One of the best hidden gems that are out there is the movie “Waking Life,” which caught my attention when “A Scanner Darkly” was coming out and it was mentioned in passing that the rotoscoping technique Linklater used in that film he used in “Waking Life” first. Well, fortunately, like I always say, on the Internet most of the time someone’s going to have already gone to the trouble of doing something you want — and sure enough, there is a fan-annotated Waking Life script on the Web.
Here’s the dialogue:
I mean, while, technically, I’m closer to the end of my life than I’ve ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. When I was younger, there was a desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path, and I had to get there.
I know what you mean, because I can remember thinking, “Oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe, everything’s going to just somehow gel and settle, just end.” It was like there was this plateau, and it was waiting for me, and I was climbing up it, and when I got to the top, all growth and change would stop. Even exhilaration. But that hasn’t happened like that, thank goodness. I think that what we don’t take into account when we’re young is our endless curiosity. That’s what’s so great about being human.
It is between English professor Lisa Moore and author Carole Dawson.
And the thing was, I really felt that too when I was younger. That I’d reach a certain point in the mid-thirties where I’d hit the “endpoint” of being married, having kids, paying off a house, etc..
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Boing Boing — which I unsubscribed from my RSS but occasionally begrudgingly browse — brought to my attention a mass election-themed Dozens exchange going on over Twitter. Here’s a lot of people’s contributions all concatenated together (these ones I didn’t write) from Twitter (where it originated and is still going), BoingBoing, and MetaTalk:
Yo momma so fat, she authorized a $700 billion bailout of Dairy Queen.
Yo momma so fat, she thinks the G8 is a Value Meal.
Yo momma so fat, her other biography is called The Audacity of Hardee’s.
Yo momma so fat, the only Supreme Court verdict she wants to overturn is HomeTown Buffet v. Yo Momma.
Yo momma so fat, she thinks sub-prime is a steak cut.
Yo momma so fat, McCain refers to her as “Those Ones.”
Yo momma so fat, when they asked which menus she reads, she said “You know, all of ‘em.”
Yo momma so ugly, Obama said “You can put lipstick on a pig and it would look a lot like yo momma on dollar margarita night.”
Yo momma so fat, ACORN registered her to vote three times.
Yo momma so fat, Russia can see her from their house.
Yo momma’s such a ho, the tab for the federal bailout plan is “700 billion dollars, plus fifty cents to have sex with yo momma.”
Yo momma so stupid, she tried to arrange the genres on her iPod to put Country First.
Yo momma so fat, McCain gives patronizing air quotes when he talks about the “health of yo momma.”
Yo momma so fat, when they asked which menus she reads, she said “You know, all of ‘em.”
Yo momma so fat, McCain refers to her as “Those Ones.”
Yo momma’s such a ho, she wants to teach “comprehensive sex education” to kindergartners.
Yo momma so fat, she is the trade deficit with China.
Yo momma so fat, she is the budget deficit in California.
Yo momma so fat, when she stops eating the Dow falls 300 points.
Yo momma so fat, when she stops eating Iceland goes bankrupt.
Yo momma so fat, the price of oil is linked to her trips to the grocery store.
Yo momma so fat, her BBQ is a leading cause of global warming.
Yo momma so fat, she is a weapon of mass destruction.
Yo momma’s such a ho, the recession will end when she puts her panties on.
Yo momma so dumb, she thinks you can check into the “Hanoi Hilton.”
Yo momma so dumb, she, too, can see Vladimir Putin’s head floating over Alaska.
Yo momma so fat, they used her a storm surge barrier in Hurricane Ike.
Yo momma so fat, she calls Joe the Plumber when she gotta urinary tract infection.
Yo momma so fat, she doesn’t know how many houses she sits around, but she really sits around them.
Yo momma so fat, they had to get the whole cast of SNL to play her.
Yo momma so slutty, even the McCain campaign won’t pull out of her.
Yo momma so nasty, Joe the Plumber had to tell her to stop “sharing the wealth”.
Yo momma so fat, Nate Silver has revolutionized the science of trying to weigh her.
Yo momma so fat, when John McCain says “my friends”, he’s talking to her plural chins.
Yo momma so fat, not even the GOP can purge her rolls!
And my own contributions:
Yo momma so fat, West Virginia voting machines magically switch their votes from “Obama” to “Yo Momma” ’cause they afraid she gonna sit on them.
Yo momma’s such a ho, there’s a daily blog dedicated to her ho-i-ness called “Daily Hos“, run by Marhos Houlitsas.
Yo momma so stupid and vegan, when someone tried to stake vampire McCain, she protested.
Yo momma so vegan, she’s voting for McCain/Palin because every egg is precious.
Yo momma so ugly, people say “What’s McCain doin’ in a dress?”
(The vegan ones are due to a weird little digression in the message forum where I initially posted these.)
And, when I reposted this on BoingBoing, I couldn’t help but add:
Yo momma so fat, she ate all the vowels in a BoingBoing thread.
(reference 1, reference 2, reference 3)
Also, did you know Shakespeare yo-momma’d?
Painter: Y’are a dog.
Apemantus: Thy mother’s of my generation. What’s she, if I be a dog?
— Timon of Athens, Act I, Scene 1
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done?
Aaron: That which thou canst not undo.
Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother.
Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.
— Titus Andronicus, Act IV, Scene II
I have experienced a myriad of moments in my life where emotions that mix about as well as oil and water are nonetheless both simultaneously present in my mind, leading to odd emotional experiences. When it comes to the subject of Diane Duane, I have felt that odd mixture for a while — but, fortunately, no longer.
Diane Duane is an author of science fiction and urban fantasy. For me, she has been, ever since my adolescence, one of those authors whose every book I not only admired and deeply enjoyed, but felt as if I had learned something new about the universe, or something had been clarified or expressed in just that certain way that felt as if, yes, that was described right, that is how that part of existence is. So, needless to say, I enjoyed all of her works to a rather significant degree.
I don’t anticipate ever not loving Ms. Duane’s novels. Should I be offered the ability to purchase traditionally published works of hers in a bookstore in the future, I will likely do so.
However, should I be presented with the option of directly supporting one of her projects with no middleman present, I most certainly will never do so ever again.
In December 2005, Ms. Duane publicly contemplated about writing the third novel in her Feline Wizards series as a fan-funded project. She conducted a straw poll on her blog, which BoingBoing promoted, and the response was enthusiastic enough it was considered a go in February 2006.
Many people entered into this business relationship with Ms. Duane. Before a single page was first seen, they gave her different amounts of money. People simply prepaying for the book paid prices larger than one might pay in the bookshop, but some people even gave her what were called “challenge grants” — $400, and one poor soul gave her $1,000, saying, “I had a hand in making it possible for a piece of art to enter the world.”
The problem, however, is that Ms. Duane has not treated this like the professional obligation it is, and has left her fans hanging — while having took their money, mind you, and even still soliciting subscribers — for well over two and a half years by now. A history of her “deadlines”:
| Chapter | Diane: “Hey, Chapter x will come out on … “ | Actual Release Date |
| 1 | Not Applicable | March 14, 2006 |
| 2 | April 3, 2006 (also) | April 4, 2006 |
| 3 | April 21, 2006; April 22, 2006; April 25, 2006 | April 26, 2006 |
| 4 | May 15, 2006 | June 2, 2006 |
| 5 | August 15, 2006 (also); August 31, 2006; few days past September 16, 2006 |
November 19, 2006 |
| 6 | September 22, 2006 (also); December 18, 2006; December 19, 2006 | January 12, 2007 |
| 7 | October 6, 2006 (also); December 31, 2006; January 27, 2007 (also); February 4, 2007; April 30, 2007 | July 21, 2008 |
| 8 | October 23, 2006 (also); December 31, 2006; February 2007; August 11, 2008 (ref. “every 3 weeks”); August 20, 2008; August 27, 2008; August 28-29, 2008; September 26-28, 2008 | Unreleased |
| 9 | November 6, 2006 (also); December 31, 2006; February 2007 | Unreleased |
| 10 | August 23, 2006; November 20, 2006 (also); December 31, 2006; March 2007 | Unreleased |
| 11 | December 31, 2006; March 2007 | Unreleased |
During this time, however, it is not as if life interfered with at least one style of writing: she actively posted a great deal to her weblog. I won’t spend time counting the individual posts, but they are not small in number, and they make it clear that Ms. Duane was sitting at a keyboard in front of a computer, during this time when chapters were delinquent by months. One example: in October 2006 she wrote two extremely lengthy posts (1, 2) on “Where No One Has Gone Before,” a first season episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation which Ms. Duane co-authored — this being in response to a humorous review by Wil Wheaton. (Don’t get me wrong: as a fan of the series and of the novel which inspired the episode, I found it quite interesting. But that doesn’t contradict the point.)
Finally, very much later, in July 2008, she returned to the project and published Chapter 7, saying we’d see a new chapter every three weeks. But then, in a style of which Lucy van Pelt would be oh-so-very proud, she yanked the football away again, resuming the old style.
Chapter 8 would be up August 20 (promised 7/28).
Then: once again, “life” interfered. As did a Discworld convention. So, August 27th (promised 8/20).
Then, she needed a couple more days. So, August 28th or 29th (promised 8/27).
Then, a month later, it would be “this weekend” (which would’ve been September 26-28) (promised 9/25).
Yoink.
whoosh
THUD.
And today, 20+ days later … need it even be said? If it were up, would this post be up?
I opened this article by saying that I had two emotions that were conflicting, but that one was dissolving, making the entire mixture rest easier.
The two emotions were these: admiration and anger. I used to deeply admire Ms. Duane’s writings while, at the same time, being actively angry at her.
Now, that anger has pretty nearly died. I’m just resigned to the fact that I was screwed over by my favorite author, over and over again, whether or not she’s a nice person, or whether or not she meant it.
[shrug] I got screwed — intentionally or no — by someone I trusted not to screw me. Not the first time that’s happened. Won’t be the last.
I’m resigned to the fact that this is what evidently Ms. Duane is going to do. And, moreover, even were my blog post somehow to meet her eyes and cause what the alcoholics call a moment of clarity, creating a sudden sense of accountability, this is what she already HAS done.
I have given up any hope whatsoever that we’re going to see a conclusion to this book anytime soon, if at all. And as for the extra money for a hardback version once it’s done, well, I’m tempted to say I’ll eat every creamy delicious page if it actually ever shows up in my hands. Except that that would really screw with my digestive system.
In my life, one thing I’ve learned as I have phased into adulthood has been to distinguish between the person intrinsic, their existence; and the behavior they exhibit.
I still can love her writing, independent from this. And I imagine that intrinsic to herself, the person who she is … is not intrinsically malicious or evil or out to monetarily screw fans or what-have-you. In fact, I imagine she is a pretty dynamite, well-rounded, cool person to know, if she’s got the well of life experience from which to draw what she’s written about all these years.
But, separately, the behavior she’s exhibiting in this situation? It’s absolutely abysmal. She is my favorite author … but this just flat-out sucks.
My own amateur post-game analysis: the problem with this process was this … I am assuming that we paid Ms. Duane the equivalent of a disproportionate advance — we gave her nearly all of the revenue she could expect from this project up front, and in the case of the sizeable challenge grants given, perhaps even more than could have first been anticipated. (I know nothing about what authors, or Ms. Duane specifically, are paid. So this assumption may be presumptuous.) We did so with no legally binding force upon her requiring her to deliver the project under particular circumstances. And we did so allowing the author herself to set the deadlines. I don’t imagine there are a great deal of formal author-publisher relationships in this world with those conditions — and for good reason.
We did this because of an inherent trust in Ms. Duane, based on an admiration of her as an author. However, we had never done business directly with her — she had a business relationship with a middleman (a publisher), who itself had a business relationship with yet another middleman (a book chain or individual bookstore), who then had a business relationship with us (purchaser-seller). But directly with her, in the context of people to whom she owed a professional obligation? That’s a relationship we never had with her directly — and a role none of us had ever played.
The problem with entering into a business relationship with someone whom you’ve only admired from a distance is that you tend to blur your admiration about whatever you admire about them, letting it bleed into your appraisal of them concerning the transaction you’re performing. I admired Ms. Duane because of her writing. And because of that, it never even occurred to me for a second that nearly three years later, she would have permitted the novel to be half-done, delayed over and over again for months on end. I didn’t think that she’d, well, be the kind of person to permit that.
I am not an author or involved in the publishing industry, but I am not delving into complex aspects of the process when I say: in a traditional publishing relationship, were an author to accept a unusually disproportionate advance and then go quite literally years past the deadline, unless there was an unusually compassionate relationship at play with the publisher, by now, she would have been required to return the advance.
A delinquent professional obligation should not be secondary in priority to attending a Discworld convention.
A delinquent professional obligation should not be secondary in priority to recreationally writing hundreds of blog posts.
Medical problems that prevent you from working? Deeply sick family that require long-term care? These are of course understandable. They don’t negate the fact that a professional obligation is outstanding, but only the coldest of hearts would not be understanding. (I daresay that when it comes to legal contracts and prepaid advances, some publishers do have very cold hearts, however. Fortunately, her fans don’t.) Still, in such a situation, in the publisher-author version of this situation, I can easily imagine there being some representative from the publisher, gingerly and with great sensitivity trying to ascertain the status of things so as to determine for the publisher what needed to be done with the project.
If I were to put myself into Ms. Duane’s shoes right now — poof, I am suddenly looking out from her eyes and have to deal with this problem — this is what I feel are her ethical choices right now. To dictate her choices to her is presumptuous as well, but hell, I’m disgruntled, so I’ll just go ahead anyway.
The first two courses of action assume that my household’s financial status can withstand said actions:
Option #1: Finishing the Novel: If I feel that I can complete this project on an immediate schedule, then I return a sizeable percentage of all payments my reader-investors made (ideally half, but maybe a third) — including challenge grants (poor Ted Ts’o and his lost $1000) — as a honorable gesture for by this point already having seriously breached the trust my reader-investors initially placed in me. I treat the remaining chapters as my highest professional priority, because my “publishers” in this case have let me keep my advance for years now and are still waiting for what they paid for. I issue a publishing schedule and stick to it, because an unmet publishing schedule is now, unfortunately, considered de rigeur for me.
Option #2: Not Finishing the Novel: If I feel that I cannot meet my obligation, then I return 100% of all payments to readers, including any challenge grants given to me. If I’m feeling particularly noble, then I also calculate how much interest that sum would have earned over that time given an interest rate equivalent to the average American savings account during that time, and include that amount.
If my household’s financial status cannot withstand it:
Option #3: Not Finishing the Novel But Not Instantly Returning the Funds: If I cannot financially return the funds yet cannot go ahead with this project, then I publicly declare the project dead and e-mail all of my reader-investors. Making monthly payments as one would with a credit card would enact a lot of Paypal transaction fees, not to mention a unfairly hellish amount of processing, so a lump-sum return payment would be made at some point in the future, but this time with the interest of whatever a low-interest credit card (say 4-5%) would’ve accumulated in finance charges during that time.
To me, these are the only honorable ways to go from this position.
But importantly, I make a BINARY decision whether to finish the novel.
Yes.
No.
One of those two choices only.
If yes, then I create a schedule and by God stick to it as if all the hordes of Random House will sue me into non-existence if I don’t meet it, even if it is just the bank accounts of my fans which I’m dealing with. It is my highest priority because it is the trust of my fans I have already repeatedly violated.
If no, then I don’t finish the novel.
I DON’T try to adopt a actually-non-existent gray area where re-drafting and re-re-drafting and re-re-re-drafting a publishing schedule somehow meets the obligation incurred by my agreement with my fans.
This is what I would do, were I her, but I’m not her. And I’ve, sadly enough, just … given up on her. We all have a synopsis in our head about subjects … if we’re asked to describe someone or something, we have a narrative about them. We have common narratives about 9/11, about Dubya, and so on.
My narrative about Ms. Duane used to be unflinchingly positive: a brilliant author who continually had some amazing and creative ideas, a flair for amazing characters and imaginative creations — “you have to read her!!!”
I can still say that about her writing. That part of her narrative hasn’t changed in my head. But now, there’s a new line to it.
Dad always purposefully humorously misattributes this line to Scotty: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Given the number of publishing schedules she’s self-issued and then not met, I think at this point, we’re at the little-known continuation of that maxim: “Fool me forty-one times, I’d have to be really fucking gullible to believe anything different at this point.”
UPDATE 11/16/08: Phyllis points me to two podcasts — recorded on December 16, 2006 — in which Diane talked about the publishing model (part 1, part 2). Her comments there are indeed quite interesting. If I wanted to be a jerk and make cheap shots, there’s a remark I could purposefully interpret wrong, about “immediate access” to “the readership’s money”, but the context makes it obvious that that comment was not avaricious in nature, but instead a simple statement that such immediate funding made the project financially feasible for her. Anyway, the first of two quotes:
“The only thing that has annoyed me this year is a series of personal problems and injuries that has slowed me down incredibly, and it’s just typical that in a year when you would commit to do something so public that was time-sensitive, that suddenly you know I’m spraining my ankle every three months, and Peter’s mother has been ill which has meant we’ve been going up and down from here to Belfast a great deal, other stuff going on, it’s been a weird, weird year and has made this project in some ways annoying for me in ways that I wish it weren’t. I should’ve been all done now, in fact, it should have been back from the editor by now, I’ve been hoping to go to press in January of ‘08, excuse me, ‘07, and that’s not going to happen now, it’s probably not going to happen until sort of March, if I, you know, get this thing in the can by the beginning of January. If I had all this to do again, I think I would do what my honorable colleagues on the other side of the water here are doing, and get it in the can first before letting it out of the house.”
When asked for advice to give to authors considering the same “storyteller’s bowl” method:
“Get it in the can, first. [laughs] Seriously. Feel out your audience and make sure I suppose first of all that the demand is there, because we all realize that our time costs money. We all have husbands and wives and cats and dogs and kids and things to feed, and it is dangerous to too willingly throw the normal channels of operation yover our shoulder and say, ‘No, I’m going to do it this way.’ That said, once you’re certain of your market, yeah, go ahead, but really, I would say: get it in the can, first.”
Separately, going to her website for the first time, I was frowning at a few things: she had a manga that went to press in September ‘07 and a short story that went to press in November ‘07.
And A Wizard on Mars was being done with the same model at the same time, but with a similar subset of disgruntled fans. Back in May ‘08, a commenter complains:
We’ve been waiting for like, three years. It was supposed to be released fall 2006, then fall 2007, and now it says fall 2008. It’s alomst summer 2008, and we don’t have a release date yet. Is anyone else getting a little impatient?
Fortunately for them, however, Amazon Canada has that coming out on March 15, 2009 — although amazon.com doesn’t.
So take all of the above essay and multiply it by two? Wow.
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From the Seattle Times, I present you with quite possibly the biggest dickhead on the West Coast:
Burke Jensen moved to Kennewick about a year ago, bought a nice house in the country south of the city and began to settle into a new job at Energy Northwest.
Then came the call five months ago to serve his country in Kuwait.
So Jensen, who says he is an involuntarily mobilized reservist, headed off, leaving behind a pregnant wife, a young son and a 2.5-acre lot with not a spot of landscaping.
Now, Lt. Jensen is being told to get an irrigation system and landscaping on his property as soon as possible or face legal action from the Oak Hill Country Estates Homeowners’ Association.
“I really don’t give a [expletive] where he is or what his problem is,” said [the] owner and developer of the 47-lot subdivision at the south end of Oak Street in Kennewick.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” said [the owner]. [...] “[Jensen] doesn’t have the right to walk away from his obligation,” said [the owner], who as the developer is the only member of the homeowners association. “I have most of the property still, so I am the homeowners association,” he said.
[...]
DeAlicante said Jensen also would like to find a renter for his home, but [the owner] said that would be a commercial use not allowed by the homeowners association.
“He’s not going to rent it,” said [the owner].
[...]
“This is a contract. I don’t like the way his property looks. This clown gets to do what he wants, and I’m as mad as hell,” he said.
UPDATE 10/11/08: The commenters here aren’t the only ones who got pissed. Montgomery Construction Sprinkler Systems Specialists laid out curbing, a fabric weed barrier, and decorative stone, and on the 17th, they’re looking for volunteers to help lay out 18,000 square feet of sod that’s being delivered. They’ve had “dozens of volunteers and donations from at least a dozen businesses,” of plants, sod, rock, dirt, a loaner home security system, food for the workers, courtesy of Operation Thank You, Wood’s Nursery, C&M Nursery, Red Mountain Feed, Job’s Nursery, Bedrock, American Rock Products, Kennewick Industrial, United Pipe and Plumbing, Moon Security, Subway, Costco, Home Depot, Basin Sod, Fluor Hanford, military reservists, the Elks Club and the River View High School Panthers. If you have a HAPO Credit Union near you, you can make donations at any branch. (Wonderfully enough, the article has no comment whatsoever from [the owner], who evidently is a farmer of hay.) (Hat tip to Mike Hanscom of Eclecticism for the link!)
UPDATE 10/20/08: I’ve gone ahead and closed the comments a second time, and I’m grateful that I had the WordPress setting turned on where new commenters’ comments had to be approved before they were posted to the blog.
For God’s sake, people, twice now, I’ve had people try to post this guy’s home address and telephone number, and I’ve had a good number of other people make violent suggestions. None of these were published. (All of them were deleted internally, so even I don’t have them around any longer.)
I think that this guy’s behavior in this instance was an utterly despicable act. But I hate his behavior; I don’t hate him. That’s the way I was raised: if you hate, you hate what the person does, not the person. And even when people share my opinion on an issue, if they are blasting out unadulterated, foaming hate at someone, it’s … well, let’s put it this way. The Internet offers a few zillion ways to give you a soapbox on which to stand up and talk. But we each have control over our own soapboxes. There are some things I’m just not going to lend out my soapbox for.
Unadulterated hate doesn’t make anyone look good, or manly, or right. It didn’t make the owner look impressive, did it? Did you think any better of him while he was foaming at the mouth? Well, it doesn’t make those who hate him look impressive, either. You know who behaved impressively? All those people in the October 20th update (right above this) who actually went and did something constructive to help Lt. Jensen. If you want to show this twit what an utter asshole he is, go help them, if you’re geographically nearby them … or call HAPO Credit Union and ask if there’s a way you can donate to the Lt. Burke Jensen Landscaping Fund over the phone. Or find out how you can help Norma Nunamaker and Project Thank You (I can’t find linkage to point you towards) and help her out. That’s the way to best get back at this asshole — because by doing that, you’re helping out Lt. Jensen and our veterans at the same time.
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So, the site has reopened, and it no doubt looks very different.
New name! While Musings of a Chicagoan was a good name, I like this more. You’re probably wondering, however, what the hell it means. Pertinacious is defined as “stubbornly tenacious” or “perversely persistent.” And metanoia means a “transformative change of heart.” Thus, a pertinacious metanoia is a perversely persistent transformative change of heart.
New theme. I’m using the ultraminimalist Sandbox theme. This was a move partially inspired by this webpost, and partially because I like how it forces focus on the content, as opposed to the design. I’ll be doing tweaks here and there to layout, but I’m guessing nothing massive or extremely noticeable.
Integration of Tumblr posts. I’m using a WordPress plugin called WP-O-Matic to feed my Tumblr posts into the blog itself, and using AsideShop to style them differently than my normal posts. (Tumblelogs focus more on images, videos, and short bits.) The one thing that doesn’t come across is, for some reason, videos … this appears to be a problem either with Tumblr’s RSS feed or with the WP-O-Matic plugin.
Twitter-powered asides. On those rare occasions where I have a small little blurpy observation to share with you guys, I’ll use Twitter, which should then autopost as an aside here courtesy of Twitter Tools.
Better linklog handling. I’m now using a great plugin called Postalicious which handles my del.icio.us linklog posting a lot better than their experimental daily posting. It may not be daily, however; it won’t post until a minimum of 10 new links are collected.
Some new widgets. Stuff I noticed, such as the little GTalk badge to the left. If I’m on GTalk, you can talk with me live by clicking there. And the FriendFeed widget serves as a “lifestream” of sorts, since FriendFeed collects a lot of the stuff I’m doing all the time.
Inspired by Merlin Mann. Merlin Mann, for those of you who don’t recognize the name, is the man behind a website called 43Folders, which used to be about productivity porn. But at the beginning of September, Merlin announced on his personal website and on 43Folders … well, I can do no better than to quote his own words:
[T]he things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks — empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.
Don’t get me wrong. Gumming the edges of popular culture and occasionally rolling the results into a wicked spitball has a noble tradition [...] [b]ut you have to bring some art to it. Not just typing.
What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, makebelieve insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small. I know that whenever I become aware of it, I realize how small it can make me.
With this diet metaphor in mind, I want to, if you like, start eating better. But, I also want to start growing a tastier tomato — regardless of how easy it is to pick, package, ship, or vend. The tomato is the story, my friend.
So, yes. I am cutting way back on trips to the steam table of half-finished, half-useful, half-ideas that I both make and consume. And, with respect, I encourage you to consider doing the same; especially if that all-you-can-eat buffet of snark and streaming produces (or encourages) anything short of your “A” game.
I can’t say that every blog post from here on out is going to be quality writing. But it occurs to me that a lot of my blog posts have been “off the cuff” quick-jots … and that some more thoughtful and well-written essay-style posts might be good to bring the table.
Speaking of which, I didn’t stop blogging in the interim. Here’s the meatier (non-”tumble”) stuff:
And here is what was posted to my linklog during the interim.
Man, this just nailed it. From someone going by the handle ‘Copperwise’ on LiveJournal:
So, Governor Palin et al, let me tell you who the Joe Six-Pack that you think you’re talking to really is.
Joe is the guy I worked with who served in Vietnam, worked construction, had four kids, thought Portland micro-brews were for hippies and weirdos — and told me one day about having to change churches, because “our pastor spends all his time talking about how bad the gays are, and I go to church for God, and I really don’t think God cares who you sleep with or who you marry.” Oh, and he went back to school at 45 to get a degree in architecture, so I guess he won’t be Joe Six-Pack soon. His income will put him into that Better Class of People y’all think you’re part of.
Joe is a writer or an actor or an artist who waits tables, pumps gas, shelves books, does landscaping, delivers pizza, scrubs toilets, and otherwise works his or her ass off all day or night to pay the mortgage so they can continue to write or act or make art.
Joe is the lady down the street who is “just a secretary” and never finished college. She also reads D.H. Lawrence and lots of egghead poetry. Oh, and she can also name the newspapers she reads, but then she doesn’t actually have time to read all of them.
Joe is a POC with parents of different races, who gets interrupted an awful lot at work to be asked “what ARE you?” by customers, and continues to bag your damn groceries with a smile. Then he goes home and watches Britcoms on PBS, plays long distance chess with a guy in Russia over the Interwebs, and feeds his kids before putting them to bed and reading them subversive stories by Neil Gaiman.
Joe is a stripper (who doesn’t have a drug habit and isn’t a prostitute.) She’s putting herself through school. She’s going to be a lawyer and look like one of you on the surface, but you’re really gonna hate it when you’re up against her in front of the Supreme Court.
Joe spends 8 hours a day on an assembly line with a wrench, turning bolts and hoping you don’t send his job to a child in China. On Thursday nights he bowls with a bunch of construction workers and he does share a pitcher of beer with them. Budweiser, even. Then he goes home, puts on his ABBA records, and dances with his partner — Andrew.
Joe comes in when you call I.T. because you’ve opened a forwarded executable file from your sister in an email with the header “Smile, God Loves You” and locked up your machine with a nasty killer worm. She smiles politely when you tell her how impressed you are that a pretty little girl like her knows so much about computers. Then she goes to her Tai Chi class and later dances naked in the back yard with her coven. But she drives a Chevy truck, so who knew?
Joe Six-Pack isn’t who you think he/she is. You don’t have a fucking clue about Joe Six-Pack.
From the October 4, 2008 edition of VG:
Mary Menth Andersen was 31 years old at the time and had just married Norwegian Dag Andersen. She was looking forward to starting a new life in Åsgårdstrand in Vestfold with him. But first she had to get all of her belongings across to Norway. The date was November 2, 1988.
At the airport in Miami, things were hectic as usual, with long lines at the check-in counters. When it was finally Mary’s turn and she had placed her luggage on the baggage line, she got the message that would crush her bubbling feeling of happiness.
“You’ll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway,” the man behind the counter said.
Mary had no money. Her new husband had travelled ahead of her to Norway, and she had no one else to call.
“I was completely desperate and tried to think which of my things I could manage without. But I had already made such a careful selection of my most prized possessions,” says Mary.
Although she explained the situation to the man behind the counter, he showed no signs of mercy.
“I started to cry, tears were pouring down my face and I had no idea what to do. Then I heard a gentle and friendly voice behind me saying, ‘That’s OK, I’ll pay for her.’”
Mary turned around to see a tall man whom she had never seen before.
“He had a gentle and kind voice that was still firm and decisive. The first thing I thought was, Who is this man?”
Although this happened 20 years ago, Mary still remembers the authority that radiated from the man.
“He was nicely dressed, fashionably dressed with brown leather shoes, a cotton shirt open at the throat and khaki pants,” says Mary.
She was thrilled to be able to bring both her suitcases to Norway and assured the stranger that he would get his money back. The man wrote his name and address on a piece of paper that he gave to Mary. She thanked him repeatedly. When she finally walked off towards the security checkpoint, he waved goodbye to her.
The piece of paper said ‘Barack Obama’ and his address in Kansas, which is the state where his mother comes from. Mary carried the slip of paper around in her wallet for years, before it was thrown out.
“He was my knight in shining armor,” says Mary, smiling.
She paid the 103 dollars back to Obama the day after she arrived in Norway. At that time he had just finished his job as a poorly paid community worker* in Chicago, and had started his law studies at prestigious Harvard university.
In the spring of 2006, Mary’s parents had heard that Obama was considering a run for president, but that he had still not decided. They chose to write a letter in which they told him that he would receive their votes. At the same time, they thanked Obama for helping their daughter 18 years earlier.
In a letter to Mary’s parents dated May 4, 2006 and stamped ‘United States Senate, Washington DC’, Barack Obama writes:
I want to thank you for the lovely things you wrote about me and for reminding me of what happened at Miami Airport. I’m happy I could help back then, and I’m delighted to hear that your daughter is happy in Norway. Please send her my best wishes. Sincerely, Barack Obama, United States Senator
The parents sent the letter on to Mary.
This week VG met her and her husband in the café that she runs with her friend Lisbeth Tollefsrud in Åsgårdstrand.
“It’s amazing to think that the man who helped me 20 years ago may now become the next U.S. president,” says Mary delightedly.
She has already voted for Obama. She recently donated 100 dollars to his campaign.
She often tells the story from Miami Airport, both when race issues are raised and when the conversation turns to the presidential elections.
“I sincerely hope the Americans will see reason and understand that Obama means change,” says Mary.
Honor is what you do when no one’s watching.
Why are you American?
When I was younger, I was patriotic because I believed it was a basic virtue, like helping people cross the street. It didn’t help that I was a Boy Scout, which encourages this blind patriotism. (Don’t get me wrong: in many other ways, I’m glad I was a Scout. Just not all, and I definitely wouldn’t be an adult Scout volunteer, given their newly fundamentalist tendencies.)
To me, this is what America means to me: I believe we’re the second- or third-best answer to the question of how a country should be run. We’re not the only country in the world with freedom of speech, and we are doing a lot of things wrong compared to other countries that do have that freedom of speech — particularly under the Bush administration, where I’ve seen my concept of freedom folded, mutilated and spindled until it’s barely recognizable.
The reason I think that we are the second- or third-best answer to how a country should be run is because we answer that question with a lot of good things, but nowadays with a lot of bad things as well. For one, we don’t care about our citizens’ health — the sheer disbelieving what-are-you-fuckin’-nuts look on Brits’, Canadians’, and Francophones’ faces when Moore asked them in Sicko about whether they ever had to pay for healthcare will haunt me for quite some time. And, far more importantly, all of our branches of government (possibly with the exception of the judicial branch, but given as the judicial is often an offshoot of executive appointments, perhaps not) have a base-level corruption, wherein (almost) any person elected to an executive-branch or legislative-branch role in our g
