Author: Ridley

This is my cat: Fashionable bow tie from Oskar and Klaus His name is Winjamin Failclaw. Originally, his name was just Win. I adopted him at a shelter event named for a music festival. I’d seen The Arcade Fire at that festival and their vocalist is named Win. Yeah, it’s a stretch. It also wasn’t sufficient. Just like people, cats respond better when you call them by their formal name rather than their nickname, so Win needed a longer name. “Winston” would be fine, I suppose, but I preferred “Winjamin” as I have a friend named Benjamin. In my experience, three syllables are ideal for scolding-names, so this was a huge improvement. Winjamin still has his claws, but he’s not particularly good at using them. Or, rather, he’s good at deploying them but he struggles when it’s time to retract them. He tends to get one of them hung up in whatever he’s sharpening his claws on and then look around with a “As God as my witness, I have no idea how this happened, can you help me?” look on his face. It was at this point that “Failclaw” was added to his name. He was four or five years old when I adopted him and I don’t have a lot of information on his history. He was getting over an infection in one of his legs when I brought him home, and his hips are a little displaced, so he’s not particularly limber. The folks at the shelter must have been giving him something because he walked reasonably well when we got him home, but soon afterwards he was limping badly. He’s healed up nicely, thank you for asking, but he’s not a champion climber. The notches on his ear suggest that either he was neutered when feral, or he’d been in a few scraps.  He’s one of the kindest animals I’ve ever encountered. He’s a little stand-offish but once he settles in to have his ears scratched, you’re not going to be going anywhere for a while. Some nights he sleeps with us, other nights he runs wild with the Red Velvet, our youngest cat. They play a lot and he’s a good sport about losing. That’s a good thing, as he loses pretty much every time. Oh, and he loves the red laser dot. I mean, I’ve never seen an animal who loves the laser like he does. One time, he jumped over to the neighbor’s porch and wouldn’t come back. We didn’t really want to climb over on to their porch and he wouldn’t respond to calling or food or anything…until Nicole thought to bring out the laser. We had him back in a heartbeat after that. My favorite thing about Mr. Failclaw is that he’s incredibly affectionate towards me. When I get home from work, he trots over to the door and raises his nose up and meows quietly until I reach down and pet him. I don’t believe I’m projecting human emotions on to him, or at least not doing so without good cause. The fact that an animal with whom communication is limited appears to feel genuine affection towards me is one of the things that makes me feel like I’m doing something right. So…that’s my cat. He’s a good kitty. I wanted to say something nice about him before I went down the rabbit hole of a Halloween story and then….November.

When I first saw the original Star Wars movie back in 1977, my father commented on how much it reminded him of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Being obsessed with anything even tangentially related to Star Wars, I tore through Dune as soon as I could. Dune was a brilliant book*, but I was a little disappointed that at the time because I didn’t see a great deal that reminded me of Star Wars. You had a desert planet, an exotic religion, and a rebellion, but other than that? Dune was about much more about intrigue than space-swashbuckling. Even now, the resemblance strikes me as largely cosmetic. But… Is it just me, or did episodes IV-VI set up the potential for the next trilogy to parallel the next three Dune books? It’s been a while since I read Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and God Emperor of Dune, but if memory serves, the could pick up right from where Return of the Jedi left off, couldn’t they? You start with a power vaccuum as the empire has been, if not destroyed, than at the very list shown to be vulnerable and ripe for overthrow. You have siblings (a generation off from Dune, but still) who been thrust to the forefront of the revolution. You have a creepy dead relative who has to potential to remain influential as a spirit. If you squint, you can even kind of cast old man Solo as an analogue to Duncan Idaho.  I’m not saying that episode VII should walk the path of Herbert’s books. I’m just saying that, given where we left off, a Dune Messiah-ish plot would fit remarkably well. I’m also saying that it would be so, so awesome. * I wound up being a bigger fan of Dune than Star Wars. I absolutely wore out my copy of the Dune Encyclopedia. Funny old world, innit?

I’m finally, finally reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s taking me a bit to effort to get in to it, not because of anything to do with the book, but because the public transportation around here has been a little too crowded for reading. Based on what little I’ve read, I suspect it’s going to be every bit as good as you’d hope a Nobel prize-winning novel would be. The little bit early on about alchemy made me laugh, in part because (and how’s this for an over-stretched segue?), I use that term to describe cooking and often have similarly unexceptional results. Cooking combines various fluids, solids, and magical spices along with copious amounts of heat and timing and produces things which seem, to the layman, like a very unlikely result. It’s as close to magic as any activity I’m aware of.  I am the fortunate to share a kitchen with a woman who can improvise soups on the fly. Soup making is probably the most alchemical* form of cooking. When you cook a steak, you start with beef and you end with beef. If you did it right, it’s much tastier beef, but it’s not exactly a mysterious process. Soups, on the hard, along with sauces, and all manner of soup-like dishes (gumbo, I’m looking at you), require a leap of faith, a trust that what ever comes out of the cauldron will be greater than what you put in to it. It’s not quite gold from lead, but I’m not sure it’s anything less magical. This is all a long way of saying that we dined on homemade tortilla soup tonight and will be doing so the next several evenings. I’m not sure what I did to deserve this, but I need to make certain I keep doing it.  * Yes, it’s a word. I had to look it up to be sure.

I’m not going to make a habit of writing book reviews here as, frankly, I’m not very good at them. If you want good book reviews, just follow Warren Ellis in all of his myriad online forms, and you’ll get some of the best.  I do, however, want to share my thoughts on Greg Graffin’s new book Population Wars. It’s an odd piece of non-fiction in that it’s difficult to say exactly what it’s about. There are dense chapters concerning viruses and bacteria, the theories of evolution, military and colonial history, the history of mass-extinctions, and personal stories about living on a farm in upstate New York.  The overarching theme of the book, as you might have guessed from the title, is a response to the question “What happens when differing populations come in to contact?” Graffin draws parallels between the conflicts that arise when microbes come together and when human populations come together. It’s not the most obvious extended metaphor, and it creaks a little under the strain, but overall, it holds up. Even with all of the science and history tucked into this book, I would probably classify it as a philosophy book more than anything else. Graffin’s goal is to derive a worldview from science and history. It’s an atheist worldview with a strong sense of morality based on the interconnection of populations and the desire to see our species beat the odds and avoid extinction.  This book is a huge step forward for Graffin. His previous work, Anarchy Evolution, was solid but far less ambitious in scope. Population Wars is much more fully developed, more informational, and written in a more assured voice. This is not the work of a musician dabbling in writing. This is the work of a serious scientist and educator. That’s not to say I agree with all of Graffin’s conclusions. Some of his philosophical conclusions are less than convincing to me, and I’m not comfortable with how detached he can be from certain events and actions. Graffin’s a good academic and he shows his work, explaining how and why he reaches the conclusions he does, but I did scratch my head several times and think “I’m not sure that follows.” That didn’t stop me from giving Population Wars are 5 star review on Goodreads. It’s a book that both teaches and invites you to learn, and Graffin proposes positive solutions to problems rather than just complaining. There are times I think his reach exceeds his grasp, but it’s such an ambitious reach that I’m very confident in my rating. 

I see a therapist on a semi-regular basis. I just wanted to throw that out there because, in some circles, there’s still a stigma attached to needing help and then getting help. To be perfectly honest, I was a little worried about how I’d be perceived and felt weird about it at first. I’d be lying if I said it felt like anything but a personal failure when I scheduled my first appointment. I suspect many people have that same sort of trepidation. The stereotype that therapy is only for weak-willed people who can’t get their shit together may be less prevalent, but it’s still around, and it’s not helpful. It’s an obstacle which prevents people who need help from getting help and it has no more basis in fact than the idea that vaccines cause autism.  I’ve had good results with therapy. I got different perspectives and approaches for dealing with problems which had resisted my tunnel-visioned approach. Even when I’m not struggling with anything in particular, it’s not a bad thing to make sure you’re not veering off into self-deception territory. My experience isn’t universal and may not even be typical, but it’s worked well for me. I try to be open about my experiences. I hope I can help ease a little of the stigma in some folks’ minds, or answer some questions, or help out in some small way. Mental issues are real. Telling people to just tough it out is no more helpful or realistic than telling someone with a broken arm to “just get over it.”  So, if you have any questions for me about my experiences, please feel free to contact me. This image of Margaret Cho and Amanda Palmer has nothing to do with therapy. A google image search on the word “therapy” provides fewer interesting choices than I would have guessed. -RK

Last night, I was hit with another bout of labyrinthitis, which is very much a real thing even though my spell-check seems to think otherwise. If you’re not familiar with you, well, be thankful as it isn’t a great deal of fun. Sometimes, when you get some swelling in your inner ear (could be for several reasons), it messes with your semi-circular canals. The result is that one of your ears is sending wildly different signals to your brain with respect to things like motion and balance.  Freeside concept art. Very germane to this discussion. This is not a lot of fun. The world looks like it’s spinning, or, in my case, jerking wildly to the left and then resetting. Keep your eyes closed when it hits. Trust me on this one. You’re not out of the woods yet, though. Any movement triggers the two sets of signals, so shifting your head to the side feels like lurching several feet. Try to avoid moving. If you have to move, say, to go to the bathroom, you crawl. You crawl with your eyes closed.  As you might expect, nausea is one of the side-effects. It’s weird, in that it always makes me feel sick, but I never actually get sick. I’m not sure if that’s due to my iron stomach or some unusual aspect of this ailment.  The first time it hit, some five or six years ago, it was terrifying. Your first thought is “will this ever end?” You don’t know, because it’s never happened to you before. The first time was the worst for that reason. The symptoms have been the same each time, but knowing it isn’t permanent makes it much easier to deal with. The other thing that makes it easier is that my wife had experience treating this same problem in animals, so she quickly recognized what was going on. The best treatments are motion-sickness drugs and sleep. The motion-sickness drugs are what allow you to sleep, and the sleeping lets you miss the several hours it takes for your body to re-calibrate.  That’s what happens, in the end. Your body reconciles the two signals from the inner ears and figures out how to turn those two inputs into one, consistent reading on your balance. It takes several hours, so sleeping is far more pleasant than trying to fight through it.  When you wake up, it’s like nothing ever happened, except you probably sweated a lot while dealing with the symptoms and your muscles are probably a little achy from, well, whatever they were doing. Today has been almost surreal in how pleasant it’s been. I’m well-rested (which almost never happens) and the whole day has felt gauzy and dreamlike. Probably a little of Dramamine still in my system. It’s hard to say for sure. Anyway, I suppose I’m fortunate in that my most severe ailment passes after a few hours and leaves almost no marks. 

This is a response to the Flash (Non) Fiction Challenge: Tell Us A Story From Your Life on Chuck Wendig’s site. Normally, I post these in the Stories section, but as this one is a true story, or, at least, as true as I can recall given that it was over twenty years ago, I suppose it properly belongs in the Journal section. I have stories that I’d like to get down in writing, and I may wind up making this a recurring feature here. We’ll see how it goes… (p.s. Here’s a different account of the same evening: http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/the_melvins.shtml ) — In the late winter of 1995, Nine Inch Nails were still touring on The Downward Spiral almost a year after its release. They were no longer playing nightclubs in Deep Ellum; they had graduated to headlining medium-sized venues like the Fair Park Colosseum in Dallas. I’d seen NIN four or five times already, but this was the show I was really excited about. Not only were Nine Inch Nails playing, but my co-favorite band at the time, Pop Will Eat Itself, were opening. This had the potential to be one of the most memorable shows I’d ever been to, and I suppose it was, but not for any reason I could have expected. Fair Park Colosseum was an odd venue. It was the home to the rodeo during the State Fair, but most of the year, it was where the minor league hockey team, the Dallas Blackhawks, played. When the venue hosted a concert, they just put down plywood over the ice, or at least, they used to. A few weeks prior to the Nine Inch Nails show, Pantera played at the Fair Park Colosseum. At some point, the fans figured out that they could make crowd-surfing way more awesome by lifting up the plywood and having people surf on it. Just imagine a sea of arms, lifted into the air, pushing a plywood board forward, a fan struggling (and likely failing) to keep their balance atop the board. Now imagine the board, propelled forward, carrying two hundred pounds of fan, and the front edge dipping just low enough to hit someone on the back of their head. Ouch. So, for our show, the plywood had been replaced by maybe an eighth of an inch of particle board. You could feel the cold when you walked on the floor of the arena, or at least, you would if you weren’t wearing army boots like I was.* Normally, the crowds arrive late, but this was an exception: Pop Will Eat Itself received quite a ton of local airplay for their debut album “This Is The Day, This Is The Hour, This Is This!”** and the new record, on Trent Reznor’s Nothing label, was something of a masterpiece. The floor of the colosseum was nearly full when the lights went down and you could literally feel the edgy energy of a mosh pit that was about to explode. And then it all went wrong. In these strange, pre-internet days, communication was a much less certain thing. No one knew that Clint Mansell***, the singer for PWEI, had fallen ill and the Poppies had been forced to drop off the tour. None of us knew that the Melvins had been filling in for the last few weeks of the tour. All we knew is, if this was Pop Will Eat Itself, then they were the worst industrial band in the world. I’m sure the Melvins are a wonderful band, but for whatever reason, they simply did not have it on the 11th of February, 1995. I didn’t like them. My friends didn’t like them. The crowd didn’t like them. The first song came and went to angry murmurs and only the faintest hint of applause. They gamely went into their second song and it went from bad to worse. The buzz got a little angrier, the crowd felt restless, and the band seemed pissed off. It was around this time that some bright person on the floor of the colosseum realized that the floor was made of thin particle board and would tear with ease. They tore up a chunk of floor and threw it at the band. This seemed like a Very Good Idea to some other folks, who followed suit. Soon, the air was full of mostly-harmlessFrisbee-sized sheets of particle board directed at (but seldom actually reaching) the stage. The Melvins reacted badly, but you can’t really blame them, can you? Their response was to start playing one note, over and over, with a ponderous drum beat, while the singer improvised lyrics about what jackasses we were. Well, that, and the fact that they weren’t going to go away no matter how much of the floor we threw at them. But throw we did. We threw and we threw and we threw. We threw until there was literally no more floor left, at which point, one of my friends turned around, facing away from the stage, and sat down. All of my friends did the same. Eventually, everyone on the floor was sitting down, facing away from the band. The Melvins, either figuring they were beat or that they’d won as much as they were going to win, threw down their instruments, flipped us off, and stormed off stage. The lights came up, and Trent Reznor came out and stepped up to the mic. “Dude. Not cool. This next act does some seriously dangerous shit, and if anyone throws anything at them, we’re not playing tonight.” I may be off a word or two. It was a long time ago. The second act were the Jim Rose Circus, a freak show act that were kind of everywhere in the mid-90’s. The had a guy who put his entire body through a badmitton racket, a guy who lifted cinder blocks with his nipple piercings****, and similar acts. We behaved will and enjoyed the show. You’d think that seeing Nine Inch Nails after all that had gone on before would be anti-climactic. Or, at least, you might think that if you have never seen Nine Inch Nails. Their show was almost the perfect embodiment of the world “climax.” Trying to describe any show is difficult at best, but NIN at their peak? Imagine the heaviest music you’ve ever…

I do a lot of my best reading in the bathtub. I might even do some writing there, too, but I won’t make any claims regarding the quality. I cheated on my project and finished William Alexander’s Flirting with French at home*. My wife pointed this one out to me at the local book store as something that might be relevant to my interests. I’ve been messing around with the Duolingo app and learning a smidgen of French in the process. The book is about a man’s attempt to learn French in his fifties, so yes, it is very much the sort of thing I’m interested in. My main takeaway? I will not be learning French any time soon. Alexander’s attempt to learn the language was considerably more intense than anything I’m willing to attempt and, I hope I’m not giving anything away here, he is not a fluent speaker by the end of the book. As I’ve never been especially good with languages, I can’t imagine I’d do any better. That’s ok, though. I’m just trying to sweep the cobwebs out of my brain, and trying to learn something you’ll never properly grasp is a heck of a way to keep the cobwebs at bay.