Last week was a good one, but I discovered something that, in retrospect, was pretty obvious. Fixing up your work space is great, but unless you re-jigger your use of time, it won’t make much difference. On the plus side, my “read books instead of messing with my phone when on the train” initiative is off to a roaring start. I spent last week reading Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds instead of checking whatever was popping up on my phone at the time. Not only did I enjoy the book (more on that in a bit), but it made the commute for more pleasant. It took me four days on the train to read the book, a fact which brings to mind Joe Hill’s epiphany that your daily page count is approximately how many books you’ll read in a year. That works if the books you read are about 350 page long and, while I have no clue what to do with that information, I like knowing it and I’m sure I’ll find some way to shoehorn it in to a conversation and perhaps even attribute its origin to Mr. Hill. All of which is a long way of saying that, while I’ve carved out some time to do some reading, there’s still the matter of making time to sit at the keyboard and do the things I say I want to do. Today is the second day of Beautiful Girlfriend’s birthday week (in fairness, she deserves more than seven days, but it’s a good start), so we have Plans and Reservations and Things Of That Ilk to do. That’s not an excuse to avoid the work, but it does me that I’ll be on holiday hours for the next few days. RK
Category: Journal
Mission Somewhat Accomplished
Aside from having an absolutely delightful stay in the northern hinterlands, I managed to finish the majority of little tasks I set out for myself. My workspace at home is not entirely re-jiggered, but it’s much better and the end is in sight. There was one goal I didn’t mention in the last post: To bring a book with me on my morning commute instead of messing with my phone the entire time. Not that there’s anything especially wrong with phone-messing, but I’m in need of a few habit adjustments and this seemed like an ideal way to carve out some additional reading team. I’ll catch up on my RSS throughout the day instead of reading it like a newspaper in the morning. I like the idea of that swap. One thing I wanted to mention in passing: When I’m re-reading my old stories or posts, I can almost immediately pick out which author I was reading when I wrote the piece. I doubt that anyone else would notice because I doubt I could really write like any of these authors even if I were trying to do so. To me, though, I can hear the voice in my head. I’ve always been extremely susceptible to this sort of contact influence. As you might imagine, when a song gets stuck in my head, it stays there. Finally, if you’re not subscribed to Warren Ellis’ newsletter, I strongly recommend it. Some of my favorite writing by John Steinbeck wound up in the journal he kept while he was writing his best novels. As much as I enjoy Ellis’ work, I find the writing he does about the writing (and reading and thinking and talking) just as interesting. If you think you’d enjoy reading that sort of thing, you can sign up for the newsletter here.
In Our Bedroom, After The War
I’m sitting at a desk in a hotel room high above a city which used to be mine (and vice-versa) but no longer is. I’m far enough removed now that the things which haven’t changed are more jarring than those that have. This is a new experience for me and I find it surprisingly pleasant. Most of the change is for the better, even if means I probably would have been priced out of my old neighborhoods had I stayed here. It’s another rainy morning in the middle of an unusually rainy Spring. It’s a good day for staying inside, which is exactly what we intend to do We have one event to attend this weekend and the rest of the time is probably going to be spent in or around this lovely old hotel overlooking downtown. I’ve set time aside for some rather unambitious but nonetheless satisfying tasks: 1) Re-organize the phone: I use an Android phone with the Aviate launcher*. The launcher does a really nice job of organizing and cleaning up the Android interface, but it’s a little too aggressive in its attempts to guess which apps I’ll find useful They’ve finally added the ability to make custom folders (“collections”), so I can go in and separate my work-related apps from the ones I use everywhere else. I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time and I feel better than I probably deserve for getting it sorted. 2) Spend a little undistracted time with my blogs and reading other ones. I’m not in a place right which affords me the luxury of dedicated home workspace, so I’m enjoying the opportunity to hole up in hotel room and not have all of my day to day chores staring at me when I’m trying to get a little reading done. I could easily get used to this. In fairness, I suspect anyone could get used to this. 3) Re-organize my workspace at home to make it as much like this as possible Method to madness! I want to spend a couple of days away, figure out what I like about this environment, and then bring as much of it home with me as I can. I’m not quite sure how yet. It’s going to involve some serious cleaning, which isn’t exactly my strong suit, but beyond that? Creating an isolation chamber within a small, one bedroom apartment shared by the two of us is going to be a challenge Number one has been crossed off the list, we’re working on number two as we speak. Number three will have to wait until we get home. I don’t travel very often, so I forget how much of a difference a few hundred miles can make. It’s like changing the angle on a photograph by a few degrees and getting a completely different perspective Remind me to do this more often. RK * I would have linked PC Mag’s review of the app but their site has become such an unspeakable horror of “how not to do web design” that I would have felt guilty had anyone actually clicked on the link.
Moving Day
I’m moving to a new laptop today, so things are a little hectic down here. It’s a cheap, low-end Lenovo with a terrific keyboard but I’m not wholly convinced that the screen resolution is going to work for me. We’ll see, but the fact that a device like this is available, new, in the sub-$300 range is kind of staggering to an old-timer like me. I let myself get caught up in a discussion of the use of rape scenes on the televised version of Game of Thrones and it put me a bit off my game. I wrote a long, long post on the subject, briefly posted it, and decided that I’d like to sleep on it a bit before deciding whether or not to re-publish it. We’ll see. I think I make some good points, but I’m not sure I make the right points, if that makes sense. I debated the specific arguments instead of the whole premise, whether GoT really needs all of these rapes. Anyway, thank you for your concern about my father. He’s been doing well lately and I don’t think he’s just putting on a brave face. I hope all of you in the U.S had a peaceful Memorial Day weekend. RK
History Will Forget The Sad Puppies
Several of you have asked me what I thought about the Hugo awards mess this year. The best response I have is “Please go read what John Scalzi has to say because he’s more deeply connected to this, knows more about it, and is a fantastic, thoughtful writer as well.” Seriously, go check out all of his Hugo awards neepery for a much more knowledgable take on the subject. If you haven’t been following the subject and don’t feel like reading Scalzi, here’s my “as I understand it” summary: A small publishing house specializing in SF books with a conservative slant has gamed the nomination process for the Hugo awards. They managed to sweep the nominations in more than a few categories. I get the sense that this is primarily a commerical play by the publishing house, but it’s been cast as a political move based on the (extremely dubious) claim that the Hugo awards have been co-opted by leftists. They’ve called their group the “sad puppies” because…I don’t know, they thought it sounded better than “racist, homophobic jerks?” Anyway, the awards are almost guaranteed to be a mess this year. Some authors on the conservative slate have removed themselves from consideration. Many voters have decided to vote “no award” for some or all categories. It’s ugly. If you want my take on the Hugos, I’ll give you this: In ye olden dayes, the players selected for baseball’s all-star game were elected by public ballots. In 1957, the ballots were being printed in newspapers instead of passed out to the fans at games (as I remember from the 1970’s) or online (as it’s done now). The Cincinnati Enquirer decided to help the fans out a little by printing pre-filled ballots with nothing be Cincinnati ballplayers selected. As a result, the starting lineup for the 1957 National League team consisted of Stan Musial, a St. Louis Cardinal, and 7 cincinnati Reds. People rightly saw this as a subversion of the process. Ford Frick, the commissioner of baseball, immediately replaced two Reds outfielders, Wally Post and Gus Bell, with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays because, c’mon, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. The remaining Reds were allowed to start the game and then almost immediatley replaced once the game started, and the game looked like an All-Star game once more. Frick took the vote away from the fans and let managers, coaches, and players select the All Stars, a system which survived until 1970. It wasn’t really the fans’ fault, though. The All-Star voting system was poorly designed and had always been open to this kind of abuse. It just took an incident like this to bring these issue to the forefront and get baseball to change the way the voting worked. The lesson here, at least as it relates to the Hugo awards, is that almost sixty years later, the players elected by this broken system, Johnny Temple, Don Hoak, Roy McMillan, Gus Bell, and Wally Post, do not seem to have derived any particular benefit from their dubious election. Likewise, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, and Eddie Matthews are not diminished by their failure to win the vote in this flawed ballot. In the long view, merit won out over attempts to leverage a poor system into a few vanity awards, just as I imagine will be the case for the Sad Puppies and their ilk.
Bullet, dodged
He’s out of surgery and it went as well as we could have hoped. Thank you all your kind wishes. RK
On a train in the rain
Just a quick update while I enjoy nineteenth century transportation that still feels magical: No surgery yesterday. His doctors have come up with a plan involving something called a “heart catheter” which they believe will make the surgery feasible. There had to be some coordination between the cardiologist and ENT before moving forward. That’s been sorted and the plan is to perform the procedure today. We continue to live in hour. RK
Holding my breath
There’s no good way to put this: My father is not well. He’s been “not well” for quite some time, but he’s sliding towards the really bad end of the spectrum of ways one can be “not well.” He’s supposed to be having surgery this morning, but that’s been the case twice this month so far and they’ve not been able to get it done. There is some legitimate concern that his heart is no longer able to sustain sufficient blood pressure when he’s under general anesthesia. Today’s surgery is to remove a benign growth on his thyroid. The growth is beginning to negatively impact his ability to breath. It’s not at a critical stage by any means, but the doctors believe that “sooner rather than later” is the best approach, as it seems unlikely he will be more able to have surgery in two year than he is now. This procedure is also a precursor to another one, tentatively schedule for a week from now, to clear out fluid in his lungs. That one is meant to precede an attempt to rescue his dialysis graft which has closed up and has not responded to attempts to de-clot it. There’s a cautionary tale in this: Miracles come with prices. Twenty years ago, he was struck by cancer. Chemotherapy and raditation treatments completely destroyed the cancer and he has been free of that particular ailment for a long, long time now. However, the chemo is likely the cause of his renal failure. Dialysis is a miracle that’s been with us a long time, but it is nonetheless a miracle. However, the blood thinners required to keep his tubes open cause fluid to build up in his lungs. We’re not wholly sure what caused his heart to struggle so, but his cardiologist hasn’t ruled out that an early treatment for something unrelated to his heart may have been the culprit. And so it goes… For the past week, I’ve been sketching ou what I suppose is going to be a eulogy when finished. I don’t know the propriety of preparing this sort of thing prior to the actual event, but I expect things will move quickly when they happen, and there are things I want to say. Fortunately, my father and I talk almost every day so there are few things left unsaid to him, but there are many, many things I want to say about him becauase…I honestly don’t know why, but I know I want to say them. So, we’re holding our breath. Perhaps things will go swimmingly this morning and the chain of procedures will be performed without incident. That would be spectacular. I live in hope. RK
Boys Will Be Boys (Why I’m so angry about calling a fictional character a “whore”)
This made me angry: The Interview started with saying how Natasha/Black Widow was being ‘shipped with Hawkeye (Renner) or Captain America (Evans) and now she’s been written with The Hulk (Ruffalo). When asked what were their thoughts, Renner blurted out, “She’s a slut.” followed by Evans agreeing with boisterous laughter how it’s “something along those lines, she’s a complete whore.” It didn’t stop with “slut” and “whore”, Renner chimed in with “trick, man.” Dibdin (interviewer) seemed unbothered by this revelation of Black Widow and hopped right in with, “Whatever the movie is, she’ll be the sidekick; she’ll be flirting.” Evans had more to say, “that’s right she’ll be flirting with everybody.” Then for some reason, Renner just felt like dropping, “she has a prosthetic leg anyways.” and Evans brings it home with, “leading everybody on.” Let me start by saying that I’m not offended on the behalf of anyone else. It’s not my place or my desire to stand up for women who are perfectly capable of standing up for themselves or even deciding that Evans and Renner were just joking and to let it go. That’s not why I’m pissed. I’m pissed because I’m a comic book fan and I feel like this kind of bro-ish misogyny sets the whole community back. We’ve been fighting this boy’s club, you can say anything you want about women because they’re just meat to us, attitude for decades. We were finally starting to make some progress and these dudes had to come out and make jokes about the one woman on their team being a whore? That’s so far beyond unacceptable. Comic fandom shouldn’t be “a safe place for dudes to treat women like objects.” I don’t think any community should be that, but, if you’re trying to make a community I’m a part of into a frat house? GTFO. Additionally, it’s hard not to hear Evans and Renner saying these things and not think that they’re talking about Scarlett Johansson as much as they’re talking about a character. (Very talented) comic book artist Jamie McKelvie put it well: How we talk about fictional characters is absolutely reflective of how we talk about real people Yes, exactly that. Casually sexist talk, even casually sexist talk about a comic book character, reveals says something about their attitudes about women. There’s a war going on in comic book culture, just like there is in gaming. There are men who feel like it’s their community and women aren’t welcome, so they do everything in their power to make women feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. The good news is that this point of view is dying out. The bad news is that they’re not going gracefully into that good night. Even if they had the best of intentions (and I think that’s an extremely generous reading), Renner and Evans have sided with the MRAs and gamergaters and other dead-enders. It’s the wrong message for them to be delivering. If they truly didn’t mean it, then I expect to see a better retraction than “I’m sorry if you were offended.” If they really don’t feel like they did anything wrong? I want them out of my community, even if that means casting different actors in upcoming Marvel movies.. They can go be assholes somewhere else; those attitudes aren’t welcome here. P.S. If you want to read a really good Black Widow story, the kind that makes Evans’ and Renner’s comments look kinda stupid, pick up Secret Avengers #20 by Warren Ellis and Alex Maleev.
Personal Update
This is probably going to read very old-mannishly, but health concerns have been dominating my attention of late and, if I’m going to write anything, it’s going to be about those concerns. So, if you find this subject enthralling, it won’t hurt my feelings if you skip this post. My skin problems have settling into a slightly different orbit. I’m still itchy, still prone to infection, and still very, very sensitive to any stimulus. It’s not as bad as it was before I started getting steroid shots and I learned that I was allergic to most textiles. I haven’t had any shots in almost six months now, so its encouraging that my condition is improved, but there’s still a long way to go. The first allergist I contacted never returned my call (and I never pursued it), so I’ve made another attempt today. The dermatologist says that there’s no sign of anything other than extreme eczema and allergies. Goodness knows I’ve been tested for essentially everything else. This is my first chronic condition and, while I think I’m taking it well, it is starting to wear me down. Of even greater concern is my father’s condition. He’s not one to complain even when he ought to do so, but he’s starting to feel the weight of his ailments and he’s starting to run out of options. There are certain treatments which only work for a finite length of time and he’s out of the warranty period on them, so to speak. I don’t know how other people count such things, but I work in orders of units when thinking about mortality. Do we have decades, or years, or months, or days? I’ve had to adjust my estimate down one level and it’s a very frightening thing to consider. Parents are, of course, supposed to be immortal and when they appear otherwise… I’d prefer not to think of it, but at this time, I can’t not think of it. So, that’s where I am right now. See you tomorrow. RK