What Were You Expecting?

Current Reading: The Return of the King

Inspirational Quote: "Well, that... happened." -- Johnny Blaze, Ghost Rider.

I went with Telemachus to see a movie on the weekend. We saw "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," or "Nicholas Cage acting crazy with his head on fire."

It wasn't good.

But the important point here is that I wasn't expecting it to be good. If I want good, I'll go rent The King's Speech. What I expected was flaming special effects, and Nicholas Cage chewing the scenery like a rabid, fiery pirhana*. I got those things in spades, so I walked out of the theater entertained and feeling my money was well spent.

Character? Plot? Theme? Sure, I suppose they were in there. You know, something to connect the action set-pieces and provide some sort of motivation for the Cage-craziness so wonderfully on display. But really, those parts of the movie were so pathetic that I'd not be surprised to discover they were afterthoughts cooked up in the editing room.

"We have some amazing footage. What story can we make out of it?"

Like every piece of entertainment, though, you can learn something from Ghost Rider.

It's about expectation. If I crack open a book with a cover that shows a ninja fighting a dragon and back-cover copy proclaiming a tale of the intrigue surrounding the ninja infiltration of the dragon palace, I do so with certain expectations. Foremost among those is that somewhere in the succeeding pages, a ninja will indeed fight a dragon. I'm also expecting a certain amount of covert action (otherwise, why have ninjas? (although, let's face it, everything should have ninjas), and a fair bit from the fantasy bestiary.

What I'm not expecting is a cross-species romance. Nor an alien space-ship exploring the universe, a re-telling of the battle of the Alamo, a treatise on the finer points of law with regards to wine handling, or any comedy in which walruses play a chief part.

I'm not saying you can't include any of those things. Go ahead. I love surprises. Just make their inclusion good, logical and sensible (as much as such things can be). Make it REALLY good though. You've just upset my expectations, so you'd better replace them with something even better. Otherwise, I'll walk away from your story unlikely to seek out your next one.

Now if Ghost Rider actually had a coherent emotional character arc and a solid plot that illustrated a thought-provoking theme, then I'd have walked out of the theater with my mind blown, because the movie would have exceeded my expectations in a completely unexpected way.

It didn't, though, and that's just fine. It gave me what it said it would and by that measure, it succeeded.

My point is this:

Every audience member has a set of expectations in place when they decide to take in a piece of entertainment. If you fulfill those expectations, then you've succeeded with that audience. If you exceed those expectations, give them a rich story of intrigue and heartbreak set in the palace of the Dragon Lord on the eve of the ninja uprising, you'll have an audience that will come back eager for your next piece.

* Bonus: Christopher Lambert (Highlander) shows up briefly, and yes, there's a beheading involved.

Lord of Some Things

Current Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkein

Inspirational Quote: "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." -- J.R.R.T.

It's been about 30 years since I read the Lord of the Rings. I loved it as a teenager. Back then, it was the grand-daddy of fantasy literature. Sure you could read Conan, or Elric or that recent trilogy by that upstart Stephen R. Donaldson... you could even read the Sword of Shannara (which was a pale imitation of the Great Work), but if you hadn't read LOTR then you hadn't ready anything, really. So I read it, and my friends read it, and then we tackled the Silmarillion and I hunted down Smith of Wooton Major and Tree and Leaf and read those too (although I can remember little about them... so don't ask me for details). It led directly to my unfortunate D&D addiction, and to my penchant for writing stories with a fantastic bent.

That was 30 years ago. At the time, being a fantasy geek was a great way to avoid meeting girls. It was tremendously effective in my case and thus I was spared considerable heartache for a good year and some.

But I digress.

A decade ago, Peter Jackson released the Fellowship of the Ring. I saw it with my wife, and Wow. It was beautiful and exciting and pretty faithful to Tolkein's vision (as I remembered it) although it included a love story that J.R.R. only hinted at in LOTR.

Back in September, while doing something pointless and time-consuming (web surfing), I saw an ad for Lord of the Rings Online. Great, I thought, another Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Another Ultima Online, or EverQuest or (shudder) World of Warcraft. Honestly, the world does not need another one of those to suck up subscription fees and vacuum up available (and sometimes unavailable) time. But hey, this one is supposedly based on Tolkein's work... and it's FREE TO PLAY.

So yeah, I fell for the classic “You gotta try this, man. The first hit's free,” line that's started every junkie's career. I'm so ashamed. It took a bloody long time to download, and I had to create a server account, but once it was installed and I was registered, I was off to Middle-Earth.

And I really was transported. The people who designed this game didn't just cash in on the MMORPG bonanza. They created a game world that is not only graphically stunning, but is incredibly true to Tolkein's work. Some of the design elements echo those that Jackson used in his movies, but only because those are based on notes and drawings that Tolkein left behind.

The Shire is there, with Bag End and the Green Dragon and Michel Delving and the Bucklebury Ferry. The Old Forest contains Tom Bombadil's house, with Tom himself dancing about and singing nonsense. It also has walking trees and Old Man Willow. Outside that, the Barrow Downs wait, and the road to Bree. I've stood in the Prancing Pony and crossed the Midgewater Marsh. I've stood on Weathertop, and am looking forward to seeking out the Bruinen and the ford where Elrond called the flood down on the Nine before I finally make it to the Last Homely House. Of course, there are a few shortcomings, if you're measuring by fidelity to Tolkein's world. Scale is a big one. Bucklebury ferry is ten miles from the Brandywine bridge, according to the book. It's about 500 meters according to LOTRO. Similarly, even if you subtract the days spent in Bombadil's house, the Hobbits took several days to make the journey from Crickhollow to Bree. In the game you can run between the two in about 10 minutes. That's an achievement even Legolas would find jaw-dropping.

The people who created this game have studied Tolkein's works exhaustively, and they've poured a love of the lore into the game world. Honestly, sometimes I just sit back and marvel at the achievement. It's like a virtual Tolkein museum.

With exhibits that try to kill you.

In fact, the thing I like least about Lord of the Rings Online is the game. It's quest driven, meaning that you follow a grand story that runs parallel to the events of books, and there are many side quest-chains that fill in corners of the story, or create their own. And that's nice, but it's the same as all the other MMORPGs out there: collect this, kill that, go here. More stamina is required than imagination, which is ironic given that sometimes the only reason I keep playing is because I want to see how the story formed by the quests turns out. Sometimes, I'd rather be reading the game than playing it.

What it doesn't do is make the leap into truly interactive entertainment, into a real role-playing experience. I'm going to ignore technical constraints and imagine the MMORPG that I'd really like to play: I'd like to play a game where character really is brought to the forefront. In existing computer RPGs, your character is just a set of skills and attributes that determine how they're going to tackle the challenges (ie: how they're going to kill things) in the game world. The element of moral choice is really missing in the game, and so what kind of person your character is (Hero? Villain? Rogue?) has no impact on the storyline.

I don't have to tell readers or good writers that a story where character has no effect on the plot is no story at all.

Likewise, failure plays no part in this kind of game. Mess up a quest? Try it again. Die? Respawn at a safe point. I'd like to see a game where failure has consequences (I wonder if such an approach could be made commercially viable? Nobody likes to pay for the chance to mess things up). If you mess up a quest, and Fredegar Bolger doesn't get his lunch, then that should change the story somehow. It should change the nature of the quests that follow it. Die during the raid on the Orc camp? Then the raid should fail and the Orcs should retaliate, threatening your home base.

Stories are all about tension. Tension only exists in the presence of a real opportunity to fail. Readers and writers know that a good, well-plotted book should consist of a whole heap of failures which cause the situation to become more and more desperate until, in the final chapters, one last hope for success arises. Anything less than that bores the reader, and in this case, it bores the game player too.

That's what LOTR Online doesn't do.

What it does do is inspire me to read the books again (as I have been), and watch the movies again (as I have been), and submerge myself in the world of Middle-Earth, where I'm surrounded by Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits who get cranky when they miss Elevenses.

At a time of the year where I always struggle, where it's occasionally difficult just to get through the day without throwing up my hands in despair, it's a tremendous relief to be able to immerse myself like that, whether in book, movie or game. It's escapism at its finest.

2011 - The Year In Review

Current Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring, by a stodgy old English professor.

Inspirational Quote: "Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go." -- Brooks Atkinson

It's my custom to run down a few high- and low-lights of the passed year, but this year my heart isn't in it. 2011 was the worst year in my memory, and although it had its share of good times, there are large parts of it that I would be happy to forget if I could. The best I can say is that if 2012 is no better, then I'm quitting everything and going to India to become a Buddhist monk.

That said, there are a few things I'd like to mention:

Music: Coldplay and Sarah Mclachlan put out new albums, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I also got quite a kick out of Ash Koley.

Television: Doctor Who and the Big Bang Theory were entertaining enough to drag me to the television once in a while.

Movies: Thor was good, as was Source Code and Limitless, but there really wasn't anything that caused me to walk out of the theater looking for someone to tell about it.

Games: If you've ever played D&D, or another fantasy role-playing game, but never played the card game Munchkin, then remedy that immediately. Go. I'll wait. Back yet? Then check out Lord of the Rings Online. More on it anon.

My resolution for this year is the same as for last year. You've got to give me points for consistency.

May your worst be behind you and your best yet to come.

MUPPETS!

If I have to say more than that, then I'm afraid I don't even know who you are anymore...

November Ain't Just About Facial Hair

Current Reading: Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight Swain

Inspirational Quote: "Adoption is not about finding children for families, it's about finding families for children." -- Joyce Maguire Pavao

November is National Adoption Month.

I'm an adoptive dad. Telemachus and Aeneas (obviously not their real names) are biological brothers we adopted when they were nine and six. That was 8 years ago.

What's it been like?

Here's the truth of it: it hasn't been pretty, it hasn't been easy, and it's going to get worse as they get older.

But, as I've tried to tell them so often, nothing worth doing has ever been easy.

Is it worthwhile?

Yeah.

It's hard, and some days all I've got as a buffer between me and despair is the knowledge that no matter how much I screw up, I'm still better than what they had before (which was nothing). Sure, there's likely someone out there who could do a better job than I.

But they're not here. I am.

Adopting older children is tough. The damage has been done, and no force on earth can undo it. You have to live with kids who bear so many scars it's a wonder they're still kids. You can't make yesterday better. All you can do is make today the best you can and give them some hope that tomorrow will be brighter.

That's your job.

The day doesn't go by when I don't screw something up. But I'm there. Every day. I'm there in the morning, and I'm there at night and I do my best to make our home a safe place.

That alone makes me the best father these children have ever had. Because of me, they have a shot at a good life.

Consider adoption. You could be the greatest thing to ever happen to a kid.

Overthoughts

There's something fundamentally wrong with putting real maple syrup on toaster waffles.

A Few Thoughts on Evolution

Current Reading: The City & The City, by China Mieville

Inspirational Quote: "Evolution is a tinkerer." --Francois Jacob

I've been thinking about evolution lately. Not where it's brought us from, but where it's taking us.

Evolution is the theory that organisms change over time, and that changes which allow that organism to be more successful in its environment are more likely to be incorporated into future generations of the organism.

A couple of months ago, I first heard an interesting theory about the mechanism of evolution. I had always believed that evolution arose from natural, random genetic mutation. Trial and error. It seemed to me that this scattershot approach, where a mutation arises and gets squashed or propagated via natural selection, would take forever to create a man (or woman) out of a fish. A few hundred million years didn't seem long enough to manage it.

This other theory proposed that the mechanism of evolution was incorporation. We aren't just people. We're also colonies of bacteria. They live in our skin, our blood and our organs. The most well-known set of these are the ones currently inhabiting our digestive system. These are symbiotes that actually aid in our digestion. This theory proposes that organisms have a habit of annexing symbiotic bacteria, incorporating their genes into our own whenever these bacteria do something that improves our chance of survival. This explains a little better why we evolve in fits and bounds, and why we see so little evidence of failed mutations.

I don't know whether this new theory reflects reality, but it opens up some interesting lines of thought. If we assume that the human organism is a machine built to evolve, and is therefore always on the look-out for useful things that will give it an edge, then we can assume that bacteria have always been the method of evolution because they have existed in the sweet spot between abundance and efficiency.

That's no longer the case. You can see that. Especially if you walk down any busy city street.

Cell phones. Tablet pads. Computers. Networks. Our own technology is taking the place of bacteria as the evolutionary mechanism. True, we aren't incorporating it into our DNA, but that's because we don't know how. Instead, we're insisting these things become smaller and more portable, so we can carry them around with us (in a somewhat less icky way than we carry around our intestinal bacteria). People with cell phones and internet access are likely to have larger social circles (even if they are mostly virtual) than those without. More numerous and varied social contact results in more numerous and varied reproductive opportunities (which has always been "winning" in the evolutionary race). These things are a competitive edge.

We're not incorporating them into our DNA, but there has been talk of "Wearable Computing" for decades now. We want these things close to us. We want them to become part of us. In a more invasive manner, exoskeletons have been demonstrated in Japan (where else?) to help paralyzed people walk, and to help ordinary people carry heavy loads (like the power loaders in Aliens).

We are using technology to enhance our capabilities, to evolve.

And the most interesting thing about that is how conscious the process is. We are designing and making our own enhancements in response to demand, in response to perceived weaknesses in our capabilities. As a result, instead of "evolving" across hundreds of generations, we are now evolving across years and the time-frame is getting shorter.

In the short term, the improvements seem to be all around communication. It's about connecting us more, eliminating distances, changing the nature of community from "people close to me," to something more like "people who share my views and interests." But I see two branches of current research with tremendous potential to change what is to be human.

The first is nanotech. It's a big thing in SF stories right now because the science is still so early in its development. The potential of microscopic machines to create and reshape matter on the molecular level is tremendously exciting and very scary. I think the idea of bacteria-sized factories is a little too far-fetched to ever completely become a reality, but there is talk of injecting micro-machines into the human body as a way to deal with medical issues like cancer, plaque buildup in arteries and weak immune systems. Already we have surgically implanted pacemakers and insulin pumps available, making it possible for cardiac arrhythmia and diabetes patients to survive. In evolutionary terms, we are physically incorporating technology, making them part of the organism (is that even going to be the right word?) we define as "human."

But purists will tell you that's not evolution because it doesn't change our essential DNA.

True. We're organic, and no matter how fond we may be of our cell phones, they aren't. To that problem, I see two possible solutions: organic machines and inorganic humans.

Organic machines already exist. We call them organs, specialized structures in our bodies which carry out a single task while consuming one thing and producing another. If we accept genetic engineering as an eventual reality, then we can envision designing our own organs and incorporating their construction into our DNA. Children born with the ability to communicate across radio waves as well as sound waves would have a considerable advantage over the rest of us.

For inorganic humans, I have to bring up the second branch of current research with the potential to change us. Artificial intelligence. We're still decades away from true artificial intelligence, of course. But computer processing power is still growing according to Moore's Law, while we're jamming more and more memory into smaller and smaller devices. It's conceivable that we won't have to wait too long before we have machines with the capacity and capability of the human brain. In order to create a real artificial intelligence, though, we have to understand our own and I think that's going to be the toughest task. Our brains are a mass of organs and chemicals that it's taken nature billions of years to develop naturally. We're summations of our genetic heritage and organic urges and individual pasts thrown together into a mass of spaghetti thoughts that make the Gordian Knot look like a simple half-hitch.

But if we can do it, if we can create a machine intelligence capable of rational thought, what does that mean to humanity?

I know you're thinking about the Terminator, and the Matrix and every other machine intelligence that has ever decided to wipe us pitiful humans off the planet. Stop it. It ain't going to happen. Asimov saw that possibility, and created the Three Laws of Robotics to illustrate the solution: since we create the AI consciously, we determine its capabilities. Unlike us, the AIs we create will not be encumbered with a lizard brain and a monkey brain and a human brain all at war with each other inside its skull. It's not going to have to deal with the burdens and barriers of a million years of natural evolution. Of course, we could create an AI soldier (and probably will) programmed to destroy, but likewise we can create an AI nanny, programmed to nurture and teach. Eventually, we'll have AIs complex enough to exceed the capabilities of humans.

And then we have the robot apocalypse, right?

Not likely. It wouldn't make logical sense. Their bodies are different from ours, and it's unlikely we'll compete with them for food. Electricity, maybe, but there's enough sunlight to power everyone if we can learn to use it efficiently. With no competition for resources, the major reasons for widespread conflict evaporate. If we teach them well, and see them not as tools but as children, we'll have an opportunity to pass on the best of ourselves without the burden of the worst. Given machine bodies, these AIs will be able to exceed our capabilities and our boundaries. With no need for oxygen, they'll not be restricted to the Earth's atmosphere. If they are given the capability to renew their bodies, there's no longer a concept of mortality or age. Interstellar journeys will finally be within the capability of humanity, although it won't be the squishy kind of humanity we picture when we use that word.

What we will have is the next major stage in human evolution: the change from organic to inorganic. A merging of technology and humanity will require that we change what we define as human, that will eliminate our dependence on DNA modification for evolution.

There are complications and stumbling blocks to all of this, of course. It's speculation. It's dreaming. But we're human, and right now, that's something we do.

An AI equipped with raw materials and nanotech that his capable of altering its physical form, of evolving not across generations, but across whims might very well be the ultimate destination of human evolution. Whether you're terrified by the thought or inspired by it, it's a possibility that bears some thought.

(Picture from here).

Incivility

Current Reading: Grail, by Elizabelth Bear

Inspirational Quote: "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." -- Mark Twain

I have a problem with profanity.

I don't believe I'm a very profane man. I try not to swear in public, although I find that when I'm around others who swear, I tend to adjust my language downward. It's an unconscious adaptation, and not one of which I'm proud. Even so, I tend not to get anymore rude than “feces” or “damn” or “Hell,” the latter two of which are perfectly acceptable because they occupy a prominent place in the Bible and therefore cannot (according to the dictionary definition) be considered profane. Of course, one has to let off steam, and there's nothing like a good curse for that. My father was a sailor of Irish descent, and the kind of man who could swear in complete sentences, sentences that were grammatically correct but extremely... busy.

Like anything, however, profanity tends to lose its potency when used so casually. His frequent use of the worst words left him at somewhat of a loss when he experienced moments that were perfect for a curse. I remember him hitting his finger with a hammer once. His exact words were, “Oh, for crying out loud.” Myself, I tend to hold my use of profanity for extreme instances when it's required by anger, or pain, or frustration. The rest of the time, I use things that are less offensive although they're rarely appropriate. My favorite word is “Shostakovich,” the name of an Austrian composer who's been dead long enough that I doubt he'd take offense at my appropriating its use. It's a good word. A nice soft “sh” to start off with, followed by a hard “t” and “k” and a nice bite of “ch” at the end. It's got all the sounds necessary to let off steam, but none of the baggage that goes with all those other words.

There are lots of words (most associated with sex and other body functions) that I honestly believe have no place in civilized dialog. But I'm apparently in the minority. These are words I hear every day. I hear them at work. I read them on the internet and in books. They make their way onto television and into the news and definitely into modern music and movies. As a result, I hear them out of the mouths of my children (my constant refrain is, “just because they go in the ears doesn't mean they should come out of the mouth.”) and I hear them shouted across the school yard and I cringe.

I used to listen to George Carlin. He made profanity funny but I always felt embarrassed laughing at him when my parents were in the room... even though it was their album. I also used to listen to Bill Cosby, who was funny and safe for all ages. I listened a bit to Eddie Murphy when he hit it big in the 80's, but I realized that people were laughing at what he said only about half the time. The other half the time they were laughing because they couldn't believe anyone could get up on stage and talk that way.

Honestly, I know they're just words. They're how people talk these days. Their status as “dirty” words is an archaism, a relic of a time when soap was used to wash out mouths as often as it was used to wash one's face. And perhaps I'm a relic of that time too, because the moment someone resorts to profanity in the course of an ordinary conversation, I automatically revise my estimate of their I.Q. down a few dozen points. Profanity in conversation always tells me that the person is far more interested in how they say something than in what they're saying.

Photo from here.

Ad Astra

Current Reading: Scientific American. I have a lot of issues to catch up on. I'm about 6 months behind.

Inspirational Quote: "Per ardua ad astra." -- Motto of the RCAF.

On July 21st, the space shuttle Atlantis landed at Kennedy Space Center. It was the last flight of a program that began in 1981 with the maiden voyage of the Columbia. I remember watching the mission, although I can't recall details. I was 13, and it seemed like the stars were opening up to us. Within a few years, I thought, we'll have a space station as a jumping off point for Luna. Then, from Luna, in a few years more, we'll have the first manned expedition to Mars.

Of course, I was disappointed. But then, the aliens from Close Encounters never landed in real life either, and I'm STILL disappointed by that.

For the next 3 years, I watched every launch I could. After that, I was at University and spent more time reading and making things go bang than I did watching the news. The rest of the world grew more apathetic as well, as shuttle launches began their migration from front-page news to footnotes in the newspaper science section... if it had one. Of course, the disasters disrupted the program and made the shuttle news again, but on the whole, space travel became a regular part of life on earth: "Pauly Shore has made a movie that isn't funny, the space shuttle Discovery did something, and the Maple Leafs failed to make the playoffs..."

Now, the program is over. Outer space is once more a distant frontier, with the Americans depending on the Russians to act as taxi drivers if they need a trip to the ISS.

We were discussing the demise of the shuttle program a few days ago when a friend asked me what the program had contributed. What had it done? Why was it a big deal? I thought about it for some time before giving the wrong answer: something about the ceramics knowledge that was developed while they were trying to create the heat shield tiles.

The real answer is that science isn't a matter of breakthroughs. It's about expanding knowledge, and the shuttle was a tool that made possible a myriad of incremental expansions. I don't know of any major leaps forward in science or technology that the shuttle created, but I know hundreds of experiments, some by school kids, would never have yielded results without the shuttle's ability to carry them into orbit.

But more important, the shuttle was a dream given form (a quote from Babylon 5). A generation of kids grew up seeing the shuttle launches and landings. They saw space not as something distant and unachievable, but as a place next door that they could visit someday. Heck, they even let Canadians on the thing. We never got around to going back to the moon. Mars is just a place we throw big hunks of expensive metal at every few years. But for a little while, we regularly stepped outside our atmosphere and stood on the threshold of the infinite, looking out at the still-distant stars and in at the blue marble where we lived.

By the time the shuttles retired, they were 30 years old. Aeons in technology terms. They are museum pieces now, as they deserve to be. They are reminders of what we can achieve, and of what we have yet to achieve, and I'm going to miss them.

*Image courtesy of NASA.

Pimp my Ride

Current Reading: Grail, by Elizabeth Bear

Inspirational Quote: "Get a horse!" - Anonymous

I have a new chariot.

Well, new is relative, actually. It's new to me. It even smells new. Of course, it smells like it's been new for a long time.

But I digress.

My previous chariot was a '98 Saturn SL2. I loved it. It ran. It complained very little. Once in a while I had to replace things, or repair bits that broke or fell off, but on the whole it ran reliably and handled my daily 30km commute with as close to grace as you can get in a 4-door economy car.

In the last year, though, it began to develop some... quirks. The catalytic converter disintegrated one fine morning, announcing its death with a deafening growl that encouraged the entire neighborhood to wake up at 7am and enjoy the early spring sunrise. The wheel bearings had suffered the ravages of one too many salt-stained winters and had begun to hum. Riding in it was like riding inside a beehive stuffed with bees the size of elephants. The horn stopped working. If I used the "mist" function on the windshield wipers, I could never be sure when they would finally turn off. The record run was 2.5 days. It reduced my wipers to rubber strips.

But the unforgivable failure was the hole that appeared in my steering column expressly for the purpose of emptying the system of every drop of steering fluid.

It took some time to find a used car to my liking. I have standards. They're low, I admit, but they exist. During the search period, I kept myself on the road by purchasing buckets of steering fluid and administering them to the car whenever I started to need a torque wrench to make a corner. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to hook an I.V. under the hood. As a result, my preferred parking spaces at work, the grocery store, my home, and everywhere else I went became decorated by a Rorshach oil blot the size of a large beaver. I could follow my progress around town by the lines of shiny drops I left everywhere. I was environmentally hostile, and I was ashamed, but I had things to do and places to go.

Finally, I found something I could afford. By "afford," I mean, of course, "manage by entering into a level of debt that was just under the maximum I could manage without courting bankruptcy."

I was due to pick it up on a Monday at 6pm.

Sunday afternoon, at 4pm, I was on my way home from picking up my sons. On the downhill run to an intersection with a highway, the radio suddenly went morse-code with static. The gages on the dash twitched like an epileptic wearing a joy buzzer. I did not regard this as a good thing, and expressed that view to my children in a series of metaphors I shall not repeat here. We came to a halt at the stop sign, and when the way was clear to the horizon, we started across. Snails have demonstrated greater pickup.

I floored it. We were going a staggering 20k/h by the time I reached the far side of the highway. I kept it floored, the speedometer and tachometer ignoring my efforts as the engine accelerated in its own time, until I'd achieved something like the proper speed.

At which point the radio tuned itself to static and every single gage went to zero. The AC and fans continued to work, but everything else, including the automatic transmission, died. I commented upon this occurrence vigorously, furthering my children's education in the profane arts.

We made it home, stuck in what I believe was third gear. Once I had the chariot safely parked, I turned off the ignition. Because I am the type of person to poke bruises and pick scabs, I tried to start the car again. It laughed at me. I could hear it. "Hur hur hur hur," it said.

So I pulled the key out of the ignition for the last time, climbed out, and took a moment to study the hunk of metal and polymer that, for thirteen years and 320000km had gotten my sorry tail where it wanted to go. I'd bought it new. It was my first car. It still sits in my driveway, empty and dead. I haven't been able to bring myself to call the wreckers and have it towed away. A friend of mine wants to take it off my hands. He thinks it can be resurrected, with a little work. I'd like to see that.

The new car is nice. Cruise control. Heated seats. The horn works and the wipers turn off right away.

We'll how it handles the years.

*Image from here.

Beep.

Apologies.
Still alive.
2011? So far, the worst year of my life.

Further entries WILL be forthcoming.
I'd play a test pattern if I had one.

All Is Vanity

Current Reading: An issue of Canada's History Magazine (formerly The Beaver).

Inspirational Quote: "I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed" -- Robert Frost

Well, obviously, not ALL is vanity. Some of it is apples. And a little bit of it is people with red hair. But, you know, OVERALL, it looks like vanity if you squint.

I apologize yet again for the long delay between posts. I have plenty of excuses, but none of them will go back in time and force me to fill in the blanks, so they're useless.


Of course, sometimes I haven't been able to think of anything to write. This is a fallacy, of course. I'm looking at things the wrong way around. I simply need to write what I think and stop waiting for the perfect planetary alignment, or geological convergence, or whatever to light the fires of inspiration.

It's true that this approach will lead me to post nonsense that nobody outside my head could possibly care about.

But then the same phrase could describe the archives in their entirety. So, the more things change...

I really have to comment on the election. It was remarkable. We elected a majority Conservative government, which I fear to my toes because Mr. Harper's heavy-handed techniques and autocratic style make me suspect that his decisions will be hard on those of us who are not rich and priviledged.

I hope he proves me wrong.

Outgoing Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff watched his party shrink to a tiny fraction of its former size. I don't think anybody saw that coming. One of his final comments struck me as prophetic, though. When asked what their defeat meant for the federal Liberal party in the next election, he said that it was good news. "Nothing could be better for the Liberal party than four years of Conservative majority government with an NDP opposition."

The Bloc Quebecois was likewise annihilated. I'm okay with that. I think a party that espouses a distinctly provincial agenda and advocates disruption of the federation really shouldn't be in federal politics.

Now we have the NDP as official opposition. It has a few members who have been in the House before, but for the most part they are all rookies, and many of them are barely out of their teens. I get the feeling that most of them were watching the returns with as much disbelief as the rest of the country. "What the hell do you mean I won? I can't win! I don't know how to do anything!"

Yeah. Neither does anyone else. Congratulations on your outstanding qualifications. The job's yours.

Of course, they are the official opposition to a majority government, so even if they had the most savvy politicos on the planet running their caucus, they STILL wouldn't be able to do anything more effective than boo loudly. They are a tale told by an idiot: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The interesting thing about politics, though, is that after such a tremendous popular upheaval in which everything changed... once the new parliament sits on June 2, it'll still be business as usual.

To Be, Or Not To Be

Current Reading: A combination of Scientific American and Discover Magazines from the last few months.

Inspirational Quote: "Lord we may know what we are, but know not what we may be." -William Shakespeare

I went to see a movie last month: Limitless. It's about a man who takes a pill that amps up his intellect. It's an intriguing premise, but the movie didn't take it in a direction that interested me, instead devolving into a pseudo-thriller/pseudo-superhero tale with superfluous violence. Good for popcorn sales, not so much for intellectual stimulation.



What intrigued me about this is the idea behind this line from the trailer: "How many of us ever know what it is to become the perfect version of ourselves?"

Of course, before we even start to think about this, we need to know exactly what we mean by "perfect." Defining "success" is hard enough. Defining "Perfection" is a task close to impossible.

Still, we can ask some simpler and more specific questions: How do we make ourselves the most creative we can be? The smartest? The most courageous? How do we overcome our weaknesses, our fears and doubts, and become the best we can?

How do we realize our potential?

In the film, it's a pill. I don't think that's a good way to go. It'd be revolting to think that my personal development depended on something that "wore off."

But beyond medication, there's the billion-dollar self-help industry. Dale Carnegie. Steven Covey. Every MBA with a book. They'll give you 12 steps, or 7 habits, or 9 favored aspects which, if followed religiously, will set your highest and best nature free of its restraints. They promise success (whatever definition may apply), and they may well deliver for all I know, but I honestly question how effective they are at promoting generic personal development.

But speaking of following something "religiously," there's religion itself. There are lots of belief systems, each of which is the only one you'll ever need. Each, if you follow its precepts, promises enlightenment or salvation or the chance to become a higher, better being.

I'm not dumb enough to even try to comment on the effectiveness of this approach beyond saying, "It works for some people."

I believe the realization of personal potential is the goal of individual existence. I often hear people ask themselves, "What am I here for? What's my purpose?" as though they're looking for some niche in which they can slot themselves and say, "this is it." I don't think it works that way. I think our purpose is to try to become our best selves, nothing more, but in attempting that I have no doubt we will do things more wonderful than we ever thought possible.

Huh.

If you want to hear a six-year-old laugh hysterically, I recommend trying to sing John Denver's "Sunshine" in your best Sylvester the Cat voice.

Once More With Feeling!

Current Reading: Scientific American and Shakespeare... draw your own conclusions.

Inspirational Quote: "Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against." -- W.C. Fields

Yes, last Friday my beloved homeland, the True North, dissolved its parliament and called for a federal election.

Again.

Fourth time in seven years.

Democracy is getting a workout.

The newspapers and stations are going on and on about the waste of taxpayer's money, time and effort. I disagree. $2,500 for a working lunch is a waste of taxpayer's money. $1.5M in air travel a year is a waste of taxpayer's money. I can't ever consider shelling out for an election a waste. We live in a democracy, a system of government that is supposed to guarantee people the right to throw out their rulers just like they've done in Tunisia and Egypt, only without all the shooting, looting and property damage.

The current government was found in contempt of parliament because of some fiscal shenanigans they declined to explain adequately. As a result, a vote of non-confidence was called and the minority government of prime minister Stephen Harper was defeated.

That's good. Mess with parliament and you should be sorry.

What's bad is that now we're in an election with some of the least appealing party leaders I've ever seen.

First is the ex-prime minister whose iron-fisted rule of his party and autocratic approach to governing have led directly to this disruption in the business of the legislature. I fear that if he is given a majority this time out, we'll see behavior that borders on the dictatorial.

Next is a man who was an expatriate until someone mentioned that he had a shot at leading the Liberal party. He insists that he's a committed Canadian, but leaving the country is a funny way to show it.

Third is the current head of the National Democratic Party, a man with a touch of charisma and maybe even a Plan, but he's leading a party with a reputation for overly socialist tendencies and reckless fiscal policies.

Last is the leader of a party founded on Quebec Nationalism. Given the opportunity, he'd take his home province right out of the country, so it's hard to believe he has the best interests of the nation at heart.

What Canada needs is a real leader, a man with charisma and vision and yet lacking in the monomania that so often accompanies those traits.

I'd run myself, but the country would melt from my awesome.

Well, This Is Awesome

Most readers are familiar with my fondness for Terry Pratchett's work. The man combines outrageous humor with tight plotting and a humanistic outlook to create some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking work I've ever read. Video adaptations of his work have been, in my opinion, inferior affairs mostly because you cannot take everything that makes the books amazing and transfer it to a screen (what's the video equivalent of a footnote?). However, they've been pretty darned enjoyable.

And now, this! Terry Pratchett's world and characters in a series scripted by a Monty Python alumnus. It is possible to get better than that, but only by coating the whole thing in Belgian chocolate.

I am pretty excited, although I guess I'd better get working on earning my British citizenship if I want to see it. I can only hope that at some point it makes its way across the pond.

In Which I Ponder a Mystery

Current Reading: Love's Labour's Lost, by Bill S.

Inspirational Quote: "I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks." -- Julius Marx (Groucho)

For a man who overthinks things, the world often throws up inscrutable puzzles.

About a week ago, I bought some new clothes. This is something I do when forced to the extremity either by natural decay or by an aversion to laundry machines.

Immaterial.

What is material is that I happened to pick up a bag of socks. I won't comment on the oddity of putting socks in a bag. In this modern consumer society, you can't find anything in a store that isn't wrapped in plastic, surrounded by boxboard or secured by wire. Sometimes all three, with a security tag attached to kick it up to 11. So, really, the oddity of bagging what are essentially cloth bags to hold your feet hardly bears comment.

On an unrelated note, the diversity of human nature is such that someone out there enjoys putting ketchup on tomatoes. The world doesn't have to make sense.

So I exit the store with a bag of socks and get home to discover that it's no ordinary bag. No. It is a RESEALABLE bag. It's not just closed off with the usual hermetic heat seal, but adjacent to that is a zip-lock assembly. Apparently, I can take socks out and seal the bag up to keep the others... fresh? Yes, there's nothing like that fresh-sock scent (!?!). Or perhaps, I can put socks back in and seal them up to keep them from... escaping? Unlikely. I'm a fairly conservative dresser and not even my socks are wild enough to require any form of corral, even a flimsy polyethylene one.

It's a mystery. Why is my sock bag zip-locked? Admittedly, zip-lock bags are handy for all sorts of things. I often use them for keeping food fresh in the refrigerator or my lunch bag (which has a real zipper, not one of the plastic-rail zip-lock constructions), but the very thought of appropriating my sock bag for wrapping sandwiches leaves me in fear of accidentally contracting athlete's mouth. I suppose I could use it for jigsaw puzzle pieces, or beads, or game tokens but I honestly don't use those things enough for resealable bags to be in high demand.

Sad, I know, but let's stay on topic.

I spent a few minutes opening the bag and taking out socks, then sealing it again. Then I spent a few minutes opening the bag and putting socks back in before sealing it again. I felt I had to. The sock manufacturers must have gone through a great deal of trouble to include this feature, and I'd feel terrible just recycling the bag without trying to take some sort of advantage of it.

I suspect that all this is actually due to a very clever and effective bag salesman.

"Look, for an extra five cents a thousand, we'll throw in a reseal option."
"Oooh, I've heard about that. Very popular with sandwich bags."
"Right, and a hundred other household uses like..." [Here my imagination fails me. Just throw in four or five clever and effective examples for yourself. I've got nothing.] "So it's a great deal."
"Yes! I'm sold! Where's that contract?"
"Right here in my resealable briefcase." ...unzip...

I doubt very much that any but the most OCD-afflicted among us would find the notion of purchasing socks in a resealable bag at all appealing, and those who do would probably balk at the thought of using bags that had been just hanging around in a store where people could --shudder-- touch them.

Why sell socks in a resealable bag? They're not cereal, or potato chips or cookies that need to be kept fresh. This is a puzzle that is, frankly, beyond me and I know it would be better for me to just let it go and move on with my life.

Unfortunately, I've just taken a close look at the bag my underwear came in...

Bedtime Song

Cassandra has inherited her father's love of Muppets (yay!).

On an unrelated note, her bedtime routine includes some reading time (by both she and I) and about 15 minutes of made up story-telling (by me) featuring whatever characters she wants to hear about, and then... if she hasn't had enough one-on-one time, a song.

My singing voice is a cross between a plugged vacuum cleaner and a bagpipe in a trash compactor. No matter. She likes it just fine.

Anyway, she gets stuck on different songs, wanting to hear them over and over again until something knocks her out of her orbit... like Dad just getting tired of the same song. One night about a week ago, in a fit of ennui, I broke out into a rousing chorus of "Grandma's Feather Bed." Well, it's become her favorite. So I can't wait to show her this...

Accepting Rejection

Current Reading: Love's Labour's Lost, by Bill S.

Inspirational Quote: "I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long." -- Louise Brown

Whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we artists (writers, actors, painters, sculptors... whatever) hate rejection.

Art is a fundamental attempt to communicate with others and to be told, implicitly or explicitly, that we have not done that well enough to reach our intended audience is a blow to the ego. Compassionate human beings attempt to soften rejection where they can: "Not right for us." "It's good, but it's not as good as the other 400 submissions we received this month." But you can't really soften rejection. It's like softening granite.

Like granite, and feldspar, limestone and all that other bedrock, rejection is a part of life. Not every door is going to open at the first knock.

So, what can you do?

Develop a thick skin. Read your rejections as "not yet," instead of "never." Hope. Believe. Learn. Practice. Work.

And content yourself with the realization that sometimes rejection is editorial policy.

Hey, Look! Stuff is Happening in the Middle East!

Current Reading: Love's Labour's Lost, by William Shakespeare

Inspirational Quote: "I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body." -- Carlos Erwin Estevez (Charlie Sheen).

Say what you will about Charlie Sheen (and everyone is), he gives great quote.

Meanwhile in real news, people in the middle-east have been inspired by the revolt in Tunisia to demand political change in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman. It's also caused some unrest in Iran and, strangely enough, China.

It underscores the unwritten rule of human existence: No assembly can govern without the implicit consent of its people.

That simplifies things dramatically, I know. Dictators have held power for years on the backs of armies and secret police devoid of consciences and armed with machine guns. Defying them is usually an act of fatal courage, and few people are willing to give their lives without knowing if their deaths will change anything.

Governments, armies and police officers keep their positions because the people of their countries are unaware of one crucial fact: those in power are always a minority. The police know that they cannot arrest every single citizen. The army knows it cannot shoot every civilian. The government knows that it cannot rule every individual at every moment. They rely on acceptance. Here in Canada, the unspoken acceptance is "I will follow your rules because I believe doing so will help me and those around me live, prosper and seek happiness, eh?"

That's the covenant that ought to exist between governed and governor. In Canada, it's a shaky thing because each of us has a different (occasionally conflicting) definition of prosperity and happiness and a different opinion on how best we can obtain these things. I imagine it's that way in the majority of the world that doesn't make the six-o'clock news (when was the last time you heard from Finland? Belgium? Trinidad?).

In these middle-east headline places, the governments have broken that covenant (notice that one of the biggest griefs to tip the scales is not "they came in the night and took/killed my brother," but "there are no jobs." People can prosper without their brother, but not if they can't afford to eat). As a result, the people have looked out into the world (largely through the web) and realized that their rulers are a minority, and that the people who want change and are willing to make change happen outnumber that minority by a significant margin.

Enough people making enough noise can force a government out regardless of what tanks or terror tactics are used.

This is a good thing.

I recognize that many people are going to die before regimes change. It's a terrible loss, but unavoidable when people who don't want to give up power are forced to do so. My heart goes out to the survivors.

And what happens after? Many are shouting for democracy, and that's fine because democracy makes explicit that implicit consent I mentioned earlier. In a democracy, you can rule so long as you convince people you're doing a good job promoting their interests, or at least not angering too many of them at any one time. But honestly, anything is fine, provided those in government recognize that their mandate is to promote a good life for their people, and not to ignore that in favor of personal advantage.

Oil is one thing that could cause all this upheaval to end badly. If Tunisia (ranked 54th in world oil production) gets a little unstable, well that's okay. Egypt (29)? Well, some people are going to start to pay attention. Libya (18)? Suddenly unrest is dangerously close to threatening oil supplies. Turmoil in Iran (4) is something no industrial nation can afford to ignore, and the urge to meddle to ensure a political outcome favorable to "domestic" interests is irresistible. The moment things start to destabilize there, every country in the world will be in there like bums in a soup kitchen, trying to fill their bowls with as much oil as they can get.

For comparison and general interest, Iraq is now #12 in the world rankings. Its pre-war output would have ranked it #7 today.

2011 is shaping up to be one of the most politically interesting years in my life.

And, for the record: like Charlie Sheen, I too am a "total bitchin' rock star from Mars."