Month: March 2016

I’ve been thinking about science fiction again. Namely I’m considering the role of sci fi in driving the scientific frontier. This popped up again recently when I recognized that the new Pizza car is straight out of a Neal Stephenson novel. Stephenson wrote in 1992, “As he scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are waiting. Waiting for hot pizza.” So, that happened. Finally.

The space between what writers dream and scientists create is collapsing in on itself, as if the two sides of an already thin line are bantering back and forth, one playing against the other for ideas and vie versa. Yesterday’s post was as much about no longer being part of that conversation as it was about anything else.

I don’t feel a part of the conversation because of the very specific niche of science fiction I am writing in as of late. My 2070 is spun out from 90’s tech that evolved quite a bit slower than how things turned out in real life. Likewise, outside of my tiny corder of sci fi, there are a lot of speculative writers–especially in the deep space genre, are being thwarted by the lack of interest and advancement in science. We are collectively more about making money these days than about making discoveries.

The point is that writers and scientists need to push each other and to do so effectively, I believe writers need to imagine what lives far beyond the tech curve to the unimaginable future of what could be. I don’t think I’ve been doing that, and I can think of few writers who are. The majority of us hit a point where we are more interested in talking about the whole thing collapsing than imagining the cool world that would follow if it doesn’t collapse.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. More boys means more noise. Seriously. The more I fill the house with l’il dudes, the more I recognize how truly boisterous and busy boys are.
2. I’m learning to take Trump seriously. He very well could be the next president of the United States. A large part of that is our own political ignorance. For one thing, we have a total inability to distinguish socialism from communism.

It is very hard to be a continually creative person. It is, in many ways, like being expected to churn out 10,000 scarves and only having enough wool for 51 and not ever even getting lunch on breaks. The longer you sit and try to make such things, the worse you and they become. I have become a drained and disappointing individual who has missed a handful of crucial deadlines and, more than that, lost the thread of creativity linking me to the creative ether.

 

I sort of think it is like the speed force. That mythical construct is built in order to give history and vulnerability to the Flash superhero character. His power comes from the speed force like my powers come from the creative force. Losing access to that source of power prevents me from doing anything even remotely interesting. Now the Flash can get his mojo back through some crazy superhero quest or whatever. I gotta just stick my head in 17 books and try to remember what it feels like to wonder and to create.

 

I think the Flash has it easy.

I’m going to get to football in a minute but I want to address the fact that our internal systems are falling apart. I can throw a dart at a US map and hit a city that is dealing with lead in the water system. We have so many structural problems from pipes to roads to outdated power grids and nobody is even a little interested in fixing that. Instead we dump millions into building new stadiums to attract football teams to our cities in hopes of increasing statewide revenue and making us seem that much cooler of a city. That being said, I love football and love the fact that the Giants are dumping money into their defense to get things going.

Olivier Vernon, ‘Snacks’ Harrison, and Janoris Jenkins are off the board. All of these moves as well as the resigning of JPP represent a significant increase in the ability of the Giants to make plays on defense. In so far as offense goes, we haven’t seen much yet. There are a handful of really valuable free agents available–especially at receiver, but I get the feeling the Giants are looking to the draft to fill gaps there and along the offensive line. Still, money is being spent early in free agency and this is a sign that the team is looking to win right now and willing to spend the cash to do so.

Some Thoughts:

1. Politics are very stupid. The media takes something you did 20 years ago and uses it as evidence of how you think and feel today. None of us are who we were even 10 years ago.
2. Bernie Sanders has a very vocal and energized following. Hillary does not.
3. This Benghazi thing is being trotted out every day and made to mean more about what Clinton did and less (almost none) about what happened there.

Today is all about the brain being all over the place. I’m back to reading speculative/hard sci-fi and it is reminding me to think about every day things. I realize that sounds odd, but the stuff I’m reading questions the way we conceptualize every day life and has brought back the question of whether or not we are actually free-thinking beings or if everything we do is a response to a script we were socialized towards from birth. This is the question that initially tipped me towards sociology and psychology and remains that question that reminds me to give time to daily free thoughts. Like these.

Some Thoughts:

1. The WWE has never had a Heavyweight Champion they define as black. I know, the Rock is quite black, but they rather view him as Samoan and advertise him on that basis. So, since ’63 the entertainment league has avoided the black champion and, the league has been notoriously racist over that same time period. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the league is a mirror of Vince McMahon’s inner desires. Yet there are still enough bright superstars to keep most viewers interested. Less so now as he plays out some soap opera drama with his son. Even my kids are bored.
2. One of the issues I am dealing with is a completely disjointed english class. One of the students who actually is making an effort to learn something pulled me aside after class and remarked on the lack of chemistry in the class. Perhaps this impending week off reflects a good time frame to regroup–just like I’ve been trying to do with the Mythology class.
3. Wrestling is helping my kids to discern between reality and fantasy–when they want to. They accept that everything about wrestling appears to be false, but they are unwilling to accept that wrestling itself is false. Its like understanding that the ingredients of a cake can’t really exist and then happily eating a slice. You should see them around Christmas.
4. Spring break is upon us and I haven’t figured out what to do. I recently had a series of conversations that served to remind me that the majority of our lives are based around sports. I want to do something different this break that is not at all sports related–especially now when there are no practices to be held.

Einstein is quoted as saying, “It is not that I’m smart, it is that I stay with the questions much longer.” I hadn’t been able to directly apply that to my life until recently. After a long weekend and a particularly hard day in classes I realized that part of what is making me so frustrated these days is being around people who simply don’t care.

I have a history of not being around the right people. You can track my lifelong productivity by that scale. The better quality of folk I associate with, the happier and more full my life is. This is not to say I’m not around good people, but the majority of my day is spent around people who aren’t making my life better. Of course, defining better or good is a slippery slope in of itself. That is why I am falling back to the Einsteinian view on this particular philosophy. I’m not staying with the questions long enough. Moreover, I’m not staying with the people who are staying with the questions and that has become more and more apparent.

I can count the amount of time I spend with friends in seconds per week. I spend more time with students who don’t remotely care about their education than I do with friends and than I do with students who care about their education. Such a thing wears on you and leads to serious burnout. Worse, it leads to brain rot, mental drain, and an inability to be a creative force and stay fresh and innovative.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I find myself in a room full of excited writers. I love the experience and it renews me every time. Still, it is not enough. I need more of that interaction in my life and not just as a teacher. I need thinkers and doers and people who are pushing the envelope in one way or another. That is what NYC was to me and that is likely why the sleepy suburbs are making me chafe.

1. The sign on the door read ‘No Guns Allowed’ there was some legal mumbo jumbo below the bolded letters and the red circle with a line through it covering a firearm. Their choice to exclude guns was pursuant to one law or another. I thought about it, wondering if I cared very much. Turns out I don’t. I thought I would. In fact, I was certain for some time about not wanting guns in the classroom. Laws have been proposed and battled over for years in regards to guns in the classroom at all age levels. Why Kindergarten teachers would need guns is beyond me, unless you believe Sandy Hook happened (which I happen to believe and wonder why a vocal minority do not). Even then, we are talking about a relatively invisible percentage of situations in which guns would be needed in a school or a restaurant or anywhere, really. Unless you’re looking for trouble…

 

 

2. Inside people were bustling about. The workers moved speedily from table to table, trying to get their customers fed and processed out with as much haste as was allowable in a sit down establishment that didn’t have a giant gold M out front. It made me think of pace, which reminded me of the football championship I’d botched the day before. It wasn’t a thought I really wanted, so I settled down to watch everyone for a while, breathing in the atmosphere and energy of the place. The people were Sunday relaxed and I tried to imagine what their lives were like. They were couples and families, grandpas and grandchildren. They were almost all white, save for the one Asian woman with the white husband. Everyone seemed happy and, though not familiar with each other, they seemed communal.

 

3. The busboy shucking coffee was rather effeminate. I’d noticed him earlier because of his makeup and was curious, not about his orientation but the reactions towards him. The more I watched, the more I recognized that there really weren’t any reactions, as if the people eating simply didn’t care or take offense. I smiled inside.

 

4. I’m not a small town guy. I feel like the stigma of such things creates such an expectation that a small town is nothing I’d ever want to be associated with. The fact is, however, I live in a small town and I do small town things. I’m a local coach. I spend Sunday morning in the café with all the other locals. I talk to my neighbors. The more time I spend here the more I wonder if this is the existence I am meant for or if it is simply a rest stop along the way of my journey towards… whatever. I don’t have any answers but I do recognize that the white picket fence is starting to chafe and I haven’t a clue what to do about it.

Some Thoughts:

1. I find the title funny. Just me. Get with it.

 

I’m writing this after my town’s first ever flag football tourney. We lost. Both teams. Our older kids suffered from a coach (me) who wasn’t there the whole time because he had another squad. More importantly, they weren’t really that old and in the 10-12 division, the older stronger teams won the day. Our younger kids fell victim to, well, themselves. We played in the finals against an out of town team we’d beaten earlier in the day and were far too tired to really give it our all. Somehow those kids seemed fresh. Furthermore, we did not play well and that led to a loss.

Which led to the end of a very fun season. I’m worn out and grateful that it is over. I know soccer is right around the corner, but my role in that is merely as spectator. The other coaches in town can deal with that stuff. All I want to do is nap for an entire summer.

Sports takes up such a predominant part of our lives here that it is hard to know what to do when you aren’t worrying about it. While I am still helping to coach one tackle team, that work is limited and I can honestly say I have time to do things with my kids.

The problem is, I am not sure what to do with em.

Struggling for a topic tonight. Considered writing about prayer, but there is nothing I have to say that isn’t going to come off as awkwardly as the Trump post a few days back. Apparently I don’t do satire well. I also don’t do so well with TV drama, despite the hours I spend watching them. I’m not sure what I am trying to gain from so much bad tv. A distraction, yes, but I feel like I have the deeper goal of uncovering what works in episodic film, a nobel gesture, but one that didn’t –hasn’t–worked.

Sleep works. I’m exhausted to the point of falling down on the blog again.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I remain surprised by how much sports consumes my life. If I could just shut it out I’d have entire days of the week available to me.

Exhale.

It has been a whirlwind of a week. There are a lot of things happening at once and not all of it is wonderful. For the sake of inner smiles, I’ll start with good, go to bad, and go back to good in the end.

Here’s some good: I got to see my eldest run track for the first time. I was super proud of him. I watched track quickly become his favorite sport and watched him have some decent times despite not being equipped with the right shoes or having very much practice in certain events. He was proud of himself, especially in distance where he beat kids he swore up and down were faster than him. Moreover, he did it in the craziest fashion imaginable. He ran a 100m dash and within a minute of finishing that race they were lining him up to run the 1600m. He did that race less than a minute and a half after the 100m. Dude hadn’t even caught his breath. Beast mode.

I like to use that term, beast mode, in regards to my boys because it reflects a certain killer instinct and ability to rise above common performance. Unfortunately, the beast comes out of coaches as well. I’ve been seeing it more and more in flag football and my dumb ass has been feeding in. It doesn’t take a whole lot for me to turn into one of those coaches lately, and I am certain it is at least partially inspired by doing too much and getting involved in petty conflicts. It is supposed to be about the kids and not about a coaches’ ego or desire to be the leader of a winning team or desire to defeat another coach whose ego and attitude you find personally offensive. This is not about taking someone down a peg.

Hell, I am not even playing. I’m coaching. No pay, no real stake other than my stake in the players. Nothing at stake beyond ego and I need to invest less of it in winning or losing and more of it in putting the kids in position to succeed.

That is the good I’ll end with. I’m watching the kids enjoy this and I enjoy them doing it. So, maybe thats the focus I need to have. That and that alone.

No, this account has not been hijacked.

I decided to come out and take a firm stance. I decided it was time to do what so little of America seems willing to do right now: Be absolutely honest about the nation I live in. If we just take a moment to peel back the veil of American society we see something very striking. We see, without a doubt, that Donald Trump represents the id of the American people. Donald Trump represents, to quote dictionary.com, “the part of the psyche, residing in the unconscious, that is the source of instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle”. He is, therefore, the most honest representative of America that there can be, and as such ought to be our president.

Neil Gaiman wrote in American Gods, “This is the only country in the world, that worries about what it is…The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.” Well, we know what we are as well. We just spend an awful lot of time catering to the voices of the minority opinion. America is 63% non-hispanic white. Hispanics, 17%. People who are black like me only represent 12.3%. Asians barely creep past the 5% mark while those who consider themselves multi-racial number 2.4% (according to the Census Bureau). So when you hear ‘Red-blooded Americans’ odds are you are in a conversation about white people. Trump caters to that demographic. Trump caters to the mindset that America is to be the all powerful voice and leadership of this planet. Trump is representative of who we are (primarily) as a nation and should be given the job to lead us. It is time for us to stop trying to be this all-inclusive stay nation and become who we have long been deep down inside. Trump brings all of this to the surface.

To say that I am wrong is to say that this nation doesn’t need to be governed by its id, but instead, as a brain is governed by its ego and superego, needs some other representative that mitigates our raw voice and perhaps gives strength and soul to the voice of minority thought. But are we truly that nation? Are we a nation that wants to hear all voices, or are we a nation that wants to be strong, and make money, and be great in our own eyes and in the way we have for some time defined ourselves and defined strength?

I do not have the answers to these questions. I can only say that when Barack Obama first appeared as a candidate offering promises of hope and change, the resounding response from a significant portion of the country was, “Keep your change” so perhaps it is in this fashion that we have come to Trump who means to undo that change (which apparently was for the worse) and make America great again. If we are to accept who we are as a country, and if we are to magnify that then we need to become the country of Trump and vote to save ourselves from the alternative.