Epinions (reclaimed), Human relations

College days, roommates, and what I learned

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In the fall of 1981, I left a miserable lumber town to attend college in Seattle, which was not yet the capital of grunge and coffee. I was only seventeen (due to long ago getting promoted out of kindergarten in mid-year) and came from a very repressive family environment. For example, in our house, to question my father’s interpretation of the Bible was equated with doing Satan’s work. Free at last to seek out pre-marital sex and alcohol, I worked harder at either than my studies. I was also overwhelmed academically due to the rudimentary education of a small-town school with low standards, and was particularly deficient in critical thinking because neither my home nor my school offered much intellectual challenge to dumb ideas. College tends to fix that.

Lesson: if your new roommate is from a repressed environment, look out. They will probably go completely hog wild.

My first roommate was Math, a brilliant mathematician from a conservative suburb (West Seattle) with a clutch of intelligent, pleasant high school friends. He was the only roommate I’d never met before I moved in with him, and the best one I ever had. He was in honors math–at UW, an intimidating program–and after putting up with me for two quarters, moved out to a single room in a quiet dorm. He promptly tried to kill himself. I may have been a flaming pain in the butt, but it turns out that my antics helped him deal with the pressure.

Lesson: don’t be too quick to judge a roommate. He or she may seem swinish, and may even be a swine, but may also fill a need that you don’t realize. Get to know the person.

For my second year I stayed on the same floor, rooming with Markdove, a senior from Tukwila (a suburb of Seattle). We had planned this because we were both a) hardcore political conservatives (this was a long time ago, folks) and serious drunkards. I used to pour Everclear in Markdove’s beer when he went to the can. One time he puked.

Lesson: if you keep Everclear around your dorm room, it will ultimately be misused somehow.

While in that living arrangement, I came to realize that I needed to control my drinking before it got full control of me. As luck would have it, the night after I chose to hit the wagon for a month, our cluster living area decided to pitch a massive wingding. I stuck to my guns. In so doing, I gained the psychological upper hand over alcohol. I still drank, but never as heavily or as out of control.

Lesson: in the college dorm environment, you are in a sea of behaviors, attitudes and parties. There will come a time at which you will have to choose to steer rather than drift. Know that the day will come. A lot is riding on it.

Markdove and I had an arrangement: lights and noise were allowed at all hours. We would use blindfolds and earplugs as necessary, and often did.

Lesson: at some point the issue of room usage, noise, study and sleep will confront all roommates. If you want consideration, you have to give consideration. Gentle hints tend to work better than open confrontation, especially with Young College Students who are Now Big Adults and who Can Now Totally Manage Their Own Lives Quite Nicely, Thank You.

I soon moved to a different dorm. My roommate was Kenpeck, and it was a good thing that I spent most of my nights (ok, all of them) in my girlfriend’s room because Kenpeck and I politely hated each other. He was a community college transfer from Aberdeen (a depressed coastal fishing and former lumber town), and was actually there for the purposes of studying and learning. My rowdiness somewhat cramped his style. In retrospect, we both judged each other quickly and unfairly, but he was the adult in the room.

Lesson: rooming with someone is a total-immersion living experience. If you don’t like each other, move. However, if you never bother to get to know each other, your roomie relations will disappoint.

I spent the next two years as an RA (Resident Advisor) in McMahon Hall, the most freshmany dorm in the UW system, and the place where I’d begun with Math as my roommate. For me, it was a little like the old show Welcome Back, Kotter. In those days, it wasn’t rare for Residential Life to hire RAs from among the rowdiest souses in the dorm system, on the grounds that it was harder to put stuff over on us. I wasn’t a very good RA, especially in my second year, and I was fortunate not to be fired by supervisors who showed me unearned compassion. But I did witness and umpire a lot of roommate conflicts.

Lesson: most of the conflicts I saw were involved one person being totally inconsiderate or anal. If you run to either extreme, you are going to have roommate conflicts. If you can compromise, you will tend not to.

Lesson: roommate relationships tend to become exaggerated. “I love her.” “I hate his guts.” “She’s such a snot.” “He and I have become best friends.” It’s better to shoot for an even keel no matter how good or bad it seems at first, try not to peak or valley, expect strengths and weaknesses. They’re there.

Lesson: most high school friends who signed up as roommates ended up no longer friends. You’re often better off with someone you’ve never met.

Lesson: being a roommate is good training for someday living with a partner, so it is a good time to learn to do small acts of consideration. Pay for your share of the pizza, or don’t eat any; try and pick up a little; bring a Coke back from the cafeteria.

After two tours of duty in VietMcNam, I retired (read: I was rejected for a third year of RAing employment for generally being an immature idiot; they had spent my entire second year kicking themselves for rehiring me) to the UW dorms’ equivalent of a country gentleman’s life: Hansee Hall.

Hansee was the quiet dorm, and you had to have a lot of quarters of priority to get in. It was all single rooms, very tiny, and very quiet and mature. Not that you couldn’t get drunk in Hansee; I proved often enough that one could. If you got raucous drunk, though, the math wonks would narc on you yesterday and you’d be exiled to the Lower Planes of McMahon or Haggett (another fairly wild place), right now. I had a weird adjoining room arrangement; there were only three like it in Hansee. Two rooms shared one bath. You had to go through my roommate’s room to get to the throne room. You had to go through mine to get out. Thus, it wasn’t really private, but you didn’t have to tramp around in eight or fifty other people’s foot fungi in a communal shower.

At first I was in with Raybird, a sourdough Alaskan and general screwoff. (By this time I was actually deigning to study and get decent grades, though obviously I still found time to act immaturely.) He was unmotivated and could dish it out but not take it. He soon quit school. I tried to encourage him not to fold the tent, but if anything I probably made it worse. If I’d had Raybird as my first roommate, though, it probably would have had an adverse effect.

Lesson: the first thing people have to learn at college is that it’s up to them. Also, you need enough distance to insulate yourself from soaking up your roommate’s moods (or letting yours soak them).

Then I had Frédéric, a Frenchman in the MBA program. We had a few cultural differences here and there, but for the short time we roomed together, we got along fine. He taught me a lot, especially bad words in French for which his girlfriend (also French) punished him roughly.

Lesson: if your roommate is from a different country, you have some adjustments ahead, but you also have a great opportunity. Not only can you learn to be an idiot in another language, but you can learn a lot about other cultures–including how to respect differences. If you were ever thinking of traveling abroad, having a foreign roommate is a good learning/warmup experience.

Finally I had Harcourt, my final college roommate. This gives me the opportunity to tell the story of the funniest thing I ever did in college.

Harcourt was a big guy from Spokane. He bore a powerful likeness to the Abominable Snowman in that old Bugs Bunny cartoon, remember that? Who would “hug him and pet him and squeeze him?” He was blond, about 6’5″ and 270, and hated football. He was a French major.

Harcourt’s pals were Connie and Pam. Connie, a petite blonde, liked to be called ‘Commie’ and was into left-wing politics. Pam was African American, not petite, and was comparatively sedate and easygoing; I had been her RA the previous year. Pam and Commie had attended Holy Names Academy and were definitely in Young Catholic Women’s School Alumnae Busting The Chains mode. I was fond of both.

After about a week or so, I couldn’t say the same of Harcourt. He was difficult to deal with, and offended by everything–and by now, I’d done some growing up and tended to be a considerate fellow. He was also a lazy slob whose natural habitat was bed and who rarely attended morning classes at all.

Harcourt most certainly didn’t drink, though it might have done him some good. Despite his size, he wasn’t the athletic type, so I never worried about him decking me in a rage. Knowing what I know now, I suspect that he was gay and closeted/questioning/conflicted, but one couldn’t have a discussion about such things with Harcourt, not even in a supportive way. Normal conversation offended him enough. An actual personal question was beyond the pale, however tactful and well-meant.

Anyhow, it was 3 AM on a Saturday night. From this simple statement, a knowing reader could ascertain precisely the situation in L112 Hansee. Harcourt had been snoring away for about four hours in his room, bothering no one. I was dinking around with a massive board wargame and well into my cups, having depleted a quart of rum just enough to be crocked but not sloppy. All was right with the world. In that state, I do not tend toward confrontationalism, which probably explains why I’ve never had a bar fight. On the contrary: I become more accepting and adventuresome.

Therefore, when the telephone rang, far from being grumpy, I was delighted. Ah! Just what I need to make my happiness complete: the milk of human companionship! Someone wants to talk with me! I cheerfully answered the telephone: “Hello?”

Three things were immediately apparent:
a) it was Pam.
b) Pam, too, had taken a drink.
c) Pam sounded lonely.

To spell it out, Pam seemed to be in an advanced state of erotic need. She was very specific about the regions of her body requiring stimulation, the type of contact she anticipated and desired in those regions, and the sentiments she expected to experience as a result. It was also clear that Pam had an adventuresome soul in ways I hadn’t ever anticipated, touching on such topics as rope use, feathers, and mild flagellation. Pam’s language was anything but clinical.

Being somewhat of a pervert, I listened to Pam’s porno for a couple of minutes. It was entertaining, and I was in my most accepting of moods. However, the male physiology is such that alcohol can cause a tragic effect: even if the libido is active, the flesh may be monastic, if you know what I mean. As sorry as I felt for Pam, and as willing as I might be to expend the considerable effort needed to improve her condition, I knew I couldn’t help her.

Now, while I make no claim to be a gentleman, I don’t believe in being callous without good reason. If I couldn’t satisfy Pam, clearly the decent act was to offer her a referral. For once in my life, as she stopped for air, I thought quickly on my feet. I positively beamed into the phone. “Well, in that case, the person you need to speak with is right here. Please hold for a moment.”

I opened Harcourt’s door. This was before the days of cordless phones. He was snoring quietly in a large puddle on the bed. I shook him. “Harcourt!”

“Hwrmwhvn.” When sleepy, Harcourt lost enough vowels that he could be speaking Serbo-Croatian.

Shook him harder. “Hey, Harcourt. Telephone.”

“Whaa.”

Spoke up a bit. “Get up, Harcourt. Someone’s on the phone.”

“Wthhllzcallngathream?” Harcourt shambled to the phone in his undies. I sat down and took a drink to enjoy the spectacle. “Hllo,” he said, eyes still half shut. I took a belt of rum and smirked the drunkard’s idiotic smirk.

Harcourt’s eyes went from sleep to awake to about this big in fifteen seconds. Remember, Harcourt had a cow about everything. Finally he bellowed into the phone, recovering his vowels: “I have never been so offended in my entire life!!”

It pains me to report that Harcourt then ended the conversation without taking the time to lay the phone down gently, nor to offer the lady a courteous parting salutation. Lamentable.

He fixed me with a gaze of the purest loathing. Were Harcourt a violent man, that would have sent him over the edge. As it was, though I was smaller, I was far and away the more physical. I replied by toasting him, upraised cup, foolish smile.

He stalked back to bed. Didn’t speak to me for two weeks.

Harcourt simply had no sense of humor.

Lesson: in a roommate situation, never walk around as though you had a steel rod rammed far up your rear. It’ll just get you mocked.

Postscript: many years later, I caught back up with Pam through the original publication of this story. She enjoyed it, and filled me in on her half of the tale. As she related to me, she and her friends had been drinking wine coolers and decided to have some fun with the guys.

[This article was originally published by me at Epinions. They can’t have it anymore. Not theirs. I have adapted it for format, context and writing skills improvements, and assert intellectual property rights.]

Adventures

Crápo Appliance

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Back when I lived in Seattle, I hung out with a tinkery, Gyro Gearloose guy named Aaron. We had some common interests, including paganism and gaming. He had a strong creative streak and breath that had been known to slay raccoons at thirty paces. One has to take the rough with the smooth, as we say back home.

Alert: this story has me being astonishingly juvenile.

Sometimes Aaron’s tinkering didn’t go too well. His girlfriend lived up in Lynnwood, not far north of me in Shoreline. One day he phoned me to let me know that his efforts to accelerate the defrosting of his lady’s freezer had led to a malfunction. His notion to employ a flathead screwdriver seemed to have been the cause. He now needed to purchase her a new refrigerator, as she was rather a testy type. Budgetary concerns dictated that he select a used appliance, and getting to the heart of the matter, I owned a truck. (This was in about 1995. The truck, drolly nicknamed ‘the White Lightning,’ was five years old. I’m still driving it.)

Sure, Aaron, I’ll go help you haul your used refrigerator. I drove up and picked him up in the Lightning. There was a place in Bellevue, somewhere out toward Redmond, that he felt would have what he needed. Off we headed, his directions mostly effective, and we pulled up at a little strip mall outside a business whose sign proclaimed it: CRAPO APPLIANCE SERVICE.

It did not occur to me at the time that this might be someone’s real name. I honestly thought that this was a shining episode of truth in advertising, like Rent-A-Dent. “You want a crappy appliance? We’ve got lots of truly crappo stuff! Best prices in town!” I wondered why I had not seen commercials for this place, with loud guys boasting that they’d beat anyone’s price.

I also fell apart laughing. Came completely unglued. Embarrassed hell out of Aaron, who was there to pick out a used refrigerator. I couldn’t stop. Tears flowed. I followed him around, doubled over and gasping for breath. I was still a hot mess as I helped him wrangle the device into my pickup, a miracle that I didn’t just drop my side and fall to the ground laughing. I was a complete spectacle. I complimented the store clerk (and possibly owner) on the forthright honesty of the name, at least in between gales of laughter. Thinking that no one would ever believe this without proof, I snagged a business card, which I carried in my wallet for years and still possess. On the card, there was an accent aigu (á) over the A in CRAPO (which is not the correct phonetic mark, by the way…it should be a horizontal line, like an en dash). The clerk grumbled at me, “It’s CRAY-po.” I must not have been the first sight of this kind that he’d seen, though I might have been the most shameless.

crapo

I didn’t find it easy to drive the truck back to Lynnwood, because I kept having giggle fits, guffaw seizures and high-pitched cackling events. I suppose Aaron was somewhat amused by how this struck me. In any case, since it was my truck, he didn’t ask me to shut up. It wouldn’t have worked anyway.

If karma exists, it may have caught up with me. Evidently ‘Crapo’ is a common and prominent LDS family name here in Idaho, like ‘Allred.’ In fact, one our distinguished solons by that name recently made the news. For getting a DWI at Christmas in D.C. Yeah. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), stay classy and true to your beliefs. Keep telling us all how to live.

It’s a good thing that all happened before Youtube, or someone might have memorialized my transformation into a werehyena, and they could probably make trouble for me out here.

Oh, well.

Adventures, Married life, Social comment

D&J’s excellent adventures: Idaho State Capitol

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I have never before lived in a state’s capital city. For me, it has never been a casual errand to visit a capitol. Now it is–and it’s more casual than I imagined it could be.

In Boise, the Capitol is laid out at the end of a very long, straight arterial that crosses the Boise River. Unshockingly, it is called Capitol Boulevard. Few capitols are easy to miss (Colorado’s gold-leaf dome is more like impossible to miss), but Idaho’s takes the visibility cake.

It also eats your accessibility cake, at least in terms of parking. We parked at a meter one block away. From the outside, it looks like an unremarkable American capitol with the traditional central dome. Given Idaho’s mining history, I’m surprised they didn’t gold-leaf this one. Maybe they thought it was too flashy. We climbed the high stairs. The only evidence of exterior security was an Idaho State Police cruiser pulled up outside, far enough away that I couldn’t see if it was occupied. If it was, its occupant showed no interest in us. I prepared for the metal detectors, interrogation, grim-looking State Police officers demanding ID, asking our business and making sure we went nowhere unescorted by an armed peace officer.

Nothing. No one. Silence.

Not just no police; no hired security. No one. We could have stripped to the skin and reclothed ourselves at some leisure without being interrupted (although I’ll bet there’s a security cam that would have thwarted that). Just a sign letting you know that this was the Idaho State Capitol, for those incapable of figuring that out on their own, and ‘please be respectful.’ (At least they did address the issue of nudity, however obliquely.) A map placard showed you how to find whichever office you sought: Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, Governor, House Chamber, etc.

“So we can just wander around?” asked Deb.

“Yeah, evidently no one cares, but obviously we can’t go in any offices.”

“Screw that. I want to see ’em.”

“Not this again.” Deb is unshy and unprone to embarrassment. I am shy and very easily embarrassed in some ways, especially by excessive forwardness. I was in no way dressed to walk into any official office. Deb simply does not care.

A person or two happened by as we ogled the striated scagliola (a form of synthetic marble) Corinthian columns supporting the dome, the interior top of which we could see. Something up in the top looked like R2-D2, and I said so. She didn’t even call me a ‘nutburger.’ There was a lot of natural marble as well: some greyish with charcoal veining, some crimson with cream veins (Oklahoma fans might say that’s the only thing would like to remember about Boise, heh).  Credit to the designers, builders and recent remodelers: it was majestic, exquisite without being gaudy. They let the marble speak for itself.

We wandered down the east wing, then the west, where the door to the Governor’s office reception was open. No one attempted to prevent our entrance. A fiftyish bleach-blonde receptionist smiled at us while on a phone call. Immediately to our left was the Governor’s office, no one present. Farther away and to the right was a desk with a State Police officer doing something on a computer. Minesweeper, perhaps, maybe Candy Crush. Deb wandered back to his doorway and pointed to a shadow box full of bullets (not rounds) on the wall behind him. “Are those bullets that were used in action?” she asked as I winced. He said it was just a display of various calibers.

Now the receptionist was off the phone. “So is the Governor a Republican?” asked my bride. Oh, good lord. I shrank away and took intense interest in a map of Idaho by counties, made of various forms of polished stone.

It was like Deb had asked ‘Did Jesus really exist?’ The receptionist looked aghast at the question, almost drew herself up a bit. “Yes, definitely.” The Capitol needs a trap door exit capable of rescuing up hefty, bearded visiting husbands at times like this.

“You’re in Idaho now,” added a suited baldhead awaiting some form of audience, opening stigmata on the hands of Captain Obvious.

These days, you can’t get elected janitor in most of Idaho without the letter ‘R’ after your name. A dead Republican would beat a live anything else; even a Republican dog (live or dead) would beat a human from another party. If he ran as a Republican in Idaho, Charles Manson would beat Mother Teresa (unless the latter were also a Republican, or unless Charlie came out on a platform of forcible gun confiscation and raising the minimum wage). Nothing factors but the party, and the only valid platform question is the candidate’s degree of passionate gun love. The challenger who boasts about having actual sex with his or her forty-five firearms has a big advantage over the incumbent who owns and adores a mere forty boomsticks, and only uses them for boring, lukewarm, lefty stuff like hunting, fishing, biking, militiaing, self-defense and making donuts.

“Is that his office?” Deb asked, pointing. Somewhere, Captain Obvious wept.

“Yes, he’s not in right now.” So one could determine by the lack of a vaguely georgewbushian presence named ‘Butch’ behind the desk.

“What part of the state is he from?” I asked.

“Right here. Caldwell, actually,” answered the receptionist. (Only later did I read that, when popped for DWI, his earlier varioush excshuses to the nyshe offisher included a claim that he had soaked his chew with Jack Daniels. Evidently time heals these sorts of political wounds in Idaho.)

Deb’s curiosity satisfied, we wandered back down to the east wing. The Lieutenant Governor’s office had a keycard entry, making it evident that one had to have a reason for entry beyond simple sightseeing. Considering how little most lieutenant governors actually do, that seems pretentious. In Washington, we had a former Husky football coach as Lieutenant Governor for so many years that he was not so much an official, but a habit. One year, the Libertarian candidate’s platform was that if elected Lieutenant Governor, she would immediately move to abolish the office and save the state several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Delighted, I voted for her.

On our way back around the rotunda, a police officer stepped out of an elevator. “I wonder why they don’t have any security,” said Deb. “Maybe I can ask that guy.”

Oh, good lord. I whispered, “Deb, that’s not a ‘that guy.’ That’s an Idaho State Police officer.”

“I don’t care.” She means that. Over she went. “Excuse me. How come there isn’t any security at the entrance?”

The officer, a tall, close-cropped young blond, replied without missing a beat. “Because the Governor believes that this is the people’s house.” We thanked him and left. Far out in front of the building is a statue of Lincoln containing the Gettysburg Address. Abraham Lincoln is important to Idahoans. In 1863, he signed the act proclaiming Idaho a Territory. The day he was assassinated, he had considered issues related to Idaho. There’s also a statue of someone I’d never heard of, cited for ‘reimposing the rule of law.’ I’ll bet that if I looked it up, that was code for ‘busted unions by force.’ Some things don’t much change, some places. Trying to start a union in Idaho is like trying to start a gun show in England, or a pork barbecue place in Saudi Arabia.

And that was our trip to the Idaho State Capitol.

I wonder, in how many states, one can do just as we did without anyone even seeming to consider it odd.

===

I’m including a bonus section here. I rarely talk about the spam I get, because WP catches most of it. I just have to push the flush handle once a day or so. The need to approve the first post from a new commenter eliminates nearly all spam. The typical spam is either a page of Chinese characters, or a short note in bizarre English that says something like ‘I very much to appreciate your web page which is the helpfulmost and fastest of its type.’ Some are borderline gibberish. If a character gets left out, or something else screws up, one gets an illustrative view. Here’s one such that I saved:

{I have|I’ve} been {surfing|browsing} online more than {three|3|2|4}
hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours.
{It’s|It is} pretty worth enough ffor me. {In my opinion|Personally|In myy view}, if all {webmasters|site owners|website owners|web
owners} and bloggers made good content as yyou did, the {internet|net|web} will bbe {much
more|a loot more} useful thazn ever before.|
I {couldn’t|could not} {resist|refrain from} commenting.
{Very well|Perfectly|Well|Exceptionally well} written!|
{I will|I’ll} {right away|immediately} {take hold of|grab|clutch|grasp|seize|snatch} your {rss|rss feed} as I {can not|can’t} {in finding|find|to find} your {email|e-mail} subscription {link|hyperlink} or
{newsletter|e-newsletter} service. Do {you have|you’ve} any?
{Please|Kindly} {allow|permit|let} me {realize|recognize|understand|recognise|know} {so that|in order that} I{may just|may|could} subscribe.

Thanks.|

You probably drew the same conclusion I did: someone’s got a spam generator, and it’s set up to vary the text just enough to elude some Googling. Somehow, the sender left off a character and it sent the template rather than the letter the template was meant to generate. The English will seem almost right, but not quite be. And now you can see how it ends up that way.

Editing/writing life, Social comment

Moneychanging in my temple

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The journey of the English language is much like a walk through modern Detroit. It evolves, but never comes through history unscathed. However, of late some of the scathing is beginning to offend my delicate sensibilities.

I’m pretty disgusted at some of what the Oxford Dictionary people have now decided is all right. They have evidently decided, for example, that ‘literally’ (a word we very badly need to separate wild metaphor from candid description) really does also mean ‘very,’ since enough people misused it long enough. That’s basically the equivalent of deciding that if men can’t hit the urinal, we’ll just remove the urinal and let them miss the toilet instead. However, they aren’t the most annoying abusers of the language. Even the text generation, with ‘ur’ for ‘your’ and ‘lol’ used as a comma, aren’t the worst. They are like copious spitters on the sidewalk, throwers of chewing gum on it, and occasional urinators in the alley. They make English gross and crude, like the floor of a baseball dugout, but they aren’t really doing much damage.

The business-speak word coiners aren’t even the worst. I hate to say it, but they aren’t even that awful. I’m talking about stuff like morphing ‘downsizing’ to ‘rightsizing,’ or addiction to words like ‘best practices.’ Most of it is baloney, but the baloney is mostly heard and believed by its inventors, who do not usually take it out into polite society where it could offend cultured persons. This is like butchers putting filler into the ground meat products: it lowers the overall quality of English a bit, but rarely poisons anyone.

No, the most irritating is made-up vaguely positive-sounding terms used as the actual names of corporations. Thrivent. Meritage. Exelon. Centene. Qwest. Visteon. Agilent. Actavis. Exelis. Altria. Viacom. Aramark. Meritain. Verizon. Navistar. Celgene. Entergy. Taligent. Cingular.

Credit to JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Electronic Arts, Monsanto and even AT&T, a rogues’ gallery of the vilest: at least their names are real words that refer to some real thing, person, etc.

These invented words go into the public mind and manipulate it, and cannot be extracted. They are goosing English in the crowded bus when they know there’s very little she can do about it, molesting her dignity and personal space. They are created by people who want to create a fiction in the public mind, hopefully one at variance with the truth (that the company only cares about quality and service if faults in those areas cause corporate harm). Don’t think that corporate invented-names are picked by employee contests. No, some very sophisticated psychological and literary sellouts get involved. Above a certain level of social control, accidents become very few.

This is crap. ‘Cingular?’ Really? ‘Thrivent?’ Seriously? ‘Meritain?’

I want to say “They cannot be serious,” but I’d be wrong. They can. They are.

Editing/writing life

25 Bad Writer Behaviors: commentary

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The subject article is by Chuck Wendig of terribleminds.com, and each point is amplified therein. Since I’ve long found a lot of fault with the way writers and authors behave, what I plan to do here is repeat the points (all of which are taken nearly verbatim from Wendig’s post, thus credited to him) and offer observations. Note: Wendig swears a lot, and some of it is gratuitous. If that bothers you, don’t go there. He’s a noteworthy science fiction/horror/thriller author with a long list of credits, and you can check out his work at his Amazon author page.

Here are Wendig’s bad writer behaviors, and what I had to say about them.

1. BEING AN UNPROFESSIONAL F’ING A-HOLE

This is pretty important, though I find it ironic that Wendig seems to consider terms like “cock-waffling” not to be unprofessional. He has a point, though. Even when you’re off duty, in public, you need not to damage your ‘brand’–a word I dislike as business-speak, but can’t avoid.

2. RESPONDING TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS (WITH MORE NEGATIVITY)

Writers who submit their work for public comment will usually receive it. Some of it will be stupid. If it’s stupid, ignore it. If it’s critical yet intelligent, you might learn something.

3. FIGHTING WITH OTHER AUTHORS

In addition to making you look insecure and unprofessional, it makes you look jealous. Don’t fight with other authors, but especially don’t fight with your readers.

4. NOT READING SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

That is, of course, assuming that you’re still buying into the model of begging for notice. But if you are, then at least show that you could and did read their guidelines. Acq-eds get a lot of material, and whatever makes it easier for them to winnow it is what they’re likely to do. They can start by throwing out everything from everyone who didn’t read what was asked of them, or didn’t care.

5. QUERYING AN UNFINISHED MANUSCRIPT

There’s a greater problem with this than the half-cooked chicken analogy: what if they say “Yes! Send us the whole thing! This is the best idea we’ve had all year and we have plans to release a book like this!” What would you say? “Uh…welllll…sorry, but I’ve only written four chapters. But it’ll be really really great when I get it done!” There is no logical reply to this on the part of acq-eds except dismissal.

6. ANNOYING EDITORS AND AGENTS

Again, the piece somewhat assumes that you’re still following the ‘beg and hope’ model. However, it’s a valid point outside that model. I did a lot of literary mercenary work, in which I worked for/with quite a few editors. At any time, they could have stopped sending me more work. They kept engaging my services. Since I’m not a lights-out writer, I suspect that I kept getting hired because I made their lives easier rather than harder. I didn’t bother them any more than I could help. Instead, I did my work.

7. RESPONDING TO REJECTION WITH RAGEFACE

If you can’t take rejection, you’re not ready to submit anything to anyone. In fact, you’re not ready for life. Applying for jobs entails risk of rejection. Asking people on dates, same. Playing a sport. Anything that is competitive. You can’t befoul your panties and lose your mind over rejection.

8. RAGEFACE, PART II: REVISION TIME

As an editor, I deal with some of this. It’s fairly common for someone to send me a portion of ms for a sample edit. Often the sample proves that the person a) can’t write, and/or b) is over-enamored with his or her prose. I fix it and send it back. They like their own version better, and decline to hire me. Am I enraged? Nah. It really isn’t that much fun to have to rewrite something lousy. And if the individual has shown that s/he is not interested in improvement, it would be a contentious relationship in any case. I prefer a collaborative relationship in which I help, teach, discuss, support, and advise.

9. DRUNKENLY TWEETING AWFUL THINGS TO PEOPLE

Not sure this needed to be on the list, but Wendig saw it happen. If your basic personality is rude, alcohol probably won’t improve it.

10. SPAMMING ANYBODY WITH ANYTHING EVER

A lot of this comes from authorial narcissism. Seen a ton of that. It says: “To me, there are two categories of humanity: the believers and the infidels. Believers are those who accept my writing as the center of the literary universe, buy my books, push my books, praise my books, adore me, and otherwise embrace the True Faith. The infidels are everyone else, including those who respond tepidly to the True Faith when its light first falls on their faces. Because mine is the True Faith, anything is justified, and if it annoys anyone, well…why don’t they pull their heads out and convert?” Amazon reviewers of any note will encounter this at some point. Several have spammed me, ignoring my polite “I”m just not interested.” This was not to their advantage.

11. ACTING RACIST, SEXIST, MISOGYNIST, ANY OF THE HATEFUL -ISTS

Also, bear in mind that your own definition of an ‘-ist’ isn’t what matters. It’s the public’s definition. That’s pretty unfortunate, because these -isms have warped definitions in the public mind. Reality: ‘redneck’ is a racial slur, for example, and thus should be objectionable. The public doesn’t object to it. Even though I’m right, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I (and other authors with public presences) do not say things that the public might interpret as racist, whether they truly are or not. Same for other -ists. Vile terms for the penis and testes are just vulgar in the public mind, but acceptable to deman a male; vile terms for the vulva and vagina used to demean a female are not merely vulgar in the public mind, but tend to draw accusations of sexism. If one is, both are…but in the public mind, they’re not. You can’t win this with logic. You can only refrain from doing yourself professional harm. Or don’t refrain, and see where it gets you.

12. THE AUTHORIAL MELTDOWN

Remember that you can always melt down in private. It’s much better for your career.

13. PLAGIARIZING SOMEBODY ELSE’S HARD WORK

It’s one thing to cite, attribute, quote and otherwise credit another author, as I’m doing here with Wendig. It would have been another to jack his piece. One is easily caught these days at all forms of plagiarism. Even if you do not refrain from it out of pride, refrain because you aren’t a professionally suicidal idiot. At least, I hope you aren’t.

14. BLOWING OUT YOUR DEADLINES

Professionals are timely, and that makes them pleasant to work with because they’re considerate of others. It also may mean some bleary-eyed late nights, early risings, and other minor hardships. But professionals produce on time without excuses, often enough that a real emergency or disaster will be pardoned as the exception. Amateurs always have an excuse: their computer broke down, the cat got sick, the kid threw up, car wouldn’t start, books didn’t arrive, etc. Professionals get the job done anyway–on time.

15. IGNORING YOUR ASSIGNMENT

Absolutely. Wendig is dead-on. One time, I made the mistake of failing to read my guidelines with great care. I ended up sending in work in a style completely at variance with what I’d been hired to do. So I’d already worked on twelve projects of the (in this case) mistaken style, to great acclaim and encore. That didn’t absolve me of the duty to read them afresh this time. Happily, my acq-ed pardoned this brain spasm and let me rewrite them. And I did, real fast, and with very great care.

16. MAKING A BUTT-TON OF EXCUSES

This might be Wendig’s best point. Amateurs are full of excuses. Professionals produce.

17. WRITING WITHOUT EDITING

This applies even to writers who also get paid to edit. Your first readers (I hate the term ‘beta reader’) are not editors. Your spouse is not an editor unless other people pay him or her to do so. I have an unpublished travel manuscript I may one day publish. It needs extensive revisions before I’d consider it worthy of publication. When I consider it worthy of publication, it’s ready to go to an editor, who will show me why it wasn’t yet worthy, and help me make it so.

18. SELF-PUBLISHING YOUR WORST INSTEAD OF YOUR BEST

I guess some people do this. I think it’s foolish, as does Wendig. I admit that here, at times, I don’t bring my A-game. I do bring my A-minus game. I’ll let myself get away with an occasional clunky wording usage. Then again, this is free content to the reader. What I’d never do is self-publish a dog of a book, thus making me look incompetent while proposing that people pay me. Unacceptable.

19. FIGHTING IN THE TRENCHES OF THE ANY IMAGINARY WAR

Yes. While I think trad-pub has cancer and that the radiation and chemo won’t take, I have nothing against anyone going that route. I question what they are likely to gain, but we all define gain differently. Same for all the other battles.

20. FLINGING SOUR GRAPES AT AUTHORS MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN YOU

Nicely positioned by Wendig in sequence, and addresses an elephant in the room: self-published people who secretly wish they were traditionally published and resent that it didn’t happen. Don’t envy or resent. I knew Cornelia Read and David Abrams back when they were writing at Epinions. They’re now traditionally published, and to significant acclaim. They’re great at what they do and they seem happy with the result. I’ve read books by both and I hope they keep enjoying the success they deserve.

21. BLUDGEONING FOLKS WITH YOUR EGO

This relates to several previous points, since it is often the source of bad behaviors. You need a certain amount of ego in order to think you can write something that people would pay to read. Just that much, and no more.

22. ACTING LIKE A BULLY

Is always contemptible.

23. “HEY, WILL YOU READ MY MANUSCRIPT?”

The biggest problem with this is that most people aren’t self-honest about what they want. Most will say they want honest feedback, when in reality they want praise. As Wendig points out, it also leads to intellectual property concerns. There’s a reason Weird Al Yankovic doesn’t even look at song ideas sent in by fans. He can’t afford to, even if he didn’t have plenty of ideas of his own. If you want a reader for your manuscript, don’t seek out an editor or author. Seek out a reader, someone you know and trust who might buy the sort of thing you propose to publish.

24. FAILING TO APPRECIATE YOUR AUDIENCE

A big one for me. I always say, “Like your reader.” Much follows from it. If you like your reader, you will be motivated to write things s/he will consider worth his or her time. You will respond courteously to him or her. You will treat him or her with respect. You’ll enjoy writing more, because you’ll be thinking of how you might entertain, educate, uplift, encourage, or some other positive verb.

25. TALKING ABOUT WRITING WITHOUT ACTUALLY WRITING

Why I’m not in a writers’ group, and don’t go to writers’ retreats. If I want to talk about writing rather than write, I’ll go to a themed convention with panels where I can pick what I’d like to talk and listen about. I have often said that at any given time, you want to write or you do not. Right now, I want to write, and am doing so–I’m writing about writing, which counts. (Wendig also was, though he doesn’t consider it writing; we differ there.) Later tonight, I will probably not want to write. I will probably watch a trashy reality TV show and a crime drama while hanging out with a dear friend who is visiting us. One reason to have a blog is to have a place to write when one wishes to.

In short, Chuck Wendig said a lot of things I might also say, though our styles would differ. If you think you want to write, I can’t see how any of his guidance will do you anything but good.

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What D&D meant

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Dungeons & Dragons, the original fantasy role-playing game, came out in 1974. I played it off and on for thirty-five years through four major revisions. Unless you’re that old and played the game in its early days, you may not fully apprehend its impact. Someone had better explain that while some of us are still alive.

In what we may call B.D. (Before D&D), there were two species of games. The casual species included party games like Monopoly, Risk, Life, Clue, Parcheesi and such. They were not meant to be realistic; they were just for fun, could be learned in minutes and finished in an half an evening. The serious species included strategy boardgames, mostly by Avalon Hill, Simulations Publications, Game Designers’ Workshop, and so on: mostly focused on accurate historical simulations and hypothetical wars. If you wanted to know how the Warsaw Pact might have done against NATO, or felt that Auchinleck and Montgomery were boobs, or imagined how the Canadian Civil War might go, they could help you explore. Their research was generally of high quality. The rulebooks were voluminous, but for those who put in the time and wanted to spend several weekends refighting Gettysburg at regimental level, they had you covered.

My own first experiences with B.D. games were the former as a child, then the latter in about 1975. Historical and hypothetical simulation games may have saved me from going completely mad in a small lumber town. They would, in 1981, send me to college with at least the fundamentals of an education in military history. But they weren’t the only external force that contributed to my teen sanity.

In 1974, the original D&D first came out. The publisher was a firm from Wisconsin called Tactical Studies Rules, better known as TSR. Think on that for a minute, what it says: “We publish rules. That’s it. The rest is on you. Invent the milieu yourself. Tell the story you wish, and act it out with players who do as they do.” It was a fantasy role-playing game (RPG). The most important rule, and the one that defined D&D, was a simple one: the rules were for guidance only. They were not definitive. The game referee/world creator, aka the Dungeon Master (DM), had carte blanche to change some or all of the rules at will. If players tried something not covered in the rules, the DM had jurisdiction and final say as to how that was resolved.

Suddenly, the imagination was the limit. Digest this, those of you who never knew a world without role-playing games. “Hello, Ms. DM. I would like to play as a member of this race, which has this specific character class that mixes the magic-user with the druid. Can I do this?” DM: “Write it up, with all the spells and so forth, and I’ll take a look.” Rules? Those were for the grognards who spent whole weekends refighting the Battle of the Bulge. The rules were what the DM said they were. She could invent new monsters, worlds, races, types of characters. The game was breeding future fantasy authors by the dozens.

We had never had this before. That’s why D&D was so revolutionary. It came out and said: “Play the game the way you like. If you like your DM, play in her game. If not, well, keep looking.” It unleashed thousands of youthful imaginations. Of course, society called us freaks, weirdos, Satanists (D&D had demons and devils; never mind that most players considered them enemies, not allies). Like most teen fashions, it was considered the Sure Downfall of Society. Our 1950s-raised parents had little idea what to make of it. To them, games were like Monopoly. However, if it kept their weird intellectual kids from smoking dope and getting pregnant, it had merits. Most sighed and didn’t worry about the havoc that evangelicals suggested D&D might wreak upon our youthful brains. Was it for nerds? Clearly. Anti-social nerds? Please. Let’s drive a stake through the heart of that ridiculous charge while we’re at this. D&D was social at its core, a group activity. It could not be played solitaire. It was not mainstream social, but it was social without question. It just wasn’t the sort of social that the yuppies, jocks and so forth expected of us. It brought us together with our own kind. It showed that we weren’t fundamentally anti-social; we just failed to adore the popular kids. We were social among people with whom we considered it worthwhile to socialize.

Of course, D&D inspired many other RPG concepts. Games took us to space, to dystopian post-apocalyptic eras, to the age of sail, and wherever else we might want to imagine. We grew up. We got jobs. We had kids, most of us. Many of us left RPGs behind, though some stayed with them. Those born after 1970 never knew a world without D&D, just as they would not know college without the personal computer, just as those born after 1900 knew no world without the automobile and aircraft.

Some of us knew the world before and after D&D, and experienced the revolutionary open-ended creativity that its arrival spawned. Our lives would never be the same. To grasp this is to grasp the effect of D&D on a twelve-year-old brain. Imagine being an artist with only graphite pencils and notebook paper, and suddenly being handed oil paints and canvas. Imagine making homebrew movies with old Super 8 cameras and a film splicer, then getting a modern camcorder and video editing computer. That’s the magnitude. That’s what it was like.

Of late, D&D has schismed into two versions. In essence, the owners tried to hand players a game that didn’t feel like their good old D&D. Players mainly rejected it, hewing to a competing version. Consider: it is surviving even the complete mismanagement of its owner, in some form, nearly forty years gone.

I can only imagine what the teens of the fifties and sixties did without the change in options my generation experienced thanks to Dungeons & Dragons. Those of the eighties take it for granted, something that was always there, like the telephone for me. We were privileged to watch the veil of possibility lift and drop away, and told to use our imaginations. And one day, the last of us will be gone.

Someone had to tell how it was. Otherwise, social history will lie, told by people who never felt the experience–and will get away with it, warping perception and memory. As I approach the boundary of half a century of life, that life has taught me that most of us live to see history lie about our times. Are you in your twenties? When you are my age, you will watch them lie about your times, too. By then I will be gone, so if anyone is to tell the truth, it will fall to you.

I seek no homages for us. Hey, if anyone should do homage, it’s us to Gary Gygax, who was the prime inventor of the game insofar as I’m aware. He, and those he played the game with, lifted that veil. All I ask is that the kids don’t take RPGs wholly for granted, as if they were always with us. They weren’t. Weird intellectuals were thus trapped in their own minds, forced to seek some other outlet.

None had the impact of D&D.

Adventures

How not to deal with high altitude summer sunshine

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Or, one of the dumbest things I have ever done in my life. Even dumber than the ill-fated Everclear experiment. Please note: this story has disgusting parts. If you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip it.

Back around 1994, my good friend George and I decided to do a road trip. We were both about thirty. George was on a yearlong self-discovery adventure in his Jeep, driving around the country. I hadn’t been back to Colorado, a place of famous scenery and an old stomping ground, since 1990 when I went back to help my mother scatter my dad’s ashes at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. That trip hadn’t gone well, mainly because the combination of my impatience and my mother’s personal foibles were not a good travel recipe, but we did what we set out to do. This would be better. I have been around much of Colorado and I’m a good tour guide, and it was a place in which George hadn’t done much sightseeing. I’d meet up with him and join him for the final leg of his yearlong journey back to Seattle.

The plan was for me to fly to Denver and meet him at the airport. Now, this took trust. This was before cell phones went really mainstream. He knew my flight information, but I had to count on him to be there. If my flights got messed up, the only assurance I had of connecting with him was twofold:

  1. I knew he would not leave the airport without me.
  2. I knew I would eventually reach the airport, and would not leave it without him.

If he knew the same things, we would somehow connect. So happened that my flight got canceled, and the most realistic way to Denver was on another airline. Other than the highly questionable airport PA, all hopes rested upon us wandering through the airport until we ran across one another. About five hours after I was supposed to have arrived, that occurred. In those days, that’s what you dealt with. Kids, next time some old person tells you how much better the old days were, ask them how fun it was not to be able to call people to let them know your flight was delayed/canceled/rebooked/otherwise messed up.

The next day, we set out for the glorious old video arcades of Manitou Springs, then Cañon City and the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas. I was a good tour guide, but I’d forgotten a couple of things. While Colorado doesn’t get all that hot, much of it is over 5000′ in elevation, and a good percentage is over 6500′. The air is thinner, with far less atmospheric protection from sunlight. Temperature means nothing; it could be 40º F outside, but at 13,000′, you will roast. I’d also managed to forget that I was a white, predominantly Nordic guy living in Seattle, where sunlight is infrequent and a sunburn is actually something of an achievement. Summers had been blistering where I’d gone to high school, but that was thirteen years in my past.

If you can believe this, I decided that the way to travel was in tennis shoes, shorts and a bandanna. No shirt. No hat (even though I knew I was already starting to go bald). George suggested some sunscreen. Macho man declined, pooh-poohing a little bit of reddened skin. By the end of the first day, I had the start of a decent burn. You’d expect that in an open Jeep. Day two came, with more of a burn, and by day three we were at Mesa Verde. I was scarlet. Still I wouldn’t put on a shirt, hat or sunscreen. By now this was really starting to hurt.

A funny side note: what I did not know at the time was that George was gay, and that this yearlong tour was more or less his coming-out tour (at least, to himself). Not that there weren’t signs, which I’d have seen had I possessed enough gaydar to detect a Pride parade. Rather, I simply didn’t make assumptions, and wouldn’t have cared anyway. I wasn’t concerned enough about it to stop and consider it. None of that is funny; what’s funny is that in the motel room each night, for amusement, I’d pull out the Gideons’ Bible and start reading all the sexual prohibitions in Leviticus. “And if a man lieth with mankind…” I was laughing the entire time, and George seemed to think it was a great joke as well. One of these days I need to ask him what he made of this comic proclivity of mine. I know it didn’t offend him, because he knew I wasn’t serious. It’s one of those things that makes one wonder if the subconscious picks up on stuff that we don’t process. We’re still laughing about it.

By the Highway to Hell, as we dubbed US 666 toward Monticello, Utah, I wasn’t laughing about much. I was broiled alive. My face, scalp, tops of arms, chest, shoulders and thighs were almost maroon, and the first burn was beginning to peel. Almost half my body was burned. Felt pretty much as if I’d been dunked in acid. This all could have been prevented, if I hadn’t been one of the world’s greater fools. Perhaps worst of all, it was detracting from my friend’s enjoyment, which I had zero right to have done. I have a photo of myself at Arches National Park, and it’s scary.

We headed for Salt Lake via Green River, and by that time it was getting disgusting. The second layer was coming off, leaving very raw skin exposed and weeping amber fluid. Did you know that the skin on your scalp is really, really thick? It was coming off like cornmeal mush, in big crispy slabs. I had amber fluid leaking out of my hair and much of my skin, drying in gross crusts. It hurt, rather badly. I finally yielded to a shirt, hat and sunblock. In the shower in Green River, I made the powerful error of trying to take a hot shower. I have a rather high tolerance for non-dental pain. This pain exceeded my tolerance by several notches. Half my body had second-degree burns, with blisters all over the place. It wouldn’t have been far-fetched for me to seek medical attention. For the rest of the trip, it was cold showers all the way.

In spite of my acute discomfort, we had some semblance of a good time. George wanted to go to Temple Square, and I’d never been, so we paid it a visit. For those who imagine bevies of missionaries bugging one non-stop, take it from me: that couldn’t be further from reality. It did have greeters (all young women, in pairs), and people walking around to help folks find stuff, but there was no hassle. This is the epicentre of the LDS Church, and you can see their pride in the attentive landscaping and appealing architecture. They also let me in, with my unappealing visage and very casually immodest dress. They were not required by law to do that. It is a beautiful place, and I was impressed by the way its caretakers express their faith through dedication to keeping it spotless, bursting with flowers, and welcoming to guests. Even if you aren’t Mormon and disagree with nearly every official and unofficial position taken by the LDS Church, the respect with which they maintain Temple Square inspires admiration for their industry.

George’s goofiest notion of the trip was yet to come. He wanted to head out to the Great Salt Lake, and gods knew I was in no moral position to obstruct anything he was eager to do, so we headed out there. There’s at least one causeway across part of it, leading to a peninsula where they have a wildlife refuge. It was simple to tell when we were getting close, because the lake smells like a paper mill. You can smell it for miles. As you go down to the ‘beach,’ you learn the second reason that lakefront property is not in demand: the brine flies. At first, I thought that the beach had brown sand. I then walked down to it, and saw the brownness scatter away from my feet in a circle that followed me. It was a literal carpet of brine flies. It’s a good thing they don’t bite, or one would be devoured. George then decided this was a great day to go wading in the lake, a pleasure I declined. (With half your skin charred away, would you willingly dunk yourself in water six times saltier than the ocean?) He then learned that the water leaves a fairly slimy scum on the skin, which ruded him out a lot. As a result, we had the one real moment of the trip where my judgment had been better. While he went into the men’s can at a Dairy Queen to scrub the slime off his legs, I relaxed with an ice cream treat and waited, far more smug than I had any right to be.

The last haul, from Burley, Idaho to Seattle, was a blur of pain for me. It was the sixth day, the first layer was long gone, and the second was bubbling off me. When we got back, for extra fun, I had some baseball games before I was recovered. Sweat-soaked uniform caked with dust which got ground into very raw flesh? I don’t recommend it. I’m not sure how I even managed to play. Somehow, in one game I was 4 for 4.

It’s been nearly twenty years. I still have the tan lines on my upper thighs; I can tell which they are, because I haven’t worn shorts that short in a very long time, and I don’t spend large amounts of time in the sun to begin with. The burn permanently darkened my skin. For the rest of my days, I’ll have to watch very carefully for melanoma. I simply can’t ever allow a serious burn again.

And I’m passionate about sunblock. I’ll trowel on the heaviest stuff I can find. Hatless in summer sun? Not unless I want to go through that again. I’d just as soon not.

Last year George and I celebrated our thirtieth year of friendship. We need to go on another road trip at some point. This time, I promise not to do anything imbecilic.

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When dominant powers assume that they make the rules

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My friend Adrienne Dellwo (if you are in search of fibromyalgia info, she’s the authority) today posted a worthwhile article on how Wizards of the Coast has managed to lose the Dungeons & Dragons market. For those of you who don’t want to read it or have never cared about fantasy role-playing games, a few years ago WotC decided on a complete remake of the tabletop game (which is still popular). Whether the new edition was a good one or a bad one was up for debate; most players a) didn’t think it felt like D&D, and b) weren’t very interested in repurchasing all the basic books again. It’s safe to assume the move was revenue-driven in a saturated market (declining sales of expensive source books), and one empathizes with the need to keep customers buying stuff, but planned obsolescence always creates a crossroads. When deciding whether to buy the new thing, and annoyed about it, people may decide on someone else’s new thing.

It isn’t the first time that’s happened in some way. We can learn from the trend, which spans most aspects of human life. The pace has sped up as communication and transportation have accelerated.

The Roman Catholic Church defined religion in Europe for centuries, with an authoritative hand in economic, political, military and social life. A variety of reformers decided that heresy wasn’t nearly as sinful as venal, oppressive, centralized ecclesiastical leadership, and today a good chunk of Europe isn’t Catholic–and a good chunk of what remains nominally Catholic really doesn’t care.

In the Civil War, the South starved because “cotton was king!” Thus, wealthy planters kept growing the stuff rather than food, even though getting it to its European markets was problematic. A primarily agrarian population, with a healthy chunk of the workforce that didn’t have to be away at war, found a way to starve. The South also insisted on going to war to preserve slavery, when a quick look around the world would have told them it was unsustainable. The Confederate States are no longer a country.

Chrysler, GM and Ford forgot how to make cars that people wanted to buy. Never mind: buy Murrican! In Detroit, social pressure (patriotism, union allegiance) worked. Everywhere else, people bought cheaper, more reliable Japanese cars. They still don’t get it. The American companies remain at the top of the Consumer Reports recall lists, people who value reliability buy Toyotas and Hondas, and the whole industry had to be bailed out. Detroit? Not much left of it.

IBM popularized the personal computer and set all the standards. Just eight years later, it was flailing about helplessly as it tried to dictate that the market pay double for a new architecture and operating system that were mostly incompatible with all the previous IBM stuff. Everyone told IBM to pound sand and bought Compaqs, Epsons, Acers, HPs, and ASTs running the same OS in evolutionary form. Do you own an IBM computer?

AOL looked poised to redefine the Internet. AOL startup CDs were a primary form of junk mail. For a great many people, AOL was the Internet, despite the steady grumbles of the tech-savvy libertarian-leaning old school who had thought typing Unix commands wasn’t too bad and viewed with fear and loathing the influx of screaming, clueless newbies with their text-speak and tendency to call IRC channels ‘chat rooms.’ Then AOL users began to learn about the Internet, and came to realize that AOL was now more in their way than paving the way. How long has it been since you got an AOL CD ride-along?

CNN was all the rage after the first Gulf War. Now it’s just one of three incompetent news entertainment stations. Those who want their existing perceptions reinforced now watch the version of the competition whose slant they prefer. People who plan to think read it online. CNN may still be in business, but they aren’t really in the news business, and their reputation is lower than ever.

Flush with the market dominance of Windows, Microsoft insisted on shoving a lousy web browser at its customers. It became the Web Browser Most Often Used to Download a Real Web Browser. Microsoft can still make the rules for Internet Explorer; it’s just that no one will care. Microsoft also kept repackaging a boondogglier boondoggle and calling it the Next Great Windows. Apple’s stock sells today, as I type, for $483/share. Five years ago it sold for about $160. You can get a share of Microsoft for $32/share. Five years ago, you’d have paid about $26 for it. New Microsoft product announcements don’t change much, especially as many are flops that drive the stock price backward.

SEIU, one of the dominant labor unions, truly believes that it got Barack Obama elected. It neglects to consider that organized labor, so long accustomed to having its way and having its sloganeering taken at face value, no longer has the power to get anyone elected. It has lost the battle for public influence. It has allowed its enemies to convince people that they are better off without the right to bargain collectively. That’s like convincing landowners that polluted water is actually better than clean water. Today, maybe 10% of American workers are in a union, and many of the other 90% would object strenuously to the concept.

Google perfected the search engine, then broke its “Don’t Be Evil” motto all over the place. People are increasingly open to search engine solutions that don’t feed the Google data hydra. Google Plus was rolled out to a tremendous yawn. Everything Google does raises the question: “in what way is this meant to spy on me?” No one will lament its downfall, when it comes.

USC college football had a motto: “Win Forever.” At one point, that looked likely. A private school, it treated NCAA inquiries with disdain. The resulting sanctions sent the Win Forever coach packing his bags for the NFL, led to the hire of a mercenary coach who has floundered, caused a demoralized team of stellar athletes to lose a bowl game to a team with a losing record, and lost the program its star power. Last week, USC struggled to defeat Utah State, a team with few athletes that USC would have recruited even when it wasn’t under scholarship reductions.

Adrienne commented to me: “To add to your list of companies that toppled themselves, I think the Big Three TV networks are next. When a show gets knocked off of my DVR and I can’t find it either on the network’s website or On Demand, and they don’t show it again for several months, it’s just plain stupid.” She’s got a point. The major networks have become increasingly less relevant, in large part because they’ve been difficult about content. Faux is the worst. Increasingly, the most compelling TV content is not on the major networks at all.

The American mindset continues to insist that its system is the world’s greatest, that its military might is unchallengeable, its currency is the world standard, and that every country’s most important relationship is that with the United States. This, as it: lags the developed world in most quality-of-living categories, tucks tail from Afghanistan, and tries to decide whether its worst enemy is a a) major world religion with a few extremists, b) people who want to sneak across its borders to pick fruit and mow yards, or c) two old Cold War adversaries who watch its missteps with bemused anticipation. It requires an enemy, lest its people look inward and see that its own government and corporations are a greater threat to them than all of the above in union. And in the meantime, increasingly, it fails to adjust to a changing world and falls behind, losing relevance and prestige.

Book reviews, Editing/writing life, Scumbag studies

SS: Roll of Infamy by Christopher Ailsby

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I’ve had this encylopedic/coffee table book for a while. The subject alternately interests and repels me.

Some people may need some background. In Nazi Germany, the Schutzstaffel–the dreaded SS, emblemized by the twin S-runes that looked like lightning bolts–was nothing less than a state within the state. The Waffen-SS, or armed SS, was the military formation. Its units ranged from ferociously brave and competent to mutinous and cowardly, and from decently fierce to culpability in some of the most loathsome atrocities of the modern era. Quite a few were hanged or shot after the war, the vast majority of whom had it coming. What is less known about them can be summarized neatly:

  1. The SS was much more than an armed force. It was an industrial conglomerate, which one might also call a greed machine. It generated many billions of fiat money Reichsmarks that would become worthless upon the defeat of Nazi Germany, whose war lasted about as long as it takes most people to get a BA and MA. And yes, a great percentage of that wealth was gotten from means such as slave labor, robbing the murdered, blackmail, ransom and so on.
  2. For all its Teutonocentrism, it found excuses to include a lot of non-Germans and even non-Aryans. There was a British Free Corps, the only SS unit with a cuffband in English. It had a Turkestani unit. There were whole divisions of Bosnians, Croatians, Galicians, Latvians, Estonians, Frenchmen, Russians and more. Performance varied from valiant to awful, from honorable to the very worst of the German military (and in World War II, that worst was the type of thing decent people have a hard time imagining). You had the 9th SS Panzer Division “Hohenstaufen,” for example, a capable formation not implicated in any atrocities. At the other end, units as despicable as what became the 36th SS-Waffen-Grenadier Division “Dirlewanger,” the SS penal unit commanded by an alcoholic child rapist and guilty in numerous appalling deeds.
  3. The SS were not the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), although the SS-SD intelligence service was surely as terrifying as the Gestapo. This confusion is common.

Ailsby treats noteworthy SS personalities in encyclopedic format, which makes lookups easy. In many cases he has located worthwhile minutiae, such as most entries’ Party and SS numbers (it was hardly rare for an SS soldier to be a member of the Nazi party), and for winners of very selective decorations, the number of the award. What I don’t grasp is the number of entries for highly decorated individuals implicated in no vile deeds. The author can’t cheat with his title. An SS corporal who died earning the Knight’s Cross, for example, was indeed part of a force that has earned infamy for may good reasons, but that’s not enough reason to list him in a book whose title suggests that it’s full of cutthroats. Odilo Globocnik, Alfred Naujocks and Joachim Peiper belong here, among quite a few others. A few highly decorated enlisted men with no record of atrocities really do not.

I also find some of his research sloppy, seemingly hasty. There are a few SS personalities I have researched as extensively as my resources would allow, and I used them somewhat as benchmarks. Terms are misspelled; details are at times glossed or inaccurate. I don’t lack empathy for the effort involved in the book, and the shortcuts it might require. Shortcuts will mean missed details, errors and such; I have made some myself in my own historical writing, not that I pardon myself for them. I see this book as someone who might have written it: hundreds of individuals to include, with a limited amount of time to spend on each, and without the resources to do academic-quality work.

That, friends, is the reality of historical writing. Academic-grade work involves the kind of research that the book’s proceeds cannot possibly recoup, and that’s why the books cost a lot, and why they are credible as sources. Mass-market-grade work is profitable, but will vary in quality. In the historical writing I have done, I’ve prided myself on coming within perhaps 90% of the credibility of academic grade, without the travel costs and months of focus needed for the latter. But I’m no expert on WWII, and to write the book, Ailsby must fundamentally purport to be such. If he is, it follows that I should not catch him in many, if any mistakes. I do. That leaves me no choice but to find this fault.

In the end, Ailsby has produced an okay book, but no better, even allowing for the research practicalities. He has collected a fair bit of good information, gotten some wrong, and misnamed the book with a misleadingly lurid title.

Beards, Social comment

Beard comparisons and visible minority

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The other day, I was with some people I didn’t really know. Okay, I was in a community education geography class that consists of a nice elderly gentleman telling stories from his life at 1.5 mph. Which may well be very entertaining in its context, but is not what I paid $36, trekked half a mile through a junior high school, and squeezed into a child-intended seat for. But that’s why I was with people I didn’t know.

For some reason, the social necessity arose to comment upon my facial hair. I guess it’s the main visible marker for me, much more important than perhaps my education or work experience (which one might infer from my speech, but which can’t be shaved off). Black people might tell me: “Try being the only one with a difference that Norelco can’t fix.” A fair point. However, it’s not that big a novelty. I’ve heard that sentiment from minorities too: “Am I the first one they’ve ever seen?” Women, when alone in all-male groups, probably ask themselves the same thing: Why are the men all acting weird? Was the last female they ever saw, the one who squeezed them out?

No, I don’t directly compare my experience. Too much differs. But I no longer wonder why people in minority situations have made the observations they did. They make sense to me now, even after an incomplete comparison. And I’m beginning to understand why they’d rather it went away, because maybe the damn subject is just old to them. If you’re fifty and Asian, Asianness has probably come up a time or two in your life. You’ve already learned all the perceptions, stereotypes, heard reactions thoughtful and ignorant alike. Maybe you’re ready to just be Joe, rather than Asian Joe.

That said, I also don’t think it stops. Not with newly met people in visible minority situations. So that means that, until people become friends with me or I shave it off, in groups my beard is my identity. And maybe I should be grateful for that, come to think of it, because I’d rather be noteworthy for my beard than for my weight or my bizarre voice. So mostly, I’m not too annoyed, until the comparisons go to undesirable places.

You know, being compared with ZZ Top as a form of beard association wasn’t bad. I can deal with being confused with Santa. This Duck Dynasty comparison crap, however, will meet with icy and obstinate resistance. Yes, I know you like the show. No, I do not see what’s amusing about it. Yes, I realize it’s wildly popular. No, that fact has never influenced my preferences in nearly fifty years of life, unless via contrarianship. Yes, I have watched it. No, I don’t think it’s amusing. In fact, I see little difference between Duck Dynasty and Here Comes Honey Booboo. It’s only funny because they have drawls. If you made either show with North Dakotans or Oregonians, it would be off the air, because much of our society associates a drawl with comical ignorance. (Although in Oregon, of course ‘Duck dynasty’ has a rather more different and literal meaning, one inimical to loyal Huskies.)

It’s one thing being compared to a mythical figure who brings kids joy. It’s one thing being compared to bearded Southerners whose rock band and look are so iconic that people half my age know who they are. It’s quite another being compared to a bunch of guys noteworthy mainly for making duck callers. Who even eats duck meat anyway? I assume people are not buying the duck callers so that they can feed or befriend the ducks.

Rasputin? Da. ZZ Top? Reckon so. Santa? Ho, ho, ho. Duck Dynasty? No. Just don’t.

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