.



Mystery - I don't read much mystery. What I do read is mostly Travis McGee by John D. MacDonald and Spenser by Robert B. Parker. Overall the McGee series is better than the Spenser series, but if I had to pick a single favorite book, it would probably be LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE by Robert B. Parker.



Although I am very fond of Robert L. Fish's THE MURDER LEAGUE, too.

Dear George R.R. Martin

A page that says "Done" which was posted on April 28, 2011 referring to the fifth book of a trilogy that is now projected to be seven books long can in no way any longer be referred to as an "update" regarding that seven book trilogy as a whole.

Get your head out of your ass and do some of the fucking work we have been paying you for, instead of simply spending our goddam money.

Hugz,

me

You know that I shouldn't

Growing up, like all kids, I listened to the music that the grown ups played in the house. Once my mom married her second husband, Bill, his rather lugubrious musical tastes -- Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, John Fucking Denver, all those folksie male vocalists that so drearified the late 70s -- dominated my domestic musical landscape. We occasionally got a hit of something more upbeat (if brainless) when Bill was in one of his rare good moods and he'd throw some Olivia Newton-John or Abba into the old eight track, but for the most part, the Bill Era was all about the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Aye, Calypso, I Sing To Your Spirit, that goddam Peace Train, and Little Boxes on the motherfucking Hillside. Oh yes.


But prior to that, it had been pretty much my mother's musical tastes, which ran strongly - or weakly, whatever - to a sort of Greatest Girl Singers of the 60s vibe -- Twiggy, Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Carole King, Joanie Mitchell, Joan Baez, and the ever loving Mamas and the Papas.

Now, there's no knocking some of this -- Carole King's TAPESTRY may be the best set of tracks ever set into wax. And I can listen to "Midnight Train to Georgia" or "Me and Bobbie McGee" all day long.

And I've always been fond of the Mamas & the Papas. "California Dreamin'" has to be one of the greatest pop ditties ever recorded, and there's not too much else by them that I won't at least tap my foot along with when it comes on an oldies channel.

So imagine my surprise when I heard "I Saw Her Again" on the break room oldies station at work the other day, and for the first time in my life, heard the lyrics clearly and realized... wow. Despite how it sounds when you're not really listening, this is no upbeat love song:


I saw her again last night,

And you know that I shouldn't

Just string her along; it's just not right

If I couldn't I wouldn't.

But what can I do; I'm lonely too.

And it makes me feel so good to know

She'll never leave me.



I'm in way over my head;

Now she thinks that I love her (yeah, yeah)

Because that's what I said

Though I never think of her.

(No, no, never think of her)



But what can I do? I'm lonely too.

And it makes me feel so good to know

(And it makes me feel so good to know...)

She'll never leave me.



Every time I see that girl,

You know I wanna lay down and die.

But I really need that girl

Though I'm living a lie;

(Though I'm living a lie...)

It makes me wanna cry



I saw her again last night,

And you know that I shouldn't

Just string her along; it's just not right.

If I couldn't then I wouldn't,

But what can I do, I'm lonely too.

And it makes me feel so good to know

She'll never leave me.

(to know...know)



But what can I do? I'm lonely too.

Yeah, and it makes me feel so good to know

She'll never leave me.



Every time I see that girl,

You know I wanna lay down and die.

But I really need that girl

Though I'm living a lie

(Though I'm living a lie...)

It makes me wanna cry.



I saw her...

I saw her again last night.

And you know that I shouldn't (no, no)

Just string her along; it's just not right.

If I couldn't, I wouldn't;

I'm in way over my head (you say...)

Now she thinks that I love her (yeah, yeah)

Because that's what I said...



Whoa. That's some dark, DARK shit there. No wonder the guy who co-wrote it turned out to be fucking his own kid.

Military intelligence

Cognitive dissonance.  Americans are masters of the art.  Holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously because that's much much more comfortable than actually accepting that those two beliefs are contradictory... we've got that shit down.

Like "America is the greatest nation in the history of the world!  And we're always the good guys!"  Most of us really believe that.  We watch cop shows and the news and we even know a little of our country's history.  We know we all but annihilated the Native Americans.  We know we put our citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps during World War II for no good reason at all.  We know we've treated all our minorities... racial, religious, gender-based, sexual... atrociously.  We know our police routinely torture confessions out of suspects.  We know all this... and still we're shocked when we hear about Abu Ghraib.  Or that we tortured people to get to bin Laden.  We're shocked.  Because we're Americans, and we're the good guys.

We can also easily believe that customer service is ominiscient and omnipotent... they know everything they need to know without us having to answer any questions, and they can just push a button or wave a magic wand and make our services work again, and all we need to do is call them up and complain.  We really believe that.  And yet, at the same time, we genuinely believe that we can talk to them like shit and treat them like garbage.  They're more knowledgeable than us, and more proficient than we are, and we'll sit on hold for twenty minutes waiting for them because we NEED them... yet they are inferior to us, and must kiss our asses at all times, or we'll report them to their supervisors.

Our God is a God of love, a God of infinite mercy, a God who sent his own son down to Earth to be tortured to death so that we can have an eternal afterlife of bliss in Heaven.   But he wiped out two cities for reasons Old Testament scholars are still arguing about (as if there are any good reasons for blowing up two entire cities full of people).  He wiped the entire surface of the Earth clean of all land dwelling life except for the creatures on one boat... again, for no good reason anyone can understand or explain.

He sent bears to rip some kids apart because they teased one of his prophets about being bald.

Even today, when supposedly he's mellowed out considerably, he apparently hates atheists and agnostics and liberals and Muslims and gays.  Especially gays.  God has a serious, serious problem with gays, we're told.  To the extent that sometimes I wonder if maybe God isn't keeping some pretty profound secrets from himself about his own sexuality.

And, of course, we can believe that our police should be paid more, our firefighters should be paid more, our teachers and our soldiers and our hard working heroic garbagemen should be paid more.  And we should have better schools and more tanks and more planes and our roads and bridges and railroads should be in better shape and why doesn't the government do something about all these annoying calls from telemarketers and all those people putting viruses on our computers?

And our taxes should be lower.  Much, much lower.

And our phones should never drop calls and our internet should be faster and our computers should never ever crash and our TVs should get more channels and our DVRs should record more shows and our electricity should never go out and we should always be able to find whatever we want at the grocery store.

And no matter where we work or what we do for a living, we want a raise every year and better benefits.  We want our deductibles and our co pays to go down.  We want dental.  We want vision.  We want our flexible spending accounts to cover over the counter medicine and laser eye surgery.

Yet our bills should never go up.  Our service providers should never charge us more for anything, the gas station should never raise its prices, and neither should the grocery store.

In fact, our expenses should go down. Our employers should pay us more to work less and everyone else should charge us less for the stuff we want.

Also, as Americans, we have a sacred right to fuck around with other people's countries if we want to.  We can overthrow their governments, we can embargo them, we can invade them and blow their shit up and steal their stuff and torture their citizens.  We can rock out with our cocks out, yes we can, bitchez!  But they may not respond.  They have to sit there and take it.  If they criticize us in their media, we will bomb their asses off.  If they organize resistance to our occupation, we will drone strike them into fucking rubble.  And if they come at us... if they dare to come across those big oceans and hit us right here on our home soil?  Fuck.  Then we will get MEDIEVAL on their asses.

Because we're the greatest nation in the history of the world and we're always the good guys.

I realize these are not original thoughts. I realize these points have been made many many times in the past by better writers with larger followings.

But, still, I had a little time while I was waiting for the laundry to finish up, so, whatever.

GOT on FB

So, GAME OF THRONES: ASCENT --

My feedback so far: everything takes too long. Sorry. I realize that two factors are at work here: (a) the programmers want people to buy speed ups, and (b) there is only so much story already done to work with so there is a need to pace us as we make our way through the narrative.

I'm not saying those things aren't important. I am saying, everything takes too long. Five minutes would be enough to give me the sensation of time going by; 45 minutes is just silly. I hit these points where everything is busy and it's half an hour until I can move on in any of the tracks I'm on and it's just frustrating.

I understand that tension is what a game is supposed to generate, and frustration is part of that tension... I've designed a lot of games myself. But a good game creates tension and then releases it in a satisfactory fashion. This is what we mean when we call a game or a book or a movie or a TV show 'good'... it creates tension, and then releases that tension in a manner we find satisfactory. If it doesn't create tension, it's boring. If it does create tension but does not release that tension in a manner we find satisfactory, then we find it frustrating, or we think the ending sucked, or whatever. Creating tension, and then releasing it satisfactorily, is the key to everything. If you can do that, you can make a million bucks in Hollywood, or, probably, in game design. But it's not as easy as it seems.

Creating tension is easy. Anyone can do it. The dollar bins at every book store, at every Game Stop, in the movie section of every Target and Wal-mart, are full of games and books and movies that created tension but did not release that tension in a satisfying fashion. Many video games rely on flashy graphics, awesome sound quality, terrific playability, tie ins to extremely popular fictional properties, to get by and generate revenue... just as many movies rely on nifty special effects, lots of violence, and boobies to sell tickets. But it still all comes down to -- does it create tension (which is easy, but many movies and games still fuck it up) and, having created that tension, does it release it in a satisfactory manner? This last bit is where all the money is. If it does, it's a great game/movie/book/whatever. If it doesn't... ultimately, it's a failure and a disappontment.

(It's worth noting that in terms of this game's source material, the jury is still very much out regarding whether or not this is a 'good' story or not. George R.R. Martin is producing a wonderful reading experience, but he's also kind of working a very elaborate con on us. Over the course of twenty years now, he's given us this extremely long drawn out process whereby all he's really done is the first part -- creating tension. That's all A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE has been so far... here's a cool setting. Here's all this nifty mysterious shit going on... the weird seasons, the bizarre monsters up Beyond The Wall, the apparent growing conflict between stasis and change/order and chaos/ice and fire... plus, all the personal mysteries regarding Jon Snow's lineage and Tyrion Lannister and what the hell is up with that stupid horn Sam is carrying around and a hundred other questions. It's all creating tension. Martin has done a masterful job of it... but can he release that tension in a satisfying manner? Can he give us a conclusion to this story that successfully resolves all of these mysteries and enigmas, that ties all of these various storylines and character bits and plot devices all together, and can he do it in a way that will satisfy us... which means, basically, in a way that (a) no one sees coming, but (b) when he finally presents it, everyone facepalms themselves and says "Of COURSE!!!! I should have seen that! That's BRILLIANT!!!"

Personally, I doubt he can do it... he's obviously already revising whatever his original plans and directions were for the characters and the story... he's obviously gone back and done this many times so far. Apparently, whenever Martin goes out on the internet and reads some post where some fan successfully guesses a plot development Martin has in mind, Martin throws a monumental hissy fit, rips up all the unpublished pages he's already done establishing that particular story direction, and starts over, because he just can't stand it when someone guesses what he's planning to do. And given that he obviously ego-searches the Internet constantly, this means that finishing this story is... well... unlikely, to say the least.

And the idea that he can possibly tie all these thousand thousand different threads up together in a manner that is satisfying and consistent... nah. There's no way.

But it doesn't matter, because the way he dicks around, he'll be dead before the next book is even finished. And in the meantime, this extended exercise in creating tension that we all call A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE has given George R.R. Martin about the most wonderful old age anyone could ever ask for. All his books are back in print, he gets paid vacations to Cons all over the world, he's got movie deals and commercial tie ins falling out of his ass, he's got hundreds of thousands of new sycophants and tons and tons of money... and if those few of us who have actually read his pre-GAME OF THRONES work kind of suspect that the man simply does not have the talent to write a finished ANYTHING that really satisfies... well, clearly, we're in the minority.

I don't think he really WANTS to finish the story. There's no real incentive for him to do it. There's no way he does it in a way that makes even a majority of his fans happy, and as soon as he does finish it, people stop paying attention to him. The money dwindles, but he's got to have enough of that to last him another hundred years he isn't going to live.

Mostly, though, he'll lose all the attention. No one will be inviting him to cons any more, and there won't be any more articles calling him "the American Tolkien".

No, I'm pretty sure Martin will die... very happily... before he ever wraps this thing up.

But if I'm wrong, there's simply no way he's going to release all the tension he's generated in a satisfactory fashion. The real Tolkien couldn't do it. C.S. Lewis couldn't do it. Roger Zelazny couldn't do it.

Sure as shit the guy who wrote TUF VOYAGING and THE ARMAGEDDON RAG can't do it.)

As to this game... so far, it generates tension fine. But when it comes to releasing tension satisfactorily... um... no. No, not so much.

This one aggravates me for half an hour, 45 minutes at a time, and then... hardly anything happens. I just move on to the next thing.

I'm also finding it tedious, skipping over all the actual adventuring and fighting and cool interactions.

In fact, now that I think of it, I don't want to run a Lord in Westeros. I want to run Kirth, that bard guy. He does all the cool stuff. And I want more details on what he does. I want the fights and the seductions and the sneaking around getting info. I don't want to run my mill and build a sept and all that nonsense. I'm not here to build and maintain a keep. I want to adventure.

Now, there may very well be people out there who like all the household stuff... God knows, Farmville is popular enough, and I'd never play it. But my feedback is, I just want to play Kirth.

In defense of Scott McCloud

So, in an unrelated comics thread commenting on an article linked to by Joe Staton, I praised the work of comics visionary, and one time college buddy of mine, Scott McCloud.

In response, old school comics hackmeister Marty Pasko took issue with my praise of Scott. He said:

"Sorry, Mr. Madigan, but I'd be willing to invest some time in trying to persuade you that your fealty to Scott O'Clude and his "Obfuscating Comics" is both regrettable and misguided.

I have zero interest in stirring up controversy for its own sake, and part of me would almost be grateful if this comment would go unnoticed, but I can't let some of the ignorant nonsense being bandied about here go unchallenged and yet sleep well tonight.

I've always had the utmost contempt for Scott Whatsisname's presumption in trying to set himself up as some sort of authority on the grammar of comics and the fundamentals of graphic storytelling, partly because his own work -- the silly, pointless, empty and creatively-bankrupt "Zot!" being the principal indictment of his fraudulence -- indicts his own credibility. The careful reading of his half-baked, supposedly knowledgeable texts by one who is a serious student of both the history and the current state of the form, AS WELL AS a seasoned practitioner of one of its disciplines, yields a strong conviction that Mr. O'Clude's primary claim to fame is as an egregious example of the principle of "Those Who Cannot Do, Teach."

I regret the fact that space, and the limited attention span of the readership I'd most want to reach, forbid my going into greater, more specific detail. It is my hope to be able to deconstruct, and savage, line by line, Mr. O'Clude's wrongheaded pomposities, as part of a highly personalized, one-on-one writing coaching service in both comics and animation storytelling that I'll be offering between now and this year's San Diego ComiCon, at which I'll be a guest.

Does that sentence mean I'm seizing an opportunity to try to sell you something? Yeah. You bet your ass, baby -- welcome to America. I have a bunch of majorly valuable experience and hard-won knowledge that I can download to you, you aspiring storyteller, you, that will give you a competitive advantage in securing paying gigs.

Watch this, uhm, space for further details...and a link to the site, now under construction, where it's gonna happen."

To which I responded as follows:

"Mr. Pasko -

No reason for you to give a shit, and certainly it shouldn't change your opinion. I'm a fan of Scott in great part because I know first hand that he's pretty much a genius; I had the privilege of being part of the same college clique he hung out with at Syracuse University. I learned a great deal from the best; him and Kurt Busiek. Kurt and I are no longer even remotely friends, but I know Kurt is a gifted writer (with some unfortunate limitations) and I know Scott is, well, a genius, both as an artist and as a comics analyst. Scott is a true visionary; one of the very few people I've ever met who can actually think originally and truly create new things.

And beyond that, where I would never say this about Kurt (unfortunately) I also know that Scott is a class act and a helluva fine human being. There's nothing mediocre about him. Only a terminal mediocrity would ever even think to associate that word with him.

I'm not going to discuss what I think about your writing over the years because it's not germane; I'm simply going to say, I've personally known far, far better writers than you, and been privileged to learn from them. In my opinion, of course. For what little it's worth. (Certainly as much as yours, though.)

ZOT! had some problems until the main character got stuck on our mundane Earth; the book needed that central conceptual contrast to really take off. Scott is, as I've mentioned, a genuinely innovative and original thinker and creator, which is a great deal more than I can say for you. Sorry, but I've read at least as much of your work as I've read of Scott's (or, for that matter, of my other college mentor, Kurt Busiek's) and you simply aren't in their class. Your denigrating words towards Scott strike me as insecurity at best and probably rank jealousy at worst... but either way, they are simply inaccurate.

I realize you're not going to hear/read this well... who would? And I realize you had no idea you were talking shit about someone I regard as a personal friend, mentor, and as one of the very few truly Great People I've ever actually met. And I also realize that probably makes me not at all unbiased about his work. But one of the many, many reasons I admire and respect Scott is not simply that he's a good friend and a great person, but also that he's an enormously talented artist.

Obviously, you can hold whatever opinion you want about whatever you want, and express it wherever you want. But any tiny vestigial respect I might have had for your judgment regarding creative matters or comic books is now utterly gone. I don't expect you to care about that... who the fuck am I, after all? A failure and a wannabe, I'm absolutely aware. But Scott McCloud is so far superior to you as a comics creator, analyst, and visionary, and, as far as I know, as a human being, that honestly, it's just pointless to even make the comparison. That you'd end a several hundred word bitch slap at a far, far better man by trying to get me to buy something of yours is just the final underscore on how much class you lack.

If I seem angry at your absolutely unmerited rudeness, well, you seem astonishingly boorish, avaricious, and opportunistic, so I guess we're even."

There was absolutely no need for Pasko to jump into that comment thread and shit all over Scott. The level of personal vitriol he spewed was completely unwarranted, and, again, I can only assume motivated by some kind of intense, nearly obsessive personal jealousy. Maybe Marty Pasko once had a huge crush on Scott's delightful wife Ivy, I don't know. Whatever the case, his actions were completely out of line, and for him to say that he has "a bunch of majorly valuable experience and hard-won knowledge" is about the most egregiously self serving and, obviously, utterly false to fact statement I've seen since the last Republican stump speech.

Pasko's writing has always been mediocre at best. Now I know why... he's a mediocre at best human being who is apparently eaten up with jealousy regarding a far, far better person than he will ever be.

The buffer

I like the buffer.

Normally I never get it... that feeling of comfort you get when you're off from work, and you know you don't have to go to work the following day, either.

Prior to my current job, where my days off are Sunday and Tuesday, and have been for almost a year now, I worked at another call center for nearly three years. It took me about a year at that call center to get enough seniority to get Sunday and Monday off with day time hours. (I had not yet managed to be able to reliably bid on Saturday and Sundays off when I left that job; shifts with weekends off and daytime hours are the Holy Grail of call center work, and are reserved for the very privileged elite at the very tip top of the seniority ladder.)

At my current call center, forget having Saturday and Sunday off... I've never seen a shift where anyone gets both those days. But just getting two days off in a row is a near impossibility. Which is why, when I accumulated a bunch of vacation and personal days in December of last year that I had to schedule, if not use, by the end of the month, since HR was changing their scheduling software and no one would guarantee that the days would continue to be available, I put them all on Mondays in January and February.

So for an oh too brief period which will soon be over, I get not just two days off in a row, but three days off in a row, most weeks. (I missed the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February because they were already scheduled up by other employees. But I got the rest of them.)

So Saturday night is pretty sweet, because I'm on the brink of a three day weekend and that's always a wonderful feeling. Sunday is awesome, because I've still got two days left. And Monday is pretty good, because there's always Tuesday.

But Tuesday just FLIES away...

I enjoy the buffer.

Upstairs, downstairs

Okay.

So, last night. Once again, the loud music, the sounds of voices, the gunshots and explosions coming down through the living room ceiling around 9:25, five minutes before the 13 year old daughter's bedtime. When I say 'loud', I mean, we could hear these sounds in the back bedroom. The loud noises have been a recurring motif lately and we've tried to ignore them, but she was complaining she couldn't sleep, so I did what I've learned is the only thing that works with the Asshole Upstairs - I called the cops on him. 

Now, when I say I've learned this, I mean, I've been up those stairs at least a dozen times in the last year and a half to ask him, with varying levels of courtesy, if he could please quiet down. It has never accomplished anything; all he does is roll his eyes at me, call me a control freak, and advise that he's in his apartment and he'll do whatever he wants. At various times in the past, in response to requests to be quieter, he's told us:

* we should buy a house out in the country
* we're not the landlord and therefore have no control over what goes on in his apartment
* my whole family should wear ear plugs
* we live in an apartment building and noise is going to happen
* it's just his lifestyle, bro

My wife has also gone upstairs numerous times and, I do not doubt in a much more civil fashion (because she's way classier than I am) asked him to quiet down, too. 

None of these requests have ever accomplished anything except to provide him with an opportunity to insult us. On a few occasions, he's actually gotten louder, just to show that We're Not The Boss Of Him, which it is extremely important that he demonstrate to us. On one memorable occasion, he and his 'besty', the slore who lives in the other upstairs apartment, actually waited for me to get back downstairs before beginning to jump up and down and scream like apes. After which, they went in his bedroom and jumped up and down on the bed and made loud simulated sex noises... which, since the youngest daughter was currently trying to sleep directly beneath, did not amuse us at all.

So what I've learned is, when he's being excessively noisy, I call the cops. When I call the cops, he shuts up... at least, for a while. 

So the cops finally showed up last night (cop, actually; sometimes one shows up, sometimes two) and went upstairs and asked him to quiet down. And he did turn the volume down a little... but five minutes after I got back to bed, he proceeded to STOMP up and down the hall running the length of his apartment... I mean, he was just BOOMIN up there, to make sure we knew he was displeased with us.

So today I resisted the urge, with some help from my wife, to go outside and gather up some of the shit his dog has left all over our backyard for the past year and a half, and deposit it all over the area in front of his front door. Because I didn't want to be that creep. 

And half an hour ago, there's a rap rap rap at the back door, and I open it, and the little turd is standing on my back porch. And he starts in: "You know, if you have a problem with the noise coming from my living room, just come up and tell me. Because I was within my rights with the agreement I made with your wife and the landlord -- "

"No," I said, pointing at him, "stop." He did, and I said "First, you have broken that agreement whenever you felt like it. The agreement no longer exists, you have had parties and been noisy far later than you were supposed to; if I don't call the cops to shut you down you'll keep going all night. Second -- I have tried to be a good neighbor to you. I came up those stairs a dozen times before I ever called the cops and every time what happened? You insulted me and never ever quieted down... occasionally, you just jumped up and down and screamed. And the last time I came up, you ordered me off your porch. So get off my porch."

"You're SO gross," he told me. "Fine. But you can't harass me."

"I'm not harassing you," I told him as he retreated off the porch. "You're a child and calling the cops is the only thing that works when you create a problem so hear me on this: I will call the cops EVERY TIME. Because you've taught me and you've taught my wife that it's the only way to get you to behave like a grown up, however briefly."

"Why are you such a miserable man?" he asked. "You can't harass me like this."

"Another thing," I said, "that agreement you're talking about? One of the conditions of it was your promise that you'd be gone by the end of summer if we just 'hung in there' with you. And you're still here. You're a liar and a child and as it is the only thing that works with you, I will call the cops EVERY TIME."

My voice was shaking pretty badly. Even at the age of 51, I cannot keep my voice steady when I'm emotional.

I still have a hard time believing he had the temerity to come up and mention that 'agreement' to me. In addition to establishing 'quiet times' in the house (which he's ignored whenever he felt like it), he also agreed to keep his dog on a leash outside his apartment and to clean up after her... which he has NEVER done. Plus, there's the whole thing where he was supposed to be gone by the end of summer, and here it is, the middle of the following February and the little shit is still fucking around with us. 

'Harass' him. He has no idea what 'harassment' is. 

Know what I caught him doing back in December? I was downstairs doing laundry when the side window into the basement opens and in he slides with a full laundry bag. When I asked him what he was doing, he said "Oh, my key doesn't work in the lock of the basement door, so I just come in and out by the window."

Now, another one of our big beefs with him and the slore upstairs is that they find it very inconvenient to keep the basement door locked. In fact, their preference would be to leave it unlocked all the time. However, the basement gives direct access to our apartment (which, of course, they don't give a shit about). And there have been a lot of break ins in our neighborhood, and the cops have advised people that the usual point of entry is the basement. So we've bitched and bitched and bitched to our landlord about it, and they've whined and whined and whined that their keys don't work in the basement lock, which is bullshit... they just dislike having to put their laundry down to unlock and then relock the door when they go in and go back out. 

However, the landlord came down solidly on our side on that one, going so far as to say that if he had to put another lock on that door, he wouldn't be giving out ANY keys... meaning we'd be the only people in the house with basement access. That shut them up... so, rather than use his key, the dickhead was just coming in through the window. 

Of course, he wasn't going back OUT through the window, that was another lie. He as just coming in that way, and then unlocking the door from the inside and going back out through it... leaving it unlocked whenever he did so.

So I nailed that window shut. It took me three times, as he kept forcing it open, but I finally got it secured. And guess what? His key works just fine now.

I don't know what he's going to do about me 'harassing' him by calling the police whenever he's in violation of the noise ordinance. But if he's got the sheer vacuous cluelessness to call the landlord and complain, well, the landlord has ignored OUR complaints for pretty much eighteen months or so. And if he wants to get in it, my wife and I are happy to have another chat about what an inconsiderate tenant he has living over us.

Brown out

So. The Brown Hotel, in lovely downtown Louisville, KY:

Lovely place. Comfortable bed. Nice chair. I won't say the room struck me as spectacular; in fact, less expensive places I've stayed in have seemed better equipped, with microwaves and little fridges and stuff. But I guess when you pay more you get less practicality, more ambiance.

The staff seemed very intent on letting us know as pleasantly as possible that we were working class riff raff who didn't belong there, and while the law might require them to admit us, we should never ever forget that this was not our proper place. The very polished looking fellow stationed at the door outside the elegant lobby bar snickered when he saw the large YMCA logo on the black canvas suitcase I was lugging, and the sleek, expensive looking redhead behind the desk was happy to announce in a loud, carrying voice that I was using a debit card, rather than a credit card, when we checked in. She did, however, give me a break when it turned out that the discount room rate I had found searching around on the web was an American Automotive Association rate, and I am not a member; she sort of sneered and said "Well, I guess we can let it go just this once." Which was very human of her. I'm sure it strained something deep inside her, but I appreciated it.

(I just went to some discount room search sites. I had never done it before; I had no idea it was an AAA only discount.)

Then I woke up the next morning after we watched PROMETHEUS for twelve bucks on their in house cable, and discovered our invoice had been pushed under the door during the night, and apparently, my wife and I had gone down to that oh so elegant bar and drunk $66 worth of liquor. Which was a fabulous trick, since we hadn't left the room at all after arriving in it. (My first reaction was that I would have a difficult time imagining $66 worth of liquor, much less drinking it, but then I reflected that this was the Brown Hotel, and it would probably not take Han Solo's imagination to encompass $66 worth of elegant Brown Hotel lobby bar liquor. In fact, probably that android from PROMETHEUS could imagine it fairly easily.)

The room was a little noisier than I would have liked for the discount enormous price that I paid, and I'd honestly expected that a place like the Brown would have nicer accoutrements -- towels, glasses, and such -- than the typical hotel fare that was actually there. But we did get breakfast in our room, and the bacon was amazing, which it should have been, for what it cost.

The guy at the front desk when we went down was much more pleasant than the chick from the night before, perhaps because we were leaving. But he did take the erroneous bar check off our tab without protest.

All told, it was a lovely experience, but the folks who run the Brown, and their preferred patrons, need to study their history. Specifically, the French Revolution.

Aggravation

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?