Editing/writing life

When you’re buried in work…

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…you may not make much time for blogging.

You really can’t. If you have time to write blog posts, which all your clients can see, how will you explain to them why their stuff isn’t getting done sooner? That’s why there’s been less new material recently here at The ‘Lancer. For example:

I recently finished a major rewrite job on a crime thriller. It was extremely difficult going, because when you rewrite, think about it: you’re responsible for everything. This character was not introduced sooner? That’s what you’re paid to correct. Wait, what did we say about how that situation went forty pages ago? Have to go back and look. Rewriting is expensive, and in some cases, needs to be (and is about to become) more expensive.

Shortly thereafter, an editing job reached my desk that I don’t even know how to categorize (except as fiction), but it’s about death and rock and roll. Much easier work, but also more commercial potential and higher expectations as a result. At times like this, it’s handy to have another gear that I am not sure others in my line of work can access. Of course, when I deploy it, I’m wiped the whole next day. Two naps. Zero social function.

That one had to be done that quickly, because I could not keep the next project waiting: an intriguing comic political fiction tale about Latin America. For one thing, it’s four hundred pages, reckoning at 300 w/pp. For another, it was scanned via OCR, leaving a goodly number of small scanning flubs. I like the ms and believe that it’ll do well, but it’s going to take me weeks to do correctly.

I may or may not finish that one by the time it’s time to dig into a Native American historical fiction novel that’s a little longer than the previous ms I mentioned. It all depends how quickly the author is able to devote the time to addressing the matters we discussed beforehand. You see, sometimes a ms needs a significant amount of work before it’s to the stage where I can do what is called editing, not rewriting. If there are major issues to address, I would prefer that the creative remedial actions come from the author; it is his or her book. This need usually reveals itself on the evaluation read, which I don’t undertake unless I’m pretty sure I’d like to be the editor. Anyway, depending on life events, that ms could arrive any time, and I’d at least have to start evaluating where it had gotten to while still working on the previously mentioned project.

And out there beyond those are shades of more, early discussions, early contacts.

Anyway, that’s what’s keeping me off the blog lately, and away from the tough ‘hoods and fleshpots of Boise. We actually have a lot of those, no joke. I’ve seen all sorts of places that look to me like strip joints. Not of interest to me personally, but considering how desperately poor so many Idahoans are–the outcome of a chillingly effective philosophy that believes, at its heart, that the best way to keep Boise from becoming Denver is to give the poor absolutely zero incentive to come or stay here–it surprises me not one bit that there are enough young women desperate for money in Boise that it can support half a dozen strip-o-terias.

As for me, even if I were the type, I have too much on my plate. But I promise I’m not forgetting you fine souls who stay in touch with The ‘Lancer. I just have to pick days when I can set aside some time, ideally days when my brain activity exceeds that of muesli.

Editing/writing life, Epinions (reclaimed), Technology

The death of Epinions

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Word has come of the final demise of Epinions.com, one of my early writing sandboxes. I can’t say that I’m sad, but like an old apartment where one lived for a time, one may look back at it and say: there is a piece of my life’s days.

To explain why it matters, I must tell what it was and why it became popular. Epinions was born as what we might call the people’s product review platform. Anyone could create an account and write reviews of books, diaper pails, cars, wines, cell phones, travel destinations, games, what have you. And therein lay its greatest flaw: you could only review what was in the Epinions database, which meant a significant delay between purchase and waiting for the item to be added. By the time the leads put it out there, the product might be discontinued, though people tried hard to keep the database as current as possible. That wasn’t a factor at Amazon, where if you could buy it, you already had an account and could review it. It’s not hard to see why Epinions reviews failed to become a go-to product research resource, in spite of significant talent and effort.

Epinions also meant exposing one’s work to public critique, because anyone could comment on and rate a review. Enough negative reviews, and your review wouldn’t show up as readily. If people didn’t like something about your review, they’d say so–although one learned to be careful taking on the site’s evident intellectual heavyweights. It developed its own culture: product detail fanatics, wiseacres who wrote reviews not meant to be taken too seriously (hi, there; my name is jkkelley), lazy two-line reviewers, moms trying to out-mom all other moms, honest hard workers, prats, and idiots.

Oh, and one got paid. At first, quite a lot, enough that unscrupulous people created click circles to scam the site out of wads of venture capital. As I arrived, pay became a trickle. I probably made $500 for over a hundred reviews spread over the course of ten years, heavily concentrated in the first three. I’d guess that I made less than $1/hour. When I started to get paid real money to write, I became less interested in donating my creativity to a site that avowedly shopped my writing to other sites with no extra compensation for me. While that wasn’t the only reason I stopped writing, I’d be false if I presented it in idealistic terms. When I learned that my work was worth more than Epinions would ever pay me, the incentive was gone–unless I had an ax to grind, as I sometimes did.

I came to know a good number of great people at Epinions. A couple are now acclaimed authors. I met perhaps a dozen or more in person. I stay in touch with quite a few. It had a few freaks, most easily avoided. Some I became close to in real-world terms that I knew would long survive the site. Some I have seen through major life changes, been drunk with, mourned. Some I’m pretty sure would take me in if I were homeless, and a few would more likely give me the coup de grace.

Epinions was a good place to learn how to write, thanks to the open-ended platform and potential for critique. Not all of it was constructive, but even the mean-spirited and bitchy critiques taught me things. I wouldn’t call it a finishing school for writing, but it was a useful boot camp. If people were heckling one’s reviews, well, there might have been a reason for that. One learned to organize one’s work (or not). One learned to be sure of one’s facts (or not). One learned how to handle critique with grace (or not). For many, Epinions was the first place where they turned to face the blast furnace of public reaction to writing.

My own specialty at Epinions was the art of the parody review. It was designed so that it could not deserve bad ratings, because it still contained helpful consumer information. It was experiential without taking the concept seriously. I reviewed Hustler as a women’s magazine. I reviewed a sippy cup for utility in drinking alcohol while operating power tools or behind the wheel. I reviewed Grand Theft Auto III as a homeschooling tool. I reviewed a CD called The Power of Pussy by Bongwater. I reviewed a game called Team Barbie Detective, playing it with my own inclinations and seeing how it went. Amused yet annoyed by a freakout review by a religious fanatic of a children’s animated DVD, which alleged that it was demonic, I bought the same DVD and evaluated it as a practical guide to demon summoning. (Hey, kids need to know this stuff.) Epinions had some review topics that just pleaded for mockery, such as ‘How To Use Action Figures And Sets.’

At times, I got serious. I reviewed Everclear, telling the story of the time it came near to ending my life in its second decade. When I decided to hammer a stake through the heart of the University of Phoenix, I was all malice and business. It wasn’t all comedy.

The defining moment, I suppose, was the breast pump review. They told me it was the funniest, craziest thing I’d ever done at Epinions. I’m not sure I’d agree, but I enjoyed the reception it got, especially from quite a few women who had actually deployed a breast pump in anger at some point. There’s a story behind it. Mark Arnold, of St. Louis, was one of the funnier writers at the site. Those of us who felt there was room for mirth commingled with the consumer helpfulness were something of a fraternity at Epinions, and Mark was in good standing. He was also dying, rather swiftly, of kidney cancer. We could do precious little for him, but we could bring our A-games to make him laugh while he was suffering, and thus convey to him our affection. I am reliably informed that we made a real difference for Mark, and I’m proud of my own small donation to the cause.

And that it may be preserved for those who enjoyed it, and survive the fall of Epinions’ flaming timbers, I present it here in modestly edited form. We remember you, Mark. You were a good guy and a funny writer.
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Venturing among the forlorn, giving a whole new meaning to “self-expression”

Evenflo Breast Pump Kit Press and Pump Battery/Electric, reviewed by jkkelley on 2001-09-05

Pros: can be returned to Wal-Mart, sex toy potential

Cons: didn’t make me lactate, painful, noisy, sold at Wal-Mart

Summary: not recommended for milking your breast, though you might get someone aroused with it

After posting my fiftieth review at Epinions, I hit upon an idea for #100 that I nursed, so to speak, for four months. At Epinions we hear a lot about stay-at-home moms this, the Mommy Brigade that, and so on. It’s mostly silliness, but there’s an element of truth in it.  My own mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she worked hard.

So, in regard for moms everywhere, I want to write for Kids & Family. Who says you have to have kids to write in this area, anyway? Bah. A fresh perspective is needed: one from someone who has no children, has not even been to Chuck E Cheese’s, and therefore has no biases. For, as we all know, it is true that just once in a great while, the occasional Kids & Family junkie gets just a little militant.

Did you realize that men too can lactate? It’s not a simple matter; our normal acquaintance, at least in the case of straight men, involves a radically different approach to the breast. Milking our own is usually not on the agenda. But we can; just ask any doctor. And we should. Who says that only women can nurse babies? I call upon males of all persuasions to break these chains of oppression and show that we, too, can be nurturing and life-giving.

With that, I resolved to milk myself, if I could, and in so doing, review a breast pump. I figured that a new viewpoint would add a lot of consumer value, result in Informed Buying Decisions, and help me gain valuable Kids & Family-related insight so that I could better relate to the plight of nursing women.

Now, granted, unless I attempted to do the dairy routine in the shopping mall food court–and since I wasn’t going to have to clean up any baby barf–I admit that I knew in advance I wasn’t getting the Total Lactatory Experience. That part I couldn’t help. But I tried valiantly anyway, good reader, and if you’d like to hear the story, read on.

It was a typical Tri-Cities August afternoon (about 95° F) one fine Tuesday when I did something which normally for me would be anathema. Something so bizarre I had to really psych myself up to get through it. I would venture to a circle of Hell to walk unto the tormented and the damned, with faith in nonconformity as my fortress.

I went to Wal-Mart.

First priority:  avoid being ‘greeted’.  I chose my entry timing with care.  Evading the underemployed senior in blue, I moved with a purpose toward the pharmaceutical section. I was in the Wal-world, as they say, but not of it. I stepped over dropped pork rinds (that is not a joke). I disdained a cart. I dodged corpulent, aimless cartpushers lacking in depth perception. I met the vacant stares of staff and patrons alike without flinching; just as in a burn ward, it is important to people not to deny their humanity even when in a state of degradation.  Exile from humanity is far worse torture.

How unfortunate for me, then, that I couldn’t find the damned breast pump section with both hands and an annotated map. I wandered around for a good twenty minutes (the place was about the size of a big league ballpark) before at last bungling across the breast pumps. Naturally, some Queen Bee had her cart parked right in front of them. Naturally, it took several minutes for it to occur to Her Majesty that I might want one, and that I might greatly appreciate it if she would kindly back her rig up. This is normal in the Tri-Cities. They mean no harm; it just doesn’t occur to anyone that they could ever possibly be obstructing anyone, so they just stand there doing nothing, letting the mental solenoids work.

My main decision was whether to get the manual or the electric one. Since I knew I would be returning it anyway (no other reason to set foot in Walton Memorial Arena), I splurged on the electric one.  Perhaps I could milk myself while reading, or preparing possum stew, or playing solitaire Pictionary.

The waiting is the hardest part, and never more so than when being in line to check out takes you out of the Brownian motion of shopping and forces you to register what you see.  Two of the three customers ahead of me had some problem or issue (probably a twenty-cent discount that they failed to receive).  It took about fifteen minutes before I finally got to plunk down the card. During that time, the Mother of the Year behind me threatened to cut her son’s finger off if he touched a pack of gum. (I shot the boy a look of solidarity. If I’d had a sow like that for a mom, I would have wanted a few looks of solidarity.)

The checker, a thirtyfiveish woman with a sad expression and a fading shiner that spoke volumes, couldn’t determine whether the credit card slip she printed was for a credit or debit card.  This is normally a fairly elementary question, I believe, but the elementary is complicated at Wal-Mart. After seeing the black eye, I gave her incompetence a pass.  My façade fading, I just signed the slip and bugged out of there.

To my great joy, I also evaded being ‘greeted’ on the way out. Exultation of the kind I felt when I was leaving Hell High School for college. Ha, you gravy-suckers. You got to borrow my money for a week, but you didn’t get my soul. You didn’t even provoke in me any reaction but pity. I get to leave, and you will remain here, slaving away for the world’s worst employer outside of a few shoe factories in Shenzhen. I had a sense of triumph and achievement as I headed for the White Lightning, my truck, which I’d deliberately parked in the lot’s farthest corner. At the 27th and US 395 Wal-Mart in Kennewick, Washington, that effectively meant parking it in Idaho.

After my appointment that afternoon (I wonder how the nice elderly lady having trouble getting her Verizon dial-up going would have reacted if she knew; I felt slutty), I headed for the barn, pump safely stowed atop my briefcase full of computer and business paraphernalia.

I showed my beautiful bride my purchase.

“NO! You aren’t really going to milk yourself, are you?”
“Why, certainly, dear. Why should women get all the glory?”
“You are such a freak.”
“By the way, dear, I need you to help me.”
(groaning) “Oh, god. With what?”
“The before and after pictures, obviously!”

She looked at me in shocked disdain. She is so culturally conservative sometimes.

That evening I tried to assemble it. Deb’s efforts to help made the task more challenging; I had to shoo her off, on the grounds that I couldn’t evaluate the assembly directions fairly if she did it for me.

Instructions: lousy. In English, Spanish and French, interspersed together, but in a way that’s difficult to follow. The drawings are not to scale, so the parts they’re showing as being big are actually small and vice versa. I’m reasonably mechanically inclined, but I found them badly formatted and confusing–the fact that I understand Spanish and French notwithstanding. I can only imagine how much fun this might be during postpartum depression.  Hell, even during partum depression.

In the back, also in three languages, are some questions and answers about breastfeeding. Engorgement (full hooter syndrome, basically), storage, refrigeration, scheduling, milking oneself and massage techniques are all covered. None of them helped me personally, though some of them look promising as foreplay.

Assembly: poorly thought out. For example: to get the bottle in place like the manual says, you have to shove with all your might, bending the plastic. I was sincerely scared that I would break it, which would give me postpartum depression (because then I couldn’t take it back to Wallyworld). I tried every direction and method. If you follow the instructions, you will ultimately damage the pumper. My recommendation is to lightly grease these parts with Vaseline or something so you don’t have to honk on it so hard.

What it looks like: imagine a white one-demitasse coffee maker, if such a thing exists. Then imagine a milk bottle about the size of a champagne split, topped by a clear plastic trumpet bell coming out at an angle. You position the little valve on top of the bottle on the drip part of the coffee maker, at an angle, then cram and force the bottle vertical.

Attachments: it also comes with a little blue bag, so that you can cart it around in public without horny guys forming a pack behind you waiting for you to uncover an inch of breast flesh.  There are also some nursing pads (probably to mop up in case you’re doing the Old Faithful thing), a little ‘silicone nipple adapter’ (a euphemistic term for ‘miniature mammary adapter’), and a rubber hose called the ‘flushing tube’ (for if you get truly infuriated with the thing and find yourself about to flush it down the can). In some ways it was sort of like a little Kirby vacuum cleaner.

Getting going: one problem most women don’t have to face is chest hair. Like Esau, I am ‘an hairy man,’ so I shaved off a circle of chest hair centered on my nipple. The trumpet bell thing, which we should just call the sucker, is about the diameter of a baseball; I shaved an area about like a saucer. Having not shaven anything in four years, I actually had to go digging for a shaving razor. Finally found one in an old travel kit. It was that or steal from the wife.

Firing that sucker up: the instructions said to stimulate my “let-down reflex” by relaxing, thinking about my baby, and massaging my breasts. Since I don’t have a baby, or much in the way of breasts, I substituted thinking about experiences I’ve had in the past that sucked, such as Micron’s warranty service, talking to Dell Computer on the phone, and dining at Casa Chapala. Day by day I recorded my experiences:

Day 1: had some difficulty getting a firm seal (some of these aquatic mammals really need to take up Tae Bo), and when I did, yeouch! I immediately turned down the suction.  It felt like I was nursing a remora. No middle ground; either there wasn’t enough suction and it fell off, or there was enough to hurt like all hell. Five minutes of this left my whole nipple area swollen, and if I’d kept it on full, I’m sure I’d have blown a blood vessel.

Day 2: the problem with this thing is that the suction level doesn’t stay put, meaning it keeps sliding up until it could suck-start a Harley. Nipple very swollen and tender. This isn’t for wimps, let me tell you. Feels like a baby, all right:  a baby badger.

Day 3: hurts even worse, though I’m getting the hang of keeping my thumb in the right place so it can’t do the Electrolux thing to me. Feels like a needle in my nipple. It is absolutely impossible to do anything else during this–can’t chat online, can’t write, can’t even read a magazine.

Day 4: I’m building up my endurance a little here, though the thing is still painful. I’m beginning to despair that I’ll actually get any milk this week. (It was at this point that I actually, for the first time, asked myself what in the world I would do with it if I did in fact begin to do the dairy thing. Sell it on eBay, I think.)

Day 5: left the suction up higher this time and sucked it up, so to speak, when it came to the pain. I paid the price–I think a blood vessel is about to go. Tomorrow I’m going to have to shave again. In the mirror, with my shirt off, I look pretty odd.  I would have a lot of explaining to do at the beach.

Day 6: weird effect; my areola (the skin around the nipple) is getting all wrinkly, like women’s do when their nipples get erect. We may be getting somewhere here, even though with the pump attached it still feels like my nipple is in a pair of vise-grips. This has real potential as a S&M sex toy. It would give a manageable amount of mildly erotic pain.

Day 7: oh, great, I’ve finally developed a tolerance for the ‘high’ setting now that the experiment is over. It hurt acutely at first (and my nipple is always tender) but after about five minutes it didn’t bother me. The hell with it; I’m taking this back. I’m also saying the hell with the before and after pictures, on the grounds that I have to admit that it didn’t do me any visible damage.

Results: very poor. This device failed to express even a drop of colostrum from my nipple. I therefore cannot recommend this pump; I must join the ranks of the many dissatisfied customers. I see now why it has the unflattering nickname: “The Nipple Ripper.”

I don’t know of any women I’d wish it on. Couple guys, maybe.

Book reviews, Epinions (reclaimed), Social comment

Recent re-read: George Orwell’s 1984

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He loved Big Brother.

Those are the final four words of 1984. When I first absorbed them, they hit me rather hard. It’s been thirty years, but it may as well have been yesterday.

I first read it in a very superficial manner in high school. It didn’t really hit me until the actual year 1984. In fact, on the first date referenced specifically by the main character (April 4, 1984), I may well have been reading it. It was a text for my modern European history survey in college, so a superficial reading would not do–especially for a course in my major.

This time, I was engrossed in Winston Smith’s long, lonely, forlorn struggle against a world of contradictory statements designed to systematically break down the faintest trace of humanity and individuality. Winston, a faceless bureaucrat, declares war against a society whose raison d’être is to possess his mind. The system intrudes constantly; it functions the same whether Winston consents, just passively lies there, or fights back. He twists viciously, flings off the grunting weight of indifferent, impersonal oppression, and decides that he has not really lived until he began to fight.

I’ve been there. In fact, that describes my upbringing.

Winston discovers allies, but hope as one might to the contrary, he confronts a system that handles rebels with an inexorable spirit-grinding mechanism. It is not enough that he die. It is not enough that he submit under duress. It is not enough that he confess to various low crimes. Nothing will suffice but utter submission of the essential self.

Been there too. That describes how the world feels to me in adulthood.

The pressure of conformity insinuates from every direction… not just against me, but against all. My fourth rereading of 1984 left me with the belief that its message grows more relevant every day. I wonder how it can be that our school systems do not ban it, as it is a threat to the conformity that society employs schools to inculcate.

  • “You have no privacy. Get over it.”
  • “It’s just a business decision; don’t take it personally.”
  • “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”
  • “Wear a Tommy Humdinger shirt. Be individual. Be unique.”
  • “Surely you don’t believe those fairy tales about a god and a cross.”
  • “Don’t be rude to telemarketers; they are just doing their jobs.”

“My self-confidence has soared since I got my breast implants.”
“If you want to get hired, you’ll wear a real suit.”
“You don’t understand; this drug replaces a chemical your brain doesn’t produce.”
“A computer on every desktop, running Microsoft software.”
“The nail that sticks up is hammered down.”
“Only ‘liberals’ truly understand the human condition.”

  • “It’s too wordy. If you can’t get the message across in ten words, forget it.”
  • “What do you mean, she’s black (/white/Jewish/Thai)? How could you do this to me?”
  • “Just ignore the bully. Names can never hurt you. Never throw the first punch.”
  • “I still need to lose ten more pounds.”
  • “You don’t want to have children? You’re sick!”
  • “Oh, sure, you’re bisexual. We all were too, before we really confronted our sexuality.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
“It’s dirty down there.”
“If you don’t like this country, why don’t you just leave?”
“If you value your Temple Recommend, you’ll do as Elder Sanctimoni and I tell you.”
“You know what the neighbors would say.”
“Nice girls don’t use those words.”

  • “So, John…your mother tells me you haven’t taken communion for two years.”
  • “Ever have those days when you just don’t feel ‘fresh and feminine’?”
  • “Drive the sporty new Acura Spatula LX!”
  • “All my friends listen to Rage Against the Machine, so I will too.”
  • “If you don’t stand up during the national anthem, you’re a Commie.”
  • “Everyone has a car. You have to have a car.”

“How could anyone possibly survive without cable TV?”
“So just throw the junk mail away if you don’t like it.”
“Everyone else is cooperating with us.”
“You, young lady, look like some kind of whore.”
“I watched the Super Bowl just for the commercials.”
“The two-party system may be flawed but it’s still the best ever designed.”

This sort of conformist rhetoric pummels us daily, and it is what comes to my mind when I read the propaganda presented by the authorities of Winston’s IngSoc overlords. I do not believe that a page of the book goes by without a statement that will come as a body blow to anyone who believes in freedom of writing, speech and thought. It does not matter what form those freedoms take for you. Orwell depicts a world in which they are gone.

When Winston loves Big Brother, the light of liberty and determination in him fades to darkness. In the contradictory spirit of 1984, this is portrayed as a moment of dawning light and joy. Ironic. I have read that some women, to their magnified mortification, find that they become aroused and even orgasm during rape, and that this renders it still more traumatic; like having not merely one’s body taken but one’s soul. Maybe that’s what happens to Winston in the end–though in his case, the ecstasy is the closing act, his last thought and feeling. He does not get to grieve.

Contradictions are the mechanism by which the Ingsoc (English Socialism) of Winston’s Airstrip One (formerly England) of Oceania (formerly the English-speaking countries plus Central and South America) breaks down the independence of the psyche. Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. When constantly bombarded with contradictory statements, in time they may pound one’s unique grip on perceived objective reality down into a numb receptiveness, the mind a blank canvas on which the propagandist can paint today’s version of history–or edit yesterday’s version when its message becomes inconvenient.

It is as though the mind were a collection of odd-shaped stones and Ingsoc the rock crusher; when it is done, the gravel all looks the same. You can use it in cement, or pave a road, or crush it further to make sand, or do as you otherwise wish.

What makes 1984 an important work of literature is the fact that a single page of it can supply the thinking reader with enough questions to last a week. I offer a sampling from page 66 of my copy, said page chosen by confidently closing my eyes and opening the book:

“Rutherford had once been a famous caricaturist, whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion before and during the Revolution. Even now, at long intervals, his cartoons were appearing in the Times. They were simply an imitation of his earlier manner, and curiously lifeless and unconvincing.” (What does this say about the basic value of creativity? Of art? What do we lose when a Bill Watterson quits writing Calvin & Hobbes because he’s simply not willing to conform?)

“And then a voice from the telescreen was singing: ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree; I sold you and you sold me. There lie they, and here lie we; Under the spreading chestnut tree.’ The three men never stirred. But when Winston glanced again at Rutherford’s ruinous face, he saw that his eyes were full of tears.” (How many times has each of us looked into the face of living human ruin? Have we fled from it? Can we confront it? Am I a living ruin?)

“A little later all three were rearrested. It appeared that they had engaged in fresh conspiracies from the very moment of their release. At their second trial they confessed to all their old crimes over again, with a whole string of new ones.” (Why is there so much pressure to make public confession? Do we believe in any sort of rehabilitation? If so, is our ‘rehabilitation’ simply a means of promoting conformity? For whose benefit is it… that of the rehabilitated individual, or so that we may congratulate ourselves on our humanity?)

1984 is not about the repression of individuality, but its systematic destruction. All that makes us unique individuals: love, family ties, our own perceptions of history, an enterprising spirit, egotism, modesty, courage, trust, greed, lust. At one point Winston observes that, contrary to his historic perception, the proletarian masses are still human, and the Party members largely no longer are.

The designation of the Party’s main enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, as stereotypically Jewish would be easy enough to interpret only at a shallow level. Orwell wrote in 1949, and it is tempting to consider his writing merely a polemic against totalitarianism, as best understood by the world in 1949–either recently-shattered Nazism or triumphant Stalinism, neither of which meant world Jewry any goodwill. That’s only part of what I take away.

Orwell’s message is timeless: any authority that rules by strength of power is shaken by the notion of someone it cannot bribe, intimidate, ingratiate or hoodwink. Short of just stomping with the jackboot, those are authority’s primary tools. Anyone whose values will not be compromised disturbs those who just went along, and those who pressured them to do so.

So it isn’t enough for IngSoc to obliterate Winston, the man. They must steal his newly-discovered soul, and those of all who oppose them. Winston’s thoughtcrime is the disease, to be attacked with antibodies until driven out. What’s left of him can then go ahead and die.

The final line of 1984 affected the path of my life. I would, over the course of life, face many pressures to conform. I learned, with effort, to put on the necessary fronts that may get one by. I did not take that so far as to validate what I despised, and concede that it was really okay. No matter how many people do a stupid thing, or a wrong thing, it will still be stupid or wrong. It reached a point where I learned to begin with distrusting the wisdom or value of an act or attitude in proportion to the number of people doing, touting and flaunting it. This was alienating, but the more things I learned that many people believed were in fact ridiculous, the better that felt. It came to a point where I had to remind myself that now and then, the masses get it right. I still keep reminding myself that mindless nonconformity isn’t much better than mindless conformity, and can easily be worse. Difference for the sake of principle, yes. For its own sake, nah.

When I read the final line of 1984, and grasped its import, something broke inside my own brain. I saw my future in terms of choices, either to go along and say it’s all okay, or to stick to my guns and have a harder life. It meant that a lot of people would make fun of me, ridiculing my choices as irrational–especially when I failed to let law, government and corporations force me to rationalize their actions as acceptable.  There was nothing noble in my decision to hate Big Brother; it was the simple survival choice. It was a choice of humanity. It might shorten my life, but at least  for a time I would be truly alive. My soul might be damaged, but it would be mine. I would look about me and see mostly persons whose souls had been sold–not because they cooperated with oppression, but because they had been unable to combine cooperating with hating, so they redefined oppression as not-oppression, then proceeded to make fun of those of us who hadn’t sold out. Our refusal remained an irritant, a reminder of sordid collaboration, and it must be demeaned by the collaborators at every turn.

The Vichy régime of France during World War II, representative of a France that chose to abandon its liberty and principles rather than fight and defend its beautiful capital to that capital’s destruction, treated its own French countrypeople more cruelly than the Nazi occupiers in many ways. I scorn and despise AT&T, for example–but not half as much as I scorn and despise the mentality that can look at the way they do business, and rationalize blessing that way while cursing the consumer who speaks out against it. The collaborator, who chose the evil side, is more to be despised than the evil side itself, which lacked ability to be good in the first place.

Here’s to Emmanuel Goldstein.

===

This review was originally published in different form on Epinions, a site now deceased. I have reclaimed my work.

Book reviews, Epinions (reclaimed), Social comment, Sports

Book review: The David Kopay Story

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(This review was originally submitted to Epinions. I am reclaiming my work in edited and updated form.)

So Michael Sam, a linebacker from Missouri with legitimate hopes of being taken in the NFL draft, has come out as gay. He did so knowing that this might impact his opportunity to play at the sport’s highest level. Evidently he had already come out to his college teammates, who respected his confidence and continued to treat him as a teammate.

This takes guts. You know how, when a windshield cracks, it can be repaired provided the crack doesn’t reach the edge? This may be the blow that cracks the glass barrier of discrimination to its edge. While those of us who advocate an end to homophobic discrimination are cheering on Michael Sam, I’d like to remind the world of the man who first struck at the barrier. I have more in common with him than some might realize.

David Kopay was a tough college running back who made it to the professional football ranks through sheer determination and obstinacy, staying there for a decade as a backup and special teams hand. A craggily handsome fellow who ‘came out’ in the mid-1970s while writing The David Kopay Story with Perry Deane Young. And a University of Washington Husky.

David and I, therefore, have walked the same collegiate paths. I’m proud of my alma mater; while no university is perfect, UW (we usually say ‘U-Dub,’ often without the definite article) combines a square mile of carefully landscaped lakeside campus with some of the finest educational tools that exist. As far as I know, it is still the very finest nursing school in the land, and maybe the world. For those with the self-discipline to till them, UW can offer impressively fertile grounds for learning in a rich variety of studies.

We also have good sports teams. But when I think of famous fellow Dawgs who inspire me, the first one that comes to mind is not Football Hall of Famer Hugh McIlhenny. Nor is it legendary quarterback Warren Moon. It is not statesman Warren Magnuson, flying ace and Medal of Honor winner ‘Pappy’ Boyington, activist and decorated veteran Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer, former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, newsman Chet Huntley, actors Richard Karn, Dawn Wells, Joel McHale or Patrick Duffy, or civil rights activist Gordon Hirabayashi–though I’d be honored to meet any of them.

No, when I think of fellow alumni whose hands I would like to shake, David Kopay is the first-stringer.

We must remember that this book was first published in 1977. Jimmy Carter was President. The nation was mired in a post-Vietnam funk. The economy was a hot mess. We had begun to make meaningful the civil rights gains of the 1960s. The Cold War was a reality. We were expecting the next war in Europe, possibly soon, and our military was the next thing to a broken force.

The ex-hippies were just starting to be promoted to lower management, but going home and listening to the Beatles and the Stones on vinyl at home, and clinging to their VW microbuses as tokens of a bygone time when ‘all you needed was love.’ We had partied the hearty party of post-WWII prosperity, we were about done throwing up the morning after, and we were mopping up the puke with a throbbing headache and drinking cranberry juice. And telling everyone to turn that damn music down.

The popular perception of male homosexuality in the 1970s was that it was a personal choice, like becoming a Jehovah’s Witness or a disk jockey. Many also saw it as a dangerous perversion, felonious in many states. Family and friends tended to treat it as a major disgrace. Society treated male homosexuality as a rare, contagious, emasculating disease.

In this timeframe, at the finish of a ten-year NFL career, David Kopay let it be public knowledge that he was homosexual. No one else had done this, especially not someone who had spent nearly a generation in men’s locker rooms where he might–omigawd–see other men naked. It sounds stupid now, but remember the times, and you’ll be able to imagine the reaction.

With Young’s able assistance, Kopay tells us the story of his path to ultimately living as an out gay man. The conflicting desires. The intoxicated sexual incidents with friends and fraternity brothers. How hard he tried to be heterosexual, and the ways in which that hurt women who truly cared for him. The cracks and comments from teammates who had no idea how correct they were, and the way Kopay enjoyed hitting them extra hard in practice. The format alternates between Kopay’s narrative and Young’s commenary, and flows well, with no sense of reading a tennis match. (Not that it’s really germane, but the two were never lovers. Of course, if you co-author a book with someone, you might as well be.)

Kopay’s book impacted popular perceptions of athletes similarly to Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. For many years, the public had practiced voluntary ignorance concerning professional athletes’ humanity. Bouton, another of my great heroes (although it should not be glossed over that Ball Four contains some crude homophobic references that I suspect Bouton regrets today), had made athletes look more human. By coming out, Kopay humanized them in yet another. If part of the population is gay, part of the athlete population will be gay. Kopay’s work destroyed that comfy ability to pretend that wasn’t so.

I find Kopay’s description of his upbringing to ring with truth, which is why I’d recommend it for anyone who wishes to better understand the experience of being gay. Of course he found his early desires and thoughts confusing; he was raised in a very religious home, and there was no manual available in any case to explain that some people happened to prefer same-sex partners. His only clue was that he knew, deep down, that he was more interested in males than females, try as he might to live otherwise. The candor of this self-discovery story, and his coming to terms with it, makes Kopay’s book relevant nearly two generations after its first publication.

By modern standards, his family’s reaction to his coming out would be considered very disappointing. For the 1970s, their reaction was commonplace and mainstream. Kopay lets us see the pain that caused him, the ‘we cannot truly accept you as you are’ hurt that continues to bleed long after. His African American teammates who knew or suspected he was gay were also the most understanding. While the book is explicit, it’s not pornographic. it is more about football than sex, and again, Kopay is straightforward. He was not a big star. He hung on in the pros by sheer force of will. He just wanted to play the game.

That explains another part of the kinship I feel with David Kopay. Armed with moderate athletic talent, he lowered his helmet and charged, pounding his way to a respectable ten-year professional football career. Unlike Kopay, I lacked athletic talent, yet I battled my way to two high school varsity baseball letters, a varsity football letter, and the slightly fear-tinged regard earned by someone lacking a commonsensical regard for his own safety. The only thing that got me any respect was the reckless use of the hardshell helmet against joints, soft parts, and so on. (I once hit a kid hard enough to break one of the steel bolts holding my face mask in place.)

After college, I took up amateur hockey and played it for six years, leaving memories of myself with many; I also played ten years of amateur baseball, making solid contributions to competitive teams (and, I daresay, leaving a few physical calling cards along the basepaths). I refused to accept lack of talent as a disqualifier. I wanted to win, and to do well, and I wanted it bad enough to give all of what little ability I did have. I’ve learned that it’s about 80% what you do with what you have and about 20% what you have to work with. The same ratio held true in college academics, as I learned by underachieving my way through my first two years of school, while others of comparable natural talent made me look rather dumb by comparison.

Kopay set forth to be a collegiate and professional athlete, not an activist. His career was not spectacular, but certainly successful (he was particularly tough on special teams). After that career ended, a challenge far greater than the Rose Bowl came his way. Kopay faced and met that challenge. His account doesn’t dwell on the courage that took; nor should it, because it speaks for itself. Sure, he was afraid; I also would have been. He felt the fear, and did it anyway.

I wish I’d had David Kopay on any or all of my teams. Skills, talents, sexual preference; all secondary considerations. Give me someone who’s honest; give me a comrade; give me someone who wants to win with all his or her heart; give me guts under fire; give me someone who never quits; give me someone who’ll angrily tell me I’m full of it; give me someone who will lead me if I falter, follow me if I lead, and avenge me if I fall.

Let me draft a team loaded with that mentality, and we will make a way.

In the first round of that draft, my team selects David Kopay.

Michael Sam’s step is of similar magnitude. I am glad that today, unlike Kopay’s day, he may look behind him and see not merely a few confidential well-wishers, but a great multitude in which straight allies outnumber those who are gay. This is one of those rare crowds where I feel comfortable. Good luck, Michael.

Sports

Bill Veeck: major league baseball’s last entrepreneur

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Were he still with us, February 9, 2014 would be the hundredth birthday of William Louis Veeck, Jr. Today’s sterile, quillion-dollar corporate baseball industry misses him terribly. There will never be a better day to explain why.

Let’s start with one bold assertion: if Bill Veeck owned your hometown baseball team, you’d buy season tickets.

You would. I love the game, but I’m not much at all for actual stadium attendance (don’t like crowds, too many jackasses). I would want season tickets.

Even when Veeck’s teams were lousy, they entertained. And since he understood women’s buying power, and their sometimes differing expectations from the ballpark experience, Veeck’s teams appealed to women perhaps even more than men. In those days, most owners viewed female fans as afterthoughts. Veeck considered women valuable customers of the most loyal sort. An unprejudiced man in an era of African American segregation and aristocratic anti-Semitic restrictions, Veeck’s operations attracted and welcomed anyone willing to buy a ticket. Thus, Veeck set attendance records, and all his teams created buzz.

They also sometimes became winners, and on a low budget. Veeck was an entrepreneurial baseball owner; when he owned a team, it was his primary business. He was no George Steinbrenner, flush with wealth earned in other ways. Rarely could he afford a team’s purchase price, so he followed the principle of ‘other people’s money.’ He would line up investors, put up some of his own money, and operate the team. He was a salesman, a hustler of the best kind, and a very shrewd judge of administrative and sports management talent. If you had wanted a drink-from-the-firehose sports and promotional education, and you’d had any guts at all, you’d have gone to Veeck’s office and offered to take a job doing anything, for whatever he wanted to pay you. The rest would come through osmosis.

There’s a trend today in sports, news and talk shows: sports entertainment, news entertainment, talk entertainment. Pro wrestling, CNN and Jerry Springer are examples of the trend. Problem: no one today manages the second noun without losing the first. Pro wrestling is not sport, CNN is not news, and Jerry Springer isn’t discussion. They’re circuses, nothing more, deserving no more serious consideration than a stage magician who seems to believe his act involves actual magic.

Bill Veeck combined entertainment with sport without diminishing either. That is genius. And while Bill Veeck spent much of his life laughing his head off, few things gratified him more than when the game’s stuffy dignitaries would accuse him of making a travesty of baseball. But why would they say such a thing?

  • He once sent a little person (formerly called a ‘midget’) up to bat.
  • He gave outrageous door prizes, like a dozen live chickens or a pallet of beer.
  • His stunts sometimes bombed, notably Disco Demolition Night.
  • He sometimes used clowns in the coaching boxes.
  • He brought up 42-year-old Satchel Paige, late of the Negro Leagues, and touted him for Rookie of the Year.
  • He was the first to sign an African American (Larry Doby) to play in the American League.
  • He held a funeral for a pennant.
  • He held a Grandstand Managers’ Day in which fans chose the lineup and strategy. His fans won.
  • His groundskeepers’ skullduggery was a legend. If Veeck’s team was full of turtles, the groundskeepers transformed the basepaths into swamps. If they couldn’t run, no one got to run.
  • If he had a crosstown rival, he considered it his duty to try and run them out of town, annoying them in every way he could think of.
  • Hardly a game went by without some sort of stunt. Car racing. Little people landing by helicopter. Door prizes. The exploding scoreboard (a Veeck invention). Fireworks…

…and much more. But he did all of it while doing his level best to build winning teams on a shoestring budget. Bill Veeck wanted to win as well as entertain. The ‘travesty’ was that he and his fans had fun.

My assessment is that the other owners hated him out of stuffy envy. Veeck was always having fun, and they often were not, and his promotional competence pointed up their many promotional scleroses; of course they were bound to hate him. The staid and dull almost always hate the fun and interesting, do they not? Most owners took their lordly positions very seriously. Veeck’s first act, upon buying a team, was to remove his office door. He would then reorganize the concession stands, renovate the women’s restrooms, speak at any event that wanted him, tease his detractors, excoriate his nearest rivals, and go out drinking with his friends. A caring man who meant much to many, Bill Veeck had a great many friends to drink with. Some were the bleacher guys, because Veeck did not watch games from an effete  luxury box. He preferred to sit shirtless in the cheap seats, drinking beer and talking baseball with his steady customers. He loved the stadium, the stunts, the fans and the game.

For most of this time, he had a leg to stand on…and only one. He lost the right in Marine training during World War II, and every so often they had to trim it back a little more. He had to soak the stump in hot water for several hours each day. Veeck being Veeck, he cut a hole in the prosthetic leg and used it as an ashtray. For fun, he would stab it with an icepick and watch the reactions. He was inventive and brave, pioneering a number of innovations we take for granted today.

Bill Veeck made baseball fun, even for people who otherwise paid it minimal attention. He is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is something of a patron saint to the Baseball Reliquary, the organization which gave me generous permission to use Tony Salin’s work as the basis of my baseball name pronunciation project.

And if he owned your hometown team, you’d go to the games.

There is plenty of good reading out there about Bill Veeck. Here’s your Veeckography:

Veeck as in Wreck, Bill Veeck with Ed Linn

The Hustler’s Handbook, Bill Veeck with Ed Linn

Thirty Tons a Day, Bill Veeck with Ed Linn

Bill Veeck: A Baseball Legend, Gerald Eskenazi

Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, Paul Dickson

Note: for my money, anything written with Ed Linn is worth reading. One of the most gifted co-authors whose work I’ve had the pleasure to experience. They rarely get due credit for that.

Adventures, Religion

Locked out half naked on I-5

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This story explains one reason why I remain open to metaphysical ideas, which is not to say I buy into them all without question.

Back in summer 1990, I bought my first real vehicle at the age of 27. We don’t count the Corvair with the failing transmission and rotting tires, which was stolen with the connivance of the dealer and the assent of our precious legal system, nor do we count the Skyhawk that also had a failing trannie, which I shoved up the seller’s rear end. It was the White Lightning, my 1990 Toyota pickup. I paid $10,200 for it. A two-wheel-drive vanilla-colored and vanilla-looking vehicle, it is, and some of the better money I have ever spent in my life. I’m still driving it.

It might surprise you, then, that one evening early in my ownership, I tried to kick the back window out–but I’m getting ahead of myself. At the time, I was engaged to K., an accountant about my age. She lived near Lynnwood, north of Seattle, and I lived in what would later become Shoreline. I was working over in Bellevue as a computer salesman in the trenches of the IBM/Microsoft wars. My work required that I wear a dress shirt, slacks, tie and dress shoes.

I was still wearing most of them late that summer evening, because I’d gone straight from arrival back at my apartment up to see K. I don’t remember why, but she was distraught about something–probably about her racist S.O.B. parents, with whom she still lived, or her abominable uncle, or her arrogant brother and cousin, or her idiot sister. If you are beginning to suspect that I didn’t have a joyous relationship with K.’s family, and that perhaps the relationship eventually disintegrated, you are a perceptive reader. Her distress wasn’t due to anything I’d done, at least.

The evening ended up with K. and I parked out in Alderwood Manor somewhere, with her bawling and sniffling, and me trying to be supportive. At one point, she had needed a mucous control method. Being the type, I had taken off my white dress shirt and encouraged her to load it up with snot and tears. That didn’t concern me. While I decided against putting the shirt back on, I figured it didn’t matter if I drove home topless. It was night. The only people who would see were my fellow tenants at the slum called The Villager, and I simply didn’t give a damn what any of my fellow Villager people thought about anything. About 10:00, I dropped K. off and headed for I-5. I’d be home in twenty minutes, maybe less. Couple beers and bed.

One decision I had made after buying the truck was a quiet protest against the apathetic climate toward stranded motorists, combined with the culture of fear. Everyone was afraid to stop and help someone, a mentality I still decry. This was before the prevalence of cell phones, so being stuck was a bigger problem than it is today, and being helped was mighty nice. I had decided to be the sort of person who would stop and help people if he could. Ah, those idealistic days. As I rolled down I-5 southbound near the 220th St. SE exit for Mountlake Terrace (mine was the next after that), I saw a vehicle stopped on the shoulder with a young man leaning against it. This Was My Time.

I didn’t stop and think about my appearance, of course. I flipped on my turn signal, braked back and pulled in behind the guy. It made sense to leave my engine running and the lights on, or so I thought. I got out, bare-chested but otherwise dressed for office work, and asked: “What’s wrong?”

The kid told me that his car had died. “Sucks,” I replied. “Where do you live?”

“Mountlake Terrace.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a ride to your place if you like.”

“Sounds good.” I moved to get into the driver’s side. It was locked. My long habits of locking doors behind me had caused me to screw myself but good. Now I was the shirtless guy who had locked himself out of his new truck along I-5 around 10:15 PM, and wasn’t much use to the kid anymore. I had a bit of a panic, and figured that I needed to break a window and get in, so I climbed into the bed. I sat on the right wheelwell, brought back my foot and booted the back window with all my might. Thump. Tried again. Thump. After a third futile kick, and a perverse gratification with the obvious fruits of Toyota’s PPG auto glass standards, I got out and tried to think what to do next.

I’ll bet it was a good thing I couldn’t see the poor kid’s expression. Then I had an idea, one of a series of naive ideas I had that night, each arguably naiver than the last. There’s naive, and then there’s twentysomething J.K. naive.

“Tell you what. I have to call a tow truck to let me back into this thing before it runs out of gas. There’s a gas station off the exit. I’ll just trot down there, call a tow truck, get him to slim jim me into my truck, and if you want, he can tow yours and take you home. Wait here, okay?”

And if you can believe this, I imagined that he would. So off I went, the jogger out for his nightly conditioning run in his dress clothes, manly chest bared for the world not to see (what with it being dark). I wasn’t in bad shape back then, playing hockey and softball, and it didn’t take me that long to reach the exit and then the convenience store. I used a pay phone–kids, that’s what we used to have to do back in the day–to call a tow truck, then set off at a return trot. This was not how I’d planned to spend that evening’s end, but stupid happens.

Can you believe that the kid had bugged out on me? What was the matter with that ungrateful little bastard? In any case, I had no other business but to await the tow truck. It was getting on around 10:45 now, and a vehicle pulled up behind me, headlights like little suns. I couldn’t tell who it was, but it didn’t take long to find out.

Out stepped a Washington State Patrolman, flashlight over the shoulder and directly in my eyes. I understand why they do that, even if it wasn’t any fun. One suspected that perhaps the officer would like to know what was going on, and might justly be prepared for risk, so I did the natural thing. Keeping my hands open, wide and visible, I gave him a cheerful: “Howdy, trooper!”

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on here?”

In fact, I would rather not have, but it was a reasonable question. And if the tow truck didn’t show up, he’d be able to summon any necessary assistance. Fair’s fair; he’d stopped to help someone, so I appreciated that on a couple of levels. I told him the story to this point, omitting nothing. “Now I’m waiting for the tow truck,” I finished.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself in a jam,” advised Trooper Obvious. Couldn’t blame him, though. He was trying his best not to laugh.

A second set of lights appeared behind his patrol car. “Trooper, I think your backup just showed up.”

He looked. “No, that’s a Snohomish County Deputy. Why don’t you stay here with your vehicle and wait for the tow truck, and I’ll go explain this to him.”

While the stater was furnishing his colleague with the Nightly Civilian Comedy Report, another set of lights pulled in behind the deputy’s car. That was the tow truck, and the officers directed the driver toward me. The driver didn’t start laughing, maybe because he had seen weirder things. He took his slim jim and got to work while I watched in nervous mode. He wasn’t succeeding, it was after 11:00 PM, my engine was still running, there were five vehicles present, and I’m not a big fan of being the center of attention at the best of times. The tow truck guy still wasn’t getting anywhere with the slim jim. He explained that on newer models, Toyota had redesigned the lock mechanism. Oh, joy.

I saw a sixth car pull up, just ahead of the kid’s stalled car. Oh, crap. More cops. Not that I didn’t appreciate that the cops had stopped to begin with, but I wasn’t looking forward to another addition to the merry throng. Then I saw the license plate.

Washington, WCA 105. It’s been nearly twenty-four years, and I still remember it purely for this reason. K.’s tags.

A little cautiously, K. got out of her maroon Mustang. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, other than locking myself out of my truck.”

“What did you do, stop and help someone, then lock yourself out?”

She knew me that well, at least. I nodded.

This is where trust pays off. When I’d bought the truck, my first act was to give K. a spare key. You never know. She pulled out her key ring, walked over and unlocked my door. Situation resolved. Then I started thinking. “What brought you out here? I’d have thought you were in bed. That’s why I didn’t call you, I figured you’d have a hard time getting to sleep as it was. Did you call my place?” I rarely ask anyone for anything, and hate to inconvenience people, especially when it will require me to explain how dumb I can be.

“No. I just knew you were in trouble, so I got in my car and headed back the way I knew you would go home.” I thanked her, hugged and kissed her, and almost hugged and kissed the tow truck driver when he declined to charge me for coming out. While he hadn’t actually achieved anything, those things aren’t free to operate. I guess he figured I’d had suffered enough for one night. Nice guy. After advising the police officers of the solution, everyone saddled up and went our various ways.

And then I began to think. She had sensed I was in trouble, taken the correct route, happened to spot my truck despite the presence of a varied little fleet of vehicles making it less than easy to pick out, and shown up with the solution in her purse. How does such a thing occur? Most of my mental answers were in language unsuitable for the blog, which maintains rather tolerant standards in that area. The kinds of things one says when one is both creeped out and relieved.

While I’m not trying to cite this as proof of the existence of psychic phenomena, it’s enough to make you think. Anyone remember the old Charlie Daniels Band tune The Legend of Wooley Swamp? It’s one of my country favorites, as they are one of my favorite country bands. And as it keeps repeating:

“Some thangs in this world ya just can’t explain.”

And to this day, I will neither get into nor out of my truck without a spare key on my person.

It has since bailed me out a couple more times.

Privacy

The Great Facebook Garbage Patch

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You might be aware that the Pacific Ocean contains a Sea of Garbage. No exaggeration (and it’s not the only one of its kind). While it’s nature is popularly misunderstood, the reality is disgusting enough: enough discarded plastic is floating in the North Pacific Gyre for the deteriorated particles to be an environmental problem at best, a disaster at worst. It doesn’t quite resemble the ‘many miles of floating used diapers’ vision many people have, but that actually might be less of a problem. One might gather up and dispose of used diapers, for example. Not so simple with deteriorated plastic particles.

I apply a related philosophy to my Facebook page ‘Likes.’

Why? Because one’s Likes feed the data hydra, which enables the following:

  • Serving suitable ads. I don’t like ads, and even though I block Facebook’s, that doesn’t mean I want to help them create a clear picture of my true preferences. And since we are the product, and we are not compensated nor cut into the profits, I see no reason to cooperate.
  • The collation of a dossier on me, which I expect either will be or is being sold to other people. There’s probably a clause deep in some TOS that says that I authorize that, but here’s a novel concept: I do not recognize those. I don’t care whether the law does or not. To me, anything buried in impossibly legalistic fine print designed to discourage me from reading it simply isn’t morally binding, just as I do not recognize as morally binding any form of coerced oath.

If I cannot prevent the dossier from compilation, I can ruin it by drowning it in trash. Thus, the Great Facebook Garbage Patch, containing at least a hundred spurious Likes for every valid Like. I Like flower shops in Indonesia, restaurants in Warsaw, bands in Chile. I Like a bizarre variety of movies. I Like numerous celebrities I’ve never heard of. I did this by feeding a random word to the search function, then Liking the first couple dozen pages that turned up. Over and over, once a week or so.

Does it bother me what people might think, surfing through my Likes and wondering what a strange creature I must be? No. I wouldn’t be sure what to make of anyone who based a judgment on that, if I was the type to care much about public opinion to begin with. Would it be great if they could be authentic, leading me to points of actual common interest? Sure, but it’s not worth knowing that I’m fleshing out the dossier in accurate manner.

What to mass Like today? Well, the Seagulls play the Broncos in a couple of hours. I think it’s time to bulk Like ‘seagull.’

Book reviews, Editing/writing life

New release: Second Chance Valentines by Shawn Inmon

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The e-version of this short story is now available. I did the editing.

What impressed me about the ms on the cold read was Shawn’s ability to generate new characters. Most of his work so far has had an autobiographical lean, and this is neither rare nor necessarily unwelcome–but one day, it comes time to fledge. I see him doing that as he gains confidence in that ability.

My part of the work was relatively modest, because with each new ms I find myself doing a little less surgery. He learns and grows, which some authors do not. We had to work over a few plot issues, seeking to avoid contrivance and create an effective and credible event flow. Those are sometimes hard for editors, or at least for me, because there is a continuum ranging from proofreading (you just look for errors) a full rewriting (few sentences may remain intact, and one may add or remove significant content). The various editing modes fall somewhere between those two, but for me the question is never far away: if I alter the story too much, will it cease to be the author’s story? There is no answer that fits all situations, but the author is the author, and I am the editor, and I have no fundamental yearning to encroach upon the author’s purview.

My usual method is to do a cold read, assess the ms and come up with some feedback and commentary prior to proceeding. There can never be two most current copies of the ms, so Shawn and I refer to it as ‘handing off the football.’ On the cold read, I think it essential to identify story inconsistencies, contrivances, credibility issues, or anything that I think a reviewer would one day pan. I would rather offer the author the opportunity to address those with his or her own ideas, so that the story remains as much his or hers as possible. I’ll offer suggestions if I have any (and I consider it my duty to arrange to have some), discuss ideas back and forth, evaluate ideas the author presents.

It went that way this time. Shawn’s a hardworking author, and was still taking time to work on the ms while he was supposed to be enjoying an idyllic getaway at the coast. I found some stuff that I felt he should rethink, and he did so. I got the football back and went to work, and I believe he accepted most of my edits.

The result is, in my opinion, a deft short story that has Shawn starting to fledge. The experience of reading his work is growing richer, and I foresee that growth continuing as his mastery of the storytelling art increases in breadth and depth. It is a pleasure to work with him and watch him succeed.

So what’s the lesson for aspiring authors? The guy is selling a lot of writing. If you want to do that, there are things you can learn from him.

  1. He isn’t touchy, either during the process or with the public. The gracious, approachable Shawn you see responding to his readership is the same Shawn I deal with. I’ve never had to tell him something sucked, but if it was the only honest way to convey my opinion, I could safely do so. He would ask the right questions: why does it suck, and how should it be fixed? Because if I’m saying that, I had better have some ideas, or I’m not much use. Shawn’s a friend, but this is business, and he’s a client who deserves to be treated like one.
  2. He takes full advantage of every service I’m offering him, which gets him the best value I can offer for his money. I told him to get in touch any time he wanted to discuss anything, from a potential project to a character that isn’t quite clicking. He believed I meant that. I want to help him, and he gives me every opportunity to do that. When you stop to think about it, I’m also helping myself, because my work will be easier later.
  3. Growth. It gets better each time. I may never break him of a few habits, but I have a few of my own I may never break. He incorporates feedback, and I see the results next time around.
  4. Marketing. Your work will not sell itself; that’s only true of endcap auto-sellers, whose series tend to jump the shark after a time. (W.E.B. Griffin, got my eye on you.) I’ve read dozens of excellent books that never sold well. If you think marketing is yucky, and you want to imagine that you can stake it all on your epic writing talent, you’re standing in your own way. Shawn can and will market his work, and that causes more people to buy it. A good product is the beginning; the next step is to bring the product to the attention of people with the power to click ‘Add to Shopping Cart.’

If you commit to those things, your chances leap skyward.

Adventures, Privacy, Social comment

Fun with collection agencies

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This is a new one for me, because I’ve never had anyone need to sick the collection dogs on me in all my life. Either I’m not paying and someone can go to hell because I don’t rightly owe the money, or (99.9%) I’m paying promptly in full–or if I slip up, accepting responsibility and apologizing. (Well, why not, if it was my screwup?) So I do not know much about how it feels to have bill collectors call.

I do know that most of the people they’re after have probably defaulted on multiple debts. Sometimes it’s not their fault; our medical system is like a random fiscal meteorite shower, where a little bad luck can wreck your finances for life. But those who are said to owe, probably do owe, and I am sure that in a majority of cases they would just prefer not to pay that which they fairly owe. If the collecting were done by the party to whom the money was originally owed, I’d have more sympathy for the collecting side, but it’s their duty to get their facts right. Including the correct phone number.

As it is, a couple times a week, I get a robocall from a bill collection agency. Now, the first time, I could see that perhaps it was the former owner of the phone number. However, I don’t recognize the right to robocall anyone on such matters. Want to have a conversation? Call, introduce yourself by full name and organization, and tell me your business in a forthright manner. All civil. Mistaken identity? Glad to clarify. If they robocall me, they get nothing. Robocall me several times, and no matter what they do thereafter, they get nothing. I’m now collecting my own bill from them, and I feel free to determine that new debt is accrued each time they disturb me for any reason. I no longer wish to make nice. After all, I don’t have a problem. I don’t owe any past due bills. I don’t need to take ownership of their problem.

Got one today; saw the caller ID and got my game face on. These days, most companies have someone who speaks Spanish.

“Bonjour ?”

“Hello, may I speak to Mary Dublois?” (pronouncing it dew-BLOYZ)?

“Quoi ?”

“Do you speak English?

“Je ne comprends pas.” (I don’t understand.)

“What language is that?”

“Qui est a l’appareil ?” (Who’s calling?)

“Is that Spanish?”

“Je ne vous comprends pas.” (I don’t understand you.)

“We’ll have someone call back who speaks Spanish.”

“Merde alors.” (Break a leg–my sarcastic way of saying ‘knock yourself out.’ Though the literal meaning, ‘shit, then’ would also work.)

When they call back, I will answer. But not in Spanish or French:

“?שלום. מי שמטלפן” (Hello. Who’s calling?)

They really should not robocall me. And if the excuse were that this was the most practical model for their business, my response is that this is the most practical model for my own business, and that their problem is not my problem, and that I decline to own or accommodate their problems, especially in view of the lack of consideration they show for mine.

I wish more people would stop letting institutions make the rules. That is part of what we have come to as a society. Companies made rules, acted on them to our detriment, and we accepted ‘that’s just our policy’ as a valid excuse. Me, I think I have as much right to make policy for myself as they do for themselves.

And mine is rigorously enforced.

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Headlies

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It’s time to lay the lumber to a trend that is spreading misinformation and slant through too many uncritical minds: the headlie. As far as I’m aware, I might be the first to use the term.

A headlie is a headline that lies. Someone creates a link to an article, or titles the article, and it’s untrue or grossly misleading. I read one today about a political figure, indicating an article that would say he’d said very ignorant things about women’s bodies. While there is no shortage of ignorance on that topic, that doesn’t mean it’s honest or fair to tar anyone with that brush when it isn’t merited. Well, I read the article, and sure enough: the person was accusing his political opponents of attempting to prey on reactions they supposedly perceived. The guy might be wrong, even an ass, but let’s be real: he wasn’t asserting those to be his views. He was attributing them to his opposition.

Later today, I read an article about a fraternity chapter that, to go by the headline, got axed from official recognition by its university for a virulently racist party off campus. Nah, turns out that’s not the reason the school gave. Its reason was that the party was conducive to underage drinking. See the headlie? Sure, we all know that the racist thing is what got their attention, but the real story here is that the university used a pretext for which probably every frat house at a public university could be faulted. The headlie deceives.

All that we can do is to read the actual article, and not react to the headlie. I am convinced that a good percentage of political hatred in this country is generated by headlies taken at face value rather than investigated, the puppeteers trusting that most people simply won’t take time to catch the lie.

Our minds are being manipulated, and we must take them back. And we should remember the people who publish headlies, because they are warping perceptions on a massive scale.

The watchdog of democracy is not only tipping over the garbage can and trashing the place, it’s blaming the deed on the cat.

Blogging freelance editing, writing, and life in general. You can also Like my Facebook page for more frequent updates: J.K. Kelley, Editor.