Welcome to Hydrargentium's: We Blog!

88%

2010-12-14T13:35:00.002-05:00

88% Geek

'Nuff said.

Funniest Facebook Joke Ever

2010-10-26T21:19:00.000-04:00

http://www.turbosloth.net/index.php?id=123

Am I right? I'm right.

Hg

The future of web interfaces?

2010-05-31T16:49:00.003-04:00

All I can say is, "cool technology, check it out":

http://random.friggeri.net/jquery-gestures/

Hg

Will this suffice?

2009-10-01T17:40:00.005-04:00

Hey! I really liked this line, from Erfworld:

...any sufficiently advanced riddle is indistinguishable from gibberish.

In fact, I liked it so much, it made me post my first blog entry in over a year!

Hg

First mate? Does that mean there's going to be others as well?

2008-09-19T09:54:00.004-04:00

It's not every day you get to see someone propose over the Internet -- especially in full comic colour in front of, oh I dunno, a few hundred thousand readers?

Way to go, David Willis.

Although, I kinda wish I hadn't clicked the link to see the strip he told Maggie he was going to post today. The whole icepicks and eyeballs thing seemed quite viable for a while there.

Hg

Wordle-ing Lemonade

2008-08-06T11:41:00.006-04:00

Okay, so there's this neat site that Jim Zoetewey pointed out called Wordle. I used it to create this, based on my story, Lemonade:

Cool huh? reminds me of those coffee cups and cheese platters from the seventies. Make I should go over to cafe press and have some mugs made up.... :)

Hg

SHF Links

2008-07-15T17:56:00.003-04:00

I just left a comment, on a recent episode of Shimmer, about good sources of SuperHeroic Fiction (SHF), and decided to reproduce the salient stuff from that comment here on my blog, for handy reference. If anyone actually reads this, then read these:

A Thousand Faces: http://www.thousand-faces.com/

Metahuman Press: http://metahumanpress.com/
-- especially Firedrake, Comic Book Hero, Power vs. Power, and Century

Star Harbor Nights: http://www.starharbornights.com/
-- start with the archives, here: http://www.starharbornights.net/

Shimmer: http://shimmer.wibblypress.net/

The Legion of Nothing: http://inmydaydreams.com/

Oh yeah, and there's a few SHF offerings on my website as well.

Hg

aLp

2008-03-31T12:24:00.007-04:00

Hurray! Bernie Hou has resumed regular updates of Alien Loves Predator!

Why is this such a noteworthy cause for celebration? Too many reasons to explain, that's why! I think I'll let today's comic stand as an example of what I mean.

See? Yeah, really. I know. Yeah. Just... yeah.

Anyway, Bernie, if you're reading this, thanks a whole whole whole whole bunch, and I now forgive you for not naming the twins Boris and Zeev. (And if you're not, well, congratulations, you've officially placed yourself in ranks of just about everyone else on the planet. Sucks to be... my blog.)

Hg

ellipsis

2008-03-28T17:20:00.011-04:00

Well, I might as well admit that it doesn't look like I'll be keeping this blog regularly updated for the foreseeable future. The crisis won out over the confidence -- I'm just not that into it when I know so few people are reading it. Internally, I can't find the emotional justification for taking that much time every day.

On the other side of things, I will say that part of the reason why my output for this blog has waned is because I've been allotting most of my creative thinking time (and most of my actual writing time) developing Hard Core Heroes. I've got all of the major characters (i.e. the team) developed, including significant backstory and motivation, as well as part of the general world situation. I've also sketched out a dozen or so scenes in my head, and written 499 words of the first chapter. (To add to that word count, I've also got 1370 words of notes written down.)

So, thanks to anyone who actually read any of this stuff -- sorry to disappoint you if you were expecting more. If you care to check back periodically, there will likely be other posts as inspiration strikes me. Also, if, by some bizarre whim of the Internet, I see my viewing statistic start to rise dramatically, I will definitely be inclined to resume my regular blogging. That's kind of taking the Field of Dreams thing in reverse: "If they come, I will build it."

As a bonus, I will include the first 499 words of Hard Core Heroes, chapter 1 (as they stand right now). Enjoy.

Hg

It was cool for spring, but sunny. Ulrich stood in the patch of sunlight beside the desk, ignoring the visitor's chair, his black skin soaking up the warmth. The occupant of this office was absent -- late, in fact -- but Ulrich could wait. He was good at waiting.

At exactly seven minutes after one, Lieutenant Colonel Cowan entered his office, blowing on a mug of coffee. He sat down at his desk, carefully placing his drink away from the folders arrayed on the blotter, and straightened his tie. Only then did he look up at Ulrich, his glance flickering over the open trenchcoat, the grey fedora, and the glossy black leather of size fourteen shoes.

"If you'd care to sit, I can have a better chair brought in."

Ulrich shook his head. "That's alright. I can stand."

The officer held Ulrich's gaze for a moment, trying to penetrate the matte black eyes.

"You may have heard rumours, Captain Stevenson, about-"

"Please. I resigned my commission a long time ago."

Cowan cleared his throat. "Mr. Stevenson, then? Fine. The rumours, then, are true."

Ulrich's voice rumbled through the room. "It's about time."

"My thoughts exactly. And the Senator's also."

The coffee in Cowan's mug quivered with dark rings as Ulrich crossed deliberately over to the window. He stared out at the Sherman tank preserved in the square below. He remembered those big metal beasts. Riding on the back, straight into enemy fire, army greens torn all to hell.

"And you want me on the team." It was a statement, plain and simple -- not a question, not a challenge.

"Actually, we want you to lead the team." Ulrich could hear the smile in the Lieutenant Colonel's voice.

He cocked his head. Sunlight barely glinted off his cheek. Turning to look back over his shoulder, he carefully appraised this desk jockey officer. The guy had probably never seen real combat. Of course, he was probably good at his job, or he wouldn't be an Lt.C. Not reporting to the Senator, anyway.

"What's the catch."

Cowan opened a folder on his desk. He tapped at the papers for a moment, and then slid across the blotter toward Ulrich.

"We reinstate you. With a promotion."

"Major Stevenson, hmmm? What if I say no?"

Ulrich watched Cowan's smile grow wider, and a sly twinkle grew in his eye.

"Then you don't get to choose who's on the team...."

* * *

"This is your whole list?"

Ulrich leaned forward across the long steel table, resting his elbows on the painted green surface. With his jacket hung on the tree in the corner, and his sleeves rolled up, the table clanked audibly with the contact. Across from him, Cowan and his aide, a young flunky lieutenant named Washburn, sat uncomfortably on the steel bench that flanked the table.

Comfort and discomfort had long stopped having any meaning to Ulrich. What was important to him was the durability of his furniture, and heavy gauge steel was the way to go.

Taking one for the company

2008-03-18T17:28:00.006-04:00

Did I say on St. Patrick's Day? I meant after.

Heh. Heh.

It was an interesting "vacation", I must say. I didn't go anywhere, just did things around the house that needed to get done. I had to take the days off, or my employer was going to take them from me. It's funny how that works: "Oh, hey, you get so many days off, but they have an expiry date." Gee, thanks.

Y'know, they've outlawed that practice with gift cards and gift certificates.

From the company's perspective, though, I can understand where they're coming from. (Ooops -- I ended that with a preposition. Good thing it's conversational, otherwise I'd've had to say, "I can understand from where they're coming." Wow, does that sound awkward?) Aside from trying to prevent burnout by insisting that people take vacations, using the only leverage they legally have (use it or lose it), it could also suck big-time if an employee banked up a couple of months of vacation days, and then said, "Hey, I'm going to cycle around Australia -- see you in September!" Not only is there potential for impact in the company's bottom line, but there's also the long-term extra load for the errant employee's coworkers, who have to pick up the slack for an extended period. (I'm sure the snarky, "wish you were here" postcards wouldn't help either.)

Wait, what? Who cares about the company's bottom line? You should, that's who. It really doesn't matter how big you think your company is, the only good company to work for is a successful company. Anything else is like working as a deck-hand on the Titanic (or the SS-92, for those of you who remember their campfire songs). Go ahead. Ask any Bear Stearns employees how they're feeling right now. (Oh yeah, and be sure to ask the ones who still have vacation days left how smart they feel about having hoarded them.)

In any case, I used my vacation days, rather than lost them. (Darn that past tense inconsistency for stealing my rhyme!) I don't think taking those days off did anything to reduce my proximity to the burnout threshold, but at least I know my coworkers will be happier, and I'll still have a job next week. Really, I was doing it for my company!

...As opposed to being stubborn about not giving up what is rightfully mine, even though I had no good use for it. Of course. It had nothing to do with that. And I'm really a Vulcan: green blood, pointy ears, expressive eyebrows and all.

Hg

On Vacation

2008-03-10T18:18:00.003-04:00

No posts this week. I'm on vacation. See all y'all on Saint Paddy's Day!

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Shouldn't Have Ducked

2008-03-07T17:52:00.009-05:00

The long coat dropped carelessly on the bar stool beside him. A moment later, the owner sat down on top, expensive wool pants crushing seams into the Burberry lining. Joel looked up from his contemplation of nothing. Atop shoulders draped in an Armani jacket, the dark-haired man sported a spitcurl on his forehead.

Joel blinked. His new neighbour didn't seem to have noticed him.

"What'll it be?" the bartender asked.

"Whatever's on draft." The man paused for a second, not quite considering. "And a shot of Tequila."

"One boilermaker, coming up."

Finally, the richly dressed man looked over at Joel. He clearly wasn't noticing Joel for the first time.

Joel blinked again. He was favoured with a smirk, the kind that seemed to be laughing at you, but not in a bad way.

"Mind if I sit here?"

Joel looked around the pub. Most of the tables were full. The booths all looked too big for just one person. The bar itself was more than half empty, but from where he sat, Joel had the best view of the TV behind the bartender.

Joel shrugged.

The smirk waggled at him again, this time with less friendliness.

"Don't talk much, do you?"

Joel shrugged again. "I talk when I need to."

The man slapped a ten on the bar as the bartender brought his order with a double clunk-clunk of glass on polished oak.

"Keep it," he said, reaching for the shot glass. A quick jerk dropped the contents down his throat, and the man followed up with a long swig from the frosty mug. Then he turned to face Joel again.

"An economy of words, huh? I wish I heard more of that at meetings. Know what I mean?"

The man chuckled to himself, then took a quick appraisal of Joel's dusty canvass jacket, faded jeans, worn leather boots.

"No, maybe not," he said quietly. Then he smiled at Joel again, pulled at his draft with a sharp slurp, and turned to watch the sports news on the TV.

After a minute, he turned back. Joel sighed. Clearly, this guy wanted to talk.

Joel gave him a raised eyebrow. It wasn't much of an invitation, but if the guy was looking for someone to jabber at, it wouldn't take much to get him going. He didn't really see the point of making the guy wait any longer.

The eyebrow was all the man needed.

"Y'ever get the feeling you missed something?"

Joel kept his eyebrow raised.

"Like you've dodged the bullet of destiny? No? Maybe?"

Joel took a sip from his rye and Coke.

"Like the other day, I was at the bank, and I had this strange feeling, like maybe something was supposed to happen... and I was there to do something about it."

Joel cleared his throat. "That's pretty vague."

"Yeah, but it was, y'know? Nothing specific. No details. And then it was gone, and I was stuck waiting in line again."

Joel shifted slightly on his stool, getting comfortable.

"And twice now, I've had this urge to, uh, go into phone booths."

Joel raised the eyebrow again. "Phone booths?"

"Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But not like that. There was nothing else, just the feeling I should go into one. And then it was gone."

"Hmm."

"Yeah, I know."

Joel finished off his drink, and signalled to the bartender for another.

"Hmm. Ever stood on the top of a tall building? Just stared into the clouds, watched the seagulls soar, and wondered about it?"

"What? No." The man seemed shocked. "I'm not crazy. I wouldn't... I'd never be a jumper."

Joel shook his head. "Not what I meant."

The man struggled to hide his embarassment. "Oh, heh, yeah, sure."

Joel shrugged, took a sip of his fresh glass. The Coke fizz tickled his nose.

"Hmm."

The two of them sat in silence for another moment, one sipping rye, the other finishing his draft beer.

"I had a dream about it once. About being on top of a building, and there were clouds all around. It was a really high building, and I could feel the wind on my face. It whistled past my ears."

Joel took another sip.

Abruptly, the man got up, shaking the wrinkles out of his coat, looking at his watch. Rolex, Joel noticed.

"Whoops, got another meeting in ten minutes." He smirked. "I wish they all talked as much as you did."

Joel looked up at him.

"What'd you say your name was?"

"Clarkson. Kent Clarkson."

Joel held out a hand.

"Joel Schuster."

Kent shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Joel. Nice talking to you."

Joel watched as Kent pushed the pub door open, and stepped out into the grey afternoon. Without hesitation, the man turned, heading back to his office. Just before the door closed to block his view, Joel saw the man's hand reach up to his face, absently twisting the lock of hair on his forehead.

Hg

Hard Core Heroes

2008-03-06T19:36:00.005-05:00

I like mainstream comics -- I really do. I can totally dig some of the stuff that Superman deals with. The X-books rarely disappoint me completely. Spider-man, of course, almost always has some depth to it.

(I don't, however, actually buy comics anymore. Since I'm satisfied with the Big Two, and since I don't need to read an entire series to figure out the plot and enjoy the individual episodes, I make do with reading a selection of mags off the rack at any of the local big-box bookstores. Easier on the pocketbook, and no one at the stores ever seems to mind.)

In a recent X-book -- I don't remember the title, since it doesn't really matter -- I read the culminating chapter in the current X-tinction Agenda story line. The story itself was okay (and the ending a little confusing -- how/why Professor X disappeared, and why the greatest telepath on the planet couldn't notice the fact that someone was about to shoot him in the head are both mysteries that probably weren't meant as such), but what really struck me was the action involving Wolverine's X-Force group.

For those who don't know or haven't been following, Cyclops put Wolverine in charge of a sub-group of the toughest, nastiest and mostly sharply-armed of X-men, reusing the name originally taken by the New Mutants while under the tutelage/influence of Cable. This special team consists of (aside from the aforementioned Canuck) Warpath, Mlle. Hepzibah, X-23, and Wolfsbane. (At least, I think that's the roster, but I'm not 100% certain of it. Those who want to know can, of course, look it up.)

Now, in the middle of all the other frenzy going on in this issue, there was also a mutant-eating, regenerating, big-toothed grey beast called Predator X running rampant. (Oh yeah, and it grows bigger with every genetically-enhanced meal.) Wolverine and his crew are sent to deal with this big nasty, and discover quickly that their claws and knives (and space-grenades) aren't hurting the darn thing any faster than it can heal the damage. Being the team leader, and the best there is at what he does, our hero Wolvie climbs up onto some sort of promontory above the beasty's head, and then yells to get its attention. When the beast looks up, Wolverine jumps at its head. What happens next? What else? Predator X opens wide, and swallows the ol' Canucklehead whole. Of course the whole team freaks out, but I'd already guessed at this point what was going to happen -- I've seen Men In Black, too.

So, what does happen when you swallow an regenerating berserker with unbreakable bones and foot-long claws sticking out of each fist? Yep, you guessed it: a terminal case of heartburn. Wolverine very handily disembowels Predator X from the inside, and crawls out of the corpse, covered in yuck, but triumphant.

Okay, so if you're anything like me, you immediately see the humour in this. This move is so over-the-top, it's so blatantly, fanboyishly hard-core, that you can't help but chuckle at the audacity. At the same time, though, the long-time comic-reader in me thinks: "Hey, that was pretty cool. Good thinking, Wolvie."

In fact, I liked it so much, I've been inspired to write a series in the same vein. Call it "Hard Core Heroes". It's about a team called Hero Force, made up of the toughest of the tough, the heroes that are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, and do it hard core. I figure as long as I take it seriously enough that the characters believe in themselves (and therefore the readers do, too), while avoiding the tongue-in-cheek camp, then it'll be cool and funny at the same time.

I already have some of the characters sketched out. I think people will really like it. I know I do -- but then again, I'm the one who's writing it.

Hg

A crisis of conviction

2008-03-05T19:10:00.005-05:00

I must admit, I'm having a crisis of conviction with regard to my blog. I've been blogging for a couple of months now -- 53 blog entries in my blog-every-weekday initiative -- and I can see that my readership is bordering on non-existent. Heck, my site counter shows (down there at the bottom of the page) only 62 visitors since I started counting (which was about the same time I started blogging steadily). Numbers like that certainly include the possibility that there are blog entries that nobody has read.

Feedback, too, is sparse. I've had a total of five comments since I started, and three of them were from Frank Byrns -- thanks, Frank. The lack of comments suggests I am failing to engage my readers at the level to which I aspire. Either that, or my prose is so tight, my arguments so compelling, I've left them all speechless. Honestly, I hold no illusions about what the truth is.

Seriously, the apathy of readership on the Internet is astounding. Not that I can blame anyone. There's so much out there, so much to read, so much to look at, so much to watch and listen to, that even if every person on the planet was randomly browsing the Internet at the same time, the odds of even one person reading my blog are stacked against me.

So, what should I do? Should I carry on, doggedly relying on scant word-of-mouth and the "Field of Dreams" theory? Should I just let it go, chalk the whole thing up as practice sessions and therapeutic catharsis? Being the eternal optimist, I have a hard time seriously considering the latter, even though the former is ludicrously hopeful.

I don't really want to stop -- I have a hard time quitting something I've put time and effort into, unless the arguments for doing so are concrete and sound. Yet I was certainly feeling discouraged today when considering what to write about. (Ironically, having felt this way, I was inspired to write about it, and thus feel far more encouraged by the experience.)

I guess I've decided to keep going, at least for the near future. The problem thus becomes, not a decision about continuance, but development of a strategy for increasing readership. My first thought, earlier on, was go to Project Wonderful, and buy some advertising on sites where the cost is still zero. I figure, if I do enough of them, then I'll snag a decent amount of incidental coverage, all for free. Unfortunately, PW has a policy whereby falsifying information in their registration is grounds for immediate removal from the program -- and since I'm churlish with my identity, this poses a significant obstacle. I even posted a query about it through their FAQ system, but no one has got back to me on that yet.

If I could get a credit card ascribed to my pseudonym, then my anonymity would be pretty much secure -- banks in Canada are highly protective (as regulated by law) of their client information. Unfortunately, I don't know whether that possible, and the logistics around keeping its existence secret from the people in my real-world life could be problematic, and prone to discovery. I'm just not sure it would work.

I suppose what I need is an agent, an Internet friend that doesn't know me anywhere else, but is willing to accept money transfers from me to pay off my advertising costs. Hmmm, I'll have to think about this.

In any case, it looks like my blog will live to see another post. This anonymity thing can be a bit of a pain, though. I wonder if Saki would have had this much problem with it, had he had the opportunity to cruise the ol' Information Superhighway....

Hg

R.I.P. Gary Gygax

2008-03-04T17:40:00.008-05:00

Well, it had to happen eventually. The Man Who Started It All, Gary Gygax, died today at the age of 69. He failed his Save vs. Death, and no amount of screaming, bribing or rules-lawyering is going to convince his DM to let him re-roll.

It's funny, because I mentioned role-playing games in yesterday's blog, and here he ends up dying the next day. Some might call that spooky. I think spooky would have been if I'd received a call from him out of the blue, and it turned out he'd dialed the wrong number. And then died. While talking to me. That would've been spooky.

Still, as every other obit piece has already said, Mr. Gygax (Can I call him Gary? Sure I can.) provided the genesis for a significant portion of today's popular culture. Personally, I can draw a pretty solid line between my early influences from role-playing games and my creative products today.

In the course of role-playing, I learned a lot about characterization. It didn't take me long to realize that playing Dungeons & Dragons was about a heck of a lot more than hack n' slash and fireballs -- although that's still some pretty fun stuff. Heck, I even won an award once at a gaming convention for the best-played characterization, and that wasn't even for a character I'd created.

Of course, every good author knows that characterization is one of the essential elements of a good story (the others being plot, setting or mood, and theme). Imagine what Star Wars would have been like without characters that seemed to leap off the screen, even when they were just standing still. Yeah, see what I mean? B-movie. Totally.

When I write, I usually have a good enough understanding of the characters that I can pretty much let them write themselves. I don't need to think too long about how a character would react to a certain situation -- in fact, if I do, re-reading tends to show me wooden characters with exaggerated or unbelievable responses, behaviours, and dialogue.

Conversely, when I find I'm stuck on what a character would do, it usually means I don't understand the character enough. In such a case, I'll step away from the story (or at least that part of it), and ruminate on the characterization for a while (sometimes months) in a background sort of way, thinking about it at odd moments in the course of otherwise unrelated mental activities. Later, I'll go back to where I left off, and the problem will have disappeared, seemingly of its own accord. In fact, what it really means is that I 'get' the character enough that I can write without overthinking.

I'm also seeing a parallel in real life: if I'm stuck on what to do in a particular situation, it usually means I don't know enough about it to make a decision with which I'll be comfortable. Just another example of life imitating art, perhaps.

Unlike our departed friend, Gary, for whom art imitated what he did with his life. I'm guessing he understood what he wanted to accomplish rather well, to have been so successful at it.

So, like so many others have blogged or will blog today, thanks, Gary. Happy gaming.

Hg

It's good for you. It builds characters.

2008-03-03T16:18:00.004-05:00

Blogging about Play-Doh the other day got me thinking about the kind of creating I like to do. I wrote about how I liked to make new creatures with the venerable modelling compound, and further reflection reminded me of other times in my youth when I mined similar veins.

Playing with Lego as a kid, I had a set of five spacemen -- each of which was a different colour or had a distinctive decal on the chest. I gave each one a name, and different abilities, and each had his own distinct tool/weapon. (Hmmmm, sounds a bit like the kids from Battle of the Planets, of which I admit I was a devoted watcher.) I had a leader, a driver, a scientist, a strong guy, and a weapons expert. Of course, I built all sorts of different vehicles and bases for them over the years, and countless foes and competitors, both robotic and alien -- but the team stayed constant, five distinct and distinctive individuals.

Back when I participated in role-playing games, character creation was one of my favourite parts. I'm quite certain that, over the years, I rolled up ten times as many characters as I played. Heck, I even took up GM-ing so I could have an excuse to create new bad guys and other NPCs. (For the non-geeks who might be reading this, a GM is a Game Master, the person who builds and runs the story in which the other players run their characters. An NPC is a non-player character, which means anyone/thing in the game story that isn't controlled by a character. And if you need more explanation than that, I suggest you try visiting a gaming or fantasy convention -- he says, cackling madly and rubbing his hands together.)

Of course, one of my favourite RPGs (that's Role-Playing Games, not Rocket-Propelled Grenades, for you non-gamers) was Marvel Super Heroes. Character creation was a snap, with all sorts of powers and combinations available. Heck, I could roll off a character in a couple of minutes, and then spend the next half hour blissfully immersed in creating backstory and identity: name, age, gender, origin of powers, visual manifestation of powers, life before powers, costume and logo, enemies, friends, allies, family. If I really liked the character, I would spend my spare time filling out the hero's identity, deciding what he or she was like, how they reacted to certain situations, how they would handle specific villains, even their favourite foods and what music they liked.

Now that I'm a writer (yeah, I know, it's kind of stretching things to identify myself as "a writer", but I do write stuff), character creation is still my favourite part. Characters come easily to me, and the slightest spark of an idea, spawned by a name, or a phrase, or some bit of visual, can set me off on a character-creation frenzy. (Well, it's a frenzy inside my head -- although, how that's different from any other time is really a question of kind, not intensity.) I imagine scenes with the character as I walk down the street, and cook up bits of dialogue while preparing dinner. I can't really say I obsess on the characters, since I rarely stick to one topic for long, but I definitely devote a significant portion of my spare braintime to thoughts about characters I've dreamed up.

You could say I've got a bit of a God complex, creating and defining other lives for fun. That could be, but the difference between God and myself, in this regard, is largely a matter of intensity, not kind.

I'm no god. I'm just a writer.

Well, a writer who needs to spend more braintime on plot. But at least I know where my strengths lie.

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Until the Fever Breaks (part 5 - the end)

2008-02-29T16:30:00.005-05:00

continued from part 4

Susie saw the man stumble, legs all wobbly and head hung low. Around him, the orange stuff was falling back in lumps, like it was being blown off his body by a strong wind. Soon, enough had dropped from his face that she could see the dark shine of his eyes. Deep in their depths, she found what she was looking for: hope.

Keeping her eyes on his, she climbed down from the bench, and walked slowly toward the man with the monster falling off him.

Rohit gazed into the brilliance. He felt he could drink it with his eyes, the most refreshing, rewarding, awakening drink he'd ever tasted. It slaked the thirst of his fever. It soothed the burning of his mind.

As he stared, the source of the light seemed to get closer. At the same time, he felt the burden lifting from his shoulders, his back, his heavy, heavy legs. He could feel the air on his hands and face, and he no longer smelled the smoke that once threatened to overcome him completely.

Within moments, the growing light resolved itself, into a distinctly human form. Rohit dropped to his knees, not trusting himself in his newfound lightness, and crawled. As he moved closer, he was sure he could make out the face of an angel in the middle of the brightness. With a sigh, he surrendered himself, giving up the last of his heat to her shining, cooling smile.

Susie's father nearly fell headlong as he raced down the escalator to the lowest floor. He'd finally made it past the rushing crowds, hearing the tremendous crash and shattering glass with his heart full in his mouth. Heedless of the moving stairway, he'd plunged forward, and only the strength born of desperation had held his frantic grip on the rubber handrail.

Now he raced down the main concourse, seeing nothing of the abandoned shops, the faux-wood benches and plastic trees. All he could see was the cloud of dust and destruction that he was sure hid his missing daughter.

Skidding to a halt in front of a massive central beam, he scanned frantically through the thinning haze for signs of Susie. Panic and frustration built up inside him, and he nearly sobbed from the pressure of it, before a movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. In a moment, his worries were gone, replaced with the kind of bewilderment that only comes from seeing the truly unexpected.

There, down the hall, stood Susie. She seemed unharmed, relaxed, even contented. Beside her, kneeling on the hard tile floor, was a man. He was panting slowly, one hand on his knee, the other splayed wide against the cold tiles, and his head hung low between his shoulders. Susie had one hand on the man's head, gently brushing orange dust from his glossy, black hair.

Susie looked up at her father, face as serene as a stained-glass cherub.

"Susie.. what-?" he blurted, lost for words.

Susie smiled. "It's okay, Dad. He's better now."

Hg

Homer Simpson's favourite toy?

2008-02-28T18:18:00.001-05:00

Y'know what's a lot of fun? Play-Doh!

Mold it, shape it, make monsters and space ships and silly faces with it -- you can spend hours and hours, and never make the same thing twice. Play-Doh is the thing that makes even the most untalented among us feel vaguely artistic (and in a good way). Heck, it's even fun just squishing it between your fingers, or pounding it flat on the table, or rolling it out into a long, thin piece (and calling it a snake, to appease the little artist inside you).

The colours are appealing, bright-enough and friendly-enough that you can't help but smile. And who can forget the smell? Wave a little Play-Doh under someone's nose, and they're immediately transported back to the most idyllic moments of their childhood. Heck, they even made a perfume that smelled like Play-Doh once.

(Oh, darling, you smell... you smell... you smell like Play-Doh? Let me squeeze you!)

Personally, when I played with Play-Doh as a kid, I wasn't all that fond of the machines you could get to work with it. I had the basic extruder, with the different shapes like stars and rectangles and such. I once made the American Flag that way, but otherwise, I was more fascinated with the extrusino process that what was eventually produced.

No, my favourite thing to make was monsters. How many limbs could a single creature support? What if it had a whole bunch of eyes? How many teeth can I fit in this mouth? Could I even make the thing stand up with legs that skinny? Yeah, that was me, playing god.

Gods and monsters? Sounds like a movie, doesn't it?

Hg

Uh-oh

2008-02-27T18:02:00.006-05:00

Why is it that words said in the heat of the moment are always the ones we don't want to say? How many times have you said something mean when you were angry, or candid when you were feeling close, and regretted it, if not instantly, then soon afterward? If you're like the rest of the humans on this planet, then it's likely far too often.

So what gives? What is it about our intense emotional states that overcome the reticence built into our normal behaviour patterns? What makes us blurt out the kinds of things that we normally reserve for our inner thoughts?

Is it some sort of survival instinct? Or is it just a non-lethal shortcoming of the layers of evolution that constantly war in our brains? Did the lizards from whom we inherited our hindbrain have no capability to filter which thoughts turned to action? (Well, according to Ryan North, probably.)

Regardless of the reason (and I suspect that the capacity for blurting things out when you're emotional has likely been the single greatest catalyst for change in the whole of human history), we're all stuck with the ability to say things we really wish we hadn't. And I'm not just talking about stupid things, like Colin Firth's recent gaffe. It's the "And your haircut makes you look retarded!" when you're angry, and the "I think your sister's pretty hot, too..." during post-coital bliss.

Of course, alcohol consumption can also produce similar results. We've all seen people embarrass themselves after a few too many. Perhaps alcohol creates a short-circuit between the different layers of the brain?

In any case, after the fact, after the words have leapt from your mouth and no amount of biting your lips between your teeth will bring them back, what's a person to do? How do you handle telling the senior who's tutoring you in math that you had a dream about him or her involving white picket fences and two-car garages? Where do you go after screaming at your kid that you can't stand the way they pronounce "thermometer"?

Well, if you're a decent human being, then what you do depends on the effect of what you said. For words spoken in anger, I would say an apology is in order, and if major damage is done, then you follow up with more trying-to-make-it-right. For previously unspoken words of love, you simply blush, and then follow up with whatever seems right based on the response: perhaps a kiss, or just a mumbled excuse and a trip to the lavatory.

And if you were drunk? Well, maybe some kind of lame joke involving lampshades is in order.

Hg

Schadenfreude TV

2008-02-26T16:47:00.006-05:00

So, I caught a few minutes of this "Moment of Truth" show the other night. It wasn't the first time, but like every time, I couldn't watch for very long. Have you seen it? Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, really.

Brutal. The word you're looking for is brutal.

People sacrifice their dignity (and I'm not talking just the "ooh, I got all mucky", or "ooh, I just ate a rat" stuff that Fear Factor required) on air, in front of millions of viewers -- plus a group of their loved ones -- just so they can make some money. The worst part, from what I saw, was that the money wasn't all that good: a paltry sum of $100k for answers that tore apart the marriage of the woman on the hot-seat. The only thing that redeemed the show was the seeming justice, the possibly divine karma that made her lose all the money when she couldn't be truthful, even to herself, about whether she was a "good person". (She said she was, the lie detector said otherwise.)

This is game show/reality TV at its lowest. In ways, it reminds me of "The Running Man", and other such SciFi concepts from the 80's and 90's.

I can't help but wonder, really, what could be worse television than "The Moment of Truth". What's next, "Celebrity Nun Whipping"?

I can see it now (unfortunately):

"Watch as D-list celebrities, most of whom you've never heard of, and don't recognize by their pictures, take the leather to the women of the cloth."

"Cringe in sympathy as the nuns grit their teeth and cry out to the Lord for strength, all in the name of their favourite charities, and to purify their souls."

"Call in, or vote online, for the best combination of celeb and Sister. Remember, your votes help decide who goes on to the next round, and who gets left behind in the Pit of Despair(tm)! Don't let your favourites down!"

"And don't forget to go online, at celebnunwhip.tv. Join the forum to discuss the merits of crotchety school-marm nuns versus pretty, young, singing nuns like the ones in the movies. Sign up for the newsletter, with behind-the-scenes photos and facts. And best of all... PLAY THE ONLINE GAME!!!"

You totally know this would be on FOX in an instant if they thought it would get eyeballs. These are the same folks that brought us "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire", after all.

Heck, Darva Conger could be one of the first-season contestants on CNW!

Hg

To hate, or not to hate...

2008-02-25T17:09:00.006-05:00

Y'know what I hate? NOTHING! That's right, nothing. There's nothing I hate.

No wait, that's not right. There's nothing I DON'T hate. That's better. Yeah, I hate everything.

Except, when you think about it, while the two statements, "I hate nothing" and "I hate everything", are semantically opposed, in functional terms they're pretty much the same thing. Since the level of affect is flatlined in both cases, there can be no contrast, and no way of providing determination between responses to various elements on the same line.

In other words, it doesn't matter which tone you choose, monotone is monotone. An all-black picture shows as much detail as an all-white one. If everything tasted like distilled water, it'd be the same as if everything tasted like Naga Jolokia peppers. (And, seriously, can you really say that one would be better than the other?)

So, hating everything and hating nothing are, from a emotional perspective, the same. Regardless of which statement is the truth, someone in either state would be unable to actually appreciate his or her emotions and responses, since that person would have nothing to which to compare. In fact, either such person would be considered a psychopath.

Really, I'd be better off deciding to hate only certain things. Even if I took only one thing (or group of things) off the list, I'd be infinitely further ahead. If I decided to not hate, for example, butterflies, then I'd have a reference point by which I could compare my other responses. I'd then be much better equipped to quantify, or least relate, how much I hate clouds, or ice cream sundaes, or politicians. (Oooh, and compared to butterflies, I really hate politicians!)

Note that not hating butterflies is not the same thing as loving them. The jury's still out on whether actually loving something provides a valid response point for comparison against hate levels.

Speaking of love, loving everything is equally as monotonous as hating it all. Again, loving everything sets up a situation whereby you have no method of determining what that love actually feels like. It's kind of like when you're immersed in water that is exactly the same temperature as your body, and when you close your eyes, you can't really tell if you have a body any more. (Kind of, only infinitely moreso.)

So just like it's important to not hate everything, and for same the reasons it's important to not hate nothing, it's also important to not love everything, and not love nothing. In other words, it's okay to love and hate, and not love and not hate, all at the same time.

Oh yeah, and you can tell me I'm full of crap on this whenever you want.

Except, I hate it when people tell me that.

Or do I? It's so hard to tell sometimes.

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Hopper's Choice

2008-02-22T17:46:00.020-05:00

"So, what you're telling me is that there's no way you're going out there?"

Hopper shifted on his stool. The question made him uncomfortable. MacDonnell was a crafty guy, as crafty as they came, and Hopper never trusted folk like that. Everything they said, every word that MacDonnell spun from his mouth was loaded with layers and meaning -- and every single sound was chosen for a reason. Hopper didn't like that, not one bit. He preferred folks who spoke straight.

"Ah've got mah orders, mister. Ain't no way I'm takin' mah aim off o' you."

To emphasize the point, Hopper raised his rifle a little higher on his shoulder, settling the butt comfortably and flexing this fingers on the stock. He rested his cheek gently against the comb, closing one eye and peering meaningfully at MacDonnell down the length of the barrel.

MacDonnell winked back at the one-eyed stare.

"I suppose that's true. But what if one of your team mates, your friends, gets in trouble. You see as well as me on the screen" -- MacDonnell gestured vaguely in the direction of the closed-circuit display on the wall -- "what's going on out there. Some of my guys are quite well equipped."

Hopper kept his eye locked on target for a few moments more, before glancing briefly at the action on the screen. He was just in time to see a bright streak of light cut through a cluster of MacDonnell's black-clad henchmen, sending them flying.

"Looks t'me like they don't need none o' mah help." Hopper chuckled. "Nope, Ah think Ah'll stay right here, thank ye kindly."

MacDonnell ignored his captor, pressing his lips together as he watched the action. His fingers strayed to the back of his neck, pulling absently at the dark hair that tickled his collar.

"It does look like your super-friends have the upper hand."

Hopper looked over again, encouraged by the villain's resigned tone. He was shocked to see Crusader overcome by a crowd of combatants, dog-piling on the hero to bring him down. In the background, he could see G-Man, normal-sized, slumped over a large crate.

"Ah-" Hopper stuttered, catching his tongue before he gave too much away. These crafty types, they're always looking for an angle, a hook into you, to try and grab you and pull you, gasping and helpless like a fish out of water. Hopper wasn't giving MacDonnell any hooks.

Then he saw Soulfire stumble, gagging and holding her throat, before she collapsed towards the camera, and fell out of view. The crimson sparkle in her eyes was gone, replaced with panic, and a frantic plea for help.

He gasped.

"M-maybe ah should go out and help them."

MacDonnell shook his head slowly.

"Do you think that's a good idea, Hopper? You're supposed to stay here with me."

"Ah... Ah don't know...."

MacDonnell stood up, the leather of his desk chair creaking gently from the release. He raised his hands, keeping them up around his shoulders where Hopper could see them.

"I don't know what you're going to do, Hopper. You could tie me up, but I'd be lying to you if I said that would hold me for long."

Hopper tracked the man carefully, keeping his weapon steady, as MacDonnell slowly walked toward the closed-circuit display.

"And we both know..." MacDonnell paused, sighing, at the sight of Gecko falling in a heap, red blood spreading across the green scales of his shoulder. "We both know your knockout darts are only going to slow me down. That would be enough if you were here to follow up, but you can't leave me on my own. Can you, Hopper?"

Hopper started as MacDonnell turned swiftly on a heel to face him.

"But you're a hero, aren't you, Hopper? You're not going to shoot me outright. It would have to be a killing shot -- a mere disablement won't keep me from making my getaway."

"But again, you are a hero. And heroes have to save people. Like your team mates."

Hopper cleared his throat, not trusting his voice.

"Am I right, Hopper?"

"Yeah, you're right," Hopper drawled, the slow movement of his head from side to side belying his words. "Ah- Ah should go help 'em."

"And leave me to escape? Is that a good idea?"

Hopper slipped off of his stool, rifle still trained on MacDonnell's chest, and walked slowly toward the heavy oak door.

"Ah reckon it is." The words came out slowly, heavy with doubt.

"But I'm an important man, Hopper. I'm a big-time criminal. Surely your friends' lives aren't as important as keeping me from doing any more harm."

MacDonnell gestured with his hands, as if weighing an object back and forth between them.

"Needs of the many, needs of the few. What do you think, Hopper?"

Hopper's shoulders slumped as he reached for the brass doorknob. The barrel of his rifle pointed at the floor.

"Ah think ah gotta go... gotta go help mah friends."

Hopper dragged the door open. MacDonnell smiled.

"You've made the right ch- uh!"

MacDonnell's smug remark was interrupted by the dart that zipped through the air into the side of his neck. The crime boss barely had time to react before Hopper was on him, crossing the dozen feet between them in a single leap. Eyes widened below dark bangs in the instant before the heavy walnut stock of the rifle crashed into the base of his skull.

MacDonnell collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Hopper reached with two fingers for the man's throat. Satisfied by the pulse he felt, he quickly removed MacDonnell's belt, hog-tying him with practiced ease.

"Ah reckon if Ah'm gonna let you git away, Ah might as well make it hard on ya," Hopper chuckled to himself.

With a single bound, he was out the door and halfway down the hall, headed for the thick of the action.

Hg

Om nom nom

2008-02-21T17:35:00.006-05:00

I was walking back to work from Subway the other day -- I'd bought a six-inch toasted Meatball sub with chipotle sauce and a bunch of veggies -- and was too hungry to wait until I got back to my desk. So, what did I do? I unwrapped the darn thing and ate it.

I really enjoy walking and eating. There is something very satisfying, very, I dunno, right about mastication and perambulation. Your legs are going, your jaw is going, you're taking in calories and burning them at the same time. It's just plain good -- that's why some of the most succesful companies in the history of the planet have a business model based on take-out you can eat with your hands.

Of course, there's also the whole thing about food and fresh air that enhances the experience. Everyone knows that eating outside is more enjoyable than eating inside. Why else would patios and picnic be so popular? It ain't 'cause o' the bees and the ants, that's for sure. The food just tastes better.

Really, though, I think there's more to it than the fluff I just tossed out. Bruce Chatwin (one of my favourite authors -- everyone should read his stuff) writes in his book, "The Songlines", about how humans were meant to eat on the move. Long before McDonald's, and long before fish and chips or meat on a stick, people were taking their food to go. Right back to the original nomads, wandering the African grasslands, we can trace the history of eating and walking. Certainly, there is an evolutionary advantage to not hanging around after you find some food: dead animals attract live animals, the kind with sharp, pointy teeth.

The nomadic lifestyle is by definition one of movement. All of our ancestors were nomads, before they settled down in, uh, well they don't call them "settlements" for nothing. Humans are built for walking. More specifically, unlike pretty much every other animal that's ever been, we're built for carrying and manipulating stuff while we walk. It's that whole bipedalism thing -- without it, there would have been no point in growing thumbs in opposition to the rest of our fingers.

So we walk. And we eat -- a significant part of human culture has to do with food. And if we can walk and eat, instead of sticking around for the competition to show up and try to take our food away from us, we're that much better off.

Walking and eating is primal, a survival feature that keeps us healthy and whole. We've developed physically in a way that facilitates just such a behaviour. We've developed culturally to make it easy to get the kind of food we can carry and enjoy. It's part of our evolution, both physical and sociological -- part of our nature.

No wonder it feels so good.

Hg

Poetry Is Dead

2008-02-20T17:24:00.007-05:00

That's right, like what it says in the title: poetry is dead. Poetry is a dead man's game, played successfully for last time when Victoria was still Queen.

In ages gone by, one could be famous as a poet -- even so much as to make a decent living off of it. Whitman, Byron, Wordsworth, Yeats, all them biggies, they all did it, and did it well, and did it decades ago. Centuries even, some of them. Even cummings, Frost and Auden have been dead more than forty years. They're all dead, and they took poetry with them.

Since then, the perversion of the poetic soul caused by 1960's coffee houses and psychedelic drugs has dimished the appreciation of poetry to the point where no one in their right mind (it was the drugs, remember -- oh, no, you wouldn't, would you?) even attempts to put in the energy and toil required to produce a work of poetic art. Poetry the way the person on the street thinks about it today is lower than karaoke, lower than fan fiction, lower even than the filthy, chewed-up-and-spit-out gum that sticks to the soles of their shoes. Poetry, these days, is nothing: misunderstood to the point of nonexistence.

Oh, sure, I can hear people shouting (and why are they shouting at their screens, anyway?), "No! Wait! I see poetry all the time! I hear it on the radio!"

Sorry, but that's not poetry. Those are just evil bits of fluff concocted by people who want to make cheap, easy money, and sold by Hallmark and their ilk. Or it's all about the commercial, marketing mavens masking a dearth of depth with moronic metre and idiotic rhyme.

And Maya Angelou? Don't get me started.

And yes, there are some great lyrics out there (but please, don't try to convince me any of it was written by 50 Cent -- it won't work, and you'll be wasting your breath and my brain), but lyrics really can't count as poetry. Find me a lyricist who consistently produces verses that can stand as true poetry on their own, without the props of melody and harmony, instruments and voice, and I'll... well, I won't do anything, 'cause it ain't gonna happen.

Don't get me wrong, great lyrics can turn a mediocre melody into a salve for the soul, but a catchy tune or a thumping beat can have the same effect on even the shakiest stanzas. Wooly Bully, anyone?

In fact, I think that, if poetry, in it's trampled-on, put-down, spit-stained senescence, is alive anywhere at all, it'll be, as Paul and Art sang, "written on the subway walls, and tenement halls."

And bathroom stalls.

Hg

Ah, life

2008-02-19T12:57:00.003-05:00

Dang that life! Always gettin' in the way, 'n such! What an annoyance!

Plus, it's terminal.

Hg

BTW - Does the title here make anyone else think of R.E.M.?

Fiction Fridays: Until the Fever Breaks (part 4)

2008-02-15T17:26:00.008-05:00

continued from part 3

Rohit, through the haze of his mind, caught a glimpse of pure, white light. He ran on, ignoring the distraction, determined to keep moving. A few more pounding steps, another roaring expulsion of searing air -- determined he may have been, but nothing seemed to keep him from focusing on that glimmering radiance.

He closed his eyes, fearing all the while that they might crust over forever, and turned his back to the light. He wanted to charge on, wanted to force his knees into the bend and snap of his haggard stride, but he could still see the light, focusing to a sharp brilliance, even through the back of his heavy skull.

With another searing roar, he shook his head, flakes ablating violently from his neck and jowels. He felt, more than heard, the pop and crackle as he forced his cumbrous eyelids open. The smoke appeared heavier than ever, but as he turned to look at the light behind him, the weight of the air seemed to lessen, as if shrinking back from the pure whiteness of the glimmering beams.

Susie saw the man -- she was sure it was a man now, and not just a man-shaped thing -- hesitate, as if he'd planned to do one thing, and then suddenly had another thought he couldn't ignore. She could almost feel his confusion, the muddle in his head like listening to the radio in a thunderstorm.

She wanted to help this man, who seemed so lost and helpless. She wished she could help him. She could feel the caring, feel it swelling in her heart, like the time she'd lost Blinda, her favourite stuffed animal. It was worry, and caring, and love, which grew and grew as she searched the house, until she found the sleek yellow otter, whiskered nose poking up at her from behind the laundry hamper. Only this time, she knew where the lost one stood: right in front of her.

Standing up on the bench, steadying herself on the garbage bin beside her, Susie reached out to the man. Not with her arms -- they were busy with the bin and her shirt -- instead, she reached out with the feelings building inside her. Her need to help this man, lost inside the orange lump, was almost physical. She was sure she could use it to make him un-lost.

As the light illuminated his surroundings, driving back the haze, Rohit arched his neck. He could feel a coolness, like the most refreshing spring rain, running down his spine, washing away the burning, crusted ash. He gasped, the contrast so intense, and so relieving, that he could barely control himself.

Breathing deeply, the whiteness of the light seemed to fill his lungs, cooling him from the inside. With two more rasping, panting breaths, the acrid tang in his throat had faded to the barest memory, like a fright or a pain long since overcome. The relief and release made him light-headed.

concluded in part 5

Hg

Love and broken windows

2008-02-14T17:13:00.012-05:00

Y'know, it's way easier to be nice to people you don't know than people you do. To be more specific, it's hardest to be nice to the people with whom you have the most contact: friends, family, lovers and loved ones.

Think about it. It's not too difficult to get a refreshing splash of "Hey, I'm a nice person" just by holding the door open for someone. If someone on the street drops a glove, the rush of "done good" is sweet and easy. Yet the people to whom you are closest, the ones with whom you share the greatest portions of your time, are frequently the same people for whom it requires a significant summoning of moral fiber in order to be as nice in such simple ways.

Granted, we tend to take those closest to us for granted, but there's more to it than that. Since our loved ones are, well, loved, we must be emotionally open to them. How could you possibly say you love someone if you're not open to that person, if your feelings aren't exposed and accessible to the person you consider special enough to love?

By opening our inner selves to those to whom we feel the closest, we make ourselves more receptive, and more accessible, to those people's emotions. This is a good thing, since it helps to reinforce the closeness through a positive feedback loop (assuming these people are as open to us).

This is also a bad thing. By opening up, we also expose ourselves to the everyday, casual acts of inconsideration, to the unconsidered emotional responses of our loved ones -- and on a continuing basis. Just like it's easier to be nice to people you don't know, it's also much, much harder to be hurt by them.

Of course, the more we know someone, the more open we are to them, and the more time we spend with them, the more these seemingly inconsequential trifles of misbehaviour add up. It's not even nickels and dimes -- more like pennies and ha'pennies, but they still can build into an overwhelming mountain of loose change. Or loose words and actions.

So, as some wise wag once spoke, "familiarity breeds contempt". Of course, it also begets a closeness, fondness, and interdependence that sometimes borders on the symbiotic. Yet that build up of tiny slights still weighs heavily on the camel's back, and the sheer, unwieldy mass of it can make the smaller kindnesses seem like too much work for the payoff. A low return on investment, or ROI, if you will.

So why do most people bother to try for the little things in their close relationships, when the payoff seems swallowed by the start-up costs? What makes people strive to overcome the inertia of their bulky bits of baggage, so that they might perform the small niceties for those they love?

It's a lot like the "broken window" theory espoused by those who strive to resist urban decay. Basically, the idea is that the rates of lesser crimes remain higher, and can even escalate, in areas where broken windows are not replaced in rarely occupied buildings (such as warehouses, vacant shops and empty homes). Studies have proven that, when the windows get repaired soon after they are broken (along with the other minor but obvious repairs like paint and trim), the crime rates drop -- rather significantly, in fact. To be succinct, fixing the small things has a direct impact on the goal of fixing the big problems.

Theorists suggest that a lot of this has to do with civic or neighbourly pride. When the area you live in looks nicer, you're less inclined to want to do bad things in it. Also, people are happier.

Bringing this back to small kindnesses, we can apply the same thinking to the question of why people in relationships try despite the weight on their shoulders. The answer is that if the niceties are not maintained, even strived for, then the relationship, like the neighbourhood, will decay. Also, people will be less happy.

Happy Valentines Day, everyone. Go hug somebody -- and maybe hold the door open for them, too.

Hg

Does this make you think of a U2 song?

2008-02-13T17:41:00.005-05:00

I like looking at the sun. I know, I know, you're not supposed to look at it -- it'll hurt your eyes, or something. (Who am I kidding? Of course I know it can hurt your eyes. In fact, I even have a basic understanding of exactly how it can hurt your eyes.) Regardless of what everyone's mother warns them, I do like looking at the sun. I can't help it. It's neat. It's cool. (Well, actually, it's the exact opposite of cool, but you know what I mean.) It's beautiful.

They Might Be Giants sing about how "The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas". Countless poets have come up with more, uh, poetic descriptions of the great glowing orb that lights our world and is the source of all life. Granted, it's not love, but I'd guess that the sun is up there in the top ten most poeticized things in the history of poetry. No matter how you look at it, the sun's a big deal.

Speaking of looking at it, like I said, that's what I like to do. I remember being a kid, on hot summer days, standing in a field or drifting in a canoe out on the lake. I can call to mind crisp winter days, where the air is so clear and the sky is so blue you feel you could evaporate happily into its emptiness, and it's so cold you can sniff your nostrils together and they'll stick. There are innumerable bright, sunny days in my memories of youth, and plenty of them centre on a view of the sun.

My head's tilted up, hands loose at my sides, and my eyes find their way to the spot in the sky so bright it pokes at my brain through the sockets. I have to widen my eyes, deliberately, to fight back the urge to squint. I know as I'm looking that I shouldn't be doing it, everyone has told me not to, but it's there, and it's amazing, and I know instinctively that it'll only really hurt me if I stare too long.

So after a brief period that seems to last for much, much longer, I look away, blinking to catch the phosphorescent after-image, and watch it flicker against the real world around me. Or sometimes, I'd just close my eyes, still facing the sky, and bathe in the warmth, feeling it flow over the skin of my cheeks and brow.

I knew, even back then, that there should be a chance of causing damage down the road, of weakening my eyesight in some way. Yet that knowledge was superseded by a surety, both instinctive and reasoned, that nothing bad would come of it, that, in fact, it might just make me stronger. So far, I haven't been disappointed. I've always had better than 20/20 vision, my tolerance for bright lights is stronger than most, and my capacity for low-light sight has amazed those around me.

Maybe I've been right all along, and looking at the sun was actually good for me. Or maybe I've just been lucky, and ate a lot of carrots.

Either way, I still like looking at the sun.

Hg

Thoughts on apology

2008-02-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Those readers who are even the tiniest bit observant likely noticed that there was no update on Friday. Personally, I'm of two minds in discussing this.

On one hand, it would be polite to apologize to my readers. I had a Grandmother who was a stickler for manners (as well as grammar and spelling), and she would likely have approved of an apology for the disappointment I may have caused. My own personal leanings are toward an explanation accompanying any such apology -- to me, if you apologize without explaining why, it seems hollow, like you don't really care enough to take the time to explain.

On the other hand, the blog-o-sphere is full of blog posts about how the blogger missed one or more posts, spending the whole post doing nothing but giving lip service (finger service?) to the apology. Presumably this is because they either A) feel guilty, or B) don't want to lose any more readers. (Or possibly C) that they don't have anything better to say.) In other words, the whole "I'm sorry I didn't post" thing seems overworn and, dare I say, trite.

So, is this kind of apology worth the reader's time? Do blog readers care if you apologize for missing a post or two? And I'm not just talking about the positive kind of caring -- the "oh, that's so nice" response -- but also the negative stance, as in, "Bla, bla, bla, don't waste my time!"

I suspect the threshold is quiet ephemeral. Depending on the type of reader the blog attracts, and the general tone of the posts, plus a myriad other factors, the correct decision could lie in either zone. In fact, "zone" is a good word to use here, since the possibilities for how the apology (or lack thereof) is addressed represent a continuum, not a binary proposition. The zones themselves also have blurry edges, where it's hard to discern the demarcation between the two camps. Kind of like Kitchener and Waterloo.

A political response to this issue would be to issue some sort of cleverly worded non-apology. A hedgy mollification that talks around the situation while still leaving every reader satisfied in a vague, flavoured water kind of way would certainly be one way to address this concern. I think that there's already too much political blogging going on right now, though, so this idea has little merit, at least on the originality scale.

It seems to me that the best thing to do is to simply acknowledge the interruption with as much brevity as I can muster (and I know, I'm brevitally-challenged, most days), while at the same time expressing some contrition, without comming off as either smarmy or smart-alecky. So here goes:

Hm. Missed the post on Friday. And on Monday.

Life just gets in the way, sometimes.

Hg

Competition and porn

2008-02-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

I caught a couple of people talking on the radio today about Roman gladiators, and American Gladiators. Specifically, the host asked some sort of "expert" to explain why people watch other people fight. I wasn't really listening anyway, and I was just about to get out of the car, so I turned the radio off and didn't hear the response.

This little bit of talk radio, however, was an audio aperitif for the hungry maw of my data-digesting brain, and it got me thinking. Why do people enjoy watching other people fight? What was it about the action on the blood-soaked sands of the Coloseum, and what is it about the much more sterile activities of the American Gladiators television show, that makes people want to watch?

It is easy to assume the cynical pose, and call upon that lovely, awkward German word, "schadenfreude" (literally, "damage joy"). The cynic says that people enjoy watching other's pain, that man's inhumanity to man is inherent in the human psyche. I think, though, that such a summation is highly oversimplified -- the philosophical equivalent of shrug and a "whatever..." before attention returns to the ongoing Halo 3 or NHL 2008 game.

For a deeper perspective, we'll have to broaden the scope of inquiry. It seems to me that, in many ways, the gladiatorial games (both ancient and modern) share much with other spectatorial diversions: namely, the competition. Be it American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, baseball, soccer, polo, chess, cheese throwing, 100m dash, bowling, or anything involving two or more people trying to pound the crap out of each other (which obviously includes hockey and football), all of these forms of popular entertainment have one thing in common: competition.

(Incidentally, did you know that the word "spectator" not only refers to "one who looks on or watches", but also to "a woman's pump usually having contrasting colors with a perforated design at the toe and sometimes heel"? Spectators are shoes? It boggles the mind.)

People like watching competition. Why else would anyone sit through three straight days of the same cricket game? Humans derive pleasure from the observation of competitive endeavours. It doesn't even have to be other humans competing: greyhound races, robot battles, cockfights, anything that pits something seemingly self-willed against something else will do. (In fact, some people even enjoy the kinds of competition that have nothing to do with self-willed actions, such as watching water droplets roll down a window pane. I remember, in my youth, many enjoyable hours spent watching two sticks tossed into a river or stream, as they raced from their splashdown to some arbitrary finish line.)

So, what gets people off about watching competition? Well, a lot of it seems to boil down to a form of projection, the ability of humans to imagine or project themselves into a situation in which they are not actually taking part. Daydreams are an obvious form of projection, putting oneself into a scenario cut from whole cloth. But people project all the time, into all sorts of situations, both desirable and un-.

Pornography is a perfect example. Clearly, viewing pornographic images has absolutely no reproductive value, in and of itself. So why do representations of reproductively-suggestive situations arouse people? It's that darn projection stuff -- viewing sex is just like thinking about sex, and both required projecting yourself into a situation in which you are not actually involved.

Projection itself is a function of the human brain's ability to plan for the future, to make predictions about what may or could happen and take appropriate actions to effect or avoid those predictions. This is a crucial survival skill, one that sets humans apart from just about every other animal, and one of the four primary adaptations that allowed humans to gain such a stupendous global dominance. (What are the other three? Language (and the generalization capabilities that our language capacity engenders), opposable thumbs, and walking on two legs.)

Needless to say, this makes projection a very powerful part of the human mind. No wonder, then, that this same ability gets linked into our pleasure centres (as well as our pain centres) in such an integral manner.

But wait, how does projection tie into the enjoyment one gets from viewing competions? Simple. By identifying with the competitors, we get to share in the thrill, the rush of adrenaline and endorphins, that the actual participants experience. Why do you supposed people get so excited when "their team" wins, and so bummed out when they back a loser. I mean, really, the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, the season finale of American Idol, none of them really matter, except to the winner(s). Yet I sure was disappointed when Clay Aiken and Bo Bice came in second, and I felt pretty awesome for having backed Fantasia Barrino and Taylor Hicks.

Who knew that such wholesome entertainment as Skating With The Stars had so much in common with smut?

Hg

All folked up

2008-02-06T15:39:00.000-05:00

Daniel C. Dennett, in his book, "Brainchildren", talks about a concept he calls "folk psychology". The idea behind folk psychology is simple. The "psychology" part of the phrase is generally comprehended -- just about everyone knows that psychology is the study of how and why people think. (Okay, it's likely that the majority won't really describe it that way, but however they put it, that's what they're actually trying to say.) To put the qualifier in perspective, Dennett first explains the "folk" part by explaining how the adjective is used in a more concrete frame of reference: "folk physics".

Folks physics, as Dennet describes it, is the kind of physics that the average person understands intrinsically: if you hold a stone in your hand, and then let go of it, it will fall to the ground, for instance. There are countless examples of physical laws that people understand perfectly well, with an intrinsic grasp of their workings based on their unconscious perceptions of how the world works.

There are, however, a great many examples of the laws of physics at work that seem to defy what people unconsciously expect to happen. And I'm not talking about far-out quantum level physics, or even electromagnetic effects. I'm talking about simple, Newtonian-type physics, used all the time, easily implemented -- the kind used by Roman engineers two and a half millenia ago. The classic example is syphoning.

Syphoning, when observed for the first time, always brings out the oohs and ahhs. It's cool enough that elementary-level science teachers feel a bit like magicians every time they demonstrate the effect. Why? Because, for all intents and purposes, syphoning looks like you're making water (or some other liquid) fall up instead of down. Think about it. If you put water in a tube, it falls out the lower end (assuming the lower end has any sort of hole in it). Furthermore, water in a bucket doesn't leave the bucket, because it falls to the bottom of the bucket, instead of up and over the sides. Yet all it takes is a properly primed hose, and you can get the water to flow up over the sides of the bucket, and down onto the floor (or another, lower-placed bucket, if you don't want a mess), without any kind of pump or other device. Seriously, it's kind of freaky.

Of course, anyone who understands the actual physical principles involved (pressure differentials, viscosity, the density of water, and the suction effect they produce when combined) understands how this can be possible, and the more jaded of scientists even fail to find it cool anymore. But syphoning is not something that people observe on a regular basis as they are growing up and learning about the world. It's not something that happens to them, personally (unlike gravity, inertia, heat, light, vibrations and other waves, or even leverage). So, syphoning goes against "folk" physics, the kind that everyone inherently understands.

Now that we understand what the "folk" modifier to physics represents, we can easily apply it to psychology. Thus, "folk psychology" is the intrinsic understanding people have about how and why other people (or they themselves) think. By using the adjective "folk" in regards to psychology, we automatically exclude those aspect of the science that run counter to our unconscious comprehension of the way people think.

So, what are some examples of folk psychology? Well, how about jealousy? Kids understand jealousy from an early age: brother or sister gets something that you don't get, so instead you get jealous. (And somewhere along the way, you "get" jealously.) It's straightforward cause and effect, based on the desire to get at least as much everyone else. (The root of this is, of course, a survival instinct -- jealousy drives you to obtain the same advantages as your societal competitors, so as to not be left behind. This survival analysis, however, doesn't count as part of the folk psychological understanding of jealousy. But then again, you don't have to understand how gravity works -- and no one really does -- to understand the effects of gravity in a folk physical sense.)

There are aspects of jealousy, though, that seem to run counter to our "intuitive" understanding of the emotion and the behaviours and responses it drives. For example, why do people get jealous for things they don't need, or already have? I've seen people display jealousy over punishments that other people receive. I've seen people be jealous of things that are way below their station: "I've got millions of dollars, but that poor person just got a second-hand pair of shoes, and that makes me jealous." To the folk psychologist (that's the everyday you and me), such exhibitions of jealousy seem petty and incomprehensible. In fact, it takes a deeper understanding of the workings of the mind, one that requires significant activity in either the studying or introspection departments, to understand that such behaviour is actually driven by a personal unhappiness, and what the person is really jealous of is, in the first case, the love that underlies the application of the punishment, and in the second case, the happiness evident on the poor person's face when they get something they really need.

In life, of course, you get much further when you strive to go beyond the folk-level understandings of the world around you. Be it physical or psychological, most of what we experience is far more complex than what can be understood via the framework we've built up from our subconciously absorbed observations.

And as an aside, consider what conclusion a combination of the physics and psychology described here begets:

Jealousy sucks.

Hg

Are there too many?

2008-02-05T17:57:00.001-05:00

I was going to write a blog post today about how "there are too many..." something-or-other. I liked the phrase, and thought it would make for a strong introduction to the piece. When I think about it, however, I find it hard to say there are too many of anything.

Sure, it would be easy to argue that there are too many wannabe's, poseurs who wrap their self-worth up in the blanket of some pop-culture icon or another. One could make a perfectly valid statement that there are too many smokers, polluting our personal spaces, littering the landscape with bite-sized tidbits of toxic filters (that don't degrade for thousands of years), and driving up health care costs (topical more to Canadians than Americans, although I'm sure the HMOs include smokers when deciding their overall rates, so maybe not). It certainly would be far from far-fetched to declare there are too many people killing each other in the world. I can't imagine anyone would really argue against that.

The thing is, though, is that, in some ways, none of these ideas are wholly valid. Wannabe's help drive the economy, and it's better to have someone with a sense of self-worth, however misdirected, than someone with no self-worth whatsoever. Smokers, too, help the economy (ask any of the struggling tobacco farmers in Southwestern Ontario, where farms that have been in the family for generations are now being forclosed, and no one wants to care, because it's tobacco), and plenty of research into treating the ailments of smokers has its use in other, more worthy fields. Even the whole people-killing-people thing must have some use, in the grand scheme of things -- it's how we evolved, right? I mean, how could ten thousand years of violent history be completely wrong?

Okay, so maybe I'm stretching things a little on that last point -- but you have to admit that the threat of violence, a concern for one's well-being in the face of reaction to one's behaviour, definitely has a moderating effect on society. And if it didn't actually happen once in a while, then the whole homeostatic system would fall apart, a victim of boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, from a logical perspective, it's impossible to make sweeping, generalized statements either for or against anything that cleaves to the realm of humanity. Every story has more sides than even the wackiest coin.

Also, I really like diversity, and if we did away completely with any one thing, the world would be that much less diverse.

And butterflies. I like butterflies too.

Hg

20... er... 17 questions with Hydrargentium

2008-02-04T17:14:00.001-05:00

Well, we have a very special opportunity here at Hydrargentium's Weblog today: an interview with Hydrargentium! Hydrargentium has graciously granted us an opportunity to play twenty questions, and what follows is a transcript of the excitement!

Q: So, let's start with something frivolous. Favourite Julia Roberts movie?

A: Hmh. Notting Hill.

Q: Really! That's surprising. Why's that?

A: Well, not because Julia Roberts is in it, that's for sure. It's got a great ensemble cast, and plenty of laughably funny bits -- like the part where the Japanese businessman leans over the counter to kiss the clerk at the Ritz on the cheek before asking if there are any messages, based on his observations of the two other characters' reaction to the clerk's generosity of information. Lots of funny bits. The writing's pretty smart, and most of the dialogue isn't all that trite. Hugh Grant is quite believable in his role (even if the role itself is unbelievable) -- he does a good job. Of course, it's not my favourite Hugh Grant movie, but that's another story. Julia, however, is quite wooden throughout the film, and I could easily ignore her in most of the movie, except for her great scene at the dinner party when she tries to convince the others she's had the hardest life and therefore deserves the last piece of cake.

Q: Ah, I see. You've clearly given it some thought.

A: Just now, yeah.

Q: Uh, right. So, on to question number two-

A: Three.

Q: Pardon?

A: Question number three. You've already asked me two questions.

Q: No I haven't. Just the one about the Julia Roberts movie. Granted, you were quite verbose in your response, but still-

A: No. I answered two questions. My first answer was short and to the point: Notting Hill. Then you asked me why I chose that movie. That's where the long answer kicked in. In response to your second question, "Why".

Q: But-

A: You think I'm kidding? Play back the tape. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Q: No, no, that's okay.

A: Honest, I don't mind.

Q: No matter. Let's just forge ahead with question number tw-... uh, three.

A: Forge on.

Q: Right. So, uh, movies behind us. Tell me, what makes you blog?

A: I'm pretty sure I've answered that question already-

Q: Oh no you don't. You did not. There's only been two questions, remember? Two. We counted.

A: Ahem. As I was about to say, I've already answered that question in a previous blog post.

Q: Oh, ah, aheh, right.

A: Yep. Check out "Meta-blog: motivation" for the full answer to that question.

Q: Um, okay.

A: ...

Q: So, where do you get your ideas? The ideas for your blog?

A: Been there, done that one too.

Q: Oh.

A: Just the other day, actually. It's titled "Into the grinding waters" -- lovely title, isn't it?

Q: Hey, I'm the one asking the questions here!

A: That you are. Ask away.

Q: Right. Ahem. What's in your music player, right now?

A: Buck 65. He's awesome. There are two tracks showing in WinAmp right now, Side 1 and Side 2, from something called "Strong Arm - Mix Tape". Each track is over fifteen minutes long. I think I downloaded it off his website a while ago. Didn't get a chance to get into it when I first got it, but now I've been playing nothing but for the past couple of months. I could listen to Buck 65 for hours. Ever since he won that East Coast Music Award for Best Newcomer, or something like that. He beat out Joel Plaskett, so I checked him out. Downloaded a song called "Wicked and Weird", and never looked back. Awesome, awesome tune. One of my all-time favourites.

Q: What did you eat for dinner last night?

A: Steak. Salad. I made Tomato Basil soup, but it's not quite right. I'm gonna try to adjust it, perk it up a little. It's good, but not great.

Q: And how do you like your steak?

A: Medium rare. Last night I put it under the broiler with a sprinkling of Montreal Steak Spice. Great to have in the cupboard when you don't have time to do anything else. Better, though, is to mix up a bit of olive oil with some crushed garlic, maybe a bit of rosemary, plus salt and pepper, and smear it all over each side. Yummy yummy!

Q: Ah, yes, you can, uh, stop drooling now.

A: Oops, sorry.

Q: No matter. Like most of your readers, I'm curious to know if you'll get to the ending of "Until the Fever Breaks". Is an ending in the cards?

A: Oh yes, definitely. I can feel it coming (in the air tonight -- great song), and I know how the thing's supposed to end, so it's just a matter of time, really. One, two, maybe three more posts. Depends on how productive I end up in any one sitting.

Q: Good to know. So, what do you do to relax?

A: Mmmm, nothing special, really. Read, watch some TV, listen to music.

Q: Read any good books lately?

A: Oh yeah. Just finished one by Gregory Benford, called "Tides of Light". Really well written, very engaging. He manages to get you, among other things, inside an alien mind, and caring about its (her) motivations. It's a sequel to a book called "Great Sky River", which I haven't read, but stands well on its own anyway. The way it ends, I suspect there's a third book, but at the time of printing for my copy -- I bought it second-hand -- there's no third book listed in the "Also by this author" section at the front. I've just started into a collection of Robert Silverberg short stories (well, long stories, really, since they average about 40 pages each) called "The Feast of St. Dionysus". I love Silverberg -- he wrote one of my all-time favourite Science Fiction stories, "Dying Inside".

Q: Interesting. So, let's just cut to the chase. Who the hell are you, anyway?

A: Excuse me?

Q: "Hydrargentium". It's just a name, a pseudonym. Not a pen-name, call it a key-name. But who are you really?

A: ...

Q: No answer?

A: Here's your answer: I think we're done here. In fact, I know were done here.

Q: What?! But I've haven't asked you twenty questions yet! It's only been, like, half that.

A: Eleven, to be exact.

Q: Right! But I thought we had a deal. Didn't we have a deal?

A: That's twelve. Now leave.

Q: What? Are you kidding me?

A: That's two more. Out.

Q: But-

A: Out. Move it.

Q: ...

A: Go. Now!

Q: Have I touched a nerve?

A: Git! Scram, before I toss ya!

Q: You wouldn't... would you?

A: ...

Q: Okay. Okay! I'm leaving. Look, don't touch me. Here I am, picking up my stuff, going out the door.

A: ...

Q: Are you sure you don't...? Uh, nevermind.

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Once Again

2008-02-01T16:09:00.001-05:00

Something a little different for Fiction Friday today. I was struck yesterday, unbidden, by a tiny bit of song. Now, I've told people I write songs and poetry, as well as stories and programs, but I've yet to really prove it online. So here's the proof.

What happened, though, is that I somehow found this half-formed phrase in my head last night:

Sandwiched in the hmm hmm between hmm hmm hmm hmm hmmmm...

Far from complete, by any stretch of the imagination, but it came with a melody (also out of nowhere, although I suspect it had something to do with hearing Counting Crows' A Long December on the radio a few days ago -- a song that I've always liked, but haven't heard in years). I have a hard time ignoring song ideas that inject themselves into my frontal lobes, so I started playing with it over the course of the evening's duties.

What I came up with, I really like. So far, there are two stanzas, along with the beginning of the chorus. I hope you like it. I also hope too much is not lost with the melodic limitations of a textual blog posting.

Sandwiched in the waiting room between Nervous Dave and John the Meltdown,
I can't keep my eyes off of the writing on the wall.
Imitative sagacity, derivative philosophy,
Plus some light graffiti: "It's the Nuts'll save us all."

We all know a little bit of everbody's story here.
Told to Group the incidents that made us who we are.
Not about the origins that raised up above our kin,
Shared instead the tragedies that brought us down so far.

Once again, I am talking to the doctor.
Once again, he is writing down my dreams.

I'm also toying with changing "writing down my dreams" to "jotting to my dreams", partly because it's alliterative (at least, it is when spoken), and partly because it seems to denote a lesser sense of caring on the part of the doctor.

Also, since this song tells a story, some of the words of the chorus will change as the song moves along. I've pretty much decided that the second chorus will be:

Once again, I am lying in the blast field / Once again, I am listening to the screams

Like I said, there's definitely a story in here.

Hg

Blogging like a weed

2008-01-31T18:18:00.001-05:00

My mother remarked once, when I was but a scrawny teenager, that I "grew like a weed." This isn't a clever turn of phrase on my mother's part, of course. In fact, it's nearly a cliche. Definitely not on par with "tip of the iceberg", or "needle in a haystack", but getting up there.

As uses of near-cliches go, though, she was correct in her statement. I did grow quite quickly in my teen-aged years. Personally, I attribute this to my voluminous consumption of milk, as well as just about any other food I could get my hands on, and my mouth around. I'm sure, at my peak dairy-drinking phase, I was going through nearly two litres a day. (For you imperial-based philistines in the U.S. of A., that's a few ounces more than two quarts.)

I'm also sure that my rapid increase in height had nothing to do with anything even remotely resembling a plant-based physiology. While I grew at a rate reminiscent of those fast-growing undesirables, those ravenous, gluttonous scourges of lawns and gardens everywhere, I certainly did not grow via any method that could be attributed to vegetative components in my genetic makeup.

However, I got to thinking about how cool it would be if you could, literally, grow like a weed. Indeed, that would be some special kind of cool.

Limb removed? Head chopped off? Grow a new one.

Hungry? Spread your leaves and feed off the sun.

Thirsty? Push your roots into the ground, and slurp away.

Need to be taller? Heck, it only takes a day to double your height.

Lonely? Lop off a lobe of root, stick it in the ground, wait a week, and voila! Near-instant clone.

The possibilities are myriad. You'd be resistant to infectious diseases like influenza, the common cold, and any colour of plague. Bind yourself to your clone for a few days, and you'd get to find out what it's like to be a conjoined twin. (Uh, that's Siamese for those of you who haven't brought your vocabulary into the 21st century yet. Heck, I bet people like that still call them "steam shovels". Although, I can't really blame them, because "steam shovel" is such an evocative phrase.)

I could go on, but I won't. I'm not really a weed. Not even a blog-weed. Give me an inch, and I won't take a yard.

Although, I might play in it for a while, especially if you've got a sprinkler.

Hg

Into the grinding waters

2008-01-30T17:42:00.000-05:00

I imagine there has to be at least one reader out there who wonders where I get my ideas about which I blog. (Yes, I really do imagine it, regardless of whether it has any possibility of being true. I imagine having superpowers all the time, too.) "Where does Hydrargentium get blog ideas?" -- I can see it in a thought bubble over the person's head.

The answer, of course, is, "I dunno."

There's no one place I get my ideas. I don't use any fancy brainstorming techniques to stir up a good blog posting. There are no mind webs, no word games, nothing of the sort being applied, or even considered. Seriously, my brain is enough of a storm as it is without adding to the maelstrom.

(Man, I love that word, "maelstrom". I'm not even using it quite right here, since, technically, it refers to water -- from the Dutch "malen" and "strom", meaing grinding stream. But it's an awesome word, evocative in and of itself, and it looks pretty cool written down.)

Sometimes, I will be thinking about things -- any things, doesn't really matter -- during the day, and take inspiration from those thoughts. Often, this will be during what would otherwise be mental "down time", where I don't have anything specific to think about, nothing to which I should be applying my significant mental capacities. Not unfrequently, though, these extraneous ponderances come unbidden when my mind should be otherwise engaged, like in meetings, or when I'm supposed to be solving a problem, or even when I'm in the middle of a one-to-one conversation with someone about something in which I'm really interested. (Needless to say, I've gotten pretty good at covering for my lapses in attention over the years.) Regardless of the timing of these thoughts, they provide a large measure of the fodder used to feed the blog.

Other times, though, I'll look at the clock, think, "Uh-oh, I'm running out of time. I better start my blog post," and then open up Notepad, with nothing specific in mind about which I could possibly blog. You'd think that having the glaring expanse of white screen would be daunting, without any ideas as to what might fill it, and a deadline looming. Heck, I'd think so, too, normally.

Fortunately for me, I'm a pretty fast thinker. I catch on to what other people are trying to explain rather quickly, often before that person would expect it possible to do. Not only that, I'm the kind of thinker who absorbs information and immediately starts applying it and cross-matching it and interweaving it with all the other stuff under my skull. Hence, the storm inside my head.

All this simply means that, in the time between when I go to open Notepad, and the time where I set my fingers to the keyboard to type the first word, my brain will go into hyperdrive and pop out an idea. Call it the "best" of a thousand. (I put "best" in quotes here because the analysis is necessarily brief. It may not actually be "the best", but it'll be good enough for blogging.)

Still within the same timespan, that idea will generate a sentence. Usually, it's the opening one, a good line that will work to get the readers reading. Sometimes, it's not the kind of sentence with which you (or at least I) would start a blog post. Again, the hyperdrive comes through, and the first sentence will combine with the impetus to blog, and an opening sentence is begat.

After that, I just start writing, part of my brain ranging ahead to pull out the ramifications and arguments for the post's content, and another part pulling the concepts into words and phrases, and organizing those into sentences and paragraphs. (Interestingly, I rarely go back and make changes once I've left a paragraph.)

But wait, the above paragraph implies the potential for other parts of my brain to be doing other things as well. The implication is deliberate, and the potential is actual. Even while I'm racing headlong through the creation of a blog posting, there are other parts of my brain doing all sorts of other things.

Like noticing the blinking advertisement in the web page behind the Notepad window. Or pulling in snippets of half-heard conversation coming from those around me. Or tapping my foot to the Muzak coming from the speaker in the ceiling. Or stopping my foot from tapping, since it's Muzak, and really, that's just pathetic if you have to tap your foot to that.

Or figuring out where to stop the blog.

Hg

Growing, growing, gone

2008-01-29T17:50:00.000-05:00

I read this article about how Canadians aren't having as many kids as they used to. The article attributes this to the fact that it's more expensive to have kids now than it used to be thirty years ago:

"You can't blame young couples for their decision to have fewer children than their own parents. Over the past three decades, total family incomes in real terms -- that is, adjusted for inflation -- have actually gone down. Statistics Canada says the median family income in 1980 was $58,000. Twenty-seven years later, it's $57,700. (Both figures are expressed in 2005 dollars to remove the effects of inflation.) But stagnant incomes are not the worst problem. A generation ago, it took just one working parent to generate that median household income. These days it takes two."

I've had conversations with coworkers about the super-issue here, the near-extinction of the stay-at-home parent. (Notice I said 'parent' here and not 'mom'. As far as I'm concerned, aside from the requirements for breastfeeding, it doesn't matter which parent stays home with the kids -- so long as someone's there until all the kids have made it past grade nine.) Nearly all agree that it makes sense that having a parent stay home to raise the kids is the best thing for the kids. This is in spite of that fact that every single one of them could cite examples of kids that turned out great despite being in daycare from the age of one, or being latch-keys starting in grade five. I think it's generally accepted wisdom, these days, that a stay-at-home parent is good for the kids. Yet it's also accepted that, these days, that it's very difficult to have half of the money-earners in the family be out of the workforce for so long -- not to mention the sacrifice that the homemaker makes in terms of his or her career progress.

The article, while informative in this regard, also raises what the author feels is another important point: the coming cash crunch of the social programs for seniors, such as Old Age Security and Medicare. Specifically, the opinion is given that "to get all of those nice government payouts... you better hope that people have lots of kids."

This idea concerns me greatly. To think seriously about encouraging population growth (where the average number of children in a typical family is greater than 2, compared to the current Canadian rate of 1.5 kids per family) seems to me to be a recipe for long-term disaster.

Since people are living longer in Canada, an increase in the procreation rate will have a far greater effect than has been historically observed. In the past, the overall population growth rate was slowed by the death rate, especially as modified by the average life span. Nowadays, with people living longer, we'll have more kids and more adults. Project this over even a single generation, and we'll see a bigger impact than even the Baby Boom produced.

My concern, of course, is the so-called "carrying capacity" of the planet. Surely and not-so-slowly, we (humans as a species) are using up the resources of the Earth at faster and faster rates. If this trend continues, we are guaranteed to overtake the Earth's capacity for replenishing those resources (and I'm not talking about non-renewables like oil and gas, but the basic stuff like food).

So, as a thinking, responsible and empathetic human who is concerned about the looming crisis, I see this desire to support our elderly simply by having more kids as being a perfect example of what my elders would have called "sheer stupidity". How could this possibly be considered a solution? Isn't it really just robbing Peter to pay Paul? (Or, really, robbing Peter, Mary, and the rest of their family?)

Anyway, I have no problems with trying to maintain a balance. If we, as a prominent country in the world, provide an example of moderation by keeping our growth rate level, wouldn't that be a good thing to do?

Maybe none of the other countries would follow our example. Maybe the rest of the governments on this planet would remain with their heads in the sand, thinking that the trickles of grains past their eardrums were whispers of success.

Still, shouldn't we at least try?

Hg

I'm in.

2008-01-28T17:44:00.001-05:00

Well, I did it. I submitted my four story ideas to Image Comics' "Who Wants To Create A Super-Heroine?" contest. I must admit, I'm a little stoked, a little jazzed, a little, how do you say? Ah yes, "edgy about the spine."

I can't seriously believe that I'll even make it into the top ten with any of my ideas. Let alone making the cut to top five (which is also gonna require a boatload more work). And there's almost no way I will be THE ONE. (And, OMG! Three issue?!?!?! I have to write THREE ISSUES!!!!)

Still, it's fun to imagine. Just like good old Carl Schmidt, I can entertain myself on my walks from somewhere to some-other-where, picturing my life after I win (OMG! I have to write THREE ISSUES?!?!?!?), basking in the glory of success over seemingly impossible odds -- and all based on the merit of my own creative capabilities. The very act of making the first step entitles me to an enrichment of my fantasy life that could not ring with the same potential of veracity without such a pedestrian impetus.

It really makes one think about the whole "making you own luck" idea, whereby adherents believe there is no such thing as luck, only hard work, the willingness to take risks, and the ability jump through the windows of opportunity in the brief moments during which they are open. I'm personally feeling happier and more successful (and really, everyone strives for success only to make themselves happier) for having tried, and I know I will continue to be proud of myself just for having entered. It's much easier, after all, to avoid the sting of rejection by not even trying.

But then my walks would be a lot less interesting.

Hg

BTW - Thanks to Frank, T.Mike, Brett and RaZ for their feedback on the ideas. I appreciate every single keystroke -- even the Shift keys!

Fiction Fridays: Until the Fever Breaks (part 3)

2008-01-25T17:11:00.002-05:00

continued from part 2

A loud crash echoed through the mall as Susie followed her father across an open concourse. A few shoppers near her shrieked in response, and she heard other shrieks from further away, muffled by the building's clever acoustics. Her father looked around, and then reached behind him to grab his young daughter's hand -- only it wasn't there.

Almost before the crash was heard, Susie had rushed over to the nearest railing. Looking down on the lower levels, her button nose squashed against the glass guardwall as she searched eagerly for the source of the excitement. By the time her father felt the first twinges of panic, realizing she was not where he expected her to be, Susie was already running down the escalator, her tiny voice piping up with "Excuse me! Excuse me!" as she pushed past the other riders.

As he moved, the heat returned. Each pounding step stoked the furnace under his skin. With no way for it to escape past the layer that encrusted him, it continued to build. Rohit wasn't sure how much more of the stifling heat he could stand, but a deeper fear told him not to stop moving. Better to burn up, consumed from within, than to be bound forever, aware but unmoving. He opened his mouth, feeling the crust crumble at the edges, and gulped at cooler air. It made little difference, with the heat inside him overwhelming the relief before the breath ever reached the depths of his lungs.

Frustrated, he roared, a wild and unfocused sound that he barely heard over the pounding of his feet and his heart. With the release of air, though, came a release of the smothering heat. Astonished, he slowed almost to a stop. A bigger breath, whistling through his nostrils, filled him up. Then he pushed, driving the searing air from his chest, past his quivering vocal chords, and out to the world. The focused yell tore away some of the burning inside him, keeping his internal conflagration from blazing out of control.

Susie heard the second yell as she stumbled to a halt at the bottom of her third escalator. While others on the floor were running, screaming, panicking in the face of that massive noise, to Susie it sounded like a cry for help. It reminded her of the lion in that story from the Bible, the one with the thorn in its paw.

She'd made it down to the right level, but the mall was a long range from end to end. She was already winded from her rush down three flights, pushing and squeezing her way past a forest of legs and bums. Now she could see that she'd be going the wrong way from everyone else, as the frightened mob raced to escape the source of the craziness.

A momentary break in the flow got her to a bench in the middle of the concourse. Climbing up, she saw that the row of benches went all the way along. At the end, she saw a quick flash of rusty orange over the heads of the crowd. She'd got her breath back, and now she knew where she was going. With the kind of stubborness that made her mother smile and frown at the same time, she pushed ahead, holding onto the benches and garbage bins for support and protection.

Once his head cleared a little, Rohit's fear of seizing up forever pushed to the fore, and he picked up his pace. A moment later, he was stopped in his tracks, driving head-first into the most solid thing he'd ever encountered. Around him, he heard a faint rumbling, but the fog of his vision made out only a towering darkness. He turned, fearing that this stop might be forever, and kicked hard at the ground beneath him. For a moment he was airborne, then he landed, leaden feet stumbling beneath him as he fought to forge ahead. He heard the scream of shattering glass, sharp and biting in his ears, but felt nothing of the shards that surely must have pelted his skin.

Susie made it to the last bench. Panting, she climbed up onto the seat, and stared. At a distance no bigger than her front yard, a huge lump of crusty, dried out plasticine, orange and red and brown all squished together, slammed into a giant steel beam. Black, glossy paint nearly hid the rivets in the angular pole that rose four stories up to the roof of the mall, far above. She felt the whole building shake, and chunks of concrete fell from the ceiling, smashing into the space in front of her.

Beside the beam, the orange lump, which she realized now was shaped a lot like a person, had stopped. She watched it curiously, squinting against the rising dust. It seemed to look around, and then up at the dark pole, and then down at its feet. Then it jumped, away from what had stopped it, crashing through a glass store front as it landed. Susie turned, following the lump's progress, pulling absently at the front of her shirt.

continued in part 4

Hg

Geek lesson: refactoring

2008-01-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

And now, just to prove that I really do know something about computers, here's a little lesson on refactoring.

First, some background. Programming a computer is nothing more than providing a set of instructions for the computer to perform. Granted, the instructions are, in almost all cases, extremely detailed -- to the point that a large majority of people don't have the patience and/or critical and logical thinking skills to do it successfully. Don't get me wrong, though. I know plenty of very intelligent people that could never program computers for a living, and I've known a number of professional programmers who I do not consider especially intelligent. It's not just smarts that make a programmer, it's a particular kind of smarts.

Now, when programmers build up sets of instructions, which taken altogether is called a program, they frequently (for various reasons, including simple organization) group chunks of related instructions into separate units, or pieces of a program. Programmers have various names for these pieces: procedures, functions, subroutines, methods, macros. For the purpose of this lesson, we'll call them functions.

So, imagine you've got a function, a set of related instructions, that finds all of the information (name, address, etc.) for a single, specific person. Programmers like to name functions, usually with more than one word in the name to describe what the instructions do. If the specific person's name was Brenda, then the name of the function that finds Brenda's information might be called "findBrenda". Also, in many programming languages, function names are denoted with a pair of parentheses after the words, like this: findBrenda(). I'm used to that myself, so I'll continue to use this notation for all of the functions I name here.

Later on, as a programmer, you may find you need a set of instructions that finds information for David. To make life easy, instead of recreating all of the instructions included in findBrenda(), you would simply copy those instructions, and then alter the copy slightly so that it looks for David's information instead of Brenda's. This modified copy of the findBrenda() instructions would be put into a new function, called findDavid().

As your program gets more complicated, you find you have to make more of these finder functions. So, you copy and modify the instructions again and again, making findAndrew(), and findStacey(), and findPierre(). No worries, you think, since it only takes a few minutes to do the copy and change.

Then, things change in the overall program, so that the information for the various people has to be found in a different way. This means that you have to modify findBrenda(), so that it looks for the information using the new method. A quick review of the program, though, shows that you're also going to have to make the same changes to all the other finder functions. Still, that's not too bad, since you can just copy the findBrenda() instructions again, and make the small changes needed to find David instead. And then you have to do the same thing for Andrew, Stacey and Pierre.

Man, this is beginning to seem like a lot of work -- especially when your boss tells you to add finder functions for another ten people. And then you overhear a conversation in the elevator about how the way information for people is found is going to change again next month. All of a sudden, you'll be like, "OMG! This is craziness, all this copying and recopying. There must be a better way!"

Well, it turns out there is: refactoring. In computer terms, refactoring is the process by which common sets of instructions are "factored out" into more generic functions. In other words, we can take the instructions that we copied from findBrenda(), and put them in a less specific function, modifying them so that they will work with whatever name they are given.

So, for our example, we would take out the information-finding instructions, and put them in a new function, called findPerson(). This new function is a little more special, since it doesn't do much on its own. In fact, it can't really do anything until it knows exactly which person for whom its supposed to find information.

But what do we do with this special function? Well, we can now change the other functions (findBrenda(), et al) so that, instead of performing their own set of instructions for finding information, they invoke the instructions contained in findPerson(). Part of this invocation requires providing the findPerson() instructions with the name of the person to find. Thus, findBrenda() would invoke findPerson(), and give it the name "Brenda". Similarly, findDavid() would use findPerson(), specifying "David", and the other finder methods would all be changed to rely on findPerson() as well, each providng their own specific name.

How, you might ask, does this save us any work? We still need to change each of the specific finder functions to invoke the findPerson() instructions. In fact, to save time, we likely did it for findBrenda(), and then copied the solution to the other functions, changing the name of the person specified for each copy. That's essentially the same as what we were doing before we refactored, right?

That's a completely true assessment. While we will potentially save a tiny bit of time, since the single instruction to invoke findPerson() is smaller than the full set of finding instructions, which will mean fewer keystrokes to select the instructions being copied (or less mouse movement), the difference is negligible -- even if we end up doing fifty more finder functions for fifty other people. However, we know that a change in the finder instructions is coming. In fact, this will be the second time they've changed, and you know it's likely that they will have to change again in the future. Every time the instructions need to change, you will have saved the time it takes to copy and modify the new set of instructions for each finder function.

Why is this? Remember how you changed all the finder function to simply invoke findPerson()? Well, from now on, whenever you have to change the instructions for finding a person's information, you will only ever have to change findPerson(). The other, more specific finder functions won't need to be changed, because they don't use those instructions directly. Instead, they simply call on findPerson() to do those instructions for them.

Can you see it now? The old way, every change to the way information is found required changes to every finder function. Thus, if you had one hundred finder functions, you would change the first one, and then copy and modify the instructions to use for every other function. That's one change of instructions, and ninety-nine copy-and-modify steps.

Once you've refactored, every change to the way information is found requires a change only to the findPerson() function. That's it. Thus, if you had one hundred specific finder functions, you would change findPerson(), and then not be required to make changes to any of the other functions! That's one change of instructions, and nothing else.

And that's it. That's refactoring, in as simple terms as I can put it. (Well, not really. I could have gone down a much more concrete route, describing stereo components, or assembly lines, or even bakeries. But I don't think you, my clever readers, needed the elementary school edition.)

Incidentally, the XP folks I mentioned two posts ago have a mantra they follow religiously. (Pardon the redundant phrasing.)

"Refactor, refactor, refactor."

Ommmmmmmmmmm.......

Hg

A passing thought

2008-01-23T17:01:00.001-05:00

I passed a woman in the hall today, a coworker with whom I've had a small amount of work-related interaction. She had on a tired, pensive, internal face as she stood waiting for the elevator. When she looked up and saw me approaching, she changed, her smile opening in my direction, light coming into her eyes; her skin seemed like it had started to glow, illuminated from within.

I smiled back, as I usually do (I usually smile to everyone I pass -- and I wonder now if it seems forced or phony), and we exchanged pleasantries as I walked past. I even conjured up some small witticism (admittedly not all that witty, but there are points for trying) as I disappeared around the corner, and she stepped onto the elevator.

The images, though, of her face before and after she recognized my presence, stayed with me as I continued on my way. (Where was I going? Lunch. I ended up getting a slice of pizza at a local joint -- not a franchise like Pizza Pizza.) What was she going through, in her private emotional world, before I intruded, and why did she she put on such a broadly public face for me?

Other times when I've passed this woman, each of us on our way to somewhere completely unassociated with the other person, she's given me a far more neutral facade, a weak, non-committal smile, in response to my usual (and probably somewhat goofy) grin. She frequently seems like a tired person -- certainly her sleeping patterns are written in dark underlines beneath her eyes -- but she's far from lethargic, just not bouncy. And I've certainly never seen her radiate before.

But there she was, stuck in the elevator's holding pattern -- Douglas Adams certainly had it right with his precognitive, self-motivated elevation devices, even if they were a bit too cheery for Ford's tastes -- and for whatever reason, she turned on all the lights when I came along. Was I looking particularly dapper today, dressed in my longcoat for a walk outdoors? Did she find my scarf amusing, or something about my wayward hair? Was I unconciously emanating some sort of joy of my own, to which she could not help but respond in kind?

Certainly, it could have been me, but I'd never provoked such a response in her before. As I mulled the exchange over on my sunny, sub-zero wanderings in search of something cheap and palatable, it occurred to me that perhaps I had caught her off guard. Could she have been so involved in her internal state, so absorbed in the life inside her, that she failed to have any warning of my impending intrusion on the outer bounds of her personal space? If so, I must have seemed like a bolt from a clear blue sky, or a sombre movie suddenly turned bizarre.

In such a case, the energy she poured into her facade on the event of her sudden awareness of my existence must have been akin to a hand thrown up in reaction to a sudden flash of light. Without any warning of who or what was coming so close, she would have had to throw her face into a yellow alert, a barely mitigated response of excess cheeriness that would be broad enough to handle whatever had suddenly popped up on the radar, and loud enough to mask whatever lingering traces of the underneath might still be otherwise detected.

Was it DEFCON 7 to protect the inner self? Maybe.

Or maybe I really am that goofy.

Hg

Poor old extroverted me

2008-01-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

If I'd ever doubted that I was essentially an extrovert, the last two days would have assuaged all my concerns.

To be clear, while Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines 'extrovert' as "one whose personality is characterized by extroversion; broadly: a gregarious and unreserved person", and 'extroversion' as "the act, state, or habit of being predominantly concerned with and obtaining gratification from what is outside the self", I'm really talking about the Myers-Briggs definition of the extrovert (as influenced by Carl Jung), which primarily identifies extroverts by the types of social situations that energize them. Extroverts, according to Myers-Briggs, gain energy from interaction with others, especially in group situations (as opposed to introverts, who are drained by group interactions, and gain energy from quiet self-reflection, or deep interaction with single individuals).

So, what makes me think I'm such an extrovert? What events occurred in the last short while to confirm my self-analysis of extroversion? I'll tell you what: meetings.

Twice in the last two days I've been in meetings at work -- productive meetings that involved a lot of conversation and communication of ideas, both abstract and concrete. Today, like yesterday, I came out of the meeting feeling jazzed, energized, all fired up, not only about the topics discussed, but about life in general. I've taken ginseng, and I've chugged Jolt Cola, and I'll tell you, the feeling is quite similar.

So, I get energy from interacting with others. Technically, that's not a surprise to the people around me. If you described me as "not really all that outgoing" to my coworkers and acquaintances, they'd probably think you had mistken me for somebody else.

Even still, working as a professional geek (the modern kind, not the biting-the-heads-off-of-live-animals kind) forces me to cultivate my introverted tendencies. With the exception of the XP model of paired programming, working on a computer all day is a lonely, solitary endeavour that requires a fair bit of self-motivation. It's nearly impossible to be successful at a job like this without figuring out some way to draw energy from the time spent alone. (Of course, you can always try to overcharge your batteries at night by engaging in hyper-social activities like clubbing, curling, or Magic cards, but if you miss even one night, you're screwed, and that kind of nighttime activity requirement plays hell with your sleep patterns.) As such, I have been forced to grow my introverted side, nurturing it to provide me with the energy I need to perform well at my job. In fact, I do it so much, I forget sometimes that I'm naturally an extrovert.

It's nice, then, to have days where I get to indulge my extroversion. It's like drinking straight from the source: refreshing as all get out.

Hg

Super-creativity

2008-01-21T17:45:00.000-05:00

Thinking about Image Comic's current contest for creating a new superheroine (that's, uh, a superhero of the female persuasion, not a high-intensity injectable opiate, which would be "super-heroin" -- although the similarity is not coincidental, since the word "heroin" probably comes from the German word "heroisch", meaning heroic), my thoughts have wandered onto, among other things, what makes people like a given superhero. And I'm not talking just, "Yeah, I like Cyclops" -- I'm talking about, "Gee, I love Spiderman so much, I'm going to name my newborn 'Peter Parker Wojahowitz', and it's a girl!"

So, what makes people really dig certain superheroes, while others are left languishing in the margins of the illustrated world. I mean, hey, I liked Blue Beetle, but why wasn't he popular enough to sustain his own comic for more than a couple dozen issues? What is it about Wolverine that he gets not only his own comic, but appearances in as many X-mags as they can squeeze him into, as well as being a regular part of the Avengers (well, the renegade ones, anyway), plus being the go-to guy for special appearances any time sales flag in a lesser comic book?

It's not a difficult task to draw up a rough list of the all-time most popular superheroes (at least in North America):

- Superman
- Batman
- Spider-man
- Wolverine
- Green Lantern
- The Hulk
- Iron Man
- Wonder Woman
- Captain America

While I'm sure there are others that readers will vehemently argue should be included, few will argue against any of these being on the list. So, the question is, what do they all have in common that makes them so popular?

I suppose that, in fact, one should precede that question by asking, "Is there anything these superheroes have in common?" (Of course, they're all superheroes, but I think we can dispense with that commonality as being axiomatic, or at least part of the definition of the problem space. If they weren't all superheroes, we wouldn't be asking either question.) Is there an answer to the pre-question? Let's just say "Yes", and get on with our analysis.

Now, looking at these heroes, it's hard to find a commonality. In fact, in addition to things they have in common, we also need to determine what's different about all of them compared to less popular characters. If Wonder Woman wasn't on the list, we could say that they are all male, but there are plenty of unpopular heroes who are also male. Thus, gender is not a mitigating factor in popularity. Similarly, we need to exclude all common traits that are also common to the lesser supers.

In addition, we also have to consider combinations of traits. It could be (and is likely that) there are plenty of traits which, when considered independently, are common to both the "in" crowd and the "out" crowd, but that, when evaluated in combinations, are specific only to the members of our list. Clearly, this is going to be a difficult task.

In fact, this is the sort of task that direct, serial evaluation is not particularly well suited for. If I do this analysis deliberately, drawing up nine lists of traits (one for each hero mentioned), and then finding commonalities, and then identifying combinations of commonalities, and then taking those identity points and comparing them against the larger population, I could be at it for months (years, decades, centuries, millenia). There must be a better way to do this, to come up with a guaranteed popular new superhero based on an analysis of existing creative successes.

Mustn't there?

In fact, anyone who has seriously tried to be creative and successful knows there is currently no good formula for success. Sure, it would be easy to draw up a list of things you think you shouldn't do, but even that might be wrong. Twenty five years ago, most people would have included "make the superhero be a mean-ass S.O.B. who carries an arsenal of military-grade weapons to blow the heads off of anyone who pisses him off" in the not-a-good-idea category. But then came the likes of The Punisher (who many would argue should be on the above list), and that stricture was proven wrong. In fact, while in general the idea is not really a good one, the inclusion of other traits, such as a personal code of honour that makes Mr. Castle go out of his way to avoid harming Law Enforcement personnel, and a giant skull on his chest, and a permanent five o'clock shadow, and a never-say-die attitude, made for a character that not only bucked the trends, but helped redefine them.

As it turns out, though, the subconcious mind (the one that people tap into when they're being creative) is fairly adept at collating this kind of information, taking huge amounts of data, quickly winnowing out the stuff that doesn't fit, and then producing potentially effective combinations. While I may not be able to describe all the things that make for a great superhero, with practice, I can become pretty good at creating some decent approximations.

Of course, this subconcious system relies a lot on what some would call "instincts" -- the ability to throw out the losers and pick out the winners from this giant soupy mess of ideas. This instinct, though, is really no more than an incredibly complex, self-redefining set of rules by which ideas are evaluated. As long as we are subconciously willing to update our evaluation rules, to accept that we can improve the subconcious processes by which we create ideas, then we will continue to create, and make better creations.

And if we don't? Well, I'm sure we've all read comics that reek of stagnation. Mary Worth, anyone?

Hg

Fiction Fridays: A Very Bad Thing (part 1)

2008-01-18T17:17:00.001-05:00

Here's something I've been working on, on and off, for a few years now. Mostly, I just open it up, re-read it, maybe fix a bit of wording, and then close it again. Every once in a while, I'll extend it by a couple of paragraphs. It's nowhere near finished, but I think it makes an interesting read, what I've got so far. I marked it as part 1, but there may never be a part 2 (or more). Anyway, enjoy.

When I was seven years old, my uncle did a very bad thing to me. He's dead now though -- I made sure he paid for what he did to me. It only happened once, but it made me feel like I was bad, and in my seven-year-old mind I couldn't see that it was my uncle who the was bad one.

By the time I was nine, I had sunk to a level, emotionally, that no child should ever have to reach. With two years of hating myself behind me, I had developed a pattern of angry outbursts, destructive behaviour, and self-degradation that marked an indelible path in both directions of the map of my life. I was well-positioned to become the "problem child" that teachers had already labeled me as.

I started doing drugs in grade seven, when a boy from the high school next to my school offered me a pill that he said would make me "hate life less". It worked, too well, but of course only temporarily. I went back to him for more, and he gave me my next two hits for free, but then he told me I had to pay, "just like everyone else." I gave him all the change I had in my pockets, which wasn't much.

He took the money, and gave me my pill, blue on one end and yellow on the other. Then he pushed me against a tree with his left hand clutching my collar and snarled that next time I had to pay full price, or I'd get nothing. As he walked away, I hated him, hated myself, swallowed the pill dry, and waited for it to work its blue and yellow magic. It worked; I stopped hating for a while.

After two days of not knowing how to get the money he demanded, I stole all the change off my father's dresser before going to school, and paid full price for the drugs. I paid full price for stealing that money too, but not right away. It wasn't until a few months later that my father caught me. He had suspected for a while, but didn't want to believe it at first. Finally, he pretended to leave the house with a loud "Good-bye!" and "Have a good day at school!" call up the stairs to me as I lurked in my bedroom waiting for him to go. He followed that up with opening and closing the door, but instead of going out, he quietly took his shoes off and caught me with his coins cupped in my small hands in the doorway to my parents' room.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, holding his black leather shoes in his right hand, and all his anger in an awkward clench of his left fist. My feeble, sputtered explanations were lost in the clatter of the coins as they fell to the hardwood floor. The noise seemed to shatter him, and his face scattered as he told me in a low voice to clean up the coins and put them back on his dresser. Then he turned away from me, sat on the top of the stairs, and put his shoes back on. He went off to work without another word, and that silence was the beginning of the end of my father's love. I paid for my drugs with my father's love.

After that, my memories are blurry for a while. I gave the drug boy my Walkman, and he told me it was worth ten pills. I tried to make them last as long as possible, but having them all at once was too hard to resist. I was back for more, with my expensive cross-trainers hanging from my fingers a week later. That got me ten more pills, but they only lasted five days.

Backpack, Game Boy, jean jacket, CD's, DVD's -- I told my mother that I had lost the items I traded for drugs. She believed me, but my father wouldn't let her buy me new ones. That made me angry at the time, and I broke a lamp as I raged about the living room, but in retrospect, I can't blame him, or her. Just myself.

After a week, and two more fruitless tantrums at home, I went to the drug boy and begged him for more pills. I didn't think it would work, but he gave me one anyway. Then he told me he didn't want to lose my business, and he knew a way for me to get more money for the pills. That was just what I needed to hear, and the freebie was stirring up my brain again.

I went that very afternoon, while the buzz was still on. I knew I'd never do it otherwise. A twelve-year-old girl in a Wal-Mart by herself has the potential to attract attention, but I just stayed in the toy section looking at Barbies until I stopped getting funny looks. Then I wandered around for a bit until I came to the hair care section. It seemed almost too easy to slip a curling iron up my skirt, one end tucked in my panties to hold it in place against the inside of my thigh, and then casually wander away. I thought I was so clever then, waiting 15 more minutes looking at greeting cards, before leaving -- and it turned out I really was, since no one stopped me.

I gave the boy the curling iron when I saw him the next day, and he told me it was worth two pills. So two days later I was back in the Wal-Mart, and emerged with an electric shaver. After that it was a digital clock, and then another curling iron. But I was getting worried, stealing so much so soon. I wasn't stupid, just addicted -- I knew that someone was going to notice me if I kept it up at that store. So I branched out. I hit the Zellers, then the Bay, then a couple of smaller stores in the mall. I managed to get an expensive pair of suede pants out of a clothing store, under a pair of tear-aways. The store was new, and busy, and they hadn't set up their sensor equipment at the entrance of the store yet. Those pants got me ten pills all by themselves.

Then, one day, in the air conditioned comfort of the mall, protected from the oppressive fever of a ten day heat wave, but not from the all-consuming fever of my year-long addiction, I got caught.

Hg

The inquisitive Mr. Schmidt

2008-01-17T18:13:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I wrote a story (as an entry into Derek Cockram's now defunct Writers Challenge) called The Diary of Carl Schmidt (Air Lord). It was a fun little piece, documenting a few days in the life of the titular character, Carl Schmidt, as he experienced his adventures as the super-hero Air Lord.

On a whim, I also did a Google Search on "Carl Schmidt", and trolled through the results for email addresses. Y'know what I did next? Yeah. I did. Really. That's right -- I emailed each of the Carl Schmidts for whom I found email addresses (four of them at the time), to tell them about a character in my story with the same name as them, along with a link to the story on my website. Honest, I really did.

I know. It sounds crazy. It probably is crazy. But do it I did. (I'd love to show you what I wrote, but I don't seem to have kept the email, even though I thought I had. Oh well.)

I can't help but wonder what these four guys' reactions were when they got the email. I'd be very surprised if not one of the four just deleted the email automatically -- in fact, it's quite likely that their spam filters deleted it for them. However, I like to imagine that at least one of these Carls actually went so far as to read the story, all the way through.

Furthermore, I can imagine that this inquisitive Mr. Schmidt not only read the story, but was secretly (or even subconciously) a superhero fan. I can imagine this Carl beginning to identify with the character, and especially his superheroic persona, Air Lord. Perhaps, for a while, the real Carl Schmidt walked through his life, picturing himself flying through the clouds on breezes of his own making. He could be sauntering down the street, overlaying daydreams of air-powered action and adventure on top of his real life. Maybe, at meetings, he would pretend to shoot breezes into the faces of boring team members as they droned on and on about how "process is king", or "we all have to work smarter", or "data drives development". Bla bla bla, boooooringgggg... puff!

Heheheheh. So it appears I can stroke my ego a little by thinking I've added a little more fun to someone else's life. Stimulating other's imagination, and the use thereof -- not such a bad thing to be proud of, now is it?

Hg

On helping Nunavut

2008-01-16T17:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so after yesterday's blog entry, I've been thinking about what, exactly, I can do to make a difference in the quality of life for the people of Nunavut. (Incidentally, I have no idea what the people of Nunavut call themselves? Nunavutians? Nunavuters? Nunavites? That's what Wikipedia is for: "Its inhabitants are called Nunavummiut, singular Nunavummiuq.")

Basic musings and brainstorms have come up with this:

- Contact my local MP, and ask him what his party, and the government in general, plans to do about the Nunavut situation.

- Raise awareness of the plight of the Nunavummiut through local programs, letters to the editor of national newspapers, contact with other media, viral marketing, and creating a one-stop website for anyone who wants to know more about the issues facing our northern brethren.

- Raise money to assist with Nunavut daily life through fundraisers such as raffles, charity concerts, collection boxes at local businesses, etc.

- Contact major businesses and corporations who could directly assist the people of Nunavut, such as those involved in transportation, food production and distribution, health care, pharmacology, and technology, and urge them to provide as much assistance as they can.

Some of these ideas are easy to follow up on. Contacting my MP is just a phone call, or an email, or a letter (or all of the above). Contacting the media is almost as straightforward. Contacting the business sector is a little more complicated, since it will require a plan of action, a lot of doors closed in my face (or emails ignored, or phones hung up), and a convincing argument as to why providing such assistance would be good for their business. (Remember that whole thing about reward I wrote the other day? It applies to businesses in spades.)

The money thing, though, is by far the most complicated. I'm not talking about actually raising the money -- I have talents, and friends, and how hard is it to make up collection boxes anyway? No, the problem with money is that it requires special handling. I can't just go and collect money, stick it in an envelope, and mail it to "The People of Nunavut, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada", and hope it ends up in the right hands, and is used in the best manner possible.

Money has to be administered, and accounted for, and protected from taxation by the formation of a charitable organization. Significant planning has to be done to best determine how the money is spent, and how to spend it with as little overhead as possible. In fact, ideally, the spending of collected money would be done in conjuction with the cooperation and assistance of the aforementioned businesses. There's a lot to consider, before I can responsibly collect money on Nunavut's behalf.

Clearly, I'm going to start with the political route. I don't actually expect much out of it, but it's the logical place to start.

Oh, and if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Thanks.

Hg

47.8 years

2008-01-15T18:08:00.001-05:00

I read in an article today that the average life expectancy in Canada is now 75.6 years. Whoo-hoo! The article also stated, to my shock and horror, that, by region, the territory of Nunavut has an average life expectancy of only 47.8 years.

Shock. Horror. I'm not using these terms lightly. This little tidbit of trivia from Statistics Canada appalls me! How is it possible that, as Canadians, living in a country that is consistently rated as one of the top five to live in, we can stand by and allow a portion of our citizenry to live the kind of conditions that produce such a shortening of lifespan?

Make no mistake, this horribly truncated survival rate is directly attributed to poverty and quality of life. While Nunavut is, admittedly, a much less hospitable place to live than, say, the Niagara Peninsula, most of these Northerners' woes come from poor food supplies, poor health care, and limited access to any health care, poor or otherwise. Just about everything that the people of Nunavut eat is either hunted, or shipped in from the wealthy south. Due to shipping costs (and perhaps a large portion of apathy), only the cheapest, poorest quality foods end up on Nunavut tables.

A life expectancy of 47 years is in line with that of your typical third world nation. In fact, it's not that much higher the the life expectancy of your average fringe citizen of the Holy Roman Empire -- y'know, from a couple thousand years ago? If I'd heard this at a party, and not already had a general notion of what Nunavut life was like, I would've thought the speaker ready to be cut off from imbibing any more alcohol, lest he heave his stomach contents onto my shoes. It's nearly unbelievable, except for the fact that it's completely true.

47.8 years. Think about it. How many people do you know who are past their 47th birthday. Okay, now take more than half of them, and pretend they're dead. Does that make it seem more real now?

There is no way, as a conscientious citizen of this country we like to call the Great White North, that I can just sit here, and twiddle my thumbs, and hope that the problem gets fixed by someone else.

And the next time someone complains to me about how their taxes should be lowered, and they should get free X-Box in a private room the next time they end up in the hospital, I'm going have a very particular reply ready for them:

"47.8 years. Maybe you should be dead already."

Just keep thinking about it.

Hg

Meta-blog: motivation

2008-01-14T17:47:00.001-05:00

Today's blog is about blogging. I'd like to examine the whole "I want to write stuff and have people read it" paradigm that seems to push so many people to blog. (And really, "so many people" is an understatement -- we're talking millions and millions of people.)

So, why do people blog? More importantly, why do I blog? What is it about blogging that offers up enough emotional reward that I keep coming back to it, five days a week? Because, really, if I wasn't, at some level, getting something out of it, I wouldn't do it. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does anything without some kind of payback. Even the most altruistic behaviour has pay-off for the person doing it: at some level, it makes them feel good about being so altruistic. You know, some people get off on eating chocolate, and some people get off on doing good things. Both actions generate a response in the pleasure centres of the brain, so both are self-rewarding actions.

(Thinking about this makes me wonder about the truism that the best motivation comes from within, rather than relying on external rewards to keep you going. It always sounds like a a good idea. However, eating large amounts of chocolate -- or frequent doses of any of a number of illicit chemicals -- is only rewarding at the internal level. No one is telling you what a great person you are, or loving you more, or giving you money or expensive things. Chocolate does not generate fame or power. The entire reward system for chocolate is self-contained. You eat chocolate, dopamine gets released into certain parts of your brain, and you get the message, at a very primitive level, that what you are doing is right, and good, and pleasing. So maybe this idea about internal motivations being the best kind is not quite as universally applicable as the sages try to make it out to be. I'm just sayin'.)

Now, what's my reward for blogging? I'm thinking it's a rather complex chain, and it must rely heavily on the concept of delayed gratification. By posting a blog, I certainly don't get much of an immediate reward (well, aside from the cheap thrill of seeing my words on a computer screen, knowing they're there for the world to see, which, quite frankly, pales pretty quickly for someone who works with computers and Internet technologies for a living). Rather, my anticipation of the response I may receive ("may" being the important word here) generates its own pleasure effect, as I dream (even if only subconciously) about the readers' responses to my thoughts, and to the craft I have applied in writing them.

Additionally, I get some small thrill at the thought that the practice I put into my writer's craft when I create a blog entry will improve my writing ability, that I may become better, and gain greater rewards because of my improvements down the road. This part is, of course, even more ephemeral, as it relies on probability projections of future rewards for work I may never perform. The weirdest part of it is that, in many ways, this is really an externally-based reward system, since it relies on my perception of possible future rewards from external sources: the classics, money and fame.

Writing in general, it seems, is a much lonelier, and more patient art, than performing. As a musician, I can get up on a stage, or pick up a guitar in someone's living room. Even before I actually produce a single note, I get real-time feedback from the people for whom I perform. Every single second of my performance gives me more feedback, and I can modify my performance on the fly to try to elicit a greater positive response. Making music, even for a quiet, reserved audience, requires zero delay of gratification. Everything is instantaneous. (Perhaps Belkar should train a level or two with Elan. Hard to imagine, but it does seem to fit. Obviously, the two have more in common than the angry halfing would ever care to admit.)

Thus, in part, my blogging is a study in delay of gratification. That in itself is also rewarding, as I anticipate greater self-rewards in the future as I contemplate an increase through repitition of my capacity for self-motivation.

Of course, I still wouldn't mind if someone posted a comment every once in a while. Those things feel good too, y'know.

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Until the Fever Breaks (part 2)

2008-01-11T17:07:00.002-05:00

continued from part 1

Sometimes, it seemed to Susie that the mall was tiny, one narrow store leading to the next, until it seemed she was already at the other end, two stories down. The whole experience was like a blur, punctuated by sharp memories of a red blouse on a mannequin, and a new toy that talked to her, and the sizzling smell of New York Fries. Other times, the mall seemed huge, with enormous distances between each end, and a maze of ramps and stairs and escalators between each sprawling floor. Today, following her father on his aimless search for "just the right thing for Mommy", it seemed like there was so much mall it had swallowed up the rest of the world.

Also, her father had a tendency to forge all the way to the back of every store they visited. Most stores had meager fronts, but delved back into greater depths than she imagined could fit in such a cramped space. Way at the back, the rest of the mall was forgotten, as Daddy searched through racks of bathrobes or winter coats, pulling out a dozen at each store to ask the exasperated saleslady her opinion.

"Would you wear this?" Her father's voice was infinitely deep, but on this shopping trip, it held a less firm timbre, and more uncertainty than she'd imagined a voice like his could express.

He turned and squatted, coming down to Susie's level as he brandished a shiny wrap with fluff along one side. "What do you think, Susie? Is this Mommy?"

Out of love for her father, Susie held back her rolling eyes. "It's pretty, " she mused, running her fingers along the sleek fabric, "but I don't know about Mom. I don't think it's her thing."

Hobbled by his ungainliness, Rohit struggled to regain his feet. The spinning in his head made it hard to find his center, so he dragged his knees up under him, and propped his torso up on his outstretched arms. He took two breaths, dimly aware of the frantic, high-pitched noises that shattered around him. Another breath seemed to clear his head somewhat, and the world reduced itself to a gentle turning. A brief flash of memory put him on the round-about in the park near his house, with the older kids towering and laughing as they casually spun the platform. Then he wondered how he could ever have been so small.

With a heave, he pushed himself upright, driving his feet into the ground beneath him to plant them more firmly. The stiffness that had captured his limbs served a better purpose this time, keeping his legs locked steady, his back upright and firm, even as the world around him started to rock and sway.

Rohit opened his eyes, trying to peer through the smoke and haze. Everything was still a blur, but at least now there was no pain. Slowly turning his head, wary of the swinging sensation that pulled at him, he looked around, trying to find something, some landmark he could target. To his left, he spied a pale glow, brighter than the swirling dimness around him.

He felt sudden elation, having found a point of reference on which he could latch his mind. Forgetting his other concerns, he turned sharply, stepping quickly toward the light.

At least, that's what he tried to do. His legs, still stiff, on soles jammed inches into the hard ground, did not respond as quickly as the rest of his body. Overbalanced, with the great weight of his burdened torso continuing on its own inertia, he barely got his feet beneath him, knees cracking as he stumbled along. It was all he could do to keep from toppling over, but the light beckoned. Rohit clenched his jaw, and pushed forward, not willing to lose his newfound goal.

continued in part 3

Hg

The Love Iron

2008-01-10T16:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I've seen some freaky comics in my time, but this one totally freaks me out. It's by the same guy, Ryan Armand, who does Minus, which I love, but not like this freaky comic.

So, what freaks me out about it so much is not that the first part doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, or even that this guy in the comic seems to think that irons are the solution to anyone's relationship problems. No, it's the part that comes afterwards, where the two potential lovebirds use said irons to melt each other's faces off, and then toss the irons away, still covered in face gunk, and squish the pliant, gooey remnants left on their heads together to make a huge, fleshy, dripping approximation of a heart between them. Freaky. Freaky. Say it with me: frea - ky!

But really, why is this freaky? Is it the depiction of facial deformation, the awful, gangliated mess they make of themselves? Is my freak-out a basic reaction to disfiguration in any form, an intestinal aversion to gross deviation from a perceived norm -- the same sort of thing that lead our ancestors to commit infanticide rather than waste precious resources on an expression of bad genetic combinations?

Perhaps it's something deeper: a fear of the true commitment, the loss of single self that must come out of a true union between two people. Is this whole tale a symbolic representation of the loss of individuality, the voluntary throwing-away of that which most represents how we think of ourselves, for the sake of a true love? Is that what I'm reacting to? Is my sense of discomfort truly indicative of my inability to give up enough of myself to fall completely in love, and to love someone wholly?

Of course, it could also just be that the final image reminds me too much of the big nasties from Tremors. Yeah, maybe that's it.

Or maybe I just don't want to look too hard at this, and I'm avoiding the issue by making it look like I'm not. Wouldn't be the first time I've done that either. But does it really matter? It's just a comic, after all.

Right?

Hg

It's a repeat of the real thing

2008-01-09T17:01:00.001-05:00

Here's a piece I wrote for an old blog I used to have. It's been a couple of years now, so I'm guessing most readers won't have read it (since that blog no longer exists). If you have, my apologies, but I really like what I wrote, and I've been dying to share it again.

The other day, I was craving a Coke. This in itself is not unusual -- I drink three or four cans a day while at work, more if I'm in the mood. However, in this case I was craving a Coke because my tummy was a little upset (which is unusual, since it's been referred to as "cast iron" by those around me since I was a wee lad), and I was thinking that, maybe, a cool, fizzy Coke would be just the thing. Unfortunately, it was late at night, I was in the middle of unloading the dishwasher, and I couldn't justify going out to the store just because my tummy felt funny. I figured I could just sleep it off, and wake up fine in the morning (which is what I did, with the expected results -- cast iron stomachs are great). However, craving a swig from the shiny red can put me in mind of what I like to think of as my Favourite Coke Moment.

Once upon a time, my basement flooded. It had rained really, really, really hard, and for some reason, this meant that my always-dry basement filled up with a half foot of water from the sewers! Yes, indeed, I watched in horror as the toilet in the basement bathroom and the floor drain in the laundry room worked in reverse, regurgitating brackish water and waterlogged bits of leaves and twigs. Somehow, the rain had got into the sewers, and backed up into my basement. (To be fair, the rainwater also backed up into lots of other people basements, but fer cryin' out loud, this was my basement. Apparently, this is more common than one would suspect, although it had never happened to me before.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I started cleaning up. First with the shopvac and a submersible pool pump, later with a mop, and later still with disinfectant for every surface that got sewer-contaminated water on it, I cleaned like a fiend. Actually, it was a bit more like a robot. I wasn't frantic, just methodical, plodding along, one step after another until the job was done. Clean-up started around two in the afternoon. I finally stopped to go to the Swish store for some industrial deodorizer around noon. The next day. Uh-huh. 22 hours, pretty much non-stop.

For the entire time, I had forgotten to consume any food or beverage. Not a drop to drink, aside from the sweat I licked off my upper lip. This, folks, is called irony, embodied by the classic quote, "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." (Incidentally, I spent much of that time with a single song running through my head. I was fortunate in that it wasn't some annoying spit of pop drivel, but was instead what I have come to consider one of my all-time favourite songs: Wicked and Weird by Buck 65. I didn't know all the lyrics at the time, but I had fun trying to figure them out while I worked.)

So, twenty-two hours of constant labour with nothing to eat or drink. Not to mention the fact that I was about thirteen hours past my bedtime. Well, here's where the Coke Moment comes in. I pulled into the Swish parking lot, and there in front of the entrance was, you guessed it, a Coke machine. I looked at the price, shading the pathetic red LED display against the bright, harsh noonday sun, and saw $2.00. Two bucks a bottle. (I suppose it might have been cooler if it had said $1.65, but this is a true story, not a fairy tale.) For a moment, I felt near panic, wondering if I had the change. Fumbling through my pocket, my hand clumsily withdrew an assortment of small coinage. Trying hard to remember how to count, I experienced a moment of pure anticipatory pleasure as I squinted at a loonie, three quarters, two dimes and a nickle -- and not much else besides pennies. Whew!

Okay, so I knew a Coke would go down pretty good right about then, but really, I had no idea. Money in, a bottle comes out. Twist off the cap, and I stood there on the sun-baked stretch of asphalt. Head tilted back, bottle to my lips. I chugged. I felt the cold acid burn, welcome and familiar on the back of my throat. But more than that, I felt... better. Much better. Better than I figured I could ever feel. If epiphanies can be physical, this was one. Relaxation and relief spread across my shoulders, down my back, out to my fingers, and down to my feet. Oh. Wow.

That $2.00 plastic bottle of Coca-Cola, there in the hot Swish parking lot, twenty-two hours of constant labour after the flood -- that was my Favourite Coke Moment.

So now, I'm hoping that others will chip in. If you read this, leave me a comment. I'd love to hear your Favourite Coke Moment. Thanks.

Hg

Science Fiction: Golly vs. Gloom

2008-01-08T17:45:00.001-05:00

One of the things I like the most about Science Fiction is the speculation about new technologies. This comes in two parts: 1) look at all the cool things you could do if only such and such were real; and 2) look at what would happen to the world if only such and such were real. Both are equally valid views on the subject, and both are worthy of serious contemplation -- at least to me. Ideally, good Science Fiction will tackle both.

Certainly, there are have been plenty of examples of Science Fiction throughout the years that have handled only the first part, the "cool" factor. A significant amount of "space-opera" and various other forms of science fiction adventure has been written over the years, targeted specifically at people (primarily males) who wanted some golly-gee escapism. Buck Rogers, John Carter of Mars, Star Wars -- they all exist primarily as a mode of providing fun and adventure to the consumer with little consideration to the real impacts of science on our everyday lives. Even Isaac Asimov was guilty of it, with his Lucky Starr series, but at least he tried to sneak in a bunch of education along the way.

There have also been produced a number of examples of Science Fiction that only satisfying the second part of the equation, the "here's what would happen" speculations. Dean Koontz has written numerous novels about the horrors of technology gone awry, and he's just one of the latest in a crew that can trace its roots at least as far back as Mary Shelley. While some of these works can be considered classics, all of them take a doom-and-gloom approach to the march of technological progress, and all of them suffer, Science Fiction-wise, from their omission of the other half.

Of course, even Science Fiction that contains a well-measured balance of both sides of the technology is not guaranteed to be good. I've personally read thousands of Science Fiction stories -- novels, novellas, novellettes, and the classic Sci Fi shorts -- and a goodly chunk of those that look at both sides of the coin still do not make their way into my list of worthwhile reads.

I recently read a couple of novels by Greg Bear, considered one of the modern masters of Science Fiction: Slant, and Blood Music. Both take a hard look at the effects of technological progress, with Slant examining a world transformed by nanotechnology, and Blood Music probing the impact of advanced biotechnology left unchecked. Both provide some very cool golly-gee moments in relation to their technology of choice, with Blood Music showing how the technology improves the health (and love life) of one of the main characters, and Slant offering up countless examples of how cool the world will be once nanotechnology really catches on. However, the action in both works also devolves into sordid tales about how technology run amok will corrupt us all: in Slant, at a societal level, and in Blood Music, right down to the very fabric of space-time.

Interestingly, while I enjoyed reading both of these novels -- Mr. Bear is an excellent writer -- I can't say that either of them will make it into my "Top Science Fiction Stories Of All Time" list. Perhaps it is their resolutions that limit them in some way, or perhaps they are almost too effective in their pursuit of speculation.

Or maybe it's just because everything I read gets compared to Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson. Them's some tough competition to be up against.

Hg

Sometimes, I build walls.

2008-01-07T16:59:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I build walls. Not literal walls, although I did build a small wooden one, of the retaining variety, for my backyard. Construction of that wall included a four-foot trench filled with gravel, a drain pipe buried behind the dirt side, pressure-treated chunks of wood cut to mimic railway ties, and steel rebars sunk two to four feet deep into the gravel and through all but the top couple of inches of the wood. That wall, despite my best efforts, is crooked, leaning on its highest end by a good four degree off the vertical -- not so much that you can see it flat on, but enough that it looks quite skewed if you peer down the length of it.

But, like I said, that was only one wall. The rest of my walls have been personal. They surround me, usually on all sides, providing a buffer, some distance from the rest of the world, from the people around me.

I built some rather impressive walls, solid, with deep foundations and high ramparts, to get through my teen-aged years. They proved their worth as I found myself subjected to the war zone of high school life. Even my closest friends really only had portcullised windows through which they could communicate, seeing only glimpses of the me that hid inside.

I withstood numerous lambastings and personal blasts from females who felt I'd done wrong. (Why did guys never try to tell me off? What was different between the males and the females in my life that the guys never felt the need?) In times like that, I could stand there, secure behind my fortifications, peering down from the ramparts at the noisome railings below. I knew that what they said, the feelings they lobbed my way, couldn't touch me. I simply waited out the storm.

Eventually, I took down my all-encompassing barriers. I wanted to -- I no longer enjoyed the isolation. Still, though, I continued to build walls. The great practice I'd had over the years meant I could hastily erect a barrier when required, buttressing and reinforcing as I went until whatever it was I felt I needed protection from had passed. This seemed to work, like I had a good system. Unfortunately, it also meant I cut myself off from a lot of people, and a lot of experiences, that might have fostered greater personal growth and development.

Nowadays, I try to find other ways of dealing with life besides piling up rocks against the slings and arrows. There are other ways -- understanding and acceptance certainly come to mind. Sometimes, too, it is better to let the pain in, let it hit you, and learn to work through it, fight it if need be, rather than never feeling it at all. There's a quote I misremember about it being better to be wounded in love than always to walk in armour. It almost seems counterintuitive, but I'm sure the idea's not wrong.

Still, sometimes I build walls.

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Red Boy (part 1)

2007-12-21T17:48:00.001-05:00

It's Friday, so here's some fiction. Also, I'll be taking holidays from now until the New Year, so there'll be no updates until January 7th, 2008.

Happy Holidays, one and all!

Red Boy

part 1

Five days. Five days was how long he'd waited, and practiced. Five days was how long ago he'd been in the accident at his uncle's factory. Five days was how long it took him to decided on his name, and put together his costume.

Dawson's mother thought he was going blind in his room, staying in there with the door closed every night, glued to his PlayStation, with his TV at the foot of his bed -- far less than the fifteen feet her old-fashioned sensibilities told her was the closest you should be. She also thought he was going deaf, with his stereo turned up loud to the latest Nickleback CD.

"Dawson! Dawson!" His mother poked her head through the half-open doorway. "Could you turn that down so I can talk to you?!"

Dutifully obeying with the remote in his left hand, Dawson dropped the volume by half, never taking his eyes from the ongoing game in front of him, or his right hand from the game controller. "Is that better, Mom?"

"Yes! Thank you! I don't know how you can think with all that racket. You know, if you keep listening to it like that, you're-"

"Going to go deaf? I know, Mom. I'm not deaf. I heard you yesterday."

His mother shook her head. "All right, but don't say I didn't warn you."

She favoured her son with a warm smile, half love, half bemusement, and turned to go. Then she turned back, readjusting the laundry basket on her hip.

"Is all your homework done?"

Dawson rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mom."

"Really?"

"Yes, Mom, just like yesterday. I'll show you later, after I'm done playing." As if to demonstrate his involvement, he winced and sucked air through clenched teeth, leaning to one side with the controller held up near his shoulders.

"Is that everything? You're gonna get me killed."

His mother sighed. "Yes, I suppose it is." She paused, then pushed ahead. "You're going to go-"

"Blind?" Dawson's eyes flickered into a distracted roll at his mother, sparing only a moment of his concentration on the game to register his annoyance.

"You told me that yesterday, remember?" He added a bit of extra "go-away-please" to his voice. "That's so not true. No one goes blind watching TV six feet from the screen. You don't need to be fifty feet-"

"I said fifteen."

"-whatever, fifteen feet away. That whole thing's just a product of your generation's adjustment to the rapid encroachment of technology into every aspect of your lives. It's knee-jerk, Mom. An urban myth."

Dawson's mother shook her head, feigning annoyance. Inside, she was pleased, and proud, of her son's intelligent discourse, but she was still a Mom, and knew she had to play her role.

"Well, just make sure you show me your homework tonight."

"Or you'll take the the video games away for a week. I know, Mom. Don't worry."

Once she was gone, down the hall and down the stairs, he closed his door, hard enough to be heard, and then turned up the stereo again. The game forgotten, and his mother handled for another evening, Dawson turned his attention back to the things he really wanted to spend time on. His name, his costume, and his powers.

After five days of this, a Monday to a Friday, he was sure he was ready.

As with all of my posts, but especially with the fiction, comments will be most appreciated.

Hg

Animal Shave Problem Stoo

2007-12-20T17:22:00.000-05:00

I've discovered a new webcomic that I intend to frequent: Animals Have Problems Too. I stumbled across the comic when asked to do a comparison of it and some other thing I didn't think was funny. (How did I get to the comparison site? From Evil Inc.)

This webcomic is my kind of humour. I like it. A lot. Animals Have Problems Too is slightly absurb, very dry, and frequently intelligent. Very few comics (web or otherwise) make me want to laugh out loud. Of the 150+ pieces I've viewed from this comic, I actually did laugh out loud (or otherwise reacted very strongly in a favourable manner) to a bunch of 'em. I even went so far as to forward a link to one of the comics to a friend -- and I never do that. I started at the most recent, went back a few, and by the time I'd viewed a handful, I wanted to read them all.

So, I went back to the beginning of the archive, and checked out the first 150. Admittedly, I was underwhelmed by the earliest few -- but what can you expect, the creator was just starting out. The comic picked up pretty quickly though, when Zach hit his groove, and never really disappointed me after that.

The art is deliberately mediocre, hand-drawn and scanned, and the lettering is deliberately atrocious. The experience, however, is distinctly positive, and the tooltips for the images when you hover over them are filled with extra Easter-eggy context. (Like this one.)

Interestingly, while in the early set, there is very little in the way of political cartoons (this one being a notable exception), the new stuff I sampled had large doses of politically motivated sarcasm. I'll be curious to see, as I peruse the rest of the archives, where in the comic's evolution the political overtones started to come out.

Out of the first 150, here are some of the standouts:

Rageaholic Dove -- The contrast in this one is astounding.

T-Rex Only Marginally Liked By His Friends -- Excellent pop-culture reference

Chameleon That Can't Get A Date -- Geekiest-lookin' lizard I've ever seen.

Quantity Is The New Quality (With Sheep) -- A flock-load of jokes, including one that made me laugh out loud. (See if you can find it. It's like Where's Waldo, with undefinable parameters. And Waldo's not in it. Oh, wait. That's a parameter, kinda.)

Goldfish With Long Term Memory -- Sarcastic ennui

Dodo Bird That Hates Cliffhangers -- And look at that! There's even one that's related to my last post!

And finally: an incredibly sage observation.

(I wonder if it applies to me....)

Hg

"Until next time..."

2007-12-19T18:01:00.000-05:00

Y'know, I think the very best thing about serialized fiction is not the stories, but the endings. In serials, there's a major delay (i.e. longer than turning a page) between chapters. This has the unique effect of putting a real, human-time emotional context into the reader's experience. The reader gets to mull over the story thus far before the next part is available to read. (And the irony of the delay of gratification thereof in contrast with the major resurgence of serialized fiction on the instant-access Internet is astounding, to say the least.)

So, modern serial storytellers, taking a page from their predecessors notebooks, have recognized the value of the cliffhanger ending. Dickens had it to the nth degree when his stories had people crowding the docks where printings of his latest installment were to be unloaded, calling out to the sailors about the fate of a beloved character. Of course, Chuck's delays were considerably longer than a day or two, and the selection of content for readers was waaaaaaaaaaaay smaller, but still, current serial writers have a lot to gain from their own unresolved endings.

Alexandra Erin, one the leading trailblazers of the Internet fiction movement, gave me two cliffhangers today: one in Tales of Mu, and one in Tribe. One of the nice things about Lexy's cliffhangers is that she uses them sparingly. Plenty of her episodes, while building and leading to a final climax, are also self-contained and self-resolving within their context, not relying on so obviously dramatic an ending. So, when I got these two (especially the one in Mu), I was quite pleased.

Jeffrey Blair Latta, over on his excellent Pulp and Dagger webzine, wrote an editorial about the cliffhanger ending. Specifically, he talks about falling (literally) as a tool to use to help stimulate the serial writer. I read it a couple of years ago, and the ideas he presented still stick with me. If I ever get to the point where I'm reliably producing enough fiction that I could support some serialized fiction without disappointing my legions of fans as they crowd the wharfs of the Web, I'll probably follow his advice.

In the mean time, as I come to the end of this blog entry, I'm recognizing that non-fiction blogs don't really lend themselves to cliffhangers. Or maybe they do?

"It couldn't hurt to try, could it?" Hydrargentium wondered, turning away from the screen in response to a strange noise behind him....

Or maybe not.

Hg

A groovy victim of progress

2007-12-18T17:53:00.001-05:00

Throughout history, the march of progress has left countless items of interest ground under its heels. Witness the Nose Adjuster, the TRS-80, the Lava Lamp... uh, the Lava Lamp?

Yeah, the Lava Lamp. I realized recently that the current craze for energy efficient lighting -- specifically standard screw-in light bulbs, replacing incandescents with fluorescents -- will ultimately kill my enjoyment of my Lava Lamp. Why is that?

Well, a Lava Lamp's operation relies directly on the very inefficiences that people complain about with incandescent bulbs: too much energy lost to heat generated by the bulbs. Y'see, while a Lava Lamp uses the light from its appliance-sized 40W bulb (the kind you put in your refrigerator) to illuminate its groovy suspension of coloured fluids, it also requires the heat from the bulb to impart motion in the fluids. (The stuff in the bottom heats up, expands and thereby lowers its density, and floats in a blob to the top of the lamp. Then the blob, now further away from the heat of the bulb, cools down and contracts until it becomes denser than the fluid in which it is suspended, and drops back down to the bottom of the lamp to repeat the process.)

So, hopefully you can now see the problem. New fluorescent bulbs generate very little heat (which is part of what makes them more efficient), and once these bulbs have completely replaced the traditional heat-generating bulbs, I will be unable to enjoy my Lava Lamp. Oh, sure, I'll still be able to put a small fluorescent bulb in my Lava Lamp, and watch the glow, but there'll be no motion, which I'd say is more than half the experience.

Bummer.

Incidentally, I wonder what kind of bulb they use for this Lava Lamp?

Oh, and hey, have you heard this joke?

Q: How many stoners does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Wh- what? Dude... just, Dude.

Hg

Dinosaurs and society

2007-12-17T17:45:00.000-05:00

Why do people get loud when they get upset? I do it -- I know that. I don't think I'd be off-base by suggesting that most people have done it at least once in their lives. (In fact, I imagine most people do it quite a bit.) But really, why get loud?

From a strictly logical (as in Spock-logical) viewpoint, getting louder rarely accomplishes the effect of being better listened to. Human nature is such that people listen less when yelled at. (And why is that? I dunno, but I'm not going into that right now.) So, logically, if people raise their voices when upset to be better heard (and therefore better listened to), they're performing the wrong behaviour for the desired effect.

I see two other options: A) random effect of adrenaline on the vocal apparatus; and B) purposeful but outdated effect on the interaction between communicating beings.

For the first option, we could suggest that being upset (and therefore excited) causes the voice to raise almost automatically, in a manner similar to how taking a deep breath causes the chest to expand, or perhaps more appropriately, to how being hit on the knee with a little rubber hammer causes the leg to kick. (That was one of my favourite parts about checkups when I was kid, the whole reflex hammer-on-the-knee test thing.) Basically, as an uncontrolled side effect of the extra adrenaline released into your system when you're upset, your voice gets louder.

For the second option, we have to look at possible reasons why, from a socio-evolutionary perspective, getting louder when we get upset might have been useful. I can see a couple.

There's the possibility that, at the primal level (when talking was used for only the basest communication, and society as a whole was so primitive that it barely justified being called as such), if a conversation got out of hand, the best response was a show of force -- but not a major one. No kicking, no hitting, no beating of chests or thumping the ground -- nothing like that so early into the conflict, but instead a raising of the voice to challenge the offender, scare off the interloper, etc. Certainly there are plenty of mammals (especially the more socially advanced ones) who use their voices in just such a manner: dogs going from a low growl to a viscious barking, cats graduating from a warning moan to the kind of nasty squalling noise that'll wake you up at three in the morning when two toms are squaring off over turf rights.

The other possibility is that getting louder is just a simple cue to indicate the speaker is feeling stronger emotions. Sure, we get loud when we get upset, but we also tend to get loud when we're happy, or when we're in pain, or when we've screwed with our emotion-response system by imbibing alcohol. (Whoo! Party!) So, getting loud just tells the listener (and others around us) that we're feeling strong emotions -- the question remains, though, about why this kind of information might be advantageous.

I'm sure there are a number of other plausible rationales, for raising your voice when you're upset, in the same vein. Maybe it's to attract more attention, bringing more people into the conversation to produce some kind of consensus, or perhaps to produce a feedback-like dampening effect, whereby a person's inhibition against loudness increases in direct proportion to the number of people in sight.

Definitely, all of this is speculation. If I stand by my socio-evolutionary model (which is the one that makes the most sense to me for the time being), then I'll have to assume that there used to be a good reason, but that reason has been left behind by the rapid pace of social change, and is now outmoded -- a social dinosaur, so to speak.

In fact, I think I like that idea for its poetic balance, if nothing else. Roaring like a dinosaur is a dinosaur's behaviour.

Raaaaah!

(It would appear there's some fun to be had pretending to be a dinosaur. I guess Calvin was right on.)

Raaah! Rwwwaaahhhhhh!

Hg

Fiction Fridays: Until the Fever Breaks (part 1)

2007-12-14T16:31:00.001-05:00

I've decided, since my primary goal for writing is to write fiction, to dedicate Friday posts to fiction. (The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that I did not post last Friday. I was going to start Fiction Fridays last week, but my day was permanently interrupted before I got very far. So, here it is now.)

I have no illusions that I will be able to post whole pieces every Friday. I'm far too meticulous and labourious a writer to be able to do that. However, by instituting Fiction Fridays, I hope to force myself to produce something vaguely self-contained for the readers' entertainment.

Thus, for your edification and enjoyment, I present a little snippet from a story I came up with last week. (That sounds misleading. As of the writing of this post, what follows is all I have composed thus far. I can't guarantee there will be more, but I hope so.)

Until the Fever Breaks

part 1

Rohit felt hot. He sensed the sweat all over, swarming on his aching skin. Coherency broke through the haze of his thoughts, for a moment, and he reasoned that the blurring of his vision must be from the sweat running into his eyes. Then he roared, dizzy, and flailed his arms for balance.

The smoke returned to cover his mind. He could taste the hot metallic tang on the roof of his mouth. Through the blur, he made out a flash that clawed at the back of his eyes. Cringing, he threw an arm up across his face. Gathering his courage, he stomped a foot on the ground, and then charged.

Susie loved going to the mall. Her big sister, Polly, got to go all on her own, and hang out with friends. Polly told stories of all the cool people there, and all the awesome clothes, and stores with free samples for perfumes, and makeup, and cookies, and ice cream. Susie didn't get to go on her own, but when Dad had to go Christmas shopping for Mom, he needed a second opinion. Susie was glad to help.

She floated through the stores, sometimes holding her father's warm hand, sometimes following behind and gazing at the pretty dresses. Her father was careful, even when he seemed distracted, to know where Susie was, any time she wandered more than a foot away. "C'mon, Susie. Let's go see if there are pyjamas in the next store that Mommy would like."

"Daddy, please. I call her 'Mom'." Susie skipped over to catch up, slipping her right hand into her father's left.

Stumbling through the thick air, hot and oily in his lungs, Rohit exhaled a pent-up sob. It gurgled out of this throat, loud and liquid. He couldn't remember how this all started, didn't know where he was, but knew for sure he wanted to get away from the heat that consumed him. The sheen of sweat had evaporated from his burning skin, leaving a crust of salt that yielded less and less with every flexure of his agonized limbs. He felt something crash against his hardened shins, stumbled, and then kicked out blindly at the assault. He could barely see through the ash that seared his eyes, and his ears were filled with a muffled roaring like fire heard far away. His nostrils had given themselves over to the acrid burn, and now his skin was withheld from all but the heaviest of blows. Panic rose up in him, a fire all its own, as he recognized his exclusion from the world around him.

He kicked again, missed, then threw himself to the ground. He felt something solid across his midriff hold and then give way. He crashed amid the pieces, his head bouncing on hard concrete. He barely felt it.

continued in part 3

As with all of my posts, but especially with the fiction, comments will be most appreciated.

Hg

Snow, wonderful snow!

2007-12-13T16:34:00.001-05:00

Wow, it's snowing! I love snow. I love it when it's snowing hard, and I love it when it's just coming down as the faintest hint of flakes. There's something magical and free about little motes of pure whiteness falling from the sky.

I was downtown today, and the snow was falling, and the wind was blowing -- not so you'd call it a storm, but enough that people were pulling their collars up, hunching their shoulders, and tilting their faces away from the weather. Not me, though -- when it snows, I feel so good, it makes me feel warmer. If you'd seen me, I'd've been the person standing on the corner, chin up, eyes bright, and hair blowing in the breeze. Snow lifts me up, makes stand straighter, feel taller, invigorates me like few other things. I want to sing when it snows, and frequently do, and sometimes forget to keep it low enough so that people won't look askance at me as they pass by. I don't care if they do. It's snowing!

Some of my fondest memories involve trudging through the snow, headlong against the growls of winter. Snow builds up in my hair, melts against my forehead, and then freezes along my hairline. I reach my destination looking like Old Abominable in the Rudolph movie, and shake my head to let loose the storm in the entryway.

I love shoveling snow, too. It's hard work, but feels good to throw piles of the stuff around, working all the muscles in my body. And it's clear, as you work, that you've accomplished something -- every single shovelful is an obvious change in the landscape. The sense of achievement you get when you're finished, happily tired and leaning on your shovel, surveying the results of your labour? Priceless.

Then there's the morning wake-up, when you look out the window after the weather has passed. Everything, and I mean everything, is white. White on the rooftops, white on the roads, white on the trees, and the chimneys, and the cars, and the sidewalks. It's all white, and it's all clean, and it's all fresh. Sure, there are no leaves on the trees, and the green grass is covered, and the flowers are gone until May, but new-fallen snow has a beauty all of its own.

I love snow.

Hg

Shockingly un-funny

2007-12-12T16:54:00.000-05:00

For no particular reason today, I've been thinking about shock humour. You know the type, where a "comedian" does something shocking, or says something shocking, to get a laugh. (You can probably guess by my use of quotes that I don't find this kind of person to be funny.)

It seems to me that people who rely on shock humour do so because they think it's funny. Simple idea, really -- I imagine most people who are trying to make people laugh do what they think is funny.

(This gives me an idea for a story, about a wildly successful comedian who doesn't think that anything she does is funny, but is very good at figuring out what other people think are funny. The conflict of the story relies on the tension between her success -- money, fame, etc. -- and her tedium that comes from always doing schtick for other people, but never herself. Now, all I have to do is figure out how superheroes fit into it.)

However, I think that people who use shock humour because they think it's funny do so for sadistic reasons. Specifically, such people think the shocks they deliver are funny because of the effect they have on the audience. In other words, what these shock jocks are laughing at is not the joke, but the squirming they provoke in others, the reaction to the joke. Really, it's a lot like laughing at a guy after you kick him in the nuts.

(Right now, approximately 50% of my readers are cringing, or bending slightly at the waist, or covering their genitals with their hands, in response to the above statement.)

Interestingly, there seems to be a not-insignificant audience for shock humour. Consumers of comedy do so because it makes them laugh. (I don't think it takes much to support this statement, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.) Since there seems to be continuing, profitable production of shock humour content, we can only assume that there must be an appreciable body of consumers out there who enjoy it. So what about them?

Well, I think people who get a kick out of shock humour are motivated by the same responses that drive the shock jocks. People who laugh at shock humour are laughing at other people's discomfort, whether they're witnessing the shocking, or performing it. They're all sadists.

But wait, isn't there another kind of response to shock that produces laughter, beside the "I get off on other people's pain" kind? Yes, there is. It's commonly accepted that many people will laugh at something that shocks or disgusts them, as a way of lessening the horror of the situation. "Oh my god, what did he just do? Ha ha ha." It's a form of nervous laughter. Honestly, though, the only kind of person who repeatedly exposes him- or herself to something unpleasant as a form of recreation is a masochist.

Either way you look at it, in humanist terms, shock humour ain't funny.

Hg

Death and meaning

2007-12-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

I heard a guy on the radio last night talking about death. (Man, what is it with me? Half of my posts are related to death so far!) Specifically, this particular scholar (I didn't catch the name) had written a book about death, and its function in and effects on human society and emotional life. The scholar and his interviewer were discussing the difference between meaningful and meaningless deaths, about how the death of a pedestrian run down tragically by a drunk driver seems meaningless, death in vain, whereas the deaths of soldiers are generally considered meaningful and important, dying for a worthy cause and fighting the good fight. Even in our current era of "wars" that many people in the countries involved are against, most people prefer to honour the soldiers, dead and living, even as they vilify the policies (and the policymakers) that send the troops out into the field.

My own thoughts, listening to this interview, ran with the whole "meaningless death" issue. The author of the book stated that meaningless deaths are like an emptiness -- something that the human heart cannot stand. He cited the roadside memorials that appear more and more frequently, even on back roads that very few people travel, to mark the place where someone died in a crash. This got me thinking about how else meaning can be added to an otherwise meaningless death. I realized that, sometimes, people try to incite change as a reaction to what seems to have been a pointless death. Mothers Against Drunk Driving works very hard to create an awareness about the dangers of driving under the influence, and was started by a group of mothers who had lost children in drunk-driving accidents. Inquests are regularly called to investigate deaths that people feel should never have happened, frequently with the goal of providing recommendations for changes that might prevent similar deaths from occuring. Countless people have attempted to change their lives for the better, as a memorial response to a loved-one's untimely demise.

I am the kind of person who likes to try to understand why things and people behave the way they do. I like figuring out systems, and how they work. Cause and effect, return on investment, these things are of great interest to me. I'm also strongly convinced in the appropriateness and validity of the evolutionary model. Since I perceive the existence of humanity's social nature as an evolutionary adaptation (just like intelligence and language), I am inclined to look at how people and societies behave through an evolutionary lens.

As such, I found myself wondering about the evolutionary impetus that produced the whole "meaningful death" response. Certainly, the basic drive of species survival in a cooperative society easily begets a taboo against unnecessary killing, and conversely encourages people to only give up their lives for the most gain. Really, it's just an extension of the mother-dying-to-protect-her-young behaviour displayed by countless higher animals. The drive to add meaning (which we can interpret as evolutionary value) to a death, however, is a significantly more complicated response, one that requires the species to possess an advanced sense of cause and effect. Specifically, someone must be affected by a meaningless death, recognize it's lack of evolutionary value, and decide to use the emotional energy generated by the event as a catalyst to effect a positive change in society, and therefore the species as a whole.

This is really an awesome concept, to me. An evolutionary adaptation to turn negatives into genuine positives (which at its root is simply making lemonade out of lemons) provides the species with a far greater advantage than any other species without such an adaptation. Partly, this is simply a factor of the intelligence adaptation, learning from our mistakes -- but I've seen dogs do that too. Really, this behaviour is a much more advanced step in our evolution.

Of course, like all evolutionary adaptations that rely on the base advantages of intelligence and society, the drive to add meaning to a meaningless death can be corrupted, or, more appropriately, poorly executed. The most basic example of such a poor execution is patriotic revenge: one of your people killed one of my people, so now I'm going to kill you (even though neither of us are directly involved in the incident). The Hatfield-McCoy feud is a perfect example of such a corruption of the drive.

(Let me be clear, though, that revenge, in general, has a very important place in the checks and balances of evolution and society. People are far less likely to wreak ill on another if they know there will be some sort of retribution, and revenge is the most personal of retributions.)

So, where am I going with this? Well, I guess this is really just a lengthy observation that using a negative incident to generate positive change is a better thing to do than letting the negativity reverberate and linger.

Also, I think there's a kernel in here somewhere that describes the interrelationship between ethics and evolution. Or something like that.

Hg

Geek is the word....

2007-12-10T17:08:00.000-05:00

I surprised some people in a conversation this weekend with a revelation about geeks. After self-identifying as a professional geek (aka computer nerd, programmer, etc.), I went on to prove my true geekiness by spewing little known facts about all sorts of topics, including the origin of the word "geek".

Having decided to write about this in my blog, I dutifully looked up the term "geek" in Wikipedia. (Do I really need to include a link to Wikipedia itself? I hope not, because I'm not going to.) I was surprised when I read the article, not because it proves me wrong -- it doesn't -- but because of how poorly written it is.

After the basic word-bite blurb that accompanies most Wikipedia article, designed to provide only the barest minimum of information for those too stupid, hurried, or uninterested to read more than a couple of sentences, there's a section titled "The definition of geek". The opening paragraph of this section is a lovely, and loving, treatise on the modern context of the word "geek". The passage tries to rationalize the modern geek lifestyle into an ideology of passion. Specifically, the description includes this definition of a geek: "one who is primarily motivated by passion".

Okay, now, let me make this clear. I work with geeks. I've worked with geeks ever since I got into this business. I went to college with a bunch of people who all wanted to be paid to do geeky things. I hung around with geeks in high school. I know geeks.

While a few of the geeks I've known might consider themselves passionate (mostly the ones who read Shakespeare), I'm pretty sure the majority have never had such a thought. Sure, geeks are "into things", usually in a very big way. All geeks, just like every other human being on the planet with a working endocrine system, are capable of being horny, even wild in bed. Plenty of geeks will get drunk, and dance themselves silly (although this is more likely to be at the company Christmas party than at a dance club). But "passionate"? I don't think so. "Passion" is for poetry and romance novels.

(And, quite frankly, I doubt there are many geeks who could even make their way through the first dozen pages of a romance novel, unless it was on a dare, or for a bet, where the payoff was a near-mint first printing of any issue of Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man.)

The thing is, the passage in this Wikipedia article is, itself, a work of geekly beauty. The author is clearly so into the concept of geekiness as a justification for his or her own socially inept existence that what has been crafted is a model of the geek paradigm. Not only does this paragraph describe and define geekiness, it is itself quite geeky. It's multi-layered (like an ogre). It's... meta-geeky.

Incidentally, I think the Wikipedia article on the work "geek" is symptomatic of the larger problem with Wikipedia (which is itself a microcosm of the World Wide Web): there's plenty of information there, but most of it is not directly usable, and most of it is biased. Of course, just about any writing is biased -- I imagine even the -pedia pinnacle, Britannica, has suffered from bias by times -- but still, I hope for better. (Why? No particular reason. Perhaps because I'm an optimist.)

Oh, and the original "geek" meaning with which I shocked the crowd? Back in the day (Which day is that, anyway?), the geek was a member of the circus sideshow. The geek's job was to put on a show, biting the heads off of live animals (most frequently chickens -- I wonder how Mike felt about that). Nice work if you can get it, I supposed, but I'd rather stare at a computer screen all day, thank you very much.

Hg

We're all going to die... some sooner than others

2007-12-06T16:43:00.000-05:00

I just finished a conversation with a co-worker about the Darwin Awards, which included relating a couple of stories from early in the archives, one about a genuine contender, and one about what the awards people call "Honorable Mentions" (or, as I would prefer to call them, "Honourable Mentions"). For those who don't know, a Darwin Award winner is a person who has removed him- or herself from the gene pool through his or her own stupidity. In other words, that person managed to do something stupid enough to die from the results of the action. (The classic example is the guy who died when the Coke machine he was rocking in an attempt to get a free beverage fell forward and crushed him. Get it? Stupidity leads to death.) The D.A. people also designate Honorable Mentions as people who have done spectacularly stupid things, but survived the experience (like the guy who attached a bunch of helium-filled weather balloons to his lawn chair, and got stuck floating for hours over Los Angeles).

So, why awards for stupidity? Sure, we can all laugh at their lack of intelligence (although we should, perhaps, ask why we are laughing), and take note of the actions described, so as not to make the same mistakes ourselves. However, the true reason for the awards is simple: celebrating the fact that these idiots have been removed from the gene pool, thereby limiting the stupidity of future generations. (I suspect, however, that stupidity will be plentiful for millenia to come.)

So, what I really want to talk about is why the Honorable Mentions don't get their own actual awards, instead of just being included peripherally. The way I see it, as long as these near misses lead to lessons learned, both for the self-made victims and for the voyeuristic masses, then the committers of these stupid acts should be fully lauded as well. Seriously, instead of just congratulating the people who have made things better for future generations, shouldn't we equally include those who have made things better for the present mob?

All of this also makes me think about the whole extra feedback loop that intelligence and language adds to the evolutionary process. Between the ability to reason and learn, and the ability to communicate what we have learned with others, humans have effectively short-circuited much of the life and death cycle of evolutionary effects. Sure, we still die (for now), but these two human traits have done more to keep people alive, who otherwise would have died without any chance of procreation, than any other evolutionary adaptation in the history of life on Earth. (I can't really say much for other planets, since we have zero empirical evidence.)

Personally, I am amazed every time I think about the effect of intelligence and language on human evolution. Especially when I walk down the street, and see a young couple walking down the street, hand in hand, whose genes clearly should have been left behind centuries ago, were it not for some other early genius who figured out how to cultivate grains, or set broken bones, or ride a horse. Most especially then.

Hg

I Am My Own Grandpa!

2007-12-05T16:32:00.000-05:00

In her collection of short stories, A Bird In The House, the essential Canadian writer Margaret Laurence provides us with a figure from her childhood, much stronger than herself. Her mother's father, embodied as Grandfather Connor, the stubborn, ursine patriarch of her family, was a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, the grizzly, overbearing, self-made man, in his huge, rank, bearskin coat, is so potent that, for most of the stories in the collection, he is a catalyst for conflict, and an element of life that must be always be considered and worked around. For Laurence's protagonist, Vanessa, who is a reflection of the writer's own younger self, he is both an unavoidable part of the scenery and framework of her life, and part of the very challenges that Vanessa must act against in her struggle to grow and gain understanding of life and family.

As a writer, I have not been so lucky. There have, indeed, been strong figures in my life. Mr. Bill was an understated, self-made man, who brought himself up from lesser beginnings, and provided quiet strength and support at an important time in my early teen-aged development. My mother's long-time boyfriend, with his overgrown beard, waist-bound extra mass, and little tolerance for the excessive exuberance and unusualness of my childhood behaviour, could certainly be bear-like on occassion, at least to me, and he was definitely one of the most frequent figures from my younger years. However, he was still only a person, given to considerable generosity, and a wry sense of humour. Even though I was sometimes afraid of him, he was never a force, merely forceful.

These figures, and others, certainly had some profound effects on my upbringing, and helped to shape who I am today. I do not denigrate them in that respect. Thinking about writing, and using, as Margaret Laurence did, figures from my younger years, I had felt that there was no one that could be such a force. It seemed that I was not afforded any person of such a calibre to provide a solid core for any such stories I might write. Further introspection seemed warranted.

Then it hit me. Rather, I hit myself (by no means literally, although I have been know to deliver self-directed smacks to the forehead on occasion). There was, truly, a great force in the narrative of my life, one who refused to be denied, seemingly direct, predictably unpredictable, and unyielding, yet possessed with (and by) challenging motives and under-explored themes, and demonstrated capacity for growth and development. This singular figure could provide all the antagonism, all the energy and impetus any story could need, yet be as comprehensible in motivation as any person could be to me.

In the story of my life, I am that force.

Hg

To grok, or not to grok... can you dig it?

2007-12-04T13:43:00.001-05:00

Thanks to a link in Lexy's blog, I've discovered the win-win joy of Free Rice. Play a fun word game, generate page views that turn into rice for starving people. I can dig it.

In fact, I can grok it. That's the word that just came up in the Free Rice game, and, being the geek and R.A. Heinlein fan that I am, I knew exactly what it meant. (Well, as much as any non-Martian can.) I found its appearance in the game especially note-worthy, since most of the more difficult words that show up are old or archaic, but grok only dates back to the second half of the 20th Century.

Specifically, the verb "to grok" was coined by one of my all-time favourite authors, Robert Anson Heinlein, in what could be his most influential novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. What evidence do I have that this book was so important? Well, the fact that an entirely invented word from it found regular usage is always a good indicator. (Want another example? How about Joseph Heller's contribution to the English language, "Catch-22"?)

Of course, the most famous and widely-referenced inserter of words into the English lexicon is, unarguably, William Shakespeare. Olde Bill is also considered one of the greatest of English writers, if not one of the greatest of all time, in any language. Coincidence? I'm inclined to draw the conclusion that the ability to add well-used words to the language in which one writes is a significant indicator of the greatness of one's writing ability. Thus, I can say with some confidence that Heinlein was a great writer.

Now, "Stranger in a Strange Land" taught me a lot of things, about human relationships, about the importance of Science Fiction in a literary context, and all that other stuff that great literature provides. Lots of novels, though, have similarly contributed to my personal development and intellectual enhancement. Only this one also taught me a value meta-lesson about the art and process of reading.

I started reading "Stranger in a Strange Land" in my early teens -- I'm going to say thirteen, but it could have been later than that. I got about 100 pages or so into the book, and found I really wasn't hooked. Perhaps the writing style was a little more advanced (read, grown-up) than I was used to, perhaps the introductory themes failed to grab me, or perhaps I just wasn't into it right then. In any case, I ended up putting the book down, and picking up another, which I immediately got into. (What book? No idea? Could have been Beverly Cleary, for all I know.)

However, in the course of that summer, I went with my family on a road trip. I don't remember where we were going, but I do remember sitting in the back seat, finishing whatever book I was on, and looking in my travel bag for more. What did I find, but my copy of "Stranger in a Strange Land", still bookmarked at the place where I'd left off. So, I opened the book, stowed the marker, and began reading.

By the very next page, I was hooked. Michael Valentine, defending himself from a group of bad guys, reached out, gave a little twist, and one of the bad guys just went away. Heinlein described it as rapidly moving away from any and all viewers' perspectives, and then later had Michael further explaining what he did, but I got it right away -- he'd twisted his target on the axes of the four dimensions, at right angles to the three we move around in, and the man no longer moved around in the same three-dimensional space as the rest of us. It was cool.

More importantly, the lesson I learned was this: never give up on a book, just because the beginning isn't grabbing you. Never. Never ever. Any book you've decided is worth trying to read is worth reading to the end. Maybe the book ends up being a waste of time. Write it off as character building, learning from someone else's mistakes, and move on. Because maybe, just maybe, this could be a great book, and ditching it will make you miss out on its greatness.

So that's the rule I follow, for books especially, but also for movies and CDs (or albums, as I still like to call them). Each of these is a major work on the part of the creators, each has the potential for slowness, and each has the potential to move me and change me in ways I can only uncertainly guess.

What I'm saying is, you can't grok the book until you've grokked the whole book.

You grok?

Hg

The Ultimate Selfishness

2007-12-03T15:01:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a bit, recently, about suicide. No, not me personally, just suicide in general. Honest, really, no need for concern, I'd really rather not kill myself (or die any other way, thank you very much). My recent suicidal thoughts (wait, that really didn't come out the right way) came about from a conversation I had a few days ago.

It's pretty obvious that people commit suicide for only a handful of reasons: they're crazy, they're crazy, or they're crazy. That's pretty much it, the way I figure it. Since, from both an evolutionary and a creationist (or should I say design-ist) perspective, the fundamental driving force behind our existence is living, it's hard to see, within this paradigm, how anyone with a properly functioning brain (or capacity for self-awareness, anyway) could possibly commit suicide.

(As an aside, I can already hear people shouting -- or maybe that's just in my o'erweening head -- that there are plenty of reasons why people would willingly give up their lives. Yes, there are, and this is not the post in which these reasons will be discussed. Suffice it to say, for the sake of this argument, that committing suicide is not that same thing as giving up your life for a good reason.)

So, people commit suicide for a number of "reasons". (I use quotes here to indicate that, while the committers may call them "reasons", there's nothing reasonable about any such justification for suicide.) First there's the "poor me" excuses: my life sucks; I can't take it any more; I don't know how I could go on. Then there's the delusional mutterings: Jesus is waiting to meet me on the other side; I'm ready to transcend to a higher plane; I won't really die, this is just a temporary setback in my immortal self; the voices in my head are telling me to jump to my death. I don't think anyone is going to reasonably argue that the latter group is not a big bowl of mixed nuts. The former group, the self-indulgent whiners, well, that's another story.

Surely, some might say, a person's life is his or her own, to do with, or dispose with as he or she pleases. Yes, you could say that, but if you believe that about yourself, then you are selfish.

Selfish? Why is that selfish? Well, first, let's look at the definition of the word (from http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?selfish):

Main Entry: self·ish
Pronunciation\'sel-fish\
Function: adjective
Date: 1640

1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others <a selfish act>
3: being an actively replicating repetitive sequence of nucleic acid that serves no known function <selfish DNA>; also : being genetic material solely concerned with its own replication <selfish genes>
— self·ish·ly adverb
— self·ish·ness noun

Now, ignoring the whole DNA connotation, we can focus in one one particular aspect of the definition of "selfish":

concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's [self] without regard for others

Basically, this means that a person who exhibits selfish behaviour does so only with concern for themselves, without regard for others.

Now, when someone commits suicide based on the "poor me" justifications, they do so without consideration for the effect their actions will have on those around them. Think about it. Would it be okay for someone to spit in her mother's face, simply because she was unable to cope with the state of her life? How about someone setting his brother's car on fire? What about... well, I think anyone can get the idea well enough without my having to come up with more depraved and disturbing examples.

So, would any of that be okay? It's hard to say yes to that without being selfish. The effects of any such anti-social behaviour are strong enough that most of them are prohibited by law (even if such laws are not always enforced). In fact, the only violently anti-social reaction to one's own inability to deal with the state of one's life is suicide -- and that's only because the law does not have provisions for prosecuting dead people.

So, you kill yourself, oh poor you, you couldn't take it anymore... and you leave behind a wake of emotional destruction and turmoil that lasts for decades after you're gone. You don't care; you're not there to deal with the consequences. It's a bit like making a big mess in the kitchen of the house you've just sold, on your last day of occupancy before moving permanently to a third world country. Why should you care how big a mess it is -- you won't be around to have to clean it up.

Your parents spend potentially the rest of their lives mourning their loss and wondering what they did wrong in raising you. Your siblings beat themselves up over whatever inconsequential thing they think might have been the incident in your childhood that pushed you too far, and spend the rest of their lives worrying about their own children, trying to avoid setting off the suicide genes that may be lurking in their gene pool. Your husband or wife, regardless of how well you may have been getting along with him or her, feels guilty, and awful, and rejected, and also has to deal with the funeral arrangements, and consoling any children you've left behind, and trying to make up for their loss by being two parents at the same time, with no chance of reprieve in the form of a weekend visit with the errant parent -- and I won't even go into the financial strain your actions will cause. Friends will have their lives disrupted, and never be sure they couldn't have done something different that might have made a difference.

But you didn't care about any of that, you just cared about your own pain. How is it any different, really, than losing your job, fighting with your significant other, getting splashed by a car as it drives through a giant puddle beside you, and then not stopping to help when the nice old lady from up the block bumps against you as you walk by, trips on the curb, and cracks her forehead open on the sidewalk? Yes, you're in pain, emotional turmoil, your life sucks, the world seems like it's out to get you, but can you really turn your back on that much suffering? Can you just ignore it, and continue on, leave it behind you because you no longer care? You can? Really? Well then, you're selfish.

Hg

A new beginning

2007-11-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I've decided that, despite the fact that no one reads this blog, I'm going to try to post every weekday. Why? Oh, I don't know. I think maybe it's the whole Blog of Dreams thing: if I write it, they will come.

Of course, if I expect a wider audience to read this, then it had better be better than just the odd semi-coherent ramblings of the stereotypical blog. Sure, I'm the first to admit that my thoughts range far too far to stick to a particular theme, but that doesn't mean my posts must be meaningless. I think that, as long as I produce an opinion, and back it up, and write it well, then people may very well want to read it.

Perhaps that's vanity, thinking that my thoughts and the way I express them are inherently interesting. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's got to be something like vanity, since I've had very little external corroboration regarding this particular opinion. Then again, isn't all blogging, maybe even all writing, maybe even all creative ventures, isn't vanity in all such endeavours? At least a little bit?

I suspect so.

Here's hoping that others can appreciate my vanity.

Hg

Comments? Anyone?

2007-11-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I know I don't post all that often, but you know what?!?! People comment on my posts even less! Now clearly, this means that I have few, if any, readers (and it's probably less than few). However, I like to delude myself into thinking that at least one person has read a few entries in this blog. So, like, if there is, could you, ummm, maybe make a comment on something, every once in a while?

Thanks.

365 Words

2007-10-09T12:34:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, I've got another little bit of writing published -- and when I say "little", I mean "little". 365 Tales, one of Alexandra Erin's latest projects, is a place where microfiction is the only way to go -- in 365 words or less. In response to the challenge this site presented, I came up with my own tale of superheroic fiction, consisting of exactly 365 excruciatingly selected words.

Check out Captain Ultra Gets Creative, and tell me what you think.

Oh, and I apologize for my sloppiness in advance. I failed to notice the typo on "dinosaurs" until after the story was published, and there's no way to change a story once it goes live. My bad.

Hg

Project Alphabet: Yucca Mountain

2007-06-25T16:50:00.000-04:00

So, I've had another story published. You can read Project Alphabet: Yucca Mountain in the latest edition of The Whetstone Report. On the main page, go to the archives (via the link in the last sentence of the home page), and select the June 2007 edition. My story starts on page 7 of the PDF. I'll warn you ahead of time, though, that this one is markedly longer than most of my other pieces. Well worth the time, though, I'd say.

Drop me a line here, or on my forum, and let me know what you think. Also, while you're in the PDF, check out the fake magazine cover for "Soldier Of Surrender" on page 6. Depending on your politics, you'll likely get a chuckle or two.

Hg

T-shirts

2007-06-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

So, I've run across a couple T-shirts on the Internet that I would totally buy if I was inclined to buy anything over the Web. The first one is the kind of thing with which I can really identify. The second is just plain... right.

Hg

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal can be funny!

2007-04-23T13:15:00.000-04:00

'Nuff said.

...okay, maybe not quite enough. I had no idea Lex Luthor played Risk. He'll get two extra armies for that, unless the JLA can break through from Siam!

Heheheheheheheh.

Hg

Where's the Beef?

2007-04-10T12:42:00.000-04:00

So, here's something that's been bugging me for a while. For the past month or so, Wendy's restaurant has been running ads on TV in which a Violent Femmes tune features prominently. By prominently, I mean the song is played loudly, as foreground music, and is meant to be heard, presumably for a hipster nostalgia effect, targeting the 30-somethings who grew up on that music. The first ad I saw with this song involved some semi-dorky guy making friends at the office by picking up food at Wendy's and dropping it off at his co-workers' desks. Nice guy, buying his way into people's hearts with baked potatoes, chili, and Frosters.

So, what's the song, exactly? Well, it is, exactly, "Blister In The Sun". Yeah, awesome song, with a distinctive guitar riff at the beginning (which is exactly the part that Wendy's uses in their commercial). So, here's what's bugging me: what marketing genius thought it was a good idea to use a song about, uh, autoeroticism for a company that makes hamburgers?

Incidentally, a Wikipedia article on this song includes the statement that, "According to lead singer Gordon Gano, this song is not about masturbation as popularly thought." It goes on (no pun intended) to provide an explanation for the "big hands" line in the song, as proof that the song isn't about that. However, nothing is mentioned about the more telling lines in the second stanza:

body and beats I stain my sheets I don't even know why
my girlfriend she's at the end she is starting to cry

If I'm feeling feisty, I may just add my own opinion to the Wiki article. But only if I'm feeling feisty.

In any case, it looks like Wendy's can now say that they found the beef. (Did they really think about this? Really? Or were they just caught up in the hook?)

Hg

Lemonade Review

2007-04-05T17:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I got a nice review of Lemonade from Paul McManus, over on the Thousand Faces Forum. I find Paul's reviews and critiques particularly interesting, because he really tries to gain insight into the writer's intent, and into the themes of the story, instead of just providing a fan-boy style, "Oooh! I really liked it when...." kind of response. Except, he does those too, which keeps the review from seeming too stuffy. Reviews from an inciteful, intelligent fan-boy -- how cool is that?

Thanks right back at ya, Paul!

Hg

Big news!

2007-04-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

Wow. A month and a half, huh? That's how long it's been since my last post? Shows how out of touch I've been with this thing, I had totally forgotten about BOXZOR until I looked at my blog today before posting! I had it my head that my last post was about toxic apple cider, and its effects on the human body (namely mine). (Hmmmm, technically that means that I let the blog slide even longer than it actually did, right? Since I didn't remember the Feb. 13 post, that means that I honestly believed that I hadn't posted since Jan. 30, 33% longer than actual fact.)

Well, enough of the obligatorily banal "golly-gee-has-it-been-that-long" spiel. Here's the big news:

PUBLICATION! ME! That's right, I've been published! By a real web-zine! (Simultaneously in print, too!) I'm even gonna get paid! Yeah! Me!

Check out Lemonade in Issue #0 of A Thousand Faces. Then, come back here, and leave me a comment.

BTW - You can buy your own genuine paper copy of A Thousand Faces with my story in it here. I know nobody reading this will, but you can't say I didn't try.

ABTW - Kudos to Frank Byrns for having the gumption to actually do something like this, and do it well, instead just thinking about it.

Hg

BOXZOR

2007-02-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this website definitely counts as one of the cool things on the web. Really.

Hey! Guess what! Your browser doesn't support iframes! Loser! Click on the link above instead! Loser! :P

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, I made BOXZOR. That's right, me. I'm the artistic genius.

Hg

To quote Samuel Clemens

2007-01-30T10:40:00.000-05:00

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Ooops. See, I said that I might forget to post in the afternoon. Needless to say, I'm not dead (yet). (Is it just me, or does that make anyone else think of Monty Python: "Look, isn't there something you could do?") In fact, I felt no ill effects, no gastrointestinal distress of any kind. (Of course, given my cast iron stomach, that's not surprising.) I have considered the idea that, since this tribasic stuff is so biologically reactive, it could easily have reacted with all of the other biological components of the cider (like, um, sugar, y'know, the first ingredient?) and been completely neutralized during the manufacturing process. Perhaps what we can all learn from this is that reading ingredient lists without being fully informed is like reading the Bible.

Hg

(Hey, was that deadpan enough for you?)

Dangerous Cider?

2007-01-23T09:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I just picked up a packet of "Alpine Original Spiced Cider", an "Apple Flavour Drink Mix". It's an instant, just-add-hot-water cider drink. Seeing as how the package says "Natural and Artificial Flavours" on the front, I flipped it over to read the ingredients on the back. I saw "sugar" as the first ingredient, followed by "malic acid", "maltodextrin", and then "calcium phosphate tribasic". Hmmm, I wondered. That's a new one, "calcium phosphate tribasic"....

It sounded strange enough, this tribasic stuff, that I figured I'd Google it and see what came up. The first hit was at this URL: http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/c0490.htm, which is a Material Safety Data Sheet listing for the compound, as sold by Mallinckrodt Baker, Inc. On the page, it lists Product Identification, such as synonyms -- one of which is "Calcium hydroxy apatite", which I've seen in ingredient lists before. It shows the chemical formula as Ca5(OH)(PO4)3, which, if I remember my high school chemistry properly, means 5 Calcium atoms and 3 Phosphate ions joined by a Hydronium ion (who happens to be a third cousin of mine, twice removed, heheheh). Sounds benign enough, and it's certainly one of the smaller molecules.

Then I scroll down the page a little more, and see "Hazards Identification". Immediately below that is this message (with formatting copied from the page):

Emergency Overview

--------------------------

WARNING! DIRECT CONTACT WITH EYES MAY CAUSE SEVERE IRRITATION OR BURNS.
CAUSES IRRITATION TO SKIN, EYES AND RESPIRATORY TRACT. HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED
OR INHALED.

Whoah! Okay, so that's kinda scary. The document goes on to describe in detail how nasty it is, how careful you have to be when handling it and disposing of it, and, most importantly, how it is "practically insoluble in water."

Now, let me get this straight. This is a substance that should not be consumed, as it will cause gastrointestinal irritation (with symptoms including nausea, vomiting and diarrhea). It also does not dissolve in water, which means that there's no way the nastiness can be altered by mixing it with water before consuming it. Yet, there it is, third ingredient in this pleasant-looking beverage. According to the ingredients list, there's more calcium phosphate tribasic then there is "dried apple juice" (which is the next ingredient in the list).

Hmmmmmm.....

This is a quandary. Surely, the manufacturers would not include anything harmful in my pleasant-looking apple cider-like beverage. Could I be missing something?

Huh. Well, I'll let you know this afternoon, after I've enjoyed (or at least tried to enjoy) this dubious concoction.

Hg

BTW - If you don't see a post this afternoon, it probably means I didn't survive. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just forget, or get busy. Who can say?

LMAO

2007-01-12T14:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, check out this ShortPacked comic, and tell me you didn't laugh. Hard.

http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20050309.html

Hg

Dr. Eldritch's Words of Wisdom

2007-01-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

I had to share this quote, from the latest Dr. Eldritch column:

Be Prepared, since you’ll never know which day will be the Worst Day of Your Life

Heheheheh. It may be cynical, but you can't say it's wrong.

Hg

My kind of Supervillain

2007-01-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

Well, thanks to a link on blogger-of-note Steve Holden's blog, I've taken the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz. And I like the results:

Your results:
You are Apocalypse

You believe in survival of the fittest and you believe that you are the fittest.
Apocalypse		72%
Dr. Doom		65%
Mr. Freeze		57%
Magneto		56%
The Joker		55%
Juggernaut		53%
Green Goblin		53%
Dark Phoenix		51%
Lex Luthor		50%
Venom		46%
Kingpin		44%
Poison Ivy		40%
Catwoman		37%
Mystique		37%
Two-Face		37%
Riddler		36%

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

A lot of the bad guys, I just can't get behind. I'm not really into their motivations. Apocalypse, despite the fact that he should have killed himself long ago based on his own beliefs, I can understand. And he looks cool (at least in this picture).

Hg

The Bard was 1337

2006-12-20T10:07:00.000-05:00

So, I just read an article about how reading Shakespeare improves brain functioning. Specifically, it states that Shakespeare's re-purposing of common words in different forms (ie. verbing nouns) causes a positive excitement in certain parts of the brain (measured via EEG), as compared to negative reactions to non-Shakespearean sentences that made no sense at all. In other words, Shakespeare makes you smarter.

Interestingly, this re-assignment of words and their meaning within appropriate context is also a hallmark of what is commonly referred to as "l33tspeak" (pronounced "leet-speak"). I'm not going to go into a history of l33tspeak, but suffice it to say that most teen geeks who know most of their friends only by their online or game names are quite proud of their l33tspeak abilities. And, as I said, similar to Olde Bill, verbing nouns is one of the grammatical foundations of l33tspeak.

Somehow, I think that most l33t h4x0rs would be mortified to discover they were imitating The Bard of Avon. Here's Shakespeare to the h4x0rs:

"But soft, you've been pwnd!"

Hg

More Dialogue

2006-11-30T16:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, a little slip of dialogue pops into my head. Sometimes, I go with it, like just now. To, you know, see what comes up.

"I put my fist through his face."

"You- what?!"

"I put my fist through his face."

"You... uh... right through?"

"Yeah. He had it coming to him."

"Wh-"

"He told me I had problems with my Mom."

"Problems with your-"

"Mom. Yeah. Something about some Greek guy, and my Mom was a ho."

"Greek guy? Block... was he talking about Oedipus?"

"Eat a... yeah, somethin' about eating. Pervert. Sounds more like he wanted my Mom. Probably wants everyone's Mom. Maybe he has a 'problem' with his Mom. Know what I mean?"

"Block, I don't think-"

"Anyway, I didn't have a problem with him sayin' I got a problem. Even with my Mom. But when he calls my Mom a ho, that was it."

"He called your mother a ho? A whore?"

"Yeah, somethin' like that. I dunno, maybe his Mom's a ho."

".... So-"

"So I did the fist-face thing. Messy, but to the point."

"Jeez, Block, remind me never to try to psychoanalyse you."

"Ferret, you need to blow off steam, you go psycho on me all you want. I could use a good spar. Just don't say nothin' about my Mom."

Mike the Headless Chicken

2006-11-21T10:06:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

I kid you not.

Hg

Going to St. Louis

2006-10-30T14:09:00.000-05:00

Frequently, comic books miss out on the smaller interactions between heroes and their sidekicks. (Well, really, who has sidekicks any more? Just Batman, and that's only because it's practically a tradition. Jubilee grew out of being Wolverine's sidekick years ago, and Green Arrow, if I understand correctly, has finally come to the conclusion that his sidekicks all have dangerously short lifespans.) I think that's too bad, because, despite their smallness, they can inject a lot of character into a story. Not that a story should be overwhelmed with the smaller interactions, but they shouldn't be forgotten either. Just like how an illustration can be overwhelmed with detail, it can also seem cartoonishly spare without a few of those brick lines on the wall behind the hero.

Anyway, I just whipped off this dialogue, between a hero and his or her sidekick. I rather enjoy writing dialogue without anything to indicate names, gender, or other bits of situation, leaving the readers to fill in the details as they may. (To be honest, in my own personal super-verse -- well, the main one, anyway -- I only have one pair who could be considered hero/sidekick, although they're more like equal partners. Still, as I was writing this, I could definitely see the two of them in this conversation. Perhaps we'll see this snippet somewhere down the line in a fully formed Slingshot and Stickman story. Perhaps.)

"Wait, we're going where?"

"St. Louis."

"Missouri. Like, the home of the Cardinals? The one on the Mighty Missippi? That St. Louis?"

"Yes."

"Ummm, why? I understand, I mean, the music's good and all, and the Rams play some pretty good football, but still, why St. Louis?"

"We're needed there."

"What? Why? Is The Black Orchid extending her operations? Wait, no, I bet it's Captain Chaos, right? You've got word that he's planning on blowing up the arch? Is that it? That's it isn't it?"

"No."

"Is that no to-"

"And no."

"Oh."

"Pack you toothbrush. We'll be staying for a while."

"What? How long?"

"Six months. A year. However long it takes."

"How long it takes? Takes to do what?"

"St. Louis just got ranked as the most dangerous city in the U.S. to live in. And they just won the World Series. This-"

"World Series -- now there's a misnomer. With the Jays not making it out of the regular season, it's a one-country tournament. Lots of other countries play baseball. Japan, for example.... I just interrupted you, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Sorry. What were you saying? St. Louis, dangerous city, took the Pennant..."

"Yes. This strikes me as wrong."

"Wrong? We're gonna go steal their World Series title? I thought they played well enough. Doesn't that make us the criminals? How would we even do that?"

"A city like that shouldn't be a dangerous place to live. No city should, but especially not one like St. Louis. We're going to go change that."

"Ah, I see. Hence the need to pack well."

"Hence."

"Cool. But don't think I'll be going to any Blues games with you, even if they play a good team. I can't stand watching bad hockey."

Functional Illiteracy

2006-10-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

Wow. Okay, so it would appear that people who do dumb things also have only the foggiest grasp of the English language. The Sympatico Site of the Day was this:

http://www.dumbmoments.com/

First of all, a couple of things were truly stupid, but most were just stupidly lame. However, I don't suggest you read the first page's worth of stories to see which of them are worth reading. Instead, read them as a study in fractured grammar. If this is how the average person comes out of High School in the English-speaking world, then maybe the Chinese really should take over the planet. Regardless, I can definitely see why so many American companies are outsourcing their Technical Support Services to India!

Gah! It gives me the shivers just thinking about how bad this is. What the heck is the world coming too? And hey, does this rant make me look old?

Hg

Good Quotes.txt

2006-10-13T15:59:00.000-04:00

So, I came across a file today, called "Good Quotes.txt". The timestamp on the file shows that I haven't modified it in a year and a half. That probably explains why I only vaguely remember compiling it in the first place. However, the quotes are definitely worth compiling, so I've recompiled them here for you:

Never memorize anything you can look up in a book.
- Albert Einstein

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

We are all primary numbers, divisible only by ourselves.
- Jean Guitton

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
- Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

Talking about music is like talking about sex. Can you describe it? Are you supposed to?
- Bruce Springsteen

Looking at them, I'm sure they must say a lot about my personality, my ethos, and my inner self (as well as my sense of humour). I'm not sure which is my favourite. Are there any that stand out for you? Let me know.

Hg

So much for the world's longest undefended border

2006-09-21T16:18:00.000-04:00

When I was in grade school, one of the things I was most proud to learn was that the Canada/US border was "the longest undefended border in the world." I put this in quotes because I remember it quite distinctly. It wasn't just one teacher. Every teacher who discussed the subject used the same phrase: "the longest undefended border in the world." Let's say it again, because it's so important to me...

"The longest undefended border in the world."

I've always felt that this wide-open border, thousands of kilometres long, was a symbol of hope, and trust, and honesty, and all the good things in our world. Sure, there will always be people who try to abuse the system, but generally, the more good we try to make, the more freedom we foster, the better things, and people, will be.

Well, it's not going to be like that any more. Today, the U.S. Homeland Security Department announced they will be spending billions of dollars to build electronic surveillance towers along both the Southern and Northern borders. In other words, Mexico and Canada. Sure, people might say that it's just for watching, not defending. Of course, people will split hairs. It's hard to split hairs over this statement, though, from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff:

"What we are looking to build is a 21st century virtual fence."

That's right, a fence (as in keep-people-out, keep-people-in). That's pretty cut-and-dried. When the head guy describes it as a fence, you can't argue with that. (Well, okay, you can, but not very well, and you'll look stupid trying.)

This bums me out. Big time. What's next, no more CFL?

Hg

Saddam loves Canadian comedy?

2006-09-12T12:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, so in this CNN.com article, Saddam Hussein (Everyone knows who that is, right?) is quoted as saying this to the "agents of Iran and Zionism" he felt were assembled in the courtoom:

"We will crush your heads!"

Apparently, Saddam Hussein was a huge fan of Mr. Tyzik, from The Kids In The Hall. In fact, they even kinda look the same...

Okay, well, except for maybe the glasses....

Hg

To snog, or not to snog...

2006-09-06T08:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I used this word, "snog", in my last post, as an awkwardly pretty bit of alliteration. I'd thought I'd made the word up, but as it turns out, those pesky, frisky Brits already beat me to it. From the Urban Dictionary, we get this:

1. verb; to interface passionately with another being, creating a field of physical obsession and focused arousal +centered+ on the lips, mouth and tongue.

2. verb; to play tonsil hockey

As a writer, I like the first definition -- use of plus signs around the word 'centered' especially feels inspired by e e cummings and the concrete poetry movement. As a Canuck, I can definitely identify with the second. :P

Incidentally, if you follow the link above to the definition page, I cannot be held responsible for the silly pictures associated with the definition.

Hg

Snog a snippet

2006-08-28T18:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, for no particular reason, I've decided to put up a chunk of writing that I haven't touched in a while, simply for my readers' enjoyment. So kick back and snog a snippet (the first 1956 words, actually) of Army of Four....

Oh yeah, and feel free to let me know what you think.

There were four of us gathered on the ridge above the village. We stood, a line of black menace, looking down at our target: the large hall centred in a cluster of one-story dwellings and shacks. The sun had just given up the day, falling, wounded, behind the edge of the Great Western Forest, having bled the last of its reddish light across the horizon. A cool twilight breeze blew through my mud-brown hair as I stole glances at the others standing beside me.

To my left was a monstrous beast with coal-black fur covering its feline body, and a dull red fire glowing from the deep-set eyes on either side of its lizard-like head. It swished its long alligator tail, covered in matte black scales, and flexed its furry toes, extending long, glistening claws from all four paws. It's chest heaved slowly in anticipation, and it purred dangerously, squatting beside me, shoulder level with mine.

To my immediate right was the giant, fully twice my height, and more than twice my girth. He was draped in dark skins and furs crusted with old, black blood from previous battles and meals. Pushing out through his bald crown was a short, wide horn -- it was misshapen and nubbly, looking more like a wart, except for the sharp point, which curved slightly downward, so that it aimed along the same line as the end of the giant's bulbous nose. The giant was nibbling absently on bits of flesh stuck to the spikes on his huge club. Each spike was as long as a dagger, and the club itself was fully my height when stood on end, and just as heavy.

Beyond the giant, at the end of the line stood the necromancer. He was shorter than I, but with a bloated body covered in a rich, sleeveless robe. His bare arms were pasty, and equally bloated, but did not hang limply at his sides. Instead, the death mage carried himself with a strength and assurance born from the arrogance of his unearthly power. His face was unknowable, because his entire head was obscured by a sheath of heavy smoke, which streamed off into the darkened sky on the same winds that tugged at my hair. He was unarmed, but for an obsidian dagger worn on the belt of woven human hair that cinched his robe around his corpulent girth.

As for me, I was just a guy with a sword. No armour girdled me to slow my stride. No shield protected me, nor did one get in the way of my swinging blade, nor block my opponents from view. Simple leather sandles were all I needed on my feet, and a rough cotton shirt and pants, dyed with squid ink to the colour of shadows, were all that adorned me. I am strong, though not as strong as the giant, and I am fast, but not as fast as the sinister beast. I know my way around magic, but have not given up my soul for the measure of power the dark mage enjoyed. The balance of my abilities made me more than a match for any one of them.

We waited for our signal, no words spoken between us. The beast, while intelligent, had not the tongue for speech, more for licking the marrow from the cracked bones of its prey. The giant was not given to words either, more of a manner of guttural noises that passed for a giant's language. It took a patient soul indeed to carry on a conversation of any measure with one of those brutes. The necromancer might have spoken with me, and in fact had not ceased his bragging on the first portion of our travel here, but gave up when he realized I was articulate, but not inclined to talk in more than grunts myself to one so full of himself.

One of the locals had been paid a trifling in coin to lure our quarry and the rest of his family to the hall that evening. We had only to wait for a spray of sparks from the chimney, from the traitor throwing a handful of the necromancer's special dust onto the flames in the hearth. The giant started to lick one of the spikes on his club. The beast hissed gently, impatient for action, but infinitely patient in the manner of the stealthy predator on the hunt. I could not see the necromancer for the giant's girth, but I could hear his occasional sigh as he dreamed of more power through the harvesting of others' souls.

The wait dragged on. The beast settled down onto its belly, all four paws underneath, still ready to spring when action was needed. The giant, despite the urgings of the mage beside him, sat down with a huff. The ground gave a good hand's depth beneath him. Then the mage drew a cloth bag from a pocket in his robe, and started stuffing handfuls of sweetmeats into his veil of smoke. The smoke did nothing to hide the smacking sounds as he chewed. For a while after, I continued to stare through the darkness towards the village, looking for traces of light slipping around the shuttered edges of the great hall's windows, and keeping watch for the sign of sparks. After a while, I hissed at the necromancer to stop stuffing his corpulent girth and resume his vigil of the hall. Taking a few steps back from the others, I drew my sword, swinging it in familiar exercise as I considered the situation.

A glance at the stars, when the clouds deigned reveal them, told me that far too much time had passed. There were only two reasonable causes. The first was that our man in the village could have been delayed in his betrayal of our victim, or his treachery detected and prevented. The other involved another betrayal, of our group instead of his. He had either warned our victim and his family, or he had simply fled the village with his small bag of blood coins, our victim none the wiser.

Either way, action was now required. I considered our options, and then spoke with the necromancer. "We can cancel our attack. This would be cancelling our contract with the Dark Master. We would also have to deal with the beast."

"The beast I can deal with. The Dark Master is a different challenge, one I would be loathe to attempt." The ghostly form of a grimace was visible through the smoke.

"And I as well. We can hunt down the toady we paid good gold to; he has likely run off. Between you and the beast, there should be little problem with tracking the wretch."

Now the smoke wavered as the mage's bulk trembled from his chuckling. "Wretched he will be, indeed, once we catch him. But such endeavours can be accomplished with almost as much pleasure further on. If we are not abandoning our contract, then we must go into the village."

It was my turn to grimace. "Indeed, I am of the same opinion. Yet we have not enough information to choose a final course. Some reconaissance is order, I believe."

"Knowledge is power, swordsman."

"True words, mage. I and the beast may go amongst the dwellings with little worry for alarm. You must have magic that can glean other information than our earthly senses detect. As for him..." I indicated the giant, now snoring gently, slumped with his horn between his knees, with a dismissive wave. "He is best left as is, for the time being. Subtlety is not his strength."

"And his strength is not subtle. I shall stand with him, in case he should wake. I can do my magic from here on the hill as well as anywhere else. I shall use the giant's bulk as a screen for any light or sound my spells may cast."

The beast had been crouched, listening, throughout our conversation. It knew the options, and knew its master wanted only one thing: success or death. I drew my sword, and held it away from the beast. Then I approached, and whispered in its reptilian ear, "Let us see what we can." The beast hissed, tongue flicking out to taste the air, and rose.

Long strides bore me down the hill, as the beast loped ahead to skirt the village and enter from near the road. On the outskirts, I crouched behind a hedge, and listened. I heard nothing, and the windows of the nearest houses were all shuttered, so I advanced, sniffing. My sense of smell was nothing like the beast's, or even the giant's, but all the same, I hoped to detect the spoor of any mongrel cur or watchdog that might alert the villagers to my presence. The beast could be facing a similar problem, but more likely it would find and eat any such animal before it could betray its presence.

Dwellings on the edge of the village were little more than shacks, and I slipped quietly through the shadows from one to the next. At each window, shuttered against the night, I listened for a moment, but detected nothing more than the sounds of slumber. Most of the villagers would work hard to meet the needs of their families, and an early sleep, early rise rhythm meant they would be in the deepest depths of their hard-earned rest at this time of the night.

Unfortunately, a dog's sleep is much lighter than its master's. I had just stepped away from the wall of one dwelling, and found myself in a pool of moonlight. The dwelling's mongrel chose that moment to awaken with a sound that was half yelp, half bark, and it was but a moment's pause before I heard its paws clatter against the shutters. Fortunately for me, the shutters were firmly latched, giving me time to hie into the shadows behind a woodpile under cover of the dog's strident alarm.

My sword still drawn, I adjusted my chrouch in the shadows to better prepare myself for a fight. I heard the animal's master stumble through the darkness inside his home, hissing at the dog to stifle itself.

"Rivva, Rivva, hush! Shush! What's out there, girl?"

From my haven behind the woodpile, I no longer had a view of the dwelling's window. The dog barked another few times, then settled with a whimper. I heard the latch unhooked, and the clatter as the shutters slapped open against the walls. I cringed. If there was any more noise, I was bound to bring the entire village out into the streets. Not that I was concerned for my escape -- I felt more than confident pitting my skills against even a mob of farmers -- but my hopes for the stealthy acquisition of information would be lost.

I considered slipping under the window and surprising the man with a sword in his throat, but the chances of a clean kill over a final cry of anguish were not great enough for my liking. Instead, I waited, knowing that if more villagers awoke and came to investigate, I could still hope to escape undetected, and at the same time give the Dark Master's beast a distraction away from its presence.

Luck favoured me. A few hearbeats later, I heard the shutters clatter shut. The dog gave a final whine, and I strained to detect her master's footsteps away from the window. Hearing nothing more, I counted three dozens in my head before giving up my concealment behind the woodpile.

Note: The above (and all other writing on this blog) is copyright 2006 Hydargentium, all rights reserved.

Girl Trouble

2006-08-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

So, I just read a story by an e-friend of mine, who goes by the e-name of RaZrEsHaT. (I kid you not.) He has a real name, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out what it is. Anyway, I read this story, and I genuinely am glad I got to read it, so I've decided to share it with all of the patrons of this little blog. (And, as we all know, there are so many of you out there....)

So, without further ado, I present Girl Trouble. If you like it, if you hate it, if you're somewhere in between, I've started a thread on RaZrEsHaT's accompanying forum for feedback on the story, which, at the time of this writing, contains only one post -- my own thoughts on Girl Trouble.

Enjoy. I did.

Hg

Welcome to Hydrargentium's: We Blog!

2006-08-16T10:51:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog. Waifsplace is in limbo for the foreseeable future, so I've decided to go with blogspot. To inaugurate this new blog, I have presented above an Alien Loves Predator-inspired bit of artwork. The image itself came from fan art in the forum, and the captions were inspired by a suggestion that it reminded forum members of Brokeback Mountain. Get it now? Good.

Anyway, welcome aboard the new ride.