The Spinning Plate Trick -- All Fall Down

     I have discovered why I dislike straight fiction, “popular” fiction, why I so prefer science fiction and speculative fiction (which are not always one and the same.)  It’s not that the “popular” fiction never has themes of science, or the future.  Quite to the contrary, there have been some very futuristic straight fiction books. 

     No, my problem, my issue with the straight or, more properly, “popular” fiction is the aim, the goal, the tone, the tenor.

     For, you see, while science fiction, like all good fiction, presents a problem, it also seeks ways to solve the problem.  From my experience with straight fiction, the goal is largely not to solve the problem so much as survive the problem, or merely to chronicle the collateral damage from the problem.  Science fiction has always been a genre about solving problems, not just for immediate use but for the future, for the long term. 

     So is this it?  Is this the difference between Fandom and Mundania, between the Rainbows and Babylon?  The search for, the willingness to find, solutions?

     And is this what has happened to Fandom as we once knew it?  To science fiction?  In our flurry, fury to be Accepted, to be a part of Society, the Status Quo, have we given up on solutions, on solving the World’s Great Problems?

     On Thinking?

     I was always proud of my particular subgroups, subcultures—not in a big, glaring way, but in a quiet way, acknowledging the good—for seeking solutions rather than dwelling in, wallowing in, the problems of the world.  Yes, those problems should be acknowledged, but they should be solved, not held as examples of…..of anything.

     “But” you say, “you can hold it up as a bad example!”  To which I reply, “That’s still an example, and the word ‘bad,’ or the implication of ‘bad,’ is easily ignored.” 

      We have plenty of bad examples in the world.  Darth Vader.  Darth Maul.  Natural Born Killers.  Storm Troopers.  The One Ring.  The Eye of Sauron.  Mr. Smith.  General Custer. 

     How many of these symbols of evil is either coveted or idolized?  What does “bad example” mean to a generation who all seem to want to be over six feet tall and menacing, and dependent on a respirator? 

     What has happened to our Fandom?

     Oh, I know, those Storm Troopers who come out in force—and yes, a lot of them have more impressive costumes than even Lucas did for Star Wars back in the 1970s—are not bad people; some of them even go out of their way to do good works.  To a certain extent, it doesn't matter.  That’s like saying, “Oh, those SS troopers weren't SO bad….that one group of them saved a kitten from a burning building,” or “Darth Vader spared his daughter, his son,”  It’s a good deed in a morass of death and destruction.  The evil they represent is still there, represented by these images.  There is still an undercurrent, even if it's not on the surface.

     I’m not an absolutist, a dualist.  However, there is so much evil in the world, in the media, in literature and movies and television, and there is no balance for it.  The News spouts evil; the television dramas spout evil, the straight/popular fiction novels spout evil, and none of those sources, not one of them, seeks to solve the problems presented.

     Damn it all, we need solutions!

Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi

     I started this blog six years ago with the purpose of making myself write in it on a daily basis.

     Yeah, that worked out well.

      In six years, I have posted 11 posts--this one will make 12--and they have gone from being writing practices to being writing practices and chronicles in the life of someone with an unusual outlook mixed with some political ant-hill-poking.  I know that political poking does not seem to fit with my chosen name, The City Druid, but, to the contrary, I feel that it is my duty as a protector and advocate of balance and the natural world to poke fun at and generally expose those things that throw the world out of balance.  That, and sometimes I just get a bee in my proverbial bonnet and have to gripe about it.

     It is my hope that some of this will make people think.  Of course, that only happens if they actually read what I have to say.  I consider that likelihood fairly low, but I have, on one or two occassions, gotten feedback from readers, so I know at least every once in a while someone does take a look.

     Typical years have seen no more than four posts per year, and those are generally done with gaps of about three years in between.  This has not been by design, but due to a simple fact of my life: I am, due to events and circumstances, extremely scattered.  In fact, this post alone has taken me weeks to complete.

     Assuming I actually complete it today.

     As I have said in previous posts, I have viewed writing as my ultimate vocation since I was eight.  Unfortunately, life does not always care what you want or how you feel.  In fact, John Lennon had something very pertinent to say on that subject: Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

     I have given up a lot because of "life happening."  Largely those things have been reading, writing, having free time, and spending time with my family.

     Interestingly, I just read a book that stares deep into the eyes of this subject.  The book is a relatively early Upton Sinclair book called "The Jungle" about the meat packing trust of Chicago around the turn of the last century.  It is an eye-opening book, and yet.....

      ...and yet, one can see the parallels between the early twentieth century labor force, between Jurgis' discovery of Socialism, and the modern disaffection with the work-a-day world of, as the Godfathers put it so succinctly in their song, "Birth, School, Work, Death."

     Granted, most of us, at least in the United States, have life much better than those poor meat packers and other immigrants in the book.  However, in basic form  things have changed relatively little.  Yes, we have a national minimum wage.  However, the things that haven't changed are perhaps somewhat disturbing.

     Immigrants who come here without going through due process (which process did not really exist in 1904, when this book was written) still will live a dozen or more to an apartment, with the adults working in shifts so that they can pay rent.  Now, though, much of that money goes back to the home country.  The extent of vermin I do not know, as my family came here centuries before immigration was viewed as an issue by anyone besides the Natives, and I have not spent a great deal of time among such recent arrivals.

     On a more consistent note, it is well-documented that a person who works a minimum wage job (which such undocumented immigrants frequently do not--they often make less) does not make enough money to support himself, much less an actual family.  The response to this, of course, is a push to raise the minimum wage but, rational or not (and it is not), businesses frequently use this as an excuse to raise prices to cover the increase in paid wages, and thus we have irrationally spiralling inflation. 

     Upton Sinclair did not just write a work of fiction, with dark and horrifying flights of fantasy.  No, he spent time in Packingtown in Chicago, and followed immigrant families to see how they managed.  This book has fictionalized what he saw, and describes it through the personage of a Lithuanian immigrant and his family. 

     It also paints a particularly vile picture of the meat packing industry, and in fact inspired Theodore Roosevelt to the passage of the Food and Drug Act because of the unsanitary conditions (as well as inspiring him to refer to books and journalism of this sort as "muck raking", thus coining a phrase that fallen from use in the last couple of years).  I am not so certain how much improvement there has been in the industry over the intervening century, though I do know that some of the same things go on now as then.

     Perhaps the most....ironic part of the book is the Ultimate Goal that Sinclair has in mind, which is to convert the People to Socialism as a clear solution to the Evils of Capitalism.  I find it ironic at least in part because of all the Science he brings forth, and how much of it is, in the long run, from the perspective of more than a century in his future, is hogwash.  Also, his understanding of people is naive.  However, he is somewhat prescient with regards to some of his technological predictions: we do, in fact, have automatic dishwashers now that wash, sanitize, and dry dishes for us, though we do have to put them away ourselves. 

     He paints the usual Utopian picture of a life wherein humans have minimal labor that they must do to maintain the world so that they can engage in intellectual and creative work.  This is a wonderful notion, but one that very few are actually prepared to see happen.

     OK, I've pontificated enough, and to relatively little purpose other than proving that, while I can write on demand, writing on demand does not necessarily equal quality on demand.

     I suppose that's enough for today and, given my history, probably means you'll see me again in 2016.

Making an "Ism" out of Terror

     Terrorism.

     It's a real bugaboo these last twelve years. 

     Oh, it was a "thing" for the previous thirty years, but one criminal act in 2001 elevated it beyond reason.  Now, I'm not trying to make light of the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the corner of the Pentagon, or the plane that went down in a field in Pennsylvania, but I am trying to give them some perspective.

     So, let's analyze the word "terrorism."

     First, there's the obvious terror.  It's a good word, and describes intense fear.  In fact, the dictionary definition is: a state of intense fear.  That's pretty self-explanatory.  You feel terror when you think someone has broken into your house if you have no means of self-defense, if you're on a water-borne or air-borne vessel that is no longer being borne by its medium, if you suddenly find yourself falling from a tall building or a cliff, if you're being attacked by a wild, large, angry animal.  In general, it is a feeling that assails us when we are in situations that threaten our lives over which we have no control.

     Now, let's look at "-ism."  John Lennon had something to say about "-isms."  In fact, he said he didn't believe in them.  So, what is an "-ism?"  Well, according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, an  -ism is any distinctive doctrine or practice.  Consider Buddhism, Judaism, Catholicism, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Vegetarianism, Lesbianism, Hinduism, Dudeism, Baptism, Patriotism, Pessimism, Racism, Optimism, Sexism, Ageism, Classism, Liberalism, Conservatism.....So, what you're saying is that Terrorism is a distinctive doctrine or practice of terror.

     Now let's look at those people defined as "terrorists" throughout the years.  Let me give you a hint: they do not all belong to the same religion, they do not all practice their terror the same way....so there is no distinctive doctrine, and there is no distinctive practice.  Timothy McVey, who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal building, destroying a day-care center and killing more than 150 people (many of whom were children) in the process, was defined as a terrorist.  By the same token, so were the perpetrators of the destruction of the World Trade Center, so were the numerous Arabs and Cubans who hijacked airplanes throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and so was the man who destroyed the TWA flight over Scotland more than twenty years ago.

     Now, a lack of fitting the specs to be a real "-ism" aside, there's a much more important consideration.

     When you call someone a terrorist, when you call an act terrorism, because of the connotations of the words, you give those people and that act power.  You are saying to those people that they are important enough to have made you angry and afraid.  Fear makes people controllable.  So what you've done by giving this title to these people is handed them your reins.

     Why can't we just call them crimes and criminals?  These words are just as true, but do not have the same charged connotations.  People fear a terrorist, but they look down on criminals.  So why would you rather be afraid of someone who had tried to get you to fear them?  You're playing right into their hands!  Sure, let's catch the criminals, but let's view them as the criminals that they are.  Murderers and vandals, but not terrorists.  The title is too good for them.

The Story of The Wandering Lobster

As the below indicates, this was a guest post I wrote for another blog: http://vulcanjeditimelord.wordpress.com/

     As the title indicates, I'm not the Vulcan Jedi Time Lord.  I am the City Druid, and he has asked me to sit in for him, since he has been writing so much the last few weeks that his brains are starting to leak out his ears.  So I'm here to tell you a story of an adventure that he and I, and another person, had many years ago.

     It was December of 1988, and he and I were staying with his girlfriend at the time.  I worked as a legal secretary for my father, he kept house, and she was a college student.  Since he cooked for everyone, he and I had gone grocery shopping at Kroger.

     It was a Wednesday, and payday was on Friday, so we were there to get a few necessities for dinner.  While we were shopping, we stopped to watch the lobsters in the tank.

     Mostly, they were ordinary lobsters, either sitting in the corners or sparring with their rubber-banded claws over territory.  However, there was one that absolutely got our attention.

     It was blue.  Have you ever seen a blue lobster?

     We vowed to come back on Friday after I got paid so that we could buy that lobster.

     Well, Friday rolled around, and I got paid, and we went to Kroger to look at the lobsters.  Much to our disappointment, Blue was gone, off to boil in a pot for someone's dinner.  However, we found another lobster in the tank that was nearly as remarkable: it was mottled green and blue/brown in a pattern very much like hunter's camouflage, and it had a barnacle growing where its nose would have been had it had one.

     We bought it.  We also bought a bag of ice and put the ice, and the live lobster, into my red Igloo cooler, and put the cooler into the back of my little Ford Festiva.  Then we went to the apartment where we lived in Inman Park, I parked the car in front of the building and kept the engine running while he ran in and got his girlfriend.  When they came out of the front door of the building, she was reading a book, and he led her to the car and helped her into the back seat.  She didn't say a word, just kept reading.

     He got into the passenger seat, and I started out.  We went downtown by way of Edgewood Avenue, and headed south on the Downtown Connector.  We talked, she read, and we generally had a very pleasant drive.  At some point, around about Macon, we switched drivers (his girlfriend didn't have a license, so she just kept reading), and we continued on our way down I-16.  Shortly after that, she realized we weren't in Atlanta anymore, and asked where we were going.

     Our goal, since I haven't mentioned it yet, was to take the lobster to the ocean at its closest point to our home (in this case, Tybee Island, Georgia, home of Savannah Beach) and release it into the water.  We felt it should have a chance to influence the gene pool.  We told her that as we drove.  She was interested in the adventure, and at that point it was getting dark so she joined the conversation.

     It's been a lot of years, so I don't remember what we discussed.  I do remember stopping at a rest stop to get out of the car and stretch.  It was just an area for tractor-trailers to park, and it had no street lights, so we got out and lay in the grass to look up at the sky.  Since we were in the middle of nowhere, there was a vast expanse of bejeweled sky, and the arm of the Milky Way was clearly visible.  We lay in the grass and talked for a few minutes, about the stars and constellations, and got back on the road.

     Once we reached Savannah, we ate and drove on out to Tybee Island.  Our biggest challenge, since it was December 2nd, was finding a hotel that was open for business.  We ended up at an Econolodge on the beach.  Since it was out of season, it was affordable.  We all went to bed.

     At dawn, we got up and hauled the cooler to the water's edge.  As planned, the giant bug was hibernating due to the ice, so we were able to safely take it out of the cooler (we slipped the rubber bands off its claws at this point since it was asleep), and put it in the shallow part of the surf.  Then we waded a little  in the water that was the temperature of iced tea, and stood on the beach to make sure the lobster went to sea.  It took a while, since we apparently got out there at low tide, or at least as the tide was coming in, because the waves kept pushing the poor, sleepy creature further up on to the sand. 

     Eventually, it woke up and actively worked to swim out to sea, and we left the beach.  Of the three of us, I was the only one who had been to Savannah, so I was the "native guide"; he gave his girlfriend a driving lesson on the driveways of Fort Pulaski (one of my favorite places to go) after we toured the fort.  Then we made our way to River Street and had breakfast at Huey's, then took a river boat tour of the port.  Then we headed home,

     It was a memorable trip, and one that has been published before.  If you've ever read a story called "The Great Lobster Liberation", that was written by the girlfriend.

     And now you know....the rest of the story.

Salad Nights

Last night can only be described as “Misadventures in Dining.”

It all started when I got home from work and we had errands to run.  It seemed every time we completed one, either Julian or I would remember another that we might as well take care of while we were out.  I finally put my foot down when we were less than three miles from home, and I was too tired and sore to survive another errand.  

Understand that both of us have old spinal injuries and suffer from chronic pain.  While going to the post office, the UPS Store, Cooks Warehouse and Target may not seem like much, to me it was enough that Costco was out of the question.

It must have been a bit much for Julian as well, because when we got home and he threw something on the stove for my usually-hungry son, after sitting down for a moment to rest,  he forgot entirely about the stove.

This became evident when our basement Storm went into the kitchen, and then yelled that the plastic had melted.  Julian jumped up from the computer to check on his disaster, and I stayed where I was, cruising Facebook.  I heard noises of cleaning and pot-and-pan clashing, and my son came out of his room and had food handed to him.  Then I heard a “thunk” and sharp, loud expletive.  I jumped up to make sure no one was maimed.

Unfortunately, the “thunk” was Julian slamming his finger in a cabinet.  He asked me to check the garbage disposal to find out why it wouldn’t work, and went to the bathroom.

The water was on and the disposal was off, so I stuck my hand in, pulled out the chunk of carrot that had become wedged between two of the blades, and turned on the disposal to wash the last of the nearly-laminated chick  peas away.  

When I turned around, Julian was back, and so was our basement Storm.  Julian said, “I want to make a very bad suggestion.”

I looked at his hand, which had a very red index finger, and said, “You want to go out to eat.”

“Yes, I want to take us all to Longhorn.  Look at my finger; it’s turning black and starting to swell.”

We all decided that the cook had every right to decide that, and I went to get my son and tell him we were going out.  He said he needed to finish his food, but was more than happy to eat again.

Julian put one of our many miracle Chinese liniments on his finger and, once we were all coated and shod and ready, we got in the car to go to Longhorn Steakhouse at Toco Hills.

Yeah, that worked well.

The basement Storm and I were both craving salads, and Julian was craving....well, pancakes, but he had wanted Longhorn.  We sat down and looked at the menu and realized that, in the six months or so since we had last been there, they had entirely redone the menu and there was nothing that looked good to her, all the salads had either grilled meat or bacon (since Julian and I are both allergic to beef and pork, these seemed like an exceptionally bad idea), except for the one that would have sucked with bleu cheese dressing on it--I was not in the mood for oranges and strawberries anyway--and nothing looked good to Julian.  Robyn, of course, would have been quite happy to devour a 30 ounce Porterhouse For Two, but the vote was three to one against, and so he lost.

As we were getting up to leave, we (unfortunately) asked the manager to let our waiter know that we would not be dining there--we had barely sipped our water and had not even touched the bread.  I say it was unfortunate that we spoke to her because she went into full Used Car Sales mode, trying so hard to get us to stay that she may well have convinced us not to go back for a long, long time.

Next, we tried Lettuce Souprise You.  Julian and I used to eat there years ago, before they went way down hill and then went entirely away.  We had not yet tried them in the fifteen years since they reopened, so we thought we should check them out.  To make a long story short, it is not what it was years ago, and we may or may not try it again when it’s earlier in the day and we have a bit more leisure time.

We were running out of close places that closed later than 9 that served decent salads.  I suggested Houston’s since I had not been there since my divorce fifteen years ago, so we went to the Houston’s at Lenox.

For those of you unfamiliar with Houston’s, it is an upscale restaurant chain owned by an Atlanta man.  While I do not know him personally, both my ex-mother-in-law and one of my former employers knew him, and it had been my former mother-in-law’s favorite restaurant.  Despite all that, we decided to try them.

Of course, I say they were upscale.  We walked in and were assaulted by no fewer than three televisions and a volume of sound that would make a sports bar during The Big Game proud.  Now, I don’t know about anyone reading this, but I was always taught that television is not something that belongs in a dining room, and that yelling over other peoples’ dinner is rude.  Given that, it was a bit of a shock when the waitress scolded my son for having his hat on before he even got to the table, but had not said anything to him when he walked in the door.  They don’t allow hats in the dining room, but they do allow drunken monkeys.

When we told the waiter that we were going elsewhere, he didn’t even bid us good evening or anything else.  He just walked off without a word.

At this point, we came up with two remaining options before we considered giving up and going to IHOP.  One we could be pretty well guaranteed to work, but it’s a bit expensive and we don’t eat there often.  We ended up at Six Feet Under instead.

Now, we’re an interesting lot to share meals together.  Julian and I are allergic to mammals.  That’s beef, pork, lamb, venison, buffalo....I could go on, but I’m already hungry.  Robyn, my son, has to avoid sugar.  Storm absolutely cannot eat anything with any spice to it, and is specifically allergic to oregano.  Conversely, Julian, Robyn and I love spicy food, and Robyn and Storm are both quite happy to eat beef in front of us, and the rest of us have no qualms about eating sweets in front of Robyn.  Sometimes it can be difficult finding a place that fits us all.

Six Feet Under is a seafood place that has a certain Cajun flair.  It didn’t matter; Storm sucked down her Chowder like she’d never seen food before, and only complained towards the end that it was way too spicy for her.  Julian and I ate the fried scallops off the top of it for her and, while I could barely tell there was pepper in them, they were very good.  Personally, I got a giant bowl of fish stew and an awesome salad, Robyn got salmon BLT sliders, and Julian got a seafood platter and....the worst chicken tortilla soup in the known ‘verse.

It started out as an effed up evening, and ended up Six Feet Under and pleasant.  Now if only the seafood party bar would 86 the televisions, it would have been perfect.

Don't Be A Wirehead.

     Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

     Are you alarmed yet?  Are you grabbing for your gun?  Are you worried about your children?  Are you hanging on every news article, every news page, every mention of school shootings, theater shootings, violence in the streets that you can find?

     Are you afraid your guns are going to be taken away?  Do you give money to the NRA?

     Do you think guns are evil?  Do you think every gun has the potential to, or the likelihood of, being used in a murder?  Do you think that every gun owner is a potential murderer?

     Do you think it's important to watch network or cable news?

     Do you work as a news broadcaster?

     If you answered yes to a substantial number of these questions, chances are that you ARE the problem.

     I've been paying attention, especially since Columbine.  I don't watch the news.  Occasionally, I will listen to NPR, which plays only news in the mornings and afternoons when I am commuting.  I have to limit this, because if I don't it causes severe depression that can last for days.  If I were to watch the news, one of two things would happen.  A) It would be much worse, or B) If I were to make a habit of it, I might become inured to the horror of it all.

     The point is, every time there is a major slaughter of this sort, it's blasted on all fronts at high volume, so much so that even someone like me who works to avoid the news can't escape.  It's on the television, the radio, the newspaper, the internet....it's everywhere. Whoever just wreaked havoc is now famous!  Often dead, but famous.

     Consistently, thereafter there are "copycat" crimes.

     The problem is defined in the name: "copycat".  Most of these people (not all, of course.  All generalities are false) want attention.  They know they'll get attention by doing this horrific thing because every other person who's ever done it in a big way (as far as they know) got loads and loads of attention.  Like a toddler, they want the attention, and don't really care whether it's positive attention or negative attention, so long as lots of people are paying attention.

     So, by watching the news, by talking about it with your friends and getting them to watch the news, by blogging about the news and Facebooking about the news, you're just giving the sorts of people who are in the state of mind that they are willing to perform such an atrocious act a reason to do it.

     Let me ask a less antagonistic question now: Do you have a legitimate need to know every detail of these tragedies?  Or, to put it another way, Do you really need to know any of this?

     If you really examine the question, and examine yourself realistically, and your life, I think you will find you do not.  Oh, perhaps if you were related to one of the children or teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, you would need to know.

     Did I need to know?

     No.

     I did not seek out this information.  I work with a number of people who are socked into the 24 hour media frenzy, and feed happily through any outlet they can find, and I knew about it within an hour of it happening because it became the discussion at large.  (One of the disadvantages to working in Cubicle-land.)  When I got in my truck to commute home in the afternoon, my radio had been left on NPR and they were covering it.  When the tears became uncontrollable, I changed the station.

     I did NOT need to know.

     I think the news media has a lot to answer for.  They are no longer purveyors of "news" (news  - /n(y)o͞oz/ - Noun - Newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events) but of ratings.  They will say almost anything if it will get them the attention they desire.  I'm not saying that they make things up.  What I'm saying is that they pick the stories that will get the strongest emotional reactions, because those are the ones everyone watches.  It does not mean that those are important stories.  It means that they are ones that will be watched by people who will also watch American Idol, Survivor, Honey Booboo, Dog, The Walking Dead, Adult Swim, Two Broke Girls, and especially CSI and NCIS, or pretty much anything else someone filmed and sold to a network executive.

     Look, I'm not saying anyone reading this is bad, or evil, or anything.  However, your behaviors, your choices, influence the world.  If you encourage these kinds of outrageous news stories (which you do by watching them, reading them, sharing them, discussing them) then you are also encouraging the results of those stories.  

     Years ago, when we lived in Athens (home of the dratted inbred English bulldogs), we had several friends in different aspects of police work.  One was a detective, and found that watching shows like CSI and Law and Order made it easier for him to catch criminals because they committed the same crimes and made the same stupid mistakes.  Another friend, a "beat cop", laughed about gang shoot-outs because, invariably, one of these guys would get hold of a pistol or some similar weapon and hold it like they were in the movies: arm locked in front of them at just above shoulder height, with the gun held at a 90 degree angle to the vertical.  The results were predictable: squeeze the trigger and fire a line of bullets until the gun smashed them in the face and knocked them out through the joys of recoil.

     It apparently made them quite easy to capture.

     As to the whole discussion of guns, A) The Second Amendment guarantees us the right to defend ourselves with guns, not to hunt with them; B) The Second Amendment also calls for a civilian militia rather than a standing army.  Not so sure how well that would go over these days....C) No one (except for a few particularly loud idiots/power mongers) is actually calling to seize all the guns; and D) I'm all for registering the gun owners; not so sure the value of registering the guns themselves.  I'm willing to debate that, but I'm not going into my reasoning here and now.

     In the end, I suppose the real point of this long, drawn-out and slightly abusive rant is this:

     SHUT UP AND THINK FOR YOURSELF.