Hopes and dreams

I haven't been posting here much lately because there hasn't been much to post about, as the films we've been seeing have been somewhere on the spectrum of typical, bland, and mediocre. Most of my writing time has been going toward a semi-new project and I don't have particularly high hopes for that one because it, like every other writing venture I've been involved in, likely won't find an audience and will come to nothing. That's how I tend to prepare for things like that, anyway. My ex- once asked me: "What are your hopes and dreams?" I said: "I don't have any. I kinda just take each day as it comes and deal with it." I have interests (way too many), desires (like any human), and make a lot of plans to do this or that thing, some of which even come to fruition. But dreams? No. I've seen too many of those dissipate to spend any time hoping for one of those to come true.

I've never written anything for myself. Some people like to engage in that; journaling so that they have a record of their thoughts (and dreams!) and observations about life. That's a worthwhile endeavor. It's just not something I engage in. If I'm going to put down my thoughts, as I'm doing right now, it's always for someone else to read. I don't need to spell things out for myself. I can do that already. Everything I write is for someone else to hopefully get something from. The problem I run into too often is that there either aren't enough people who get something from it (that's my fault) or there aren't enough people who care (which isn't anyone's fault.)

I wrote about American Fiction a while back; the film that I thought was the best of 2023. It sang to me from the opening stanza because it was about a writer who never seemed to get his message across to people or at least not enough people who cared. I know that feeling better than any other in my life. I get it every time someone reads something and doesn't react or gives the most harmless of platitudes: "It was good." that tells me that it didn't register with them at all. I feel that sensation even more when I know that they didn't bother to read it at all; as I look at things I've blogged about where the unique views are in the single- or low double-digits. I mean, I guess I should be happy, right? If I was "writing for myself", the only unique view would be mine; the loneliest number.

My friend, Jeff, and I are returning to material I created for our comic studio, Fifth Panel Comics. He's decided that he needs to be drawing again and I have several hundred pages of script, prose, story concepts, scenes, characters, and setting that have never seen the light of day. So we're going to try to turn it into something again, 30 years later. I don't have any hope for it. I can't. Every time I think of 5th Panel, I think of the hilarious times we had in the studio and doing conventions and just speculating- dreaming, you might say -about what we could make it into. But I also think of the time that we stopped into a restaurant with a couple of our artists and the guy behind the counter asked us what we were talking about and we showed him the anthology book we'd created, Razorwire. He asked everyone to sign it and both artists signed their stories and Jeff signed as the publisher and then the guy looked at me and said: "And who are you?" And I had nothing to say because, despite being the nominal editor and having come up with the title, neither my name nor my work was in that book. I had made other people's dreams come true (at least partially), but I hadn't even been able to write something for me. Or, at least, what little I had that had been published hadn't been good enough to become something noticeable.

So we're back at it. We have a website and some of the old artwork and I, of course, have every one of the hundreds of thousands of words that I've written for, about, and of the world that I created. Will it come to anything? I don't know. The dream, of course, would be that it takes off and Jeff and I can both retire from our day jobs and do this thing that we love for as long as we want to do it. But that's the kind of dream that I find myself unable to believe in (which is, y'know, like all of them.) I believe in Jeff's intent. I believe- kinda -in the work, although you'll never hear me say it. I'd like those around me to believe in it, but most of those people just aren't interested, which doesn't make me think that this time is going to be any different from the last one. You can't blame people for not being interested. That's the first hurdle in writing things for other people. They either are or they aren't the camel that can be led, presuming you're even leading them to water. If there's no water, it won't matter that they've been led in the first place.

When we get the material rolling and the site loaded with stuff, I'll post the link here to whoever still notices this outlet. "Hopefully" someone will. Maybe it will even be worth your time and attention. I'm afraid I was always more writer than oneiromancer. Or, at least, that's what I claimed to be. For someone else.

Justin Amash and the travail of choices

I discovered that Justin Amash was seriously considering a presidential run as a Libertarian when I read the board this morning. The person who posted the story immediately attacked Amash for potentially threatening Biden's victory by providing conservatives that dislike Trump with another option. The first response to his post was a dismissal akin to "Egotistical politicians all think they're the savior that America needs.", which was also an expression of dismay that someone else other than the two anointed ones might get involved in the race. I found both reactions to be an interesting display of both a failure to see beyond one's own window and an assumption that almost all politicians, by their very existence, are bad people. Both are also implicitly expressions of American monotheism in politics.

First off, it's ridiculous to deny the presence of ego in politics. Most people who run for office have a fair share of it in order to stand up in front of people and say either "I have new ideas" or "I'm the voice for your ideas", if not both. Most politicians are fond of their own opinion. That's why they're politicians. The question of the presence of egotism is a bit murkier and certainly the speculation that all politicians have a messiah complex is just part of that "Politicians are bad people" trope. There are a number of reasons that most people choose to run for office. John Conyers used to talk about civic duty. When he started, there weren't a lot of people willing to stand up and talk about what was happening in that part of Detroit, because it was mostly Black. (I once joked with him, on a live mic, that he'd be better off joining the Greens, since his outlook was closer to ours. He suggested that we should talk later.) Similarly, a lot of minor party or impossible-to-win-in-this-red/blue-district races are run because there's no one speaking for the people in that locale who don't agree with the dominant viewpoint. And some people just think they can do things better than the person already there. Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example.

In this case, the latter motivation is likely what's moving Amash. The guy already left the GOP because of how insane it's become, despite continuing to spout off regular conservative viewpoints as an independent. How many times have we seen Republicans (Never Trumpers, etc.) talk about how repelled they are by what their party has become and, yet, Amash's run somehow has to be all about Amash? But they're all corrupt! They're all in on it! They're all fatuous egotists! Both sides! All sides! But if you can't believe anyone who wants to run for office might do at least OK in that office, then what's the point of any of this? The old homily that the "best person to run for president is the person who doesn't want the job" is moronic. What's the best example? The current idiot in the White House. He didn't want the job. He just wanted the attention, narcissist that he is. That's why he's spent half his time in office playing golf. Being president is kinda difficult. It's a lot of work. Who wants that? Well, really driven people who think they have good ideas. That old James Lipton questionnaire that he always asked of guests on Inside the Actors Studio had a "What job would you never want to do?" question. The nearly universal answer was "Politics."

There are few more ego-driven people in the world than actors. They have to be. That's part of their craft. And, yet, none of them want to take the role of society's presumed egotists. Why? The simple answer is that none of them want to be "bad people." The more reasonable answer is that all of them realize that it's a difficult job trying to respond to the wants and needs of a variety of people in whatever district, municipality, or nation that they happen to oversee. It's often a thankless job, whereas at least as an actor you get applause and sometimes awards. And it's also a job that brings such an intense level of warped scrutiny from media sources and the public that even those people already under intense scrutiny, as actors, are probably not interested in subjecting themselves to it. You can't please everyone or, often, even anyone when compromise (that thing that existed pre-1994) is the order of the day.

Which brings us to our second response: the idea that Amash is somehow threatening Biden's chances in November and should, therefore, be condemned for it. This is the opposite of the typical perspective; that Democrats are threatened by Greens and those to the left, while Republicans are threatened by Libertarians and those to the right. In this case, the initial poster determined that there are a lot of non-Trump conservatives out there, just like Amash, who would otherwise be voting for Biden. This is a much more difficult question (and assertion) and there's really no way to state anything about the situation as a fact. As we've all seen, repeatedly, in recent elections, there's basically no way to determine who someone will vote for given alternative choices. The popular theory on the Democratic side is that, without Nader's presence in the 2000 election, it's a "fact" that all of those Green voters would have voted for Gore.

This is the point where another popular saying comes up: "Anecdote does not equal evidence." The difference is that this saying is actually accurate. I don't know whom Green voters in Florida or elsewhere would've voted for. I do know that I, as a Green voter in Michigan, wouldn't have voted for him because I've never voted for a major party candidate for president in my life. Without Greens on the ballot, I always voted for socialists who, incidentally, gained more votes in Florida than the difference between Bush and Gore in 2000, if you really want to get picky about it. Can anyone tell me, for certain, that non-Trump Republicans were going to bite the bullet and vote for Biden? Can anyone tell me they won't do that, anyway, even with Amash in the race? Of course not. That's about as predictable as Clinton losing all of the upper Midwest in 2016, right?

So, this is mostly about American political monotheism: Thou shalt worship no other gods before the Democrat and the Republican. This is the argument usually put forth by someone who is content with the current establishment, barring one orange, misogynist outlier. This is why entities like the New York Times won't mention that many current systems are broken or that the president tells lies almost literally every five minutes. They're content with the way things work right now. Life isn't as good as it could be, but they have jobs, they have health insurance, their 401ks and their mutual funds are doing OK; things were generally fine until the orange man-baby arrived. So, they don't want people to question the way the system operates (good luck with that during a pandemic!) They just want to focus on getting rid of the "other guys." This is what minor party people like myself used to laugh about when it seemed like the biggest difference between a Dem or GOP Congress was who had the larger offices in the Capitol.

Along comes former Republican, Justin Amash, and... he might spoil(!) everything! Once again, he's giving people CHOICE on the ballot! You know what happens when people have choices! The wrong people might win! But still the system will remain unchanged and the 'right' people will win it back later. This is the "boogeyman" argument that both major parties have used for the last thirty years. A lot of Democrats feel justified in currently saying something along the lines of "See?! We were right!" Well, yeah, albeit once in 30 years is similar to suggesting that the two non-Trumpers you've spoken to have said they're voting for Biden and that makes all the difference. Hey, the one time you were right has given us an election where only the hardcorest of the hardcore actually want to vote for president! Great. But it's not that simple, because it never is.

And now we're in a situation where all the systems are breaking down and their flaws are being seen not just by the people who have struggled under them for decades (if not centuries), but by everyone. Amash is essentially saying: "Hey. This isn't working. I'd like to do something different." And the response is: "All politicians are egotistical assholes and YOU'RE not the right kind of asshole!" In other words: "Not this time. This isn't the right time for change. Wait until next time." I would ask: "If not in the midst of a pandemic that's going to have lasting effects on life around the world, is there a time that is a good time?" Because time is what a lot of people will be lacking, quite soon. Without jobs, a lot of people are going to find themselves without food and shelter. Is your only answer to them going to be "Hey. Things will be fine if we all line up behind so-uninspiring-he's-soporific Joe Biden, so that things will go back to normal." 'Normal' is the problem; politically, economically, socially. Doing 'normal' with Democrats and Republicans is what has gotten us to this state of affairs; with people dependent on jobs for insufficient insurance, living paycheck-to-paycheck on those jobs, and not knowing what they'd do in any kind of calamity... just like this one.

Just as a side note: No, I'm not making a direct comparison between Dems and the GOP. Even if I were inclined to believe in the "all politicians are horrible" trope, as with all things in life, there are gradations of horrible. Some are clearly worse than others. In my direct encounters with most politicians, they're usually just regular people: dumb, self-interested herd animals. That's kind of demoralizing when it comes to the federal government, as you'd like to think that people who made it that far aren't fucking idiots but, as we've seen, that's very, very far from the case.

The state of my political world

I haven't talked about politics in this space for a long time because, frankly, the state of politics in this country bores the shit out of me. My friend, David Palmer, has tried to get me involved in a couple different efforts in the last couple years. One of them was to help Rashida Tlaib in 2018. Another one was a project oriented around voting patterns and trying to use that info to help campaigns that we were interested in (like Rashida's, by and large.) And, y'know, I was willing to help, but I didn't do either effort any justice, mostly because I've become something of a political nihilist in the 15 years since I got out of regular activity.

When I helped build the Green Party in this state and was its chair for five years, I was still an activist. There were still principles that I was willing to work a second full-time job without pay for. There were principles that I was willing to ruin my marriage for (although that likely should have ended a lot sooner than it did, anyway.) I still hold those principles among the guiding truths of my life. But most other people don't give a shit. Quite honestly, most people didn't give a shit then, which is why I walked away from it, having burned out on doing most of the work myself because everyone else had better things to do when they weren't spending a couple hours a week in a local meeting, thinking that the more they talked, the closer the world came to suddenly transforming. When Tricia and I met up with David after a concert one night, he asked her: "So, what's it like living with an actual revolutionary?" We all laughed because it was kind of a joke. I laughed at least in part because I knew that almost everything I'd done was a complete waste of time. Most revolutionaries at least have the integrity to spend a long time in prison or be assassinated or something like that.

Both of Tricia's kids, Keller and Simone, are Bernie supporters. Being from the current generation, they recognize the obvious injustices of American society and understand, as much as they instinctively understand breathing, that things need to change. I don't know how much of my occasional ranting has influenced that outlook, if at all, since they both seem to have developed opinions on their own based on their open-minded view of society. I remember when Simone was in eighth grade and mentioned that a couple of her classmates had already declared themselves to be transgendered. I just shrugged, but I chuckled inwardly, trying to imagine any set of circumstances where I could've been at the age of 13 where anyone would even consider doing that, much less actually following through. There are many things that have changed for the better on a social level in the last 37 years. And, of course, there are many things that really haven't. Such is life.

But I was having a discussion with a guy I know on that Michigan board I've been hanging out on for 23 years. I don't even watch Michigan anymore, but I've known these people for a long time and they're still worth the conversation. He's a Biden supporter because he's a former Republican, appalled at the party's descent into Trumplandia, and he just wants to remove the game show host from the Oval Office. In other words, "anyone but Trump." That's not an unreasonable position and it's been supported with Biden's victories in most of the primaries and with his support from the DNC that Sanders has continually attacked and derided (possibly not the best strategy when trying to win the party's nomination, as a non-party member. Just sayin'.) But it's also emblematic of the status quo, which is essentially "put things back to where they were", pre-Trump.

Those of you who've listened to Mike Duncan's superb Revolutions podcast will have heard him regularly opine on the difference between a political revolution and a social revolution. The former is what founded this country. It was a bunch of wealthy, highly-educated, landholding White guys who objected to being denied any way to govern themselves and to having their money taken just because they weren't part of a few particular families. It wasn't about slavery or poverty or the inability to find a job or any other basic human right. It was mostly about money. I've always said that America was founded as a way to make money and it has never changed. This event was no different. These guys were part of the Haves in 18th century America, even if they didn't have the coat-of-arms to prove it back in the old country.

A social revolution is a very different animal. It's almost always initiated by the Have Nots who have been denied those basic rights, typically because the Haves have kept those things from them. Why? Because denial of basic rights usually makes money. This class division has existed throughout human history and the consequent revolutions have occurred whenever that chasm has gotten so wide that the Have Nots on one side of it see no way that they're ever going to close it without violence. And here we are.

The trigger event, in this case, may be a global pandemic, which has suddenly kickstarted conversation on topics that were formerly taboo. Could you imagine middle schoolers declaring themselves to be TG in 1985? 1995? Of course not. By the same token, could you imagine anyone talking about a universal basic income on the floor of Congress before the last couple weeks? Or seriously discussing national healthcare as a necessity, rather than a political prize? Or, for that matter, even envision the idea of Congress discussing just giving... money... to people.., that actually need it...? I can't. It violates so many tenets of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps America that it's hard to comprehend. It's absolute heresy to the give-more-money-to-the-rich-and-they'll-be-kind-and-generous religion. But those are the realities we're facing, as the trickle-down crowd shouts that grandma should be sacrificed to their ever-failing experiment, and they somehow fail to see that "the economy" also won't recover if a good chunk of the population ends up in mass graves instead of, y'know, buying shit on Amazon. And who is our hero to carry the banner of these new, transformative measures in society?!

Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, long-time senator from Delaware, the most corporate-friendly state in the Union. Joe Biden, scion of credit card companies and the leading supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy act that makes student loans non-dischargeable (You may have heard that that's a small issue to many young Americans and Democrats.) Joe Biden, vociferous proponent of both of George W. Bush's decades-long wars, which cost ungodly amounts of money. In many ways, Biden is the model, establishment Democrat. He's the perfect example of what I usually refer to as the "I got mine!" Democrats; giving lip service to a lot of issues, but only really following through on the ones that keep the status quo for the Almost Haves. You may know them as America's diminishing middle class. They have some money. They do OK. They're never going to be a Bezos or a Bloomberg, but they're content as long as things stay the same. In other words, Biden just wants to bring us all back to pre-Trump, when the poor got poorer but there weren't as many kids in cages at the border. And the president didn't act like a spoiled child. And professionals weren't dismissed from government service for making the president feel bad. But, uh, the poor still got poorer and nothing much else really changed, especially for those young people looking to make their way in the world. "Let's get back to the time when you still didn't have much chance at finding the American Dream!" isn't much of a slogan, but it's all he's got.

And now he's the nominee. The Democrats' constant "boogeyman" approach to elections has finally reached the bottom of its barrel. Now it's not just "You have to vote for us because, if you don't, THAT GUY will win!" It's that and "You're going to help us elect a guy whose only worthwhile attribute is that he's not THAT GUY!" Get fired up, yo. And all I can do is look back at the work I used to do and think, again: What a complete waste of time. Because I'm still looking for jobs that I'll hate in order to afford the drugs that keep me alive to be miserable, since Joe doesn't want national healthcare. Most people will never be free of the mild terror of knowing that, if they lose their job, they've not only lost their health coverage but will soon be out of their home because Joe's in favor of our all-or-nothing system. A lot of people are crashing face-first into those realities right now because of that global pandemic and the inaction of the current idiot in the Oval Office. And do you know what Joe's response is?

He doesn't want to fight the president.

Millions are outraged at the president's delays, where he refused to listen to his own HHS secretary, because a health crisis would make Trump look bad. But Joe doesn't want to point that out. Despite the attempts to put a $500 billion slush fund in the emergency aid bill that was directly requested by the White House when Trump realized that 6 of his 7 biggest properties were shuttered by state lockdowns, Joe doesn't want to fight about that. Millions are appalled that news sources like the New York Times and CNN won't simply call the president on his lies, especially when they're indirectly leading to people dying from coronavirus or directly leading to people poisoning themselves with various forms of quinine. But Joe doesn't want to call the president a liar. That would be unseemly.

So, this is where we are. And I think back to David's comment... "Revolutionary." I wish it was still funny.

Just a little rain on the parade

Rain is on my mind. Not like Harvey rain. This ain't Michigan State's impending debacle. (Tangent: I've seen people on the Web blaming Houston's zoning regulations, or lack thereof, for the flooding. These people apparently haven't registered the concept of 50 inches of rain falling in a few days. 50 inches! 50! I don't care if your zoning regulations say: "Only one building, wetlands, and a dirt road per 10 acres." 50(!) inches of rain is going to flood ANYWHERE. /tangent) But some small rain on Michigan's latest gridiron campaign, beginning tomorrow, is clouding my thoughts.

I've been having a tough time getting excited for this season. My fandom has been slipping away for the last decade, mostly because I can't justify the existence of the NCAA any longer. Even if I was aware of the issue when the Fab 5 were complaining about it in 1992, the fact that an increasing number of billions of dollars is being made on major college sports and none of it is going to the athletes is something that just hangs over me when I watch the game. Nowhere else in society do you have adults be expected to put their skills to use and be explicitly forbidden from being compensated for them. At a minimum, you call that exploitation. At a maximum, there are much darker parallels to be drawn, especially given that the majority of those athletes are African-American. The fact that the only professional outlets for those skills in the US collude with the NCAA to deny those athletes access to those paying jobs for three years (in the case of football, 1 in basketball) past the age when most of them have legal standing as adults just makes the crime, and the associated hypocrisy, even worse.

You can add to that the issue of concussions. American football is a violent game, full stop. It's why so much protective gear is worn. Even sports that are considered contenders for the title holder of violence, like rugby, don't require so much gear because the game isn't predicated on extremely powerful collisions. Those collisions lead to concussions and I find that when I'm watching a game these days, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what those kids are doing to themselves in the name of getting permission to be paid for what they're already really good at.

These feelings are in stark contrast to those of Michigan's current coach, who feels that football embodies everything that's good about life. In truth, no one else that I recall can so accurately be said to "live football." Every day, during almost every waking moment (he does have a family), one could make a fair argument that Jim Harbaugh is thinking about football and how to be better at it than he was the day before. My slow alienation from the game has reached its pinnacle right around the time that most around me, energized by the dynamo of his personality and the success that Harbaugh has maintained throughout his career, are more enthusiastic than ever about what Michigan could accomplish on the field. But I try to blot out the stain that is the NCAA and the scourge that is the threat of CTE and think in similarly positive terms and realize that I just don't share the faith anymore.

Brian did his usual excellent review (I can't call anything that exceeds 50K words a "summary") of the team and his expectations for the season and came down at the 9-3/10-2 mark. You know how many of those I've seen in my life? 12. Two more at 9-4, a 9-2-1, a 10-1-1, 5 10-3s (including the last two years), and 3 11-2s. There were a couple 10-1s, an 11-1, and a 10-0-1 in my lifetime but I was too young to know what was going on. I've seen a lot of apparently successful seasons for Michigan that, in many ways, don't really add up to a whole lot. I mean, yeah, a lot of Rutgers fans would kill to have the program that Michigan has, but their first problem is that they're Rutgers fans, so I don't really care about that. I just imagine sitting in front of a game, mildly irritated that these kids are sacrificing their health and bodies to make millions of dollars for someone else, and think about the impending 10-3 season and... I just get bored.

Do I really want to see Michigan slaughter Rutgers again? Do I really want to see the ritual sacrifice of Cincinnati or the slugfest with Wisconsin or the inevitable loss to Ohio State again? Do I really want to be implicitly supporting a system that denies these kids the opportunity to make a living off of their natural talent and developed skills, unlike 99% of the rest of humanity? Make no mistake. These guys are professional athletes. The only thing not professional about it is that they're not getting paid. Having recently been looking for jobs in a sphere where my only experience is of a volunteer or self-employed nature, I can tell you what most employers think about the "professional" standing of someone who's never received a paycheck. These kids are basically modern corporate America's favorite class: unpaid interns, who are supposed to be eternally grateful to the monolith that tells them that their time and effort aren't worth a dime without the guidance that the monolith provides. Insert Kubrick's giant black slab conveying the thought of tool use (violent tool use, incidentally) and it's kind of hard to deny the imagery.

I still enjoy the game, to a certain degree. I was watching Indiana and Ohio State play last night with an appreciation for what was happening on the field (and utter amazement at the modernity of about half of Mike Debord's offense; I'll never forgive 1999.) And despite a similar appreciation for Harbaugh's gung-ho personality and the dynamism that he brings to some parts of the offense, I find myself unable to join the Harbaughdyssey because I don't see the breakthrough that so many friends and others I respect insist is taking place. I don't see Michigan contending for national prominence on a regular basis because I don't see Michigan getting past OSU to win the division or go to the conference title game, which means 10-2/9-3 and some irrelevant bowl in Florida on an annual basis. Incidentally, the last irrelevant bowl game that Michigan participated in cost TE Jake Butt millions of dollars as his draft stock plummeted when he injured his knee during said game. "Come to Michigan! Do lasting damage to your body for free, because it's the only way to (hopefully) get paid for what you can do with that body!"

I look at that last paragraph and I feel mildly ashamed that I'm even contextualizing my apathy toward the record that Michigan might achieve, given the other concerns that I can't shake. I mean, certainly my interest in the game is grounded in what Michigan can achieve in it. I'm a fan. I have been since I was six years old. I could go on being just like all the other fans who love the game and all the kids who play it for that same, simple love. But I wonder. I wonder if that new coach who's supposedly the greatest thing to ever grace the sideline of Michigan Stadium (I've lived through six now; admittedly a ridiculously low number compared to many programs) is really enough to make me think that being a fan for one more 10-3 season is worth supporting the economic injustice or watching people risk the rest of their lives on a game that was probably a bad idea taken to extremes in the first place. I remain a fan, but I struggle with the idea of continuing to be a fan. Do I step out of the rain or keep walking to where I'm going?

Time travels they are a changin'

Amazon has produced their latest "100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books to read in a lifetime" list. Like most listicles, it's a marketing tool, but at the very least, it's an obvious marketing tool, coming from one of the three legs of the marketing (s)tool that makes up the Interwebs (the other two being Google and porn.) Couple things:

1. Why they feel compelled to combine SF and Fantasy, rather than splitting them into their own lists, is kind of jarring. They were always combined as the wing of geek literature that most booksellers didn't care about. Now, with the prevalence of all things geek (see: Game of Thrones, Marvel movies, impending Star Warsapalooza, etc.), you'd think that there's enough material to define each genre on its own. But, then again, it might be weak on the Fantasy side, but I think it's weak just based on what they have listed already (more below), especially since they insist on including some of the hoary classics that aren't even good books.

2. On the one hand, it's gratifying that they're including a lot of new (and very good) material rather than exclusively dwelling upon said hoary classics. OTOH, this is a marketing tool that can be used to sell new stuff, amirite? So, as with most listicles, this is one set of opinions and far from definitive. That said, again, good to see new(er) stuff, in addition to some things which may not have been recognized before.

I've read only 54 of them, believe it or not. Guess I'm slacking(?):

1. A Wizard of Earthsea. The first of three LeGuin selections. It's gratifying to see her reputation continue to grow as the decades pass, as she was among the best of the New Wave that elevated SF and Fantasy past what the Sad Puppies were whining for at the Hugos for the past few years. I liked the Earthsea stuff, but didn't stay with it.

2. The Windup Girl. One of the aforementioned newer selections. This was excellent.
3. Snow Crash. Still Stephenson's most iconic work, even if it is awash in "old school" cyberpunk trappings and came during his "troubled ending" phase, where it seemed like he had much more story to flesh out but decided to cut it off before he wandered too far afield. The Deliverator lives on.
4. Starship Troopers. Iconic and inflammatory in a far different way than the Verhoeven film, which remains high comedy in the guise of action.
5. Cloud Atlas. I enjoyed this one and I think the film was decent on its own merits. Do I think it belongs on this list? Maybe in one possible future.
6. 20K Leagues Under the Sea. This is one of those classics that I'm OK with in terms of giving the reader a broad appreciation of how the genre has developed and where it began.
7. The Forever War. This is one of those irreplaceable choices, because it remains timeless, even if it was a very pointed statement for its time.
8. Solaris. Lem's work was always legendary among the SF set. It's starting to descend to the hoary level, as one film after another tries to capture it and fails. I actually read this for an SF course at Michigan, suggesting that you can get something useful out of education.
9. The Road. Obvsly.
10. Slaughterhouse Five. Something else I read in that course at Michigan. Prior to that, I'd never really considered Vonnegut or his status as an SF author.
11. Blood Music. This was a selection in one of those "10 books for a penny" deals that Publishers Clearinghouse used to run. I knew Bear's name from several other books I'd seen on the shelves in bookstores, but had never stopped to read one. That's what marketing used to be.
12. 2001: A Space Odyssey. I appreciate the story, but this one has more impact for Kubrick's film, which makes me question its status as an actual thing you should read before you die, or simply one of those boxes to be checked.

13. Game of Thrones. This was also a selection on a different Publishers Clearinghouse list (yes, I guess I'm a good example of marketing success; that was the original cover, too), shortly after it was first published in 1996. I knew Martin only vaguely, but the blurb about political infighting in a fantasy world was enough for me to snag it.
14. Ender's Game. Another checked box. His best book and the one that should really be read is Speaker for the Dead.
15. Old Man's War. So, similar question: Do you include the first of a now-iconic series or do you replace it with the better writing and better story of later entries?
16. A Wrinkle in Time. I have several friends who swear by these books that they read when they were kids. I was unimpressed when I did.
17. The Sword of Shannara. Here's where we arc from pseudo-serious list into the land of total marketing. Sword was a blatant Tolkien ripoff and not a good book in any way. If you want to recommend anything from the Shannara series, you want The Elfstones of Shannara.
18. The Martian Chronicles. Box checked, but still a great work.
19. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Worked better as a radio play, honestly. I think Adams would agree with me.
20. Sandman Slim. As pleased as I am to see this new(er) work here, I'm also kind of surprised. I didn't think it had gained the kind of cachet needed for this list.
21. The Left Hand of Darkness. Another LeGuin and probably her most famous.
22. Good Omens. I have a hilarious story about the attempts to write a screenplay of this book...
23. I Am Legend. Book decent, not sure it belongs here. Movie awful
24. Dune. Still probably the best fictional political tale until GoT and yet shared the Hugo with a much smaller book (This Immortal) written by a man absent from this list.
25. 1984. Box checked. Predictions continue to resonate, even 31 years past. The more things change...
26. Childhood's End. Forget 2001. This is the Clarke book that should be here, even if the imagery does get kind of heavy-handed. (Devils? Really?)

27. Lord Foul's Bane. Eh. I really enjoyed the Thomas Covenant stuff when I read it at the age of 10, even if it was an obvious Tolkien lift (it was done better than the Shannara stuff...) I guess it's become kind of a pillar of Fantasy, but I'm still arching an eyebrow.
28. Pawn of Prophecy. Awful. Eddings wrote these as an "exercise of the form" and his paper-thin characters and lack of real action display that to the fullest.
29. The Lord of the Rings. Box checked. Still worthwhile as the foundation of modern fantasy.
30. Ringworld. Possibly Niven's best stuff.
31. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Read these as a kid. Liked them better than l'Engle, even if the Christian imagery was obvious even then.
32. Red Mars. Was a great leap forward when it emerged. Robinson has been doing great stuff.
33. Dragonflight. Has unfortunately been an anchor around her neck ever since. I liked it when I first read it, but I drifted away from her books as I got older.
34. Stranger in a Strange Land. Overrated, but interesting for the deep insights into Heinlein's philosophy and his dismay at the changing times.
35. Brave New World. See: 1984.
36. The Gunslinger. Again, have a few friends who loved this series. I read this one and stopped. I just wasn't impressed.
37. American Gods. I don't have a good screenplay story about this one, but it's the better book of the two Gaiman selections included.

38. Neuromancer. Easily my favorite of the list. Gibson rejects this work now, but I'm an old-school cyberpunker and I still love the taut but fluid prose in much of it. This book inspired me to write more than any other.
39. The Handmaid's Tale. You can see the dreams of much of the Republican base. Solid, if unheralded, film, too, even if it largely deviates from the book.
40. World War Z. Great book. Riotously awful film.
41. H.P. Lovecraft: Tales. I've read all of them, even if not in this particular collection.
42. Riddle-Master. I read all of these on the advice of another of these lists (but printed on paper, as they did, back in the 80s) but never quite "got" them, I think.
43. Hyperion. Like Red Mars, kinda ground-breaking at the time, and deserving of all the praise it's gotten.
44. The Time Machine. Probably the better pick of the hoary classics, between this and War of the Worlds, since it's a social statement on the level of 1984 and others.
45. The Stars My Destination. Another I picked up as a kid from a "Best of" list.

46. Perdido Street Station. This is one of those books that discourages me from writing, since I don't think I'd ever be able to do something this good.
47. Interview with the Vampire. Ugh. Got 23 pages into it and put it down because she'd used the same phrase 4 times in those 23 pages. Old girlfriend insisted that it got better. It didn't.
48. The Hobbit. Marketing. Not a great book, prologue to LotR or not.
49. The Colour of Magic. Yes, it's the beginning, but The Light Fantastic is where the series and his writing really begin to shine.
50. A Canticle for Leibowitz. Still excellent, even today. That he didn't follow up is one of the great voids of the genre.
51. Frankenstein. Box checked. Read this for that class, too.
52. I, Robot. I find it fascinating how Asimov's Laws have become a kind of public property for much of science fiction.
53. Fahrenheit 451. I also find it fascinating how Bradbury's political views changed so much over the decades that he objected to Michael Moore's averring to his title.
54. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Perhaps the one instance where I'll say the movie (Director's Cut only!) was better.

Requisite "But where...?" response, albeit brief:

Where are Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny? If Neuromancer was the book inspiration, those two were my author inspirations. Strangely, they have the effect of both Neuromancer and Perdido Street, in that I read their stuff and am just awed into depression. The insight of Ellison and the poetic flow of Zelazny are both mind-blowing and crushing, all at once. "Maybe there was a pocket universe under my bed. I'd never looked." kind of sums it up.

They've won. Again.

Nation of sheep. Ruled by wolves. Owned by pigs.

Election season arrives at its two- to ten-month hiatus, depending on your status (local, state, federal) and obsession (What will Fox and Friends choose to obsess over and will the term "lame duck" begin to be used for a president's entire second term?) Last night was similar to 2008 in that I kept only vaguely in touch with the proceedings until it was all over but Karl Rove's shouting (Well, sniveling, really.) Then it was a mix of laughing uproariously at the funereal air enshrouding Fox News and nauseous disgust at a lot of the blather on Facebook and other networks where friends, associates, and colleagues of mine seemed to revel in the idea that a Democratic president had been reelected to continue to plague the nation with both action and inaction.

He doesn't even need the rock rolled away first. (H/T gamesthirst.com)

This is a man who justifies the assassination of US citizens from afar without due process or trial, who claims that the death of children in the process of these assassinations is also justified because they are of "military age", and who maintains a "kill list" of people he most desires to see in the crosshairs of the nearest unmanned drone (regardless of the nearby presence of a few dozen Pakistani villagers.) This is a man who employed Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary (the primary goalkeeper for the interests of the banks who nearly destroyed the global economy) and Larry Summers as his primary economic adviser. Summers is perhaps the one person about whom I could accept the concept of public lynching, as would doubtlessly happen were he to set foot in the Baltic nations or Russia anytime soon, where the people who lost savings, homes, livelihoods, and relative after relative to suicide as a direct result of Summers' "shock therapy" transformation away from communism would descend on him as soon as he appeared in public. This is a man who not only extended the duration of the most virulently anti-privacy and anti-individual rights law since 1790, but expanded upon its tenets. The Patriot Act is now even more oppressive than the previous administration had hoped for and we have liberal, socialist, Muslim Obama to thank for it. Don't you all feel safer?

I mean, to a certain degree, I'm used to this. I've been involved in electoral politics even before I could vote (1988) and it's no surprise to see the public mindlessly flock to the polls every 2 and 4 years to elect people who think of them as beneath contempt (i.e. easy targets for unmanned drones and the economic dreams of Larry Fucking Summers) and then revel in it as if this time they finally found the right guy. In this case, they found him again, even though he spent the last 4 years doing everything he could to dissuade them of their fantasies. What makes it even more galling was seeing a number of people whom I, at one time, considered political allies crowing about the reelection of a man who's done everything he can to make "Hope and change" into a punchline, rather than a mantra.

"But health care!", they say. Right. A money soak for the already wealthy insurance industry and a "solution" that does nothing to address the real problem of lack of government price controls, even in government programs, and the ever increasing costs created by medical professionals too willing to soak the system. As always, gotta protect those big donors. "But social issues!", they say. The Democrats' response to most social issues is the equivalent of someone attacking the tide with a broom. Obama's lone progressive social moment in his first term was a last-minute acknowledgment of the right of gay people to have a publicly recorded relationship with the person of their choice and he only did that when it was clear that his poll numbers were wavering. Glory fucking day. Otherwise, he essentially served out George W. Bush's third term.

Those social issues, while important in the long run, are also often seen as inevitable in that same period of time (witness Colorado and Washington's legalization of marijuana; anyone want to make a bet with me that Obama doesn't touch that issue for the next 2-3 years? The prison industry donates a lot of money to Democratic coffers.) Said issues also do absolutely nothing to alleviate the fact that those soon-to-be-happily-married gay people are just as economically screwed as the rest of us. It's the equivalent of the GOP getting angry, poor, white guys to vote for guns and against abortion while draining their wallets of anything meaningful. We've arced past the inequality of the Gilded Age. What do we call it when everything is plated in platinum?

This is the wealthiest nation in the history of human existence... but more people are going hungry now than at any time since the 1930s. This is the fabled Land of Opportunity... but social mobility is lower now than it has been in a century and getting worse. We'll have spent $707 billion on guns, planes, tanks, and soldiers in FY 2012 but somehow teachers' salaries and their pensions are the reason that our municipal, state, and federal budgets are out of whack. Progress on social issues? You mean we're finally approaching the level of devoutly Catholic Spain, which permits gay marriage and abortions as national policy? Awesome. Is that happening because of or in spite of the fact that people keep gladly electing criminals to public office and then throwing a party at their own funeral?

Hello, um, America. And goodbye.

Now, you could say that the outpouring of emotion last night and today is a product of the relief of a closely fought election but the worst part about that supposition is that all of this was easily predictable, months ago. Sure, Nate Silver is properly getting his 15 minutes because he actually paid attention to the numbers and understood what was happening, whereas the rest of the political world was still trusting its collective gut, which all too often has shit for brains. But all of this was obvious even above and beyond Silver's data. Romney was an historically bad candidate with a campaign that will be the benchmark for what not to do for decades to come. Who lets their candidate on a yacht named Cracker Bay(!) for an exclusive "thank you" dinner for big donors in the midst of economic hard times? What GOP candidate in the past century could have imagined having the CEOs of two of the biggest multinational corporations in the nation tell him that he and his ad crew were "full of shit"? Even at a private dinner, who dares to state that almost half the electorate is beneath your notice? The incompetence displayed by the Romney campaign over the past year is astonishing and I have a hard time believing that any of those who led it could possibly find another job in 2014.

Put simply: There was no doubt that Obama was going to win. There was as little doubt as in 2008 when the Alaskan Dingbat Carnival took over the McCain campaign. There was no struggle of values here; no hard-fought engagement for the future of the American people. It was two rich guys slinging crap at each other in an effort to make themselves seem less bad (as in, more attuned to people who won't make in 10 lifetimes what either of them will make next month) and betting heavily on the idea that said people are too weak-willed or defeated or distracted to ask for something better. It makes me physically ill to see people claim that their vote doesn't matter because of where they live so that they feel free to vote for what they actually want and believe in, while others bemoan the fact that their state isn't "safe" and they therefore don't feel justified in choosing the candidate that they truly desire. This is the Democrats' Boogeyman Syndrome written into stone. It's no longer used as a threat to scare people. It's now a moral obligation to heed the fact that the Dems' candidate gives better lip service to the ideals that those voters favor and that said voters must accept personal blame if their vote leads to the GOP candidate winning who, in the example laid out for us by Obama, is only slightly worse, if at all. Think GWB would have been in favor of the indiscriminate bombing of the Pakistani countryside? I'd give a lot to be able to see that interview, especially now that he's out of office.

So, yeah: Four more years. Hoo. Ray. Four more years of killing, hedging away from anything the public actually wants, and rule by the monied elite. The below picture was perhaps the best summation of the whole thing. I wonder how big the party will be in 2016 when they get elected for a third time.

(H/T Not a Dime's Worth of Difference)

A long, long time ago in a town right nearby

I used to attend shows like this and think that I would be making my way in the industry:

Comic Con has changed quite a bit and I am more distant from it than ever.

Getting the most out of it before it's gone

So, I mentioned George Clooney's recent interview with James Lipton on the latter's Inside the Actors Studio. During the discussion, Clooney mentioned his tendency to do the pictures he likes for scale or a little more and to do advertising in order to make real money because that combination allows him to live a "nice life", as he put it, and still enjoy his career by doing the movies that he wants to do. In other words, he doesn't have to put up with typical Hollywood crap in order to pay bills or to live said nice life a la the typical big-time star.

He mentioned that the event that really put him on that course was one time when he was doing a shoot in Europe and he was staying at this nice villa on Lake Como in Laglio, Italy. It was actually undergoing some remodeling at the time and the owner asked Clooney if he liked the place and, if so, would he be interested in buying it. Clooney really liked the area and the villa and then stopped to notice the construction workers on the site walking off for lunch. He said they looked like typical construction workers that you might see anywhere with lunch in hand... but lunch was a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine for each of them and they were singing as they walked down to the water. Right away, he realized, those guys were enjoying life a lot more than he was and he resolved right there to enjoy what he was doing or to not do it. Ever since then, he's avoided dreck like Batman and Robin and turned his career in the direction of major critical and commercial success. He also bought the villa.

There's a man who knew what he wanted and had the talent and drive to get what he wanted and is now enjoying seemingly every moment of every day. I have no idea what that feels like.

I've already mentioned my inability to feel happy about most things. That's not to say that I can't take joy out of events. This past season for Michigan was one of the more enjoyable in recent years, as the team overachieved and the coaching staff put to rest most of the fears of a return to the Carr malaise. The funny thing is that there's one moment from the season that sticks in my mind more than any other and it actually took place right before the season officially started. I had joined a number of Victards on the golf course south of the stadium and we had decided to pack up and head in for the first game against Western Michigan. The south side of the course has a number of rolling rises as the terrain generally elevates to the intersection with Scio Church Road. Upon cresting one of them, I had a perfect view of the stadium, with the monstrous brick luxury boxes and the new oversized scoreboards. I felt positive about the team, the season, and going to see the game at that point. So positive, in fact, that I remember thinking that I was looking at a cathedral of the game. Here was Michigan Stadium and here was the moment in which things were going to return to their historical trend of victories, the joyous throng of 100K, and the team, the team, the team. No matter how insipid it sounds, this truly felt like a communal event where people were gathered in appreciation of the game itself, the great, young players that currently make up the team, and the past glories that the program had enjoyed again and again.

I was inspired enough by the scene and that moment to begin composing a description in my head that could have been verse or could have been an essay akin to one of those that Spencer at EDSBS or Johnny at RBUAS have written so many times; an emotive appreciation of the near-gladiatorial spectacle that many of us likely spend way too much time orbiting. But I never wrote those words because I realized at some point that I don't have the talent that Spencer and Johnny have and I really had no outlet with which to convey them, so it likely would have been a waste of time. Once again, emotion quails in the face of reason and pragmatism.

Would I have done better to have simply grabbed my loaf of bread and bottle of wine and pushed on through to enjoy the process of it all? To enjoy life as it lay before me? I don't know that it would have been enjoyable as soon as I got to that whole "realizing I don't have the talent" moment.

Clooney's life is emblematic of someone that has found his path. He does what he dreamed of doing and he does it the right way, in a manner that he loves, and on projects that speak to him and from him. That's a path that anyone from an engineer to a bureaucrat to an athlete to a construction worker can potentially walk. It's obviously a bit more emotive and obvious coming from an enormously successful (and wealthy) actor, but it's still something that bespeaks joy, regardless of occupation or walk of life. I've often thought that various life events and/or my own failings or poor choices have kept me from finding that path and enjoying that walk. But now I'm not even sure that I could find the path even without any obstacles in my way. I'm not just constrained any longer. I'm basically lost in the woods and so much so that I'm not sure it's worth the effort to try to find my way out.

As kind of a side note, I even started talking to a friend, late of the Michigan theatre department, about acting schools. As I've noted before, I'm fascinated with (good) films and I did some Shakespeare way back in the day (but, as Slim Charles noted: "the problem with back in the day is that it's back in the day.") It's funny because you watch those Lipton interviews and, when they do the crowd shots, you see people of all ages attending the class at Pace University. The vast majority are quite young, but I frequently see people as old or older than I am. So, in that moment of positivity, you think: "It's not impossible to start at this point, is it?" until that wave of reality and reason comes crashing in and you start to wonder if it's not just another pipe dream because no other path seems feasible or worthwhile right now and hasn't for quite some time.

I have three little lives depending on me and that's what keeps me wandering in the woods, I suppose, but it's hard to say for how long or when I simply give up on the idea of ever singing my way down to Lake Como. Of course, Orpheus kept singing even after meeting up with the Maenads. I had a story idea about that once...

"Are you happy?"

Said question was put to me a while back by a friend. He's not a close friend, so it's not a topic that I would generally venture into with him. I don't mind communicating personal things to people, but this is a topic that could take some time and I'd be concerned about being soporific. The other half of that assessment is, yes, there are things that I will only talk about with a select few.

The topic came up because I had mentioned to him that a couple people I knew seemed genuinely happy in recent times. They had gotten over some significant hurdles and had reached that point of almost-nirvana; the "life is good/beautiful/perfect" moment. He said he'd known moments like that and then turned the question back to me.

"Are you happy?"

It struck me then that I'm not sure what that means anymore.

It's been so long since I've had one of those "life is good" moments; wherein I'd been content with the route my life was taking, my immediate surroundings, whom I was with, what I was doing, and could genuinely appreciate the positive side of almost everything, that I honestly don't know what it feels like any longer. I can't remember what it felt like in the past. I'm slowly beginning to question whether I've ever been there. Certainly, there are always the self-pitying reflections when times are difficult (as they are now, somewhat), when one becomes convinced that there's no way out of the turmoil and wonders if there ever truly was. There are sincere moments of regret for all of the woulda, coulda, shoulda moments that might have shifted the course just enough to bring at least some joy into the otherwise presumably bleak and Road-like outlook. One's perception is always colored by what's happening right now, so now would probably not be the most advisable time to sit back and wonder if happiness had ever truly been present. It certainly doesn't feel that way now, so how can memories have ever been better? But perhaps I'm thinking too much in the realm of absolutes.

Are there good times? Absolutely. I had a pretty good time last night, in fact. It's easy to be distracted from the overarching sensation by friends and experiences. Copious amounts of alcohol don't hurt, either. Life is not solely a path of misery and never has been. If ever that situation comes about, one can usually be sure that life is either going to take a dramatic change quite soon or be finished equally quickly. I can remember many good moments from the past 20 years. What I can't remember is that feeling of contentment and surety that says "life is good."

My answer to him was: "Probably not." (Evasive much?) So, he turned it back again: "What would make you happy?"

That stumped me for a bit. Again, I feel like I'm operating at a loss here because the sensation is seemingly beyond me. But I could think of several things that would make me happier and I listed off a few and quickly remembered that all of them are circumstances that are either largely beyond my control or situations in which my vote is not the only one that counts. Despite earnest lifetime effort, I cannot simply control all of the people around me and get them to shut up and do what I tell them to do. In a couple scenarios, doing so would at least mildly defeat the purpose, anyway.

He pointed out one scenario and said: "Why don't you pursue that if it would make you happier?"

Two reasons: 1) That was one of those that isn't solely up to me. If there were something out there that didn't resemble fly fishing from a B-52 (for all you non-Cold War kids: here), I surely would have attempted it by now. 2) Since it's not just up to me, it necessarily involves the happiness of people other than me. Diminishing someone else's in favor of mine is something that I may never be able to do.

My parents essentially instilled in me the idea that my personal happiness was secondary to all else. If someone else wanted to do something (usually them) that impinged on my life, then I was simply required to suck it up and accept it. It's a perspective that I still employ on a regular basis in my relationships with others. It's more important to me that my friends are happy than that I am so, as I've vaguely averred to before. It's also contrary to MA's approach, in which the nature of Stoicism is defined by not subsuming oneself in "destructive" emotions, but instead working through everything with reason. Reason, of course, can't account for everything and there's certainly room to question whether the human condition can survive a "pure" Stoic approach in the same way that aspirational Buddhism almost demands a transcendence beyond the consciousness of the human state. There's not really a classical philosophical approach to the idea of dispensing with "constructive" emotions except, perhaps, nihilism, but one wonders if that's a proper summation of the inability to feel genuine happiness any longer.

As noted, this isn't a topic of which I would go into great detail with most people, largely because I'd have to explain a lot of it and/or not be certain that the imposed upon would understand what the hell I was saying in the first place without jumping to any number of conclusions that would invariably be wrong and/or annoying. In my life, I think I've come across all of three people who could always seem to understand what I was saying as I was saying it. That's an incredibly comforting thing. The first is someone whom I haven't seen in almost 20 years and haven't talked to in about half that time. The second is someone that I barely talk to anymore, as she's enormously involved in her own life (as she probably should be.) The third is someone that has become close relatively recently and I still hesitate to impinge (that word again...) upon her because, once again, why douse someone else's day (and presumed happiness) with my own dire proclamations? "Let every action aim solely at the common good..."

So, I suppose I occasionally ramble on about these topics here so that people can choose when to stop while I attempt to gain some perspective on them alone. Effective? I don't know yet.

A moment of introspection

Marcus Aurelius said: "A man's life is what his thoughts make it." One could analogize that into modern phrasing such as "You are what you want to be." or "You're only limited by your own imagination." But MAAA (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) was a Stoic; latterly considered one of the premier thinkers of that philosophy. Part of that perspective is that people deal with what life brings to them (or upon them.) So, I'm not so sure that he felt that one's imagination was the limiting factor, rather than how one dealt with outside forces that may be beyond one's control.

I consider this quite often in estimating my own life or lack thereof. At a young age, I became aware of what a lot of people considered to be my 'limitless' potential. It led to me coasting through school much of the time and skipping two grades so that I was able to graduate from high school at the age of fifteen and later from the University of Michigan at the age of nineteen. At that point and with my theretofore accelerated pace, one might have thought that I was on my way to doing something 'big', as it were. Many people that I knew said that to me and about me. Over 20 years later, my lone response would have to be Jon Stewart's famous catchphrase: "Not so much."

I spent a fair amount of time pursuing goals that were of immediate interest to me at that particular moment. My parents had constantly stressed the future, urging me to discard friends and situations in the name of something and someones better at some point in "the future". When exactly that would be was never specified. They certainly encouraged the idea of skipping grades, but I was perfectly comfortable with that, as well. After all, I was bored to tears with most of what I was "learning". I typically learned much more about the world outside of school by reading on my own than I did in the classroom. That trend continued in college and, by my junior year at Michigan, it took a while for my mother to convince me not to drop out and do something else. "At least you'll have your degree.", she said. "And a degree from Michigan will get you a job anywhere." What was true in the 60s wasn't so true in the 90s, but that's another discussion.

So, by the age of 20, I desperately wanted to do what I wanted to do and right now, dammit. I was done with doing "what was done" by regular, middle class white kids, like me. But, of course, with somewhat less life experience than those around me, I fell into the conundrum that many people encounter at some point in their lives: I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had been accepted to Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service as I was leaving Michigan; presuming that I would continue on into the political/diplomatic realm with my BA in political science. But I desperately wanted to be out of school and had little enchantment with the idea of being part of the Washington machine which I so decried. So, I joined a couple other political groups like the SWP, worked where I could, created a comic studio with a friend that we ran for a few years until the distribution monopoly shut us down, led the Green Party of Michigan for a few years, and have spent a few more paying an underwater mortgage and watching my marriage wither to the end. Thus, I am here.

Have I wasted my life?

One of the recurring themes of Thoreau's Life Without Principle is the idea that doing something solely for money is no measure of personal success. He suggests that doing something that is less enjoyable to you for the sake of money or fame simply means that you need to find better hobbies. His emphasis there as in so many of his other writings is that of a life well lived, regardless of the direction or result. That's certainly an appealing thought to me. Of course, Marcus' frequent charge of being mindful of the end results of one's actions ("Let every action aim solely for the common good.") and striving to achieve something better than everyday endeavors is also highly appealing to me. In many ways, I've internalized both of those, despite the conflicts between them. What concerns me is that I feel quite often that I may not have even followed Thoreau's approach in that even the things that I did for little or no financial return have amounted to very little of anything else, as well.

I don't have a great deal of interest in material success and never have. As I've often noted to people around me, I'm probably the closest thing to a communist most people are likely to meet. I'm not an ascetic. It's certainly nice to have access to certain material things (like, say, computers...) but if my house-that-I-never-wanted were to burn down tomorrow, the only thing I would want to save at any cost would be my cats. I'd be disappointed at the loss of my books and my computer, but I've read those books and other computers can be found. Thus, achieving piles of money has never been a goal that I pursued with any zeal. What I really wanted to do was achieve something worthwhile.

What is 'worthwhile'? That's a very nebulous question. In the movie, The Last Samurai (a rather disappointing film overall but worth watching for Ken Watanabe's performance), the character Katsumoto delivers a couple lines while standing in a grove of cherry trees blossoming in the spring: "A perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one and it would not be a wasted life." This is emblematic of samurai culture under the Shogunate, when a class of warriors in a land of peace began to emphasize perfection in smaller (and less violent) actions and rituals and the perceived nobility achieved by doing so. That, too, dovetails nicely with Thoreau's thoughts and even, to a small degree, Marcus' perspective on striving for greater things. But I look back at what I've done and what I've pursued and wonder if I even tried to look for the perfect blossom.

Have I wasted my life?

Granted, my life is not over. Presumably, it will continue for quite some time. But I'd like to think that there was still something to accomplish, something to lend purpose to it that will be memorable for more than simply occupying a Social Security number. Once again, I'm not quite sure what that is. My only definite impression is that my string of failures, wasted opportunities and, indeed over the past few years, idleness has amounted to very little that would engender approval from even Thoreau. I would like to think that there is something to be done that would encourage people to remember that I existed to some positive end. Is that vanity? Probably. Is it an expression of "aim[ing] solely for the common good"? Maybe.

Another movie line I'm fond of is one of George C. Scott's from Patton, where he vents his frustration to an aide at being left out of the war: "I feel that I am destined to achieve some great thing! What, I don't know." I don't believe in destiny. But sometimes I do wonder if I've missed one too many opportunities or if they were ever there to begin with.

Back to the real world next time.