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Fear

9/25/2024

I’m not writing. I give advice to people who ask me (had an ex-player from way, way back consult with me about his writing) about how to write and I say, “write every day” even though I myself do not. I can make all kinds of excuses–in fact I do–but how can I call myself a writer if I don’t actually write? Simple. I can’t.

I’ve been thinking about how fearful I am. See, my current book idea is what I’d consider a Good One. I love the Beltrunner series (or “saga,” as my publisher insists on calling it) but I wouldn’t say it’s idea-based. The idea is not particularly original. But the one I’ve been working on seems like forever is an IDEA. And those aren’t three-to-a-penny. So then, you’d think, I should be on fire writing this.

I think I’m afraid. Afraid of two things, really. First, that I won’t be able to execute the idea perfectly. As long as the idea remains in my mind unchained to actual words, it can remain unblemished. But when I go to write it, I might dirty it. So I think part it it’s that. But I think–hell, I KNOW–that the main fear is that I’ll write this good idea, and I’ll write it well, and it will go nowhere. No one will want it, no one will pick it up. I’ll have had my best shot and I came up short. With Betlrunner, I’ve got a secure publisher–the fine folks at EDGE. But as pleasant as they are, and as good as they’ve been to me, they’re still small press. If I want to truly make this writing thing work, I need to break into the big markets. And I’m scared that this idea, this Enclave 454 idea (Glenn’s title) simply won’t be good enough. And then what? I can’t pretend that I submitted a half-baked bad book. I’ll have done my best and my best won’t be enough. That’s what I am scared of. It’s like a weird perversion of that tired Gretzky quote–”you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Sure, but until I’ve taken that shot, I haven’t missed, right, Wayne?

So I use the excuse that I’m tired, or it’s late, or I have other things to do (which are all true, I suppose) to keep me from writing. But the simple truth is that I’m terrified.

Maybe I should try and use that. Writing from a position of terror and uncertainty might help me get into Toska’s mind. Because honestly–I haven’t “got” her yet. I have her backstory and history and stuff, but I don’t truly have her down. Is there such a thing as Method Writing?

I can also use simple shame on myself. Shame is a powerful motivator. I feel ashamed that I espouse these belching platitudes about how a writer works, but then I don’t actually do it.

Jesus, this was a rough blog post. Be seeing you.

Political Nihilism

7/13/2024

I am writing this on the day Donald Trump was shot during one of his rallies. Information is still sketchy and uncertain, but it looks like an assassination attempt. Tragically, reports are coming in about one attendee killed by presumably a stray bullet, with two others wounded.

I want to be on record saying this is awful. I think my views on Donald Trump are pretty clear, but in case they aren’t, I find him to be as close to an existential threat to America as any presidential candidate has ever been. I disagree in the strongest possible terms to his policies, his character, and his outlook on the country. But this is a man who should be voted down, not gunned down. As much as I don’t want to see him elected, I do not want to see him hurt or killed.

So this assassination attempt is a terrible, terrible thing. In every way I repudiate this action. I don’t think I can be any clearer on this.

I’m not going to write a “however,” essay, if that’s what you think is coming. There can be no justification for any “Trump should have been shot at, but,” sentence. What I am going to do is speculate on the fallout of this.

I hope I am wrong, but I wonder if today was the day Trump got elected again.

I can’t help but believe that those who approve of Donald Trump (his followers, media biased in his favor, etc.) will use this relentlessly as fodder for his campaign. Here’s what I think will happen.

Right-sided Media will, to varying degrees, cover this not just as a failed assassination attempt but as evidence of Trump’s vigor and vitality. They’ll praise how he rose from the wound and pumped his fist defiantly in the air. How he went back to the campaign trail. In some cases, there will be talk of how he got shot in the head (not quite–yes, the ear is on the head, but anyone shot in the fleshy part of the ear didn’t really get shot in the head) and shrugged it off. He’s the Man Who Can’t be Killed. He is so tough, he deflects bullets. There will be T-shirts of him rising, ear bloodied, defiantly screaming into the sky. He’ll be talked about as God’s special anointed, how God was looking out for Trump and kept him safe. In short, one of the things that will happen is this near-miss will be seen not as evidence of how close he came to death, but of how strong and godlike he is to rise above a head shot.

The second thing right sided media will do is paint this as a “hit” ordered by Joe Biden. This will be done in various ways–some will outright claim it, saying Joe Biden, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity (recall the absurd argument made by Trump’s own legal team that a president might be able to order the assassination of a rival and claim it as an “official act”) ordered a Deep State sharpshooter to kill his opponent. And even then Joe screwed it up. It will be seen as evidence of both Biden’s evil and of his incompetence. Mind you, not all media will say this overtly. Some of the more “responsible” right-sided media will merely “ask the question” or couch their coverage in ways to gently suggest this. “We don’t know yet what involvement, if any, the Biden administration had in this attack” sort of thing. No doubt the shooter will be identified as a left-wing nutjob, which may indeed be the case. But even if he or she isn’t, that won’t matter. In fact, nothing factual will matter about this.

And that’s the point of this essay.

The optics and preliminary information about the incident will become as fact. Spin will become as fact. Right side media–and the Trump team itself–will paint this as evidence of Trump’s demigod status and as evidence of the left-wing trying to silence him. He will speak at the convention about how the left is trying to shut him down, using the law, and now using guns. He’ll claim he took a bullet for all of us. It won’t matter if any of that is true. It will become true.

I really don’t like being this way. I don’t like having this nihilism about the state of political discourse in my country. But I can’t help it. I can’t help knowing what I know. Nothing that’s actually true matters. Only what people want to be true. And once a person has committed to the truth as they want it–as they need it to be, there can be no shaking it.

Trump is a god. Joe Biden tried to kill him. Those will become as true as any empirical fact about the universe. And if somewhere down the line, we discover something about the incident that casts doubt on either of those two truths, it won’t matter. Nothing will matter.

Again, I need to return to my original point. The assassination attempt (for it is becoming clearer and clearer that this is what happened–any lunatic left-wing fantasy about a “false flag” or “setup” is very likely as insane as those who would proclaim Trump to be a demigod) was a tragic and awful moment in American history, and it would appear only chance kept this from becoming an even more tragic moment. Donald Trump is, in my view, bad for America. But in no way does that justify what happened to him. It’s a stain on our country, and it should be and is being condemned by both sides of the political spectrum.

We shall see how this plays out.

Be seeing you!

The Careful Progressivism of Popular Science Fiction - Part I

6/7/2024

Since its origins, science fiction has defied easy categorization. Even the notion of “the origin” of science fiction is by no means settled. Some might say science fiction truly began with Hugo Gernsback (from whom the science fiction literary award “the Hugo” is named) when he coined the term “scientifiction” in 1916. Others, like Lester Del Rey, go back a bit further to around 2000 BCE with the epic of Gilgamesh.
Whenever this genre truly started, it has been a boundary-pushing one. All fiction does at some level concern itself with not what is but what could be: science fiction, however, takes this notion and extrapolates it much further. Because of this, much science-fiction tends towards progressivism. The genre is simply too expansive to reduce it to merely a “left wing” phenomenon–there are many, many examples of more conservative texts that seek to reinforce more traditional and time-honored (or perhaps time-worn) values and ideologies. This essay will not attempt to argue that science fiction is ultimately this thing or that thing–rather, I’ll be looking at what I am going to call the careful progressivism of popular science fiction.
Like any literary genre that has reached popular acclaim, science fiction has a dizzying array of texts, films, and franchises ranging from the obscure to the culturally embedded. “May the Force be with you” and “Beam me up” have become common phrases in English parlance, and no matter where one stands on the continuum of science fiction geekdom, almost everyone in America knows who Darth Vader is or who Mr. Spock is. So let’s look at the latter example and how it has at once advanced progressive ideas while at the same time reinforced more conservative ones.
The Star Trek universe began humbly enough–in February of 1965, American television audiences saw for the first time the Starship Enterprise and met its intrepid crew, though only one of the original characters, the aforementioned Mr. Spock, would continue on to the second pilot.
Mr. Spock, the vaguely devilish alien-human hybrid, would immediately cause a clash with the network, as would the ship’s second-in-command, a female officer called simply “Number One.” (The actress playing Number One, Majel Barrett, was later recast as Nurse Chapel when the show was retooled and picked up) Here we have perhaps the first example of the careful progressivism of the show: the network passed on the pilot but made the unusual move of requesting a second pilot, though they demanded some changes. One of them involved both the Spock character and Number One. The network balked at having two controversial characters–Mr. Spock’s alien appearance and Number One’s, well, womanhood. They did not like Spock’s devilish look, nor did they like the idea of a woman being second in command. They essentially told the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, he had to choose between them. He chose Spock, and the notion of a strong woman, second in command on the starship Enterprise in the mid 1960’s, died.
Once the show was picked up and found its stride, Roddenberry made several casting choices that, on the surface, appeared to have been very progressive. George Takei was cast as helmsman Sulu, and the character was not played as a stereotypical Japanese man–Sulu was not an inscrutable Asian caricature who espoused homespun Confucian wisdom, nor did he speak with an affected Japanese accent. In fact, in one memorable scene, a foppish alien named Trelane bows to Sulu and calls him “honorable sir.” Sulu is clearly irritated by this and mutters sotto voce “is he kidding?” In another episoide, when Sulu goes mad due to some spaceborne poisoning, he charges around the ship shirtless wielding an epee while he’s pretending to be a musketeer. So, again, on the surface, this is a progressive bit of casting in the mid-1960’s, especially considering World War II had ended only twenty years ago and the U.S. was involved in Asiatic conflicts.
Before we congratulate Star Trek too much on how well it crafted the character of Sulu, however, bear in mind that in many hand-to-hand combat scenes involving the character he uses what I can only guess is karate or some other Asian martial arts style. So while the show took pains to scrub any conventional stereotypes from Sulu’s character, they felt that they had to have some nod to his Japanese background and make him karate-chop bad guys. This is what I mean by careful progressivism.
In another bold casting move, in the second season the show added the young navigator Pavel Chekov to the crew, played by Walter Koening. Chekov was added mainly because of the increasing popularity of young rock stars like the Beatles or the Monkees. Koening was even given a wig to make him look even more like Davy Jones, though this was abandoned later. The boldness of the move was not casting a young person on the show–rather, the officer was quite distinctly Russian in accent and national pride. Creating a Russian officer for the Enterprise in 1967, a mere five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was indeed a bold move. Again, though, this seemingly progressive posture was undermined by the characterization of Chekov as an almost comically prideful Russian whose revisionist history–which invariably favored Russia–was the butt of many jokes on the show.
One cannot speak of progressive casting on Star Trek without mentioning the chief communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols. Nichols was part of the cast from the beginning of the show proper, and her role was not insignificant. Her character’s African descent was frequently mentioned, most notably her fluency with Swahili. After a year on the show, Nichols was considering quitting the show after the first season in the late 1960’s, but was told someone wanted to meet her, claiming to be her biggest fan. That person convinced her to stay on the show, claiming she was a vital role model for all Black Americans.
That person was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whoopi Goldberg, who would join the Star Trek franchise as the supporting character Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, remembers watching the original series and exclaiming to her mother, “I just saw a black woman on television and she ain’t no maid!”
In 2012, Nichols met with President Barack Obama in the White House’s Oval Office. He admitted not only was he a “trekkie” but that he had had a crush on her when he was younger.
Uhura, as much as any other supporting character, made important plot and character contributions to the show, but the most impactful moment for Uhura and Nichols was the famous “kiss.” In the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” broadcast on November 22, 1968, Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, gives a passionate, fully-on-the-lips kiss to Uhura, in glorious extreme close-up with swelling music. The network originally had planned to shoot both a “kiss” and “non-kiss” version to see which one it preferred, but both Nichols and Shatner purposefully flubbed the “non-kiss” shots to force the network to use the kiss.
The thing is–despite all this groundbreaking stuff–according to the plot, both Kirk and Uhura were being controlled by cruel telekenetic humanoids who “forced” them to kiss. In order to get this black-and-white kiss on the air, the show had to make it something that Kirk would never, ever do under ordinary conditions. Once again, careful progressivism.
To be continued…

Be seeing you!

Graduation 2024

5/28/2024

We don’t do speeches from faculty at graduation at my high school–the common approach has been to rush the ceremony along, get ‘em in, get ‘em out quickly. We actually pride ourselves on how rapidly we can finish the ceremony. When we can do it under an hour, we count it as a success.

So I’ve crafted one in my head–sort of a fantasy where I’m sitting in the faculty section listening along with the other teachers, and the principal says something like, “maybe we should do a speech from the teachers. Anyone interested?” And I can do that thing where you’re the hero who answers the call, right? So I stand up and shout to thunderous applause, “I’m ready!” Here’s the speech I’d give.

“Graduates, as I look out onto your eager young faces, I can only think one thought: those are some stupid-looking hats you’ve got on.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? This flat topped piece of cardboard covered in black felt? Looks ridiculous. When else do you wear this except at graduation?

Come to think of it, most of your momentous events in life are commemorated with a silly looking hat. You’re born–you get a knitted cap. You look like a dockworker. First birthday? You wear a conical paper hat with an elastic string around your chin. Bar Mitzvah? Very small, badly fitting flat cap. Promotion to drum major? Huge fuzzy hat that makes you look like a Q-Tip. Finish Cordon Bleu school? Giant puffy white hat. Just been named Pope? Giant tapered hat that makes you look like a chess piece. That hat’s actually called a “miter,” did you know that? Just as the hats you’re wearing now are called “mortar boards.” They’re called that because they resemble, well, mortar boards. See, bricklayers–folks who build things out of bricks–use these flat square surfaces to hold mortar. That’s the grey stuff that you see between the bricks. It’s the substance that holds the bricks in place and cements them together to make them strong. They use a trowel–like a hand shovel–to get some mortar from their boards and just kind of slather it where the brick is going to go.

Huh. Mortar boards. Maybe…there’s something to that. We like to talk about education being your future and stuff like that, but education isn’t your future. Oh, it’s part of your future, of course, but it’s not your actual future. You’re going to build your life in the years to come, using bricks made of jobs, relationships, events, and sometimes even actual bricks. But how will you put it all together? With the education you got here and will continue with. You learned a lot here, but mainly what we hoped you learn was how to put it all together–how to assemble the pieces of your life into whatever you want it to be.

Use the mortar of education to build yourself, to add to your life brick by brick. Use the mortar to withstand the bad times that come to you, to keep what you’ve built from crumbing when it faces the wind of adversity. Use the mortar to forge strong relationships with others–a spouse, co-workers, friends, family.

Maybe those stupid mortarboards really are the perfect hat for the occasion. So when in a few moments you toss them into the sky, realize that you’re not just celebrating what you’ve done–you’re celebrating what is yet to come. A person’s reach should exceed their grasp, or what’s a heaven for? The sky’s the limit, everyone!

Be seeing you!

Family

4/30/2024

No matter how much we fight it, we still look at people as “in” or “out.” We have a lot of words for it–colleague, family, kith and kin–but ultimately, we consider some folk to be “our” folk and others to be, well, “others.”

Some of us limit this designation to “blood,” as in those who share genetic material, but of course this is problematic. Where does one draw the line? Where does one decide “that person is too far distant to be blood related.” Others decide that living arrangement makes a family. Those who live with us are our family, blood related or not.

Then there are those families that are a result of shared experiences or values. The guy on your football team is your “family.” Or the woman who loves the Dodgers as much as you do is your family. You could even consider those in the same religion as family.

Still others think of family as “those we spend time with.” In this case, co-workers might be family. Maybe even more so than those with whom you live, depending on your situation.
I’ve come to a place where I tend to think of people with whom I have a shared experience as family, especially if that shared experience is somewhat difficult or unusual. I oncer made an impromptu speech after a football game in which I referenced that popular saying, “blood is thicker than water.” See, to my way of thinking, most folk get that saying wrong. I see that as meaning “the blood of the covenant is more binding than the water of the womb.” Or, to be more prosaic, “those who have shared a difficult experience–who have shed blood together–are closer than those people who merely share the same genetics.”

So that’s where I am. I consider my “conventional” family members family (my wife, daughter, son, brother, sister-in-law, father, and so on) but I also consider my fellow teachers to be family. I consider coaches to be family. I consider umpires to be family. And I consider writers to be family.

I just came from a very pleasant conversation with a lovely man at my school who is my brother by profession twice over: he’s a teacher and a writer. I suppose, if some people have “brothers-in-law” I have “brothers-in-job” and “sisters-in-job.”

I want to clarify something here: shared experience does not necessarily mean shared perspective. This lovely man to whom I refer has a very, very different perspective than I do on quite a few things. In many ways, our lives are rather different: we seem to only share the same job.

Encountering folks who have a different life than you is supremely important (and if you can’t actually meet them for real, read about them. It’s almost as good). Broadening one’s horizons broadens what one thinks of as family.

When you get right down to it, if you believe “family” means “those who share genetic material” then all human beings are family with all other human beings. Sounds good, except that there are a few humans I do not care to call family. Adolph Hitler, for example.

So no, I can’t go with the “genetic” definition. I suppose I should add “those who share the same core values, no matter how arrived at.” When I say “core value,” I mean very basic ones. Compassion, for instance. If someone is compassionate because they find it warms their heart to be so, that person is my family. If someone is compassionate because their religion tells them to be so, that person is also my family. To a great degree, I care not how a person arrives at the value of compassion. Or kindness, or charity, or integrity, or values of those stripes.

I am fortunate indeed to have a family. My wife, daughter and son are my triune lights in the darkness of this world. My brother is a beacon of bravery, integrity and honor. My father is a pillar of wisdom and an exemplar of a life lived in service. My mother…I’ve written about her previously, and can’t do it again just now.

But my family is also the lovely man I spoke to today. And it’s the other umpires in my unit. And it’s my high school friends with whom I remain in contact even today. And it’s anyone who teaches or marshals the forces of decency against venal corruption.

I’ve got a pretty awesome family.

Be seeing you!

Mom

4/19/2024

Safe.

I was always safe with her. In the home she made, the food she made, the life she made for me. Gave me everything I needed, including space to become me. And including scarcity. Sometimes people need scarcity. I could come home and be safe, and I was pushed to go outside. I knew she loved me no matter what, and she told me without her voice I needed to show effort.

Safe doesn’t mean unchallenged. In fact, I’d say safe means a place where you can accept challenges freely, knowing that what you truly need in life is provided and will be provided. Food, clothing, shelter, health, love–these things were free and as abundant. We didn’t live in a big house but we had a huge home. We didn’t eat like kings but had all we needed. We didn’t have expensive clothes but they were clean and fresh and somehow always laundered. I was safe in the best way possible–I knew I could leap into things and survive the fall if I missed the opposite ledge, because my mother had made me able. And she’d be there to patch me up, then put her hand gently but firmly on my back and say, “now, try again, Son.”

I’m sorry for you, Reader, because you didn’t have my mom.

Knowing what I know now about parenting, I know that when my mensch of a brother and I were playing outside–usually something moderately to extremely dangerous (it usually worked out that Jeff was the test pilot and I was the engineer designing the vehicle: he was the Alan Shepherd to my Werner von Braun) my mother was either watching or preparing the Band-Aids for when we almost inevitably needed them after a failed test run of the wagon that really should have worked. She made the home a place we could come to, regroup, refuel, and then bang outside again to try a new trajectory.

I was a reader when I was young–I still am. Some of you are also readers: not people who read, but a reader. People who can walk and read simultaneously. People who leave books around the house so that they are never more than a few steps away from a story. When I was young, I would read after my bedtime, breathlessly turning the pages of Ivanhoe to see how Rebecca was going to escape Front de Boeuf’s castle. My parents (sometimes Dad, sometimes Mom) would knock on the door and say, “lights out, time for bed.” And I would turn off the light only to grab a flashlight and read under the covers. As a kid, I thought this was impenetrable. No one would suspect I was still awake, reading!

Of course Mom knew. I always wondered if Mom and Dad talked about it, had little debates if they were going to stop me again, and if so, which one would do it. Sometimes they would tell me an hour later, in firmer tones, “Go to bed!” but often, they didn’t.

They made sure I had change and a few dollar bills when it was Scholastic Book Fair time at school.

When I started writing (way, way back in primary school) they indulged me in it. Another memory I have of Mom is from 1978 when I was 10 years old. I was already a science fiction maniac, even at that time (reruns of syndicated shows like The Twilight Zone or Star Trek, or even when I was desperate, Lost in Space were my main fare) and when a brand-new TV show called Battlestar Galactica debuted right as school was starting up in September of that year, Mom made a special point of showing it to me. She was so excited that she could bring me this exciting new show and indulge my love of sci-fi.

Mom, I suppose this may be too late, but that show was…not great. I watched it mostly because you showed it to me and I wanted to honor you. But my God with the Cylons and the single red scanner eye and especially with Muffit the daggit and the robot replacement and Boxey…

You passed away just before your 78th birthday. You’re dead but not gone, Mom. You’ll never be gone. You’re in your grandchildren. You’re in the turning of a dog-eared copy of Ivanhoe at 11:30 at night on a schoolday. You’re in spaghetti sauce that’s so good I could and did eat it without pasta. You’re in the feeling of a home, of being safe.

You’re in my brother.

You’re in me.

I miss you, Mom. Even though you’re still here.

Uninspired

4/9/2024

Blah. Just nothing is coming. Not from any lack of projects–I’m working on the bonus / reward story for the folks who preorder Beltrunner II: Aftermath (see elsewhere on this website for ordering information), I have a work-in-progress that I have been pecking at for literally years (and which my very good friend and astoundingly brilliant man, Glenn Vogel, has given me some sage advice regarding), and I have the beginnings of Beltrunner III: Legacy written out.

No, I have a lot of irons in the fire as the saying goes. I just don’t feel like working any of them.

I’ve given this advice to others, so I suppose I should take it myself: when it comes to art, one cannot wait for inspiration. That wait might be a long, long time. No, as much as one is able, one must just plug ahead, writing or painting or composing or whatever, despite the lack of inspiration. Just keep working. It’s not so much “leap and a net will appear” as much as it is the idea of discipline and habits of mind, I think. I don’t really know the psychology, but I know it works for me.

But damn is it difficult sometimes.

Like now.

What makes it worse is that my time these days is a pretty precious commodity. I have no one else but myself to blame, since I seem to be the living embodiment of the antithesis of Thoreau’s “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” command. Nonetheless, I know that not every day grants me the hours I need to write, so when I get a day with those hours, I should use them well.

It would be very easy to write about how the Puritan Work Ethic is the backbone of American exceptionalism and make some reference to noses and grindstones, but the simple truth is I, like so many others, need some kind of push to work. That’s one of the great things about NaNoWriMo, I guess–it’s a motivator. Never mind that it’s artificial and self-imposed. It’s still a motivator.

Well, I know I will kick myself later if I don’t work now (kick myself mentally–I have long since lost the suppleness of limb to accomplish self-kicking) so I suppose I’ll close this short, pointless blog entry and see what trouble young Collier and even younger Sancho can get themselves into.

Be seeing you!

I've Heard the Sirens

3/24/2024

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I’ve been resisting doing what is necessary to advance publicity for my writing. The actual act of writing I do religiously* but when it comes to the associated, business side of the craft I am, to be blunt, negligent.
It is therefore a personal milestone that most of you will find laughably trivial that I have accomplished.

I joined Instagram.

Hold the national holiday preparations for a moment and listen to me. This is going to be a post about my experiences in just a single day on the social media platform. I believe I understand something that had been eluding me for many years.

See, when I’ve watched my adolescent students between the ages of 13 and 18 become thralls to their phones (electronic pacifiers, I’ve been known to call the devices) I’ve said to myself, “this is such bizarre behavior. They’re obsessed with these things. As soon as I relax classroom discipline and allow phone access from the wall pockets where I force them to sequester their phones, the little darlings are positively glued to their screens. They shut out the rest of the world, they don’t talk to one another, they don’t watch the excellently produced video bulletin program–they’re enraptured by their little screens. Why is that?” I also have never understood the behavior of these same adolescents in their free time on campus: they are watching their phones, eyes half open, slumped over half-awake (or half-asleep, if you prefer) and not showing any signs of stimulation to the video they’re watching. How can this little phone have them so dulled, so willing to hand over their humanity?

So I did a little experiment. I tried to duplicate how young folks consume entertainment. I turned on YouTube on my phone, accessed a little video, and let it play. Then another video, related to the first, came up automatically. Then another, and so on.

God help me if I, too, didn’t catch myself becoming electronically drugged by the experience. It is all too easy to let oneself become numb, to allow the drug of the vast Internet to take hold and reduce you to a dull consumer.

It was eye opening, I’ll tell you. But what has this to do with Instagram?

I created my account and uploaded a publicity video that my publisher at EDGE wanted me to make (you should be able to find that video elsewhere on this site). It was not very difficult, though I had to navigate some technical issues on my desktop. Still, within an hour, I had the video up on my shiny, new Instagram account. I then spent a few minutes linking it to my Facebook account, posted a little message there, and shut the computer down to make the family lunch (grilled cheese panini on sourdough bread for Sue, same for James but with some ham added, and a salad for myself). That done, I remembered I still needed to add the Instagram app to my phone. I did so, and saw the little notification alert telling me I had some activity on my post.

Well, what do you know? Some of my friends had followed me and made little comments on the video.

As God as my witness, the little rush of emotion was something for which I was unprepared. That dopamine hit is powerful. It didn’t matter that I knew the brain chemistry behind it all, didn’t matter that I hadn’t cared about this just hours earlier–suddenly, for a moment, the little heart icon and the brief notifications telling me someone had looked at something I had written was my universe.

The feeling didn’t last, of course–but when it subsided, I realized–finally–what kids today are going through.

Yes, of course we should tell kids to put the phone down and talk to each other. Yes, going outside to play or reading a book or petting your dog or going camping with your family or attending a concert or playing tennis or [name some ordinary activity] is better than staring at your phone. Yes, kids today are addicted to things I wasn’t addicted to. But more to the point–those addictions DIDN’T EXIST. The closest thing we had to obsess over was sugary breakfast cereal.

Social media is engineered to be addictive–engineered by experts, fine-tuned by computer algorithms, funded by uncaring corporations (or sometimes messianic individuals who are themselves trapped in their own creations). Our poor kids have been seduced almost from the cradle with these sites, and have as little resistance to them as you or I would have had if we’d been subjected to them from an early age.

The human need to be loved, accepted, listened to–the need for positive attention–is strong and primal. A baby knows little when it is born, but it knows how to summon attention with a cry. Later, when your child shouts, “look, Daddy!” before performing a death-defying leap into the pool, it’s the same fundamental urge. We all have it, and it’s not wrong. There’s a reason solitary confinement is so torturous. Oh, there are some folks who thrive in solitude and anonymity. But for every Alexander Pope writing “Ode on Solitude,” there are ten John Donnes writing “No Man is an Island.”

FOMO is an acronym meaning “fear of missing out,” and it’s been applied to the young generation’s addiction to their phones and need to be constantly updated on their place in the social hierarchy. But I think we all have that, yes? It’s acute in the younger folks not because they are weak and silly but because social media (and the overall zeitgeist) has systematically and precisely targeted them. They’re being told every day, every hour, hell–every SECOND that they can be assured that they are being paid attention to, that they’re not missing out, if only they make an account and check it. All the time.

Keep getting those likes–that’s how you silence your own infant wail for mommy.

Storytellers in antiquity knew this. Odysseus, the craftiest and cleverest of all the Greek heroes, knew he’d never resist the sirens if left to his own wits. When tied to the mast, he fell under the Sirens’ spell and demanded to be let go. He’d made arrangements ahead of time to temporarily deafen his men with some well-placed wax earplugs, and thus was able to navigate past the Sirens. (I’ve often wondered how he got down: “Guys, we’re out of range of the Sirens, so you can cut me down. Guys? GUYS!)

Young folk, I’m going to keep taking your phones away. I’m going to keep trying to counsel you to experience real life. But I’m a lot more sympathetic now. What I only knew intellectually I now know from experience. I’ve felt it. It’s powerful, that song. But it needs to be resisted.

Be seeing you!

*strange term for an atheist to use, you say? No, I don’t think so. That’s how I feel about writing–it’s a ritual, a comfort, something that brings meaning to my life and something I do very consistently and faithfully. So there.

Why Can’t Bad Guys Shoot?

3/8/2024

Not just shoot–land a blow with a sword / mace / baton / baseball bat / fist, you name it. Your run-of-the-mill, rank-and-file Enemy Soldier–can be a fantasy goblin, Imperial Stormtrooper, Gestapo officer, street tough, whatever–can’t seem to hit the Hero with anything. And God forbid Our Hero be unawares, standing there on or in the landing platform / dance floor / Great Hall / abandoned warehouse or wherever completely vulnerable. Our bad guy’s first shot always misses but alerts the hero to the danger. Or the bad guy comes charging out in full bellow, letting Our Hero defend herself.

And don’t even get me started on bad guys who, armed with guns, decide to charge at the hero who can only fight hand-to-hand.

See, I like the bit in that gloriously bad movie, Flash Gordon, when Flash is easily dispatching Emperor Ming’s guards. Ming calls over Klytus, head of the Imperial Secret Police, and demands to know if his men are “on the right pills.” He even suggests that Klytus execute their trainer because of their poor performance. The reason I like that is that even Ming the Merciless comments on the ineptitude of the guards and has some helpful ideas for his lieutenant.

Yes, I realize that if the bad guys were able to shoot our Hero in the head the moment his back was turned, we’d have a rather short movie. But still. There has to be some way to show how the bad guys are a threat besides ominous music / impressive costumes / being able to march well. I know that the first scene in Star Wars shows Stormtroopers mopping up rebel soldiers with relative ease, but those selfsame rebels didn’t seem to be the most crack fighting force ever assembled.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject, how about when the Bad Guys wear armor it actually is useful? Just once. Once I’d like to see a generic bad guy soldier take an arrow in the shield or deflect a sword blow with his cuirass or remain standing after a wounding laser shot to his sci-fi armor.

I mean, who would sign up to be a Generic Bad Guy, anyway? Are they all nepo babies or something? Does the evil empire pay that badly? Are they on some Union dispute doing work-to-rule and shoot but don’t hit on purpose?

Let’s get it together, Generic Bad Guys.

Be seeing you!

Quaint Little Controversies

1/28/2024

You know those movies or tv shows from a while ago? The ones about politics (I’m talking about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or even The West Wing) from a bygone era?
It occurs to me that when those movies or tv shows wanted to drum up some kind of political controversy, it was always something like “a Senator is using his influence to possibly make some money on a public works project!” or “The President accidentally called his political opponent ‘stupid” on a hot mic!” or something like that.
Then I look at what’s happening today. The leader of the Republican party–the last Republican president, and the one who is poised to receive his party’s nomination this year–has said he’ll be a dictator for his first day in office, and has argued that he should be allowed to assassinate a political opponent, who has been found liable for sexual assault, and who uses Hitlerian-style oratory when describing immigrants (I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point). Politicians (especially those on the right) regularly call their opponents “communists” or “people who hate America / baseball / babies / freedom (pick your sacred cow).”
Oh, how absolutely cute and quaint those fictional controversies are!
Seriously, what we used to find scandalous and objectionable and “oh-no-you-DIDN’T” about public behavior has become more than commonplace now. I don’t consider myself a Puritan (the best definition of that group I’ve ever heard is “someone who has a sneaking suspicion that somebody, somewhere, is having a good time”) but I do want to hit the pause button on what is permissible and normal in our behavior to one another.
Now listen up. Before you get that look on your face, let me say I do not mean what is permissible insofar as innocent but perhaps outre behavior, like getting a lip piercing or a Daffy Duck tattoo or twerking to Duo Lipa (I think I have that name right). While that’s not how my bread is buttered I have no objections to it. You do you, as the kids say.
I’m speaking specifically here about behavior and speech that is directly insulting to the principles of decency and respect towards others to which we should all aspire. It’s not insulting if you want to shave half your hair off, use black lipstick and wear carnaby gloves and fishnet stockings. Nor is it insulting for you to decide to call yourself this gender or that one, or even to refuse the concept of fixed gender at all. You do you, and I celebrate that. No, again, I am speaking of hurtful words and behavior. It used to be well outside the norm to even consider electing a person to office if that person called their opponents “vermin” and who said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” or who organized and encouraged a violent coup attempt on our government.
Or if that person was a rapist. I don’t want to forget that.
How will history judge us? I fervently hope my grandchildren (are you reading this, my daughter and son?) will read in history books about the “Madness of the early 21st century” or whatever the chapter is and they will ask me, “Grandpa, did we REALLY almost pick that guy for president a second time?” as if they cannot believe how our society could have fallen so far.
I wonder if young German kids ask their grandparents how their nation could, almost a hundred years ago, have done what it did. I know entire branches of psychology grew up studying how a rational, Enlightened nation could have fallen so far into evil as it did. Will we one day do the same?
And what will political satire look like tomorrow? How can we have satire of something that is so far outside the norm, so absurd, so inconceivable as to be almost beyond comprehension? Satire often works by magnifying the characteristics of that which is being mocked. How can one magnify the enormity of evil that is taking place now? How can we make the already ridiculous ludicrous?
And if we continue on this path, I have another question.
What do we say to the dead who will follow?