| Word Dissociation Games, with Josh & Richard |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|05:12 pm] |
As I went through Bartle's Blog, I found a challenge to play a word dissociation game. He first asks for five random words, then lists five of his own. I played the exercise myself: I closed my eyes to see if any random words popped up. I looked at my surroundings for inspiration. I let chains of thought take me from starting words to other words, covering my tracks by virtue of the sheer vagary of thought. In the end, I got my five words:
Smile (the verb)
Invincible
Terrorist
Fan (the thing that cools you down)
Really
Then he explained that many people respond to the exercise by looking around them for inspiration, which is a no-no because he had asked for random words. Okay! That's a bit harder. Not only does it strike out the word “fan” directly, but it discourages my spatially-inclined method of imagination, which is to seed new ideas with visual cues. Then he listed another five of his own. I found myself closing my eyes in mild exertion to try and blank out the world from which I was not supposed to derive any cues. I was deposited into a dull black mindspace, really just me under a spotlight with nothing else in the universe.
That's what prompted me to write about this. Bartle's exercise offered me an insight into my own thinking. You see, when I play “imagination,” sometimes I get onto such a roll that I stop drawing from my surrounding environment for visual cues. Instead I observe an entire fantasy simulation in the theater of my imagination. We call that “staring into space” or, perhaps, “daydreaming.” However, told not to use the surrounding world for cues, some bureaucratic synapse decided that these fantasy images were not acceptable either. Thus, I was deposited into the dull black mindspace. It was hard, and, if you ask me, a little less random than before, but eventually I came up with five more words whose selection had been more in line with Bartle's desiredtype of randomness:
Clothespin
Candlelight
If
Noodle
Dystopia
After this, Bartle insisted that we not cheat, and proffered some suggestions for ways not to generate a random list. He then proceeded to list yet another five words of his own. At this point I felt that I was anticipating him, because one of those words was “she” and thus quite obviously not the tangible sort of noun that people often tend to grasp for when they're looking for “random” words.
Bartle then admonished us that this exercise was for our own benefit, and that it was vitally important that we dispense with our own methods of picking words and try to be truly as random as possible about it. He then offered up a fourth five-word list of his own. This reinforced to me—strangely enough, it had taken four of his five-word sets for me to actually grasp his message that what was important here was not the words, but the way they were picked. I wrote another five-word list, feeling like a student in the midst of a hard lesson:
Sparkling
Blithely
Detriment
Yuletide
Prognosticate
To get those words, I had been squashing my eyes closed, clinching my sphincter, shaking my forelimbs, as if I could just will five random words into my possession. Humbling, for someone of my skill to be at such a loss for words. That by itself was another reason to write about this.
Here Bartle pointed out that simply grasping for nouns wasn't random enough. This was the one part of the lesson that he didn't have to teach me; I already understood that much. He gave one more list, and so did I:
Hydrate
Thimble
Epiphany
Mistreat
Underscore
Then, of course, came the coup de grace. As I had worked on my own lists, I had discarded far more words, on the grounds that they were not random enough. Some words I mutated into different ones, including the majority of those words which finally did make my later lists. So what did good old Richard then say, but this:
You don't say a random word, then when you think of another random word wonder if there's some connection and, only when you've given it some thought and decided there isn't, then say it. You just say the first five words that come into your head, because you've told your imagination that you want random words and so that's what it's given you. In other words, don't discard words because they're not random enough. Don't put that much effort into it. Just tap into your imagination and get the first five words to plunge out of the foam. It was a very hard lesson for me, because that's just not the way I think. But I suspect he's on to something. My imagination is very powerful, but I often have a hard time plugging it in to my writing, which can be extremely analytical. Maybe his way of thinking would yield better results.
He then went on with an advanced exercise: Take the five random words and turn them each into an original premise. This I did, and, contrary to his opinion, I found it much, much easier to do. Thus, I insisted on generating yet another five random words to make those original premises. They were as hard to concoct as the ones that came before them. In addition to all the aforementioned caveats, Bartle's method causes me to produce a great deal of non-words, such as “fire-tattle.” (Would that be the person who reports fires to the authorities for the recognition of being a model citizen rather than to actually be a model citizen?) Anyhow, my five premises:
1. CRESCENTS smell like the city of Creon.
(Cre Scent, get it? Creon is an Imperial megalopolis in ATH, and crescents are croissants. Never before had I tried to sum up the smell of the city in a single word.)
2. We don't think about WOOL as playing a prominent role in the future.
(Well we don't, do we? Instead we tend to think of our most recent Ages—the Industrial and Information Ages—and simply make them more extreme. More metal, taller buildings, smarter computer networks. There's very little novel thinking in there, and no wool at all.)
3. Toys are the PRINCIPAL tools.
(Those big capital letters make it look like I'm saying toys are the best tools. What I mean is that they're the first tools. As children our excitement for manipulating tools stems from a play drive.)
4. Isn't it cynical that the tightening of a BELT is a metaphor for want but the loosening of it is a metaphor for excess?
(Not that I have any personal bias in the matter...)
5. Anybody who walks around in loafers, banana peels, or foolhardiness is SLIPSHOD.
(Okay...that's enough puns for today.)
In concocting my five premises, I noticed time and again that I was tending to write premises which reflected philosophical or ideological attitudes, or, alternatively, premises that relied upon puns, or premises that end up as “gotcha” questions. They were not particularly dissociative, either. Bartle then listed another five of his own premises, and made mine look decidedly uncreative in comparison. So I wrote five more:
1. Is a TABLE most important because of what's on it, who sits there, or where it's located?
2. The antithesis and ally of crying is also to CRY.
3. A mook is severely restricted in what they may consider during a cogitation, so that their minds may remain STERILE.
4. In the Joshalonian penal system, dragons will BONK convicted criminals who have earned more than a lashing but less than a thrashing.
5. LEST would have been a Boolean operator in earlier days. |
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| Video Game Development Strategy |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:57 pm] |
This is a small entry, but its size belies its importance. I came up with the following methodology as part of an actual proposal to ZeaLitY that he become producer on a video game venture of mine. This method is what I myself would use in the development of a video game.
1. Story development.
2. Systems development.
3. Materials development.
4. Location and event development.
5. Testing and release.
Next is a list of the key positions necessary for the completion of the kind of video game that I would design. Note that more than one position could be filled by a single person, and, likewise, multiple people could fill a single position.
1. Director.
2. Producer.
3. Writer.
4. Programmer.
5. Artist.
6. Tester. |
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| Megaliths of the Present Past |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:43 pm] |
♥♥♥ The Freeway ♥♥♥ was my first great obsession in a life filled with obsessions. I was born in Los Angeles, a megalopolis with hundreds of miles of freeways and some of the most fantastic interchanges in the world. My mom would drive me around on the freeways sometimes because I liked it so much, and before I could even spell I had learned most of the L.A. freeway system. I had a particular love for the Santa Monica Freeway, the massively-multilane westernmost portion of Interstate 10 which is guarded by an Arthurian interchange with Interstate 5 on the east and a Tolkienian fadeaway into the Pacific Coast Highway on the west, and is elevated throughout much of its concourse between.
My first favorite song was “Freeway of Love,” which I loved not for the love, or even for the pink Cadillac, but for the freeway. My first drawings were almost always of freeways. I filled up two bound books (one of which I still have) and countless sheets of white paper with freeways, interchanges, and ramps. My first strategic thinking was planning freeway routes to get from one place to another. When SimCity 2000 came along, the most exciting promotional screenshot included a freeway. I loved building freeways in that game. The only downside is that they filled up so much of the map that there wasn't room for truly astounding freeway structures.
By the time I had grown up and was ready to leave California, they had just completed the 105, the “Century Freeway,” a long-delayed north-south corridor that was famously proclaimed to be “the last freeway that would be built” in Los Angeles. Even though they later went on to extend the 210 by dozens of miles, I don't doubt that the 105 will indeed prove to be Los Angeles' last new, numbered freeway.
This is for three reasons. One, freeways have almost always been unpopular, and it has become harder and harder to get them built in the face of organized local opposition. Two, the cost of freeway construction and maintenance is rising astronomically as environmental considerations, concept studies, and material and labor costs all grow larger. Three, most damningly of all, the freeway is becoming functionally obsolete.
That's a terrible thing for someone like me to have to admit. I love freeways. But, the more I look at it, the more it seems obvious that the time of the freeway is not enduring, and, while there will undoubtedly continue to be freeways for more than a century to come, I expect their zenith has already passed.
A freeway serves two basic functions, each quite distinct from the other. The primary use of the freeway is to move cargo and people between cities. The other use of the freeway is to move (mostly) people within a city. A freeway is always connected to at least one major population center, and therefore the major problem of dismantling roadways is mitigated in the case of freeways by the wide variety of viable mass transit alternatives. Indeed, I don't think of those mass transit alternatives as “alternatives” per se, but as logical successors to the freeway.
As I read about the movement to remove existing freeways, what strikes me is that the proponents of this movement focus only on the lesser of a freeway's two functions, thus rendering their argument incomplete. The problem here is that so many freeways are through routes. If we were to dismantle Interstate 5 here in Seattle in order to liberate Capitol Hill, millions of trucks connecting Canada with the West Coast of the United States would be diverted onto Seattle streets or east onto the 405—untenable. That's why it would never happen so long as truck-based cargo is so significant as a long-range medium of land transportation.
Eventually, the United States will return to rail as the most environmentally friendly and economically lucrative form of land transportation for intercity-cargo. What is required is that massive civic infrastructure be put in place. Until that actually happens, freeways will remain vital.
Michael said something interesting to me once: He hates to drive and doesn't even have a license (or didn't until recently). What he said is that I love to drive because I see driving as an act of freedom—which immediately rung true and reminded me of the time Stephen and I nearly fled to Canada—whereas he sees driving as a burden. |
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| Finishing Threads |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:32 pm] |
The Crackpot Dome Scandal
An Imperial Adventure Starring Josh
...will not be seen tonight, due to production difficulties and budget shortfalls. However! I want to bring my adoring fans of Crackpot Dome at least some sense of closure, so here are a few excerpts from the lost film.
Part 3: The YSNB Threshold
 
[Aboard Airship One. The oversized armored dirigible is braving a blizzard lightning storm. Turbulence is high and nerves are wracked. Emperor Josh is sitting in the Navigation Room with Imperial Chief of Staff Evil Rahm Emanuel, Admiral Floözer, and U.S. President Barack Obama. Admiral Floözer is airsick.]
Josh:
Tacoma is never going to let me live this down.
Evil Rahm Emanuel:
Forget the Tacoma Dome. That's the least of your problems. The Joshmodrome isn't even insured yet.
Josh:
I didn't even want to build the Joshmodrome! All I wanted to do was win reelection as National Ice Cream Director. And I didn't even pull that off! I lost by 71 percent...
Obama:
My condolences.
Josh:
Now I'm going to have to explain how a ten-mile geodesic dome floated up into the sky and vanished.
Sonja:
It didn't vanish. They've just spotted it in Hawaii.
Navigator:
Now leaving Imperial Airspace and crossing into American territory. Majesty, we are in violation of the 1993 Yanko-Joshalonian Anti-Levitating Dome Treaty.
Josh:
Damn! Who'd have thought that that would ever come back to bite us?
Flight Attendant:
Sorry. Mr. President, would you like another glass of orange juice?
Obama:
Thank you.
Josh:
And I'll have one of those oranges with a straw in it.
Evil Rahm Emanuel:
I don't think that actually works in real life.
Josh:
It's worked before.
Obama:
That's because the kitchen staff has been humoring you with hollowed-out oranges injected with orange juice. It's very labor-intensive.
Josh:
Is this true?!
Flight Attendant:
Am I fired either way?
Josh:
Probably. |
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| The Steins' House |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
Continuing my series of unfinished thoughts from California during my visit this spring...
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had had dinner with the Steins at their new condo in Seattle. On that occasion, I asked them if they had sold their old house in Victorville yet. They said they had not. I asked them if the basic utilities were still turned on. They said they were. Then I asked them if I could stay there during my Passover visit with my parents. They said I could. So here I am.
There's a lot I could say about this arrangement. The Steins have a very nice house and it has been a treat to stay here. At a hotel, comparable amenities and a quarter of the space would run hundreds of dollars a night. I'm getting this for free, saving me beaucoup bucks even as my luxuries are maximized. The house itself is very well fixed, with excellent faucets and fixtures, smooth-sliding drawers and ergonomic sensitivities. It's a treat, is what it is. They have a huge tub, which I haven't used yet but might indulge in tonight. (Editor's Note: I did!) They have an old piano, woefully out of tune but still as powerful as real pianos are. And they have a boatload of lights. I love lights. I love to play with the different schemes of using various lights together, at various intensities. There are about two dozen separate lights on right now just within thirty feet of me, and all of them are halogens or the old incandescents, thus giving off that warm orange glow I remember so fondly—as fluorescents cannot (yet?) reproduce it. There's even an unsecured wireless connection floating around, meaning I have Internet access without touching their own computers.
But I'm not going to talk any more about any of that. This house holds a special meaning for me, because I have been here before. I had two of the best weeks of my life here. It was ten years ago this summer that I housesat for the Steins in this very place, for two weeks, taking care of their dogs and Anna's pet hamsters while also enjoying the privilege of staying in this lovely paradise. This was a dynamic age in my life, and a very fulfilling time for me:
- I was in the first quarter of my senior year of high school. My long journey of school life was finally coming to a culmination. Elementary school had not been a pleasant experience for me, and middle school even worse, but high school was better and senior year was of a wholly different cloth entirely. For one thing, old faces from all twelve years of my schooling—some of them people I hadn't seen since I was a wee little Josh—were popping up in my classes, different and familiar at once. My life as I had known it was flashing back all around me, a reminder of where I had been. This was not just another year in school. This was the last year.
For another thing, the teachers were behaving differently. They were treating us differently. It was nearly time for us students to go out into the world, and so they made themselves more accessible and they engaged us with greater respect. Mr. Vanderlaag, my AP Physics teacher (yes, the infamous “hardest” class on campus) in particular was a remarkable character. Most days he shared with us his wisdom and eccentricity as well as the lesson of the day. He was the one who told me about Chuckanut Drive, and who insisted I could get a 4 on the real exam after I scored a 2 on an AP Physics practice test. (I did get that 4, one of my proudest grades ever.) One time in class, the ASB president and vice president serenaded the 2000 class president with a rousing rendition of “You've Lost that Loving Feeling,” which I can't forget. Mr. Vanderlaag's tests were brutal, and I rarely did enough homework, but he was a good enough teacher that I passed that class with a good grade and I owe much of my knowledge of science to him.
He hosted a Wednesday evening study session that marked my first and only extracurricular involvement in the school system. I would drive by night in my Plymouth Volare—which I had just bought that summer with my own Bar Mitzvah money—to join him and perhaps three-quarters of the class. Each week someone was responsible for bringing snacks, and then we'd study physics problems for a couple of hours. He always started with an “Early Bird Special,” and ended with a “Blue Light Special,” both of which were worth Bonus Points to be applied toward our final grade. (Now you know where I got “Bonus Points” from. “Demerits,” meanwhile, came from my middle school.) If drudgery and oppression was living a life of routines forced by other people, then freedom was being able to drive my own car through the dusty desert evening to an extra-credit practice class with my favorite teacher and just learn science.
For a third thing, all around me it was as if the other students were growing up. No longer were my classmates kids; they were adults in early bloom, just as I was. We weren't students anymore. Our minds were in another place. We saw our studies as means to a new end. This was most evident in the behavior of some of my erstwhile tormentors. One of my arch-nemesis from fifth grade shared a psychology class with me, and we maturely avoided each other entirely. He hated me, and honestly I hated him, but never once did we cross paths. (Just as well: His dad would go on to become the fucking mayor of the town.) On another occasion, one day in the restroom at school I ran into someone who had bullied me in eighth grade, Jon. He had an infant kid now. I felt sorry for the kid, to be honest. Anyway, he asked me how I was doing. I don't know why he felt compelled to talk to me. Guilt? Awkwardness? I'll never know, and I don't even much care. I told him that my family had had to move out of our house and into a cheap apartment because we didn't have enough money—all too true. He said that that was too bad. I washed up and left, and we never did speak again. I won't miss him. But he was respectful that day, or at least not a prick, and that much I do remember.
- I mentioned I had bought the Volare. Eight hundred bucks, it was. Damn thing was the gift that kept on giving. A writer could ask no better vehicle. It rode low so it would bottom out on speedbumps, and the suspension was bad so it would also bottom out on lesser bumps if I took them too fast. The steering wheel was such that turning it a little made no difference, and turning it the slightest bit more would cause the car to veer off wildly in that direction. The brakes didn't work well, and the tires would lock with remarkable alacrity on even modest stops. The speedometer was inaccurate and became more inaccurate as the car went faster, leading to that unforgettable day when I was supposedly traveling at the speed limit on the freeway but was somehow rushing past all other traffic and could smell my own burning tires even as the car vibrated so alarmingly that I had both hands gripped on the wheel.
The radio worked, but the speaker volume was so bad that I could only hear the music when the car was totally stopped. The air conditioner worked but had leaked its fresh tank of freon in under a month, so I had no air conditioning after that. The headlights worked but were so badly out of alignment—and so quick to get back out of alignment whenever I fixed them—that only my brights were any good for driving. The clock worked, but only sometimes, and thus was never accurate. The windshield wipers didn't work at all. The one time it rained while I was driving, I happened to have Dan Rib along in the passenger's seat, so I had him stand up and stick his arm out the window to operate the wipers manually. His hand was frozen solid by the time we got back to his place.
This thing was a beast. Fiery orange and two lanes wide, it was like operating my own light tank. I almost got a Purple Heart, too, the time one of its tires went flat and I cut myself up on the metal trying to change it—successfully, I'll have you know. Great car. Awesome car. And it meant guaranteed freedom. If things boiled over at home, I could go out. I didn't need permission to use a parental car. I had my own. It was mine.
That car played other roles, too. There was the Wednesday night study session in physics. There were Nate and Jessie, who I would sometimes hang out with after school. We all had sixth period free, and would sometimes go to Jack in the Box to eat lunch, or occasionally to the library to play chess. Then there was also Marie. After more than two years of secret affection, this was finally the year I told Marie that I loved her. I had been driving her to school in the mornings—by far the greatest advantage of a scheduling snafu in my classes that year that had caused me to get sixth period free rather than first period free. (I wanted first, in order to be able to sleep in an hour longer, but I settled for sixth when I realized that changing it would mean losing my excellent Spanish III teacher. Ferrying Marie came later.) I told her I loved her on a lark one morning, in that car. She didn't ride to school with me again after that, but we ended up staying friends past high school.
- Dan had been riding in the car with me that day because were were writing the Purim spiel that year. This was one of many writing projects I was undertaking that year, and Purim Hood would go on to become our proud accomplishment. Dan, who not only co-wrote the play but also played the star character, went on to get his degree in drama...for whatever that's worth. I had some beautiful fun hanging out at his house, working through writer's block, coming up with crazy songs, and generally advancing a plot so Pythonesque in its ridiculousness that it wouldn't take much work to rewrite as an actual musical.
- This final year in Apple Valley was a year of great optimism for me. For years I had carried the burden of living with a dysfunctional family, but now it was if a great weight was lifting from me. I knew that college and escape were less than a year away. I knew that soon my life would finally change for the better—the future would arrive! How significant this was to my day-to-day mood! I changed that year.
- Lastly, but also most importantly of all, ATH the RPG was underway that year.
These were just some of the major dynamics in my life that year, guaranteeing that twelfth grade would be a period of continuing transition between my childhood and the realm of tomorrow. Staying at the Steins' house for two weeks was one of the pivotal moments in this evolution of Josh.
I mentioned that we had had to move into a small apartment due to money problems. This was immediately after Passover in eleventh grade. From then on, until I left for college, I had to share a room with my dad. I'm an extremely private, introverted person. It was hard enough for me that I almost never got our old house all to myself. Now I didn't even have my own room. I had no private space at all—at least not physically. Housesitting for the Steins gave me a two-week reprieve from that hell. I had total, complete solitude and free rein over an entire house—a big, luxurious house! I cannot easily tell you what that meant to me.
Despite the fact that this is a five-page journal entry.
It was this stay, ten years ago, that gave to me the sense that my old life was ending and my new one beginning. Let me walk you through a simple example. I was a big fan of Saturday night anime on the Sci-Fi Channel. Back then they used to do a two-hour movie every Saturday at ten o'clock. I had given up television in twelfth grade, after years of overexposure, but I still watched the anime each week. I looked forward to it immensely. On one such Saturday night, when I was at the Steins, I saw Fatal Fury for the first time. I immediately picked up on the similarities therein with the Guard of Galavar, and I took much inspiration for both Gregor and Jemis (then James) from that movie.
Let me talk about the house itself, and some of my memories herein. I have to write this tonight, because it's my last full night here, and, after I leave at the crack of dawn on Monday morning, I will never return. The Steins are selling this place.
The house sits on a cul-de-sac in Spring Valley Lake, formerly and still one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the High Desert, featuring broad and quiet roads, a full golf course, and even an artificial lake. Despite being a subdivision, many of the houses here have genuine character amid their pretensions of the upper middle class. They are different from one another, unlike the cookie cutter mentality of most developments. There's a lot of greenery here, and trees...it's one of the greenest places in the whole region.
The Steins' driveway has a friendly light on a short brick tower by the curb. Facing the street are the two regular bedrooms, the foyer, living room, and dining room, and the garage. Facing the rear are the master bedroom and bath, the front bathroom, the family room, the breakfast nook, and the back hall. In between are the front hall, the kitchen, and the study.
The front yard is green and simple. There's a porch, and an old metal bell on one of the pylons near the front door. I ring it every day when I leave. The front entry is a wooden double door with frosted glass window-lets and metal handles. The foyer, living room, and dining room are all one continuous space, although the dining room is set off by its ceiling. The living room and the family room both have ceilings which follow the slope of the roof, the living room up and the family room back down. Thus there are two attics: the western one with entry in the garage ceiling, covering also the kitchen, dining room, back hall, and the study; and the eastern one with entry in the front hall, covering also the bedrooms and bathrooms. Likewise, there are two air conditioning systems, one covering the west half of the house with control in the study and the other, main unit covering the east half of the house with control in the front hall. They converge on the family room.
The “study” is more like a general purpose room. It connects the garage with the back hall, and is used by the Steins as sort of a den, with a computer, built-in recessed bookshelves, and a fairly closed-off feeling with no view of the rest of the house and only one tiny window, on the west wall. Improbably, the water heater is located here, thus allowing adequate service to the kitchen, but literally as far as possible from the two bathrooms, thus generating the house's greatest design flaw: Hot water takes forever to get to the bathrooms.
The breakfast nook is full sized, containing a good-sized dining table, and is ringed by a half-octagon of windows. Of all the various uses to which extra space might be put in a house, I have no idea why the convention of a second, less formal dining table is so popular, but it is. Lighting comes from a very strongly-lit ceiling fixture that is far less flamboyant than a chandelier yet still protrusive and ornate enough to draw attention to itself the way that a chandelier would.
The nook connects to a kitchen, a very large and sensibly constructed kitchen with massive cabinet space and decent countertop space. There is a main sink on the counter that opens out onto the family room, and a second sink on a center island. The oven sits against the wall next to the connection to the dining room. The fridge sits on the wall near the connection to the back hall (and by extension the back entry, which is in the back hall). It's one of two central junctions in the house, the other being the foyer, which connects the front entry, front hall, family room, and living room. Perhaps my favorite feature of this exquisite kitchen is the two recessed lights over the center island. These are controlled only from a switch in the dining room, and the one over the second sink puts out more light than anything else in the house. The kitchen also has eight other ceiling lights, recessed, controlled by switches at the boundary of the family room and back hall, on either side of the breakfast nook. It wasn't so ten years ago, but today the counter tops are blue granite.
Study, nook, and kitchen are all tiled in gray, as are both bathrooms. The rest of the house is wood-paneled on the floor. The dining room has a formal dinner table and a full chandelier. The living room houses the piano and Phil's drum set. This room has two sets of recessed ceiling lights, independently adjustable and, like the lights over the kitchen island, rheostat-controlled. The family room houses the fireplace and big TV, and has three independent sets of rheostat-controlled recessed ceiling lights. All five sets are also orientable, and the Steins have kept them spread out to create a calm, diffuse light that never comes into focus. The foyer has a chandelier more suited to foyers.
The front bathroom has a skylight which happens to admit the sun onto the floor at this time of year. The skylight adds immense pleasure to the bathroom experience. This is also a very well-designed bathroom. The tub and toilet are on one wall, with a small, full-height wall protrusion separating them. A largish open space follows, and then on the opposite wall are the sink and cabinets.
Phil and Therese's bedroom is very nice, with a walk-in closet, a reading nook with a private back door leading out into a secluded area in the back yard, and a ceiling light with a fan. There are more rheostat lights over the nook. The room is designed, the back yard planted, and the house oriented such that bright direct sunlight never comes into the Stein's bedroom, creating a dark and serene place, excellent for slumber or repose. Their bed has one of those outstanding memory foam toppers that Kendra has; I miss those! The two regular bedrooms are smallish and not very well-conceived. The master bathroom has a glorious spa tub like at Cindy's house, as well as a separate shower. The space is cramped, however—especially the toilet, which seems more like an afterthought than a centerpiece, stuffed as it is between the counter with the double sinks and the far wall.
The back yard is fairly spacious and is partitioned into numerous independent zones, where different kinds of foliage, or design, or stone prevail. I saw a desert lizard dustily crawling along its merry way on my last morning there (the night after I wrote most of this entry), during my final tour of their back yard and garden. |
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| More Thoughts from California |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|12:49 pm] |
While I was in California this spring, I realized last night that the San Gabriel Mountains are always lit from behind by Los Angeles. It's subtle, but unmistakable. Yet I never noticed it, in all my childhood. It took the perspective of flying over those mountains from the north, at night, to apprise me of my neglect bias.
During conversations with Dad on that trip, he told me that I was conceived in Morrow Bay. Presumably, he was referring to the town by that name and not the actual bay. I must say that as far as incipient locales go, Morrow Bay ain't a bad place to have gotten started. It saddens me, though, because our last family vacation included a day or two in Morrow Bay. By that point our family was so dysfunctional and hostile that I can't imagine any one of us enjoyed it. No skin off my back, but to Dad it must have been a real letdown.
Also in the course of those conversations, he shared with me three questions that he occasionally asks his patients:
Three Questions:
What do you want?
Where are you going?
What are you doing to get there? I don't remember the context of his tell, but of course I noticed very keenly just how interesting it was for him to come up with something so insightful. Many of the ideas that I have developed for myself in the course of my philosophy were hard-earned, and are rare in the world. My dad is quite an intelligent fellow, but even so it surprises and impresses me when he reveals that kind of wisdom. He is rarely outwardly contemplative like I am. But obviously he is inwardly contemplative, or at least he has paid good attention to his professional development as a psychologist. |
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| Realistic Characterization Requires Realistic Motivation |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|11:48 pm] |
Just so we're clear:
Characterization
The development or description of an individual's personality.
Trait
Any persisting aspect of an individual that contributes to the continuity of their behavior or cognition.
Four concepts we'll be wise to distinguish:
Personality
The sum of the physical, mental, psychological, emotional, and social traits of an individual.
Temperament
An individual's dominant or most inherent emotional disposition in a given set of circumstances.
Identity
The sum of an individual's self-perception; i.e., their “sense of self.”
Character
The sum of an individual's style and philosophy. Also: A person in a story.
Characterization is the author's highest challenge. Specifically, if a realistic character is the author's intent (whether the character in question is fictitious or real), then nothing is as complicated to create from scratch on the blank page as a person. This is because personality comes not just from one's internal hardware but from circumstance too, which means that characterization is an open-ended task: It ends only when the character ends. Anything less than that would be a simplification or a technicality.
The difficulty of thorough characterization is conveyed in literature and beyond by the gargantuan number of characters who fall short, and the considerably smaller number of those who make it partway (or all the way!). The prevailing method of characterization—which is to establish a character's personality by some combination of seminal events and narrative declaration—depends upon the fallacy that personality is self-contained. This mistake results in deficient characters who are cut off from most situational development and whose motivations are astonishingly limited.
Segregating a character's personality from real-time circumstances is a form of cheating, and, as is often the case with intellectual cheating, it undermines the end goal. Throughout the course of the narrative, the character is put into the situation when it should be that the situation is put into the character. This mistake results in characters with “simple engines” whose personalities may be nuanced and multi-dimensional (or not) thanks to a long list of traits, but whose motivations in any case are astonishingly limited. This degeneracy is particularly robust in cases where a stereotypical character's motivations are derived exclusively from established major personality traits.
Limited motivations make for predictable behavior. Any method of characterization that hopes to succeed in a realistic portrayal must develop the character's capacity for motivation.
The truth is that sentient will is self-contained, but identity is not. The will is self-contained, while identity changes by the moment, in whatever degrees.
Now, the reason I distinguish between these four different things—personality, temperament, identity, and character—is so that we can better develop characters in our writing, myself included. |
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| Zero Time |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|11:30 pm] |
Like everyone, there are plenty of settings and situations that stress me out—be it a little or a lot, in this way or that. Not like everyone, however, there are some settings and some situations that stress me out not at all. Zero, perfect zero. I don't have a catchy slogan for them, but on the plane to Las Vegas this spring I felt that way.
(No, that isn't the most recent time I experienced the perfect zero. I'm simply resurrecting old, unfinished journal entries cluttering my desktop.)
Zero Time is a place where time's apparent passage stops. It's the place where my naturally futuristic orientation coincides with the present moment. In times like this I am completely at ease, because I'm never “here”; I'm lost in thought, or on one of the islands of self-consciousness that punctuates the flow of time.
It's a good place to be. It is relaxing in a way that the rest of life is not, or, to put it another way, it takes serenity to a new height for me. |
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| My Latest Correspondence to the Junior Senator from Washington |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|05:18 pm] |
Dear Senator Cantwell,
I write to you today about the state of healthcare reform in the Senate. But first allow me to thank you for your work in securing a new coastal radar for our state. This issue was “under the radar” for most people, but you nevertheless were able to make it a reality. Thank you.
On the subject of healthcare: I wrote to you over the course of this year to request and even demand that healthcare reform include a strong public option. I have closely followed both you and Senator Murray in the course of these negotiations. I would conclude that you have made a decent effort to make healthcare reform meaningful and accessible to us all. Because I conditioned my further support of you on your efforts in this one issue, I am very glad to say that I am willing to continue to support you in the future.
Nevertheless, it now seems that meaningful healthcare reform in the Senate is dead. The current legislation would do more harm than good. By forcing people to buy insurance from private companies who will still be free to deny claims and set caps, the Senate is not only preparing to impose a massive tax on the American people that would be paid directly to a private and unethical industry, but, even worse, that industry would be free to take our money without giving us the coverage we are paying them for!
I would ask you to filibuster any bill that does not contain a public option, but frankly I do not have the confidence or respect in your courage as a Senator to expect that such a request would possibly be met. Our liberal-minded Senators, to a head, have rolled over for a handful of people like Nelson and Lieberman. I cannot begin to convey my disgust and dismay at those few traitors. But my ire extends also to the White House, for failing to better champion healthcare reform, to the Senate leadership (including Senator Murray), for failing to whip these insurgents into line, and to the Senate's progress members, including you, who have refused to use your superior numbers to bring people like Lieberman into line.
I don't know what to say about this. I have been betrayed. I am shocked. I suspect the American people will have found plenty to say in the 2010 elections. Our vaunted 60-member majority is a sham.
If this is as good as it gets, then I have no choice but to conclude that many of your Democratic colleagues need to be voted the hell out of office so that honest and willing individuals may take their place. I would like you to take this message to heart, and pass it along to your colleagues:
You never listened to us—we who elected you. You listened to everyone else, but not us. You listened to the insurance companies. You listened to the right-wingers, to the centrists. But to us? Of course not! We're just a bunch of obstructionists and ideologues and big scary “socialists.” Single-payer? Off the table. Public option? A pipe dream.
I can't believe that Democratic majorities as huge as yours could turn meaningful healthcare reform into an insurance industry giveaway. I am as disgusted at the political process as I have ever been.
Sincerely,
Josh Fredman
Seattle
P.S. As an exercise in the responsiveness of your office, I am requesting a non-form letter reply, written just for me, by you or anyone on your staff. It doesn't have to say much; there's not much you can say. But a word of commiseration, an admission of failure, an apology, perhaps a promise to revisit healthcare in the coming Congress...written by an actual person specifically for me, would be a nice gesture. It would be the first time I have ever received a non-form letter from one of my elected officials. |
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| The Second Most Terrible Majority |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|12:42 pm] |
I will tell you the problem with healthcare reform. They never listened to us. They listened to everyone else, but not us. The White House, the Senate, even the House of Representatives. They listened to the insurance companies, you bet they did. They listened to the right-wingers, to the centrists. But to us? Of course not! We're just a bunch of obstructionists and ideologues.
Healthcare reform in the Senate does have some positive points—although not as many as you might think—but, as structured now, the overall legislation amounts to an enormous, mandatory tax on the American people, paid directly to a private insurance industry who will still be free to deny us coverage.
I don't get it. These people are destroying themselves. We're the ones who voted for them. By spiting us this badly, they are guaranteeing that millions of Democratic voters will stay home next November. I understand the importance of representing all the people rather than just one's own political base or even the majority of one's constituents—both of whom supported strong healthcare reform, I would add—but there's also some value in cooperating with the people who are your strongest supporters.
The White House has boggled my mind on this. I don't know how much of it is Rahm Emanuel's fault, who leads the White House efforts to work with Congress on this issue, and how much of it is President Obama's fault. I can tell you that Obama, for the first time, is in danger of losing reelection in 2012. Doesn't he see this whole thing collapsing around him? How could he have been such a brilliant candidate and turn out to be such an incompetent president? He saw this coming; he must have. The Republicans have been stonewalling all year long. They've voted against everything, even their precious troop funding bills—and you will remember that in past years those same Republicans equated nay votes on troop funding bills with treason and rank cowardice. There are no deals to be had with the Republicans. They are not a loyal opposition; they are an insurrection. Obama can't have missed that. So why didn't he appeal straight to the American people? The odiousness of healthcare reform in the Senate can be attributed to about five or six Democrats, and Joe Lieberman, and the weakness of Leader Harry Reid. Obama could have made a difference by controlling the narrative, like Bush was so good at doing, but he hasn't don't anything to fire up the public. He's just sat and dithered.
I am furious. If there were a viable alternative party, I would choose them over the Democrats. But there is no alternative: The Republicans mustn't return to power, not next year and not in 2012, and not ever until they are no longer controlled by the far right. But the Democrats don't represent our interests. Healthcare is an extremely important issue for me; I have been betrayed.
I guess the truth of the matter is that the Democratic majorities we have are misleading. We're not going to get majorities larger than we have now, but it doesn't matter because those majorities are padded with conservative trash, obstructionists, dead-enders and thugs. The Republican caucuses are fully homogenous; they are all extremely conservative except for a nominal fringe. The Democratic caucuses, however, still span the full ideological spectrum. When it comes to the overall makeup of the Congress, actual liberals are still in the minority. And clearly the actual liberals now in office do not have the strategic vision, the willpower, the audacity, and the intelligence to overpower their fellow conservative Democrats. That's how one Joe Lieberman can eclipse the Frakens and the Feingolds, the Boxers and the Browns, the Cantwells and the Kerrys, and even Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.
All emotion aside, here is what needs to happen: We need to hold on to our Democratic majorities, while primarying unsuitable Democrats in favor of new faces who will actually represent our interests. The big corporations are powerful, I'll give you that. But they're not as all-powerful as we sometimes like to believe. Not everyone who goes to Washington can be bought out. Some people are there on principle. My own Representative, Jim McDermott, is an example. We need to elect more of those!
I don't know what to do yet about Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. I like both of them. But both of them have fallen far short of an acceptable performance: Look at where we are now. I don't know what to do yet about President Obama, either. Obviously he can't be primaried. I'm not even sure that that would be the right course of action anyway. I'd like to give him another chance. Maybe he'll learn from this. But one thing is certain: A year ago, many of us hoped that we were looking at one of the greatest presidencies in our lifetime. By now, that dream has evaporated like the morning fog. Barack Obama is not going to be a great president. He is, instead, a weak one. He has shown his preference for blowing with the wind rather than bending it to his will. If we were to get a good Democratic Congress, I have no doubt he would enable them. I think his intentions are good. But he is not a good president. If even one house of the Congress were Republican, he would be downright incompetent.
How could that be? How could such intelligence, surrounded by such intelligence, be so stupid? All he had to do was go on TV a few times and declare that this nation would have single-payer healthcare, send his administration out to the traditional media to reinforce that message and advocate for it, and then strong-arm the Democrats in Congress behind the scenes. Or, single-payer aside, he could have done that with the public option. Instead we've got this trash coming out of the Senate that would force us all to buy junk insurance.
In 2006, I recognized that the Democratic victories were a repudiation of Republicans rather than an affirmation of Democrats. In 2008, however, I interpreted it differently: The GOP platform had evaporated into a bizarre and surreal landscape of issueless slogans and broken glories. Democrats were talking about actual stuff for fixing the country. People voted for the Democrats that year. This year, the Democrats have delivered on very few of their promises—and have now betrayed us on the most important one. Next year is going to be a very strange election indeed: Will anger at the Democrats exceed fear of the Republicans? Both parties are going into the next election with public hatred around their necks. The only segment of the population that seems to be energized is those damn tea party idiots...and they're so fantastically insane that they're focusing much of their energy on the GOP civil war, which is still in full swing.
We could have picked up even more seats next year. Now, instead, it's all a big question mark. If healthcare conference negotiations go well and we end up with a public option after all, and if the Democrats do better next year, then we may hold on to our current majorities and even pick up a seat or two in the Senate. Losses in the House look inevitable at this point, but we can still keep them small. Eh, who is this “we”? You and me have been shut out of the equation. The Democrats in power can still keep their losses small. Good luck with that, idiots.
Otherwise, what's going to happen is that the Democratic base—you know, the people like you and me who have just been spit on and shoved into a pond full of shit—will stay home. The conservatives certainly will not stay home; they'll vote. And they'll win a lot of seats. Not enough to retake either house of Congress, mind you. This isn't going to be another 1994. But a loss of twenty, thirty seats in the House is not out of the question, and we may lose three or four in the Senate. That's the worst-case plausible scenario.
All because they spurned us. What colossal idiots. What would have been so terrible about supporting real healthcare reform? What would have been so risky about it? What would have been so unconscionable? It was hugely popular among the public. The Congressional Budget Office consistently showed that it would be a money-saver. It was win-fucking-win! And now look where we are. Amazing! |
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| The Most Terrible Majority |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|10:36 pm] |
I've heard it said that religion itself is innocent...that a few villains and knaves have spoiled its good name over the ages...that “God” never condoned the slavery and the slaughter, the rape, the repression...that “He”—invariably a Lord—is high above the theocratic institutions of mankind, and only ever wanted for us exactly that which we ourselves in this era consider just...even though the principles we now hold dearest would have been impossible to attain in a younger civilization. It's not religion that failed us, I've heard it said: It is we who failed God. “Come back to God. Things will be different this time.”
I think we should turn that old unwisdom on its head, that we may better catch a glimpse of the truth: Religion is certainly not innocent. It dwells in the preeminence of infamy itself. It is the very worst sort of crime. It is a great evil that has nevertheless been practiced by some fine human beings.
The truly noble devout, what few of them as exist, travel a hard road: They are aware of the great evils committed in and for their religion. They are aware of the blackness of history. They know it would be futile to deny the truth. They understand the jury's verdict against their god, and they, according to their goodly interpretations of their faith, accept the judgment with gladness, with resolution to do better in the future.
There aren't too many people like that.
I have come to appreciate that our level of development in this nation—by which I refer to technology and society alike—is almost completely irrelevant to the measure of character in a person who lives here. Academic education aside, most people are barely literate. They are incurious, dishonest, weak-willed, and overcome by emotion. They barely if ever undertake critical thinking. They do not nurture awareness in themselves. They are content to accept what they are told...provided that the messenger wears the right stripes. They allow themselves to be governed by all that is petty. They are human still, yet they are trash. Stones. Dead weight. They are all sorts of words that I would certainly have to gainsay or marginalize were I to vie to be their president. They are humans who threw away their heritage. They are the most terrible majority: The Irredeemable.
That's a premise worth challenging: Are they really irredeemable? I'll let you think about that by yourself, while I move on: To so many of these people, religion nourishes a starved mind. Some religion can provide a sense of meaning, a perspective, an ethical center, and even instructions on how to go about daily life. No one in America anymore truly needs it, if anyone ever truly needed it, but The Irredeemable will settle for it. Because it's comfortable. Because it's popular. Because it's authoritative. Because it's easy.
These people cannot avail themselves of our nation's greatness...even those who are not utter hillbillies and are connected to some parts of that greatness. Indeed, they may even keep the rest of us from availing ourselves of the nation's greatness. They are an intractable underclass of overlords. If they could have been educated better, perhaps many of them would not have turned out this way. But, as it is, they are living failures. They are not going to seek out salvation. Indeed, it's worse: They are no longer capable of experiencing the full measure of humanity. At best, they can be kept comfortable until their time is up and they “pass” from life...and into dust.
Religion has got to go. These teeming millions, however, need their god, upon whom their world is founded. What to do? I'd say there's only one cure for it: Those who have thrown away their heritage—those incomparable fools—must be given the philosophical equivalent of institutionalization for the mentally disabled. Religion is dangerous; we know that. We need to provide a substitute which is not dangerous...but which also cannot be touched or tested, lest it lose its magic. “God” works because everything bad is declared to be either the work of foolish humans or a divine plan beyond our comprehension, while everything good is taken as a sign of holy magnificence. In religion there is total, perfect unaccountability. Any replacement for religion would need to have the same quality.
But it mustn't retain that infallible authoritativeness which is religion's hallmark. One who believes in religion's successor must never be able to plausibly conclude that they are privy to the knowledge of the stars, or have any merit to stand in judgment of others. Such powers must be earned. Instead, this new system of perspective must be conveyed not as an institution of tribalism but as one of humanism. I have given such a system more thought than perhaps you realize, and I will eventually have more to say on the matter.
Now, I want to remark that this is my 3001st Live Journal entry. I wouldn't have noticed the occasion were it not for a comment congratulating my 3000th. The more recent half of this journal is undoubtedly not as obviously profound as the older half. That's partly because I have been less diligent in writing down the important things. But it's also because the whiz-bang profundities are mostly behind me; today's profundities are subtle enough that they challenge my ability to write about them at all in a coherent way. (And if they give me trouble, imagine what they would do to a non-writer!) However, my philosophical development has proceeded in all this time, and I don't consider it a boast that by this point my philosophy is already one of the most powerful and defensible in the world, ultimately requiring only one stupendous leap of faith and a tiny handful of sapient assertions; the rest is inevitable.
So many observations. So much reasoning. Even a few conclusions. I can look back and see many points on which I was wrong or incomplete, and I can see how that took form in my life generally. I'm getting better at not setting myself up to be wrong, by learning to distinguish between what I know and what I only think I know. For instance, in my previous entry I passed along that fellow's advice without any of my own commentary. I've come to understand that my economic commentary is generally not worth a lot yet. There are some exceptions—I can argue for a progressive tax, to give you an example—but I'm not yet to the point (and perhaps I won't ever be) where I would be my own economist of choice. That's in contrast with my passion for sexual equality, where I'm generally as satisfied with my own arguments as I am with anyone else's.
I suspect that individuality as we know it is not so permanent. I suspect there will one day be fewer individuals. I suspect the key to our continued evolution is what those individuals will possess in their quality of character.
I wonder if the next 3000 entries will take another six years. Heh! I expect I will migrate my journal once my personal website is fully operational, some time before that. I may keep the color scheme, though: I've grown fond of these soothing lavenders and ice. Schala is a question mark. I've grown fond of her too...but it's the richness of gold more than anything. I think I'd replace her with a comparable sketch of Silence, the ultimate Sinistral.
Soon it will be time to write a retrospecticus of this decade, and look out into the next one. I am feeling the burn, here. Kendra didn't realize just how much I've grown in all this time, or I suspect she would not have broken it off with me. But she was also not without cause. I may have had this decade to excuse myself of worldly accomplishments so that I might focus on inner development, development which has taken me beyond what most people would ever fathom. But the coming decade will prove whether I can turn initiatives into institutions on a serious scale, or whether I, too, in my own way, am fated to become one of The Irredeemable. |
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| Christmas Party Notes |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|10:38 pm] |
I was at the Steins' apartment building Christmas party tonight. I asked the sociable Phil how he makes connections with total strangers, so he showed me. Thus I had the chance to have a conversation with a 56-year-old businessmate and dilettante (his word). He was knowledgeable so I asked him how to fix the country. He prescribed these remedies:
1. Eliminate short and long selling.
2. Task the SEC with reforming the marketplace so that corporations are judged on the basis of actual performance over time periods of months and years rather than days and weeks.
3. Mobilize my generation and the middle class generally into activism.
4. Institute compulsory national service.
He's from Detroit; used to be an executive at one of the Big Three. Now he has a consulting practice in Seattle. He is frustrated at a lot of the usual stuff--the state of business, politics, etc.--and also with himself. He says that he never really liked business and got sucked into it at a young age because the opportunities seemed irresistible. He isn't sure where his passion lies.
His personal advice to me was along those lines: The first thing he told me was to stick with my passion. Heh. Of course he is to be commended for that advice; he simply didn't know who he was talking to. The second thing he told me, I can't now remember. (This is amusing because, originally, he couldn't remember it either.)
Ah! I just remembered. By the time he remembered it, he had segued into prescriptions for my generation rather than just me. The second piece of advice was to do something for the government...a couple of years of national service in some way or another.
He looks like Glenn Beck, but he's a progressive atheist activist affluent dilettante.
I also shook hands with the guy who is in charge of designing the City's Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel. I am still trying to figure out how to leverage this handshake. |
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| Rennovations |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|10:44 am] |
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The Jungle Sisters in the apartment next door--so called because they're sisters, they lived next door, and they had all kinds of beautiful plants on their balcony and along the front walk--moved out last month sometime around Thanksgiving. In the past few days, the Work Crews have hit the place...hammering and dragging and sawing. Now the apartment is sealed off entirely with "DANGER: ASBESTOS" plastic coverings, pumps, and other goodies. The Work Crews are making lots of noises and vibrations. I think they're converting the Dreaded Asbestos into Magic Happy Faerie Dust. That'll have to be removed with even greater care in the year 2037, once scientists have learned that Magic Happy Faerie Dust causes feghoots syndrome. |
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| Markos' Monster |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|08:13 am] |
I was one of the last defenders of Joe Lieberman after he became unpopular (on the left) earlier this decade. I had seen the criticism of him as unfounded. He was held to a different standard, and condemned for actions that would not have been condemned in another person. His extensive good work in the Senate was completely ignored. And the hatred against him was absolute. It struck me as yet another example of groupthink within a political faction.
Something happened with Lieberman this decade. He's not the same person as the one who ran for vice president. September 11 affected him more than most, I think. Then, the netroots declared war on him. I think it got to him, because he has moved to the right for years...culminating yesterday in his announcement that he would single-handedly defeat key aspects of healthcare reform. Unless the House puts up a herculean fight in conference, Joe Lieberman is going to be the reason that we don't get a public option out of healthcare reform.
That's not forgivable. My support for him faded in 2006 when he lost the Democratic primary for senator and then ran anyway, as an independent, winning on the support of non-Democrats. But I remained privately neutral. I can't do that anymore. This guy has become everything that his detractors originally made him out to be. I think they have blood on their hands, to be honest with you. But now, in a more direct way, so does Lieberman. We all lose.
One cannot control the thoughts of the people--although Fox News has done tremendous work in engineering a partial exception--but I cannot help but pause to reflect that none of this would have happened if people all around had been more reasonable in the first place. |
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| Demivierges and Demiurges |
[Dec. 13th, 2009|09:19 am] |
Well I'll be darned. Vierge means "virgin" in French. I get the feeling Rob planned all of this ten years ago: the most stupendous practical joke of the decade. "Anagram of Grieve" my foot!
I bet he even foresaw that I'd change Vierge into a female to balance out the cast. Pah! Appearances are that I've been well and truly pwned. And if it weren't for Says You! and the bluffing round (guess what a "demivierge" is), I may have gone to print none the wiser!
I'd be only slightly more likely to name one of the ATH characters "Virgin" than I would to name them "Jesus."
In other news, I woke up from a dream this morning that belongs right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. I was a graduate of the fire academy. Along with my classmates, we were about to be sent to fight our first fire. This was set on the east end of Campus Parkway: The fire station was roughly where the Commodore Duchess is, and the building on fire was on the SW corner of 15th and Campus Parkway, about a block away. There's something there in real life, but I forget what. (Despite having walked or bused past it several thousand times.) The University wasn't actually there, but that is neither here nor there!
The building on fire was an old art deco dormitory. The seventh of nine floors was totally on fire. My fellow firefighters and I went running from the station toward danger and adversity. It actually felt pretty good to be the one in the yellow fire gear, people moving aside for us, looking on with admiration and sincerity. Yeah...that was the highlight of the dream.
The comedy of errors began when I couldn't seal my breathing mask. As we arrived at the dormitory, we could look up and see the fire coming out of a window with a fire escape. Obviously no one was using the fire escape. Figuring that there'd be smoke, I tried to fit my mask, but it didn't want to do that.
Once inside, the power was still on. The lobby was huge...probably three stories tall. The elevators were working, but we took the stairs instead...as far as the first floor, at which point the flood of evacuating residents on the stairway became so thick we couldn't get past them. There was also a design flaw in the staircase at that point, where a structural beam cut across the vertical space above the steps (you know, the part of a staircase where the people go). This created a bottleneck like a hatchway, so only a few people at a time could get up.
We retreated back down to the lobby. I asked one of the fleeing residents if the fire was limited to the fire escape. She said no, that the entire seventh floor was on fire. Of course, now I get to share with you one of my smaller fears in life: being on the lower floors of unsafe buildings. It seemed likely to me that the building would collapse. Given that it looked like everyone on floors one through six (and possibly seven) would be able to evacuate safely, I conferred with a couple of colleagues (apparently I had become in charge of our firefighting group) and told them that I was leaning toward abandoning the building rather than trying to save the people presumably still trapped on the top two floors. (A veritable Profile in Courage!)
As we discussed this, one of my other fellow firefighter graduates got a separate idea and ran out. Thinking that running out seemed like a good idea anyway, and that it this point I was open to any other possibilities, I followed her out of the building. (I think she was Kimberly. You know...the Pink Ranger.) Whoever she was, she ran next door to an apartment building that was actually an urban mansion belonging to this elderly Asian lady. I stopped for a moment to look back up at the dormitory: Fire was now coming out of every window on the seventh floor. K and I climbed up to where the owner was, and K explained her idea. The owner was impressed, but declined to cooperate due to legal liability issues. (I don't remember what the idea actually was, but it made sense.)
I was more concerned about the dormitory collapsing. I looked out her kitchen window, thinking I'd be able to see the building start to wobble as the structure failed. Lo and behold, it did! It wobbled, gave way slightly, and then collapsed.
There was only one problem: It collapsed up. Now, what does it mean when you're in a relative frame of reference and your point of reference moves in one direction? It means that, relatively, you move in the other direction.
Yes, somehow, this building--the apartment building, which wasn't on fire and had nothing wrong with it whatsoever other than that I was inside it--is the one that collapsed. A real Wile E. Coyote kind of a moment. I was overcome with the rush of weightlessness as the apartment building telescoped downward. I rushed to the living room, which, after one more collapse, had become almost flush with the ground level. Amazingly, the floor that we were on hadn't compressed, so I was able to climb out up onto the grass lawn, Firefighter K close behind me.
I beheld the collapsed building whence I had just escaped. Then I looked at the dormitory, which was still on fire but totally in good shape otherwise. This was the point of absurdity at which I woke up. |
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| Festival of Fats |
[Dec. 12th, 2009|08:32 am] |
Now that it's Channukah I demand a steady supply of doughnuts and fried latkes. Earlier this morning I bought a vaunted Top Pot Raspberry Bismark. It was so cold on the walk over that my eyes watered. Ah, a Bismark: Now there's a good, Jewish name...
What's this? Why is Captain Secular even talking about a religious holiday commemorating improbable miracles? Well, I could take the cheap way out and claim that I just like the presents, food, and song...which would be true! But I also enjoy the "holiday season" atmosphere around this time of year. There are so many goodies. You get an appetizer with Halloween, and then a parade of cheer with Thanksgiving, Channukah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Year. (I've never actually commemorated Kwanzaa or seen anyone else commemorate it, either, but add it to the list if you like!) It's a time of the year when cities glow bright on long nights, the skies open up with their precious water, white winds blow, and people pay just a little more attention to the world thanks to the edginess of the chill in the air. My hope is that someday we'll decide as a people to have this "holiday spirit" all year long. (Of course, if that were to happen, then the holiday season would become even better...so...double win?)
Obviously it's not about the religion for me. I do know the story of the Maccabees, and of all the other holidays I mentioned. I am a firm proponent of the "de-sacramentation" of holidays, purifying and elevating their other qualities for modern enjoyment. Hence the Raspberry Bismark rather than Shacharit.
In other news, I get a kick out of any species whose common name involves the eating of another species, like the blue-tailed bee-eater. |
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| Damnations |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|11:24 am] |
Democratic Senators Bill Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, and Max Baucus, and Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, and possibly others, need to be kicked out of office in their next election. I'm through with them. Their opposition to any kind of effective public insurance option as a part of healthcare reform has crossed a line of unforgivability. The Democratic leadership, Harry Reid in particular, need to be stripped of their leadership powers for letting this happen. The Obama Administration ought to hang its head in shame for not vigorously promoting meaningful reform. If the Republican alternatives for president weren't so horrifying, I'd withdraw my support for Obama on this one issue. As it is, I can't do that. But I'm pissed.
The Senate legislation is getting worse and worse. At this point, the legislation says we're all going to be mandated to buy insurance, but most of us will have to buy it from companies that have no intention of honoring our claims. Recissions and pre-existing conditions will go away, but it won't be any kind of victory since claim denials will go through the roof and annual caps will still be in place. This is shaping up to be an enormous insurance industry giveaway that won't accomplish meaningful reform at all. We'll be paying them to kill us, just like now except on an even larger scale.
The House legislation was lukewarm, but ultimately acceptable. I support it. However, at this rate, the Senate bill is going to be so bad that the final bill which emerges out of conference may not be acceptable. We'll have to see how those negotiations go. Of course, first, we'll have to see what the Senate's final product is. Get your barf bags ready.
Every one of those Democratic Senators (and Lieberman) is scum... |
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| The Coldest Morning of the Year? |
[Dec. 10th, 2009|11:30 am] |
Holy Carpathians! 17 degrees at nadir this morning; 21 right now at half past nine (and 29 at half past eleven when I finally posted this thing). My little heat dish is fighting the good fight, but the bottom line is that it's just dang cold. This could potentially be the coldest weather of the winter season, unless another Arctic air mass comes our way in the next couple of months...and it's not technically even winter yet! In Seattle, you can get your wettest days and your coldest days in autumn. Winter is an afterthought. How about that?!
In other news, dried apricots are delicious. Especially the ones that are still fat and squishy. (Ah, how widely true in life that is!) Sadly, I just ran out. |
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| Josh Sucks |
[Dec. 9th, 2009|08:13 am] |
Uboa's pet betta died. She wrote about it in Facebook. That totally changed the course of my mood this morning.
I had a betta once, when I was a kid. It was a beautiful, luminescent blue and purple, with magenta highlights. One of the most guilty shames of my past is that I killed it through negligence. I didn't change its little tank water often enough, and, on the last time, I squirted way too much cleaning solution in to "make up" for my irresponsibility. The poor fish died soon thereafter. I still feel surprisingly and significantly bad about that, all these years later. I've yet to have another pet of my own, ever since. Adios, Skud. I hope your master was more decent...
I don't even remember if it had a name. |
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