29 September 2005

Cingular: Raising the Bar. In a limbo contest.

Just a brief update tonight. I am for absolutely no accountable reason irritable and pissy tonight, so I don't much feel like writing anything. I'd get drunk, but there's no liquor in the house and I don't feel like walking to The Hub. Although I just might do so anyway; there'll be no going out tomorrow because I'll be working until 8 pm or later.

I'm pissed at Cingular. I broke the phone I had with Verizon. Now, I ultimately ditched Verizon because their customer service sucked balls and they kept dropping calls in the middle of fucking Tampa, and went with Cingular because A) my family members all have Cingular, so lots of free calls there, and B) Sprint, Alltell, T-Mobile, et al all suck for a variety of different reasons (most corporations suck) (tonight, everything sucks. Except this rant, which is both amusing and profane, and goes on at some length after the jump, concluding with important information for all friends, readers, well-wishers, family members, and charitable strangers).

But at least with Verizon, when I broke my phone, they gave me a new one under the insurance policy I paid for because I am prone to breaking and losing small objects. I walked into the store, said, hey, I broke my phone, and less than a half hour later I walked back out with a new phone, just like the old. No money changed hands (at least, not that I recall, and I tend to remember spending money).

Now, it appears I've lost my phone. I don't know where it is. Yes, my car's a mess, but I went through all the mess and I'd swear it's not in there. I couldn't find it at work. It's not at the gym, or outside the SECRET ROOM at the wing HQ. I've looked and looked in the house and cannot locate it. I tried calling it, several times--at work, at the house, in the car using my work cell phone--but never could find it and by this time the battery will have drained, so it's off anyway wherever it is. Al Gore probably stole it, the bastard. Him or the underpants gnomes.

I went up to Cingular on Tuesday (the day of the 11-minutes-of-useful-work) to try to get a new phone, like I had at Verizon. No dice. I have to call this phone number (with what? My phone's gone) at the insurer (an outfit called lock/line, no capitalization because e.e.cummings is SO in these days) and deal with them, and they will "send" me a phone. The guy at Verizon says it only takes two or three days, but I was visibly agitated and he probably just made that up. What am I supposed to do for two or three days?

I do still have a land line at the house, so while I was at home this morning (long story of no interest) I tried to call. Now, I have a 1983 model Bell telephone. The kind with a rotary dial. Yes, there are still people out there with these phones. It is perfectly functional, and I'd like you to show me some other c.1983 appliances that are still as good as the day you received them free from your utility company just for applying for their service.

Anyway. I call lock/line. The recorded voice begins, as usual, by asking if I want to continue in English or Spanish. I'd actually prefer Creole, thank you very much you racist bastards. When I make no entry, the recorded voice asks the same question again. And a third time. Most companies ask twice, then send you to an operator, which is all I want anyway. When I'm using a touch-tone on these stupid messenging systems I just keep hitting 0 until I get an operator. I'm not a fucking monkey; talk to me!

So after the third round of English/Spanish, the voice says, "Your call will now be ended." Just like that. Fuckers hung up on me. What, do they expect I'd be calling from the cell phone that they insure when I wouldn't be calling them at all unless it was either broken or missing? Idiots.

I called from work. I had to think about it for a while, but I finally selected English, rather than Spanish. Then I had to go through about four more menus--punching 0 got me nowhere--asking me whether I'm a Cingular customer or not, though by the end of it I was starting to doubt whether I should be. Finally I get into a queue to wait for an operator. While I'm in this queue, like at Disney World or something, instead of music I get the same voice telling me what I should expect.

"Keep your hands inside at all times!" said the voice. "If you are calling about a warranty item, a $5 fee may apply! Please remain seated until the train comes to a complete stop! If you are making a claim under insurance, there is a minimum $50 deductible!"

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, what the FUCK was that last statement? A fiftyfuckingdollar what? Deductible? On cell phone insurance? Do these people think they're fucking Allstate? I've replaced at least four separate cell phones under insurance with other service providers (Cellular One, USCellular, and Verizon), and have NEVER paid more than five bucks for the privilege. Now these quisling dopesmokers think I'm going to give them $50? Yeah.

In order to make something positive come from this experience, and since there is NO WAY IN HELL I will ever pay a $50 deductible on a $79 cell phone, I'm writing a $50 check to UMCOR instead; I'm sending it to their Liberia mission, since I think in the Katrina aftermath (to which I've already donated) a lot of the long-standing missions have been forgotten. Feel free to join me; call it a Cingular protest.

Incidentally, I am without cell phone. And since I'm too cheap to pay for long-distance, I really don't have access to a phone at all right now. Since I'll need a phone available while I'm on vacation I've got to resolve this situation sometime in the next week. I'd prefer not to do it at the Cingular store, where the jackass working the desk tried to tell me he couldn't sell me anything for less than $279 (though the $79 model I purchased was still hanging on the display wall), so if anyone happens to know a better way to resolve this (since we must assume the former phone will never be found), please leave a comment.

And I'm off to The Hub. Hope I don't get mugged on the way!

28 September 2005

Xenophilia

We stand at the edge of a great precipice, said someone of some importance at some key moment in history. I think.

Today it became official. The last month or two was merely a stay of execution, merely a spot of breathing room before the final word should come down.

I met with my flight doc today. He is drawing up the paperwork that will recommend my disqualification from flying; he expects to complete it today and get it signed by the head of flight medicine office tomorrow. Thence it goes off to San Antonio, to some agency there (it sounded a lot like he was saying “half-wits,” which I rather doubt), who will review the record and make a final determination. He expects this determination to be made within a matter of weeks (in other words, almost certainly while I am in fact on vacation trying NOT to think about it). More follows the jump.

He spoke of the matter as if it were merely a formality, that I should not concern myself with the prospect of the board’s rejecting his recommendation. Thus it is true in all likelihood that I have had my last flight in the Air Force. (Aw shucks, I didn’t squirted with shaving cream on my fini flight. I’m brokenhearted, really.)
The full force of this has yet to sink in, or else it has sunk in and just has made absolutely no impact on me (I think the former the more likely). Not that I expect to be much bothered by it all. This is the road I knew I was heading down in March when I went to head-shrinkers in the first place. I’ve closed so many chapters in my life with less fanfare that I suppose I’ve grown rather numb to the whole idea.

It’s sort a shame, I’ll grant, because in one sense the physical flying itself was not what got me down in the first place. It’s the Air Force. It’s the military; the lifestyle, the lack of options, the degree of control (almost total) that one has to give up to other authorities (who could give two shits about you) in order to be here and do this job. Flying threw this matter into high relief in some sense, because of the TDY rate flyers are subjected to (no comments about Army/Marine deployment rates, because I’m not in the fucking Army and this is why), but it wasn’t flying itself that was the problem. It was more a case of, you put up with a lot of shit to fly—more than to do other jobs in the AF—and while I don’t dislike flying I find that flying is not at all so great that I’m willing to put up with everything that goes along with it.

So, here comes disqualification. And now we start to ask questions about what that really means. Retraining into another career field against my will? I wouldn’t put it past them. Walking papers and a recommendation not to let the door hit me on the way out? Probably not. The doc went so far as to say that this simply wouldn’t happen, but then he seemed to be trying to reassure me of something I might be scared of, when in fact there are several scarier options.

Most likely seems to be a discussion about what other career field I’d like to volunteer to go into. Obviously JAG is my main choice, and I know the window for applications is opening again in January. I plan to speak of nothing else; there MAY be other career fields I’d be WILLING to do, though none that attract me particularly. What I want is a chance to be normal again, and the only way I get that is to get out entirely. Still, this is also the least secure and snuggly option of them all, since while I’ve been planning mentally to be jobless, I’ve done little if any financial planning for that eventuality.

So whenever the friendly people come to talk to me about what else I’d like to do for the AF, I will mention JAG, and I will not mention anything else. Any career field they try to put me in, I’ll just apply for JAG anyway, so why waste the money on retraining? Then again, why waste the money on retraining me to be a JAG, when I’m already probably qualified to do any number of less interesting jobs.

The only officer shortages right now are in Security Forces and Acquisitions. Neither of these requires intensive retraining, at least not at the outset (SF obviously would in the longer-term). I certainly won’t be volunteering for either of these. There’s a retention problem in Acquisitions because there’s a real contest between Acquisitions and watching paint dry for excitement and job fulfillment—although if you rise high enough in the career field there are numerous options for skimming off the top, or better yet getting a job with Boeing and skimming off the top there. So no, I don’t think I’ll volunteer for acquisitions. And I can think of few jobs anywhere in the entire world to which I am less well suited than being a Security Forces officer.

The Air Force Times last week ran an article about the AF needing to eliminate 4000 officer positions by the beginning of the 2007 fiscal year (in October ‘06). I expect this topic to come up in my situation. If I knew my chances at getting a JAG slot I’d feel a lot better about how to handle the potential of walking away. If it comes down to getting out or getting non-vol’d to security forces, I’ll take my walking papers and not look back. But that may be a fanciful setup.

About a month ago, my psychologist made me sit down and write out what I thought at the time were the most likely possible paths for the near future—not get DQ’d, get DQ’d and go to JAG, get DQ’d and get retrained into something else, or get sent packing. The exercise was worthwhile because, while I didn’t learn anything new, I did at least force all available options onto one side of a single sheet of paper. When the gaping maw of possibility is starting to freak you out, making that maw look smaller can be incredibly helpful.

I’ve not learned much else new since then, except that the first of the four options seems much less likely. But even that isn’t much. All options seem awfully open-ended, even written down like that, and though now it looks like it’s only a matter of weeks before the formal disqualification happens, there’s still no way of knowing what I’ll be doing next year, or whether next year is the soonest I’d be doing it. Active prayer is the only thing that prevents all this from keeping me awake at night.

So that’s a glimpse into the mind of Smitty. Scary place.

The Mother Tongue and Seven Samurai

I recently finished Bill Bryson's wonderful book The Mother Tongue. And, I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai.

Both are highly recommended. Of the two, the book is the more accessible; if you have an aversion to subtitles you won't enjoy the movie, but then, if you have an aversion to subtitles just grow up. I'm no big samurai movie fan, but this is one of the great movies of all time (if we believe the AFI 100 list), and is well worth watching for characterizations. Unlike modern action movies that claim descent from Seven Samurai, this movie actually has three-dimensional characters and stands as a great film apart from its action sequences. It is three hours long, but if you watched Dances With Wolves or any of the Lord of the Rings movies you should be over that.

The Mother Tongue is an extremely amusing look at where English comes from and why it is the way is. It's not exactly a linguistics textbook, but for the vast majority of us who have no particular desire to take a linguistics course, that may be a good thing. The book covers the development of English, then takes a look in separate chapters at slang, names, swearing, and numerous other topics of general interest to anyone who speaks or reads English (which is all of you). It's an extremely entertaining read, so much so as to warrant not reading it anyplace that you'd earn disapproval for laughing out loud.

Again, both are highly recommended. I would have written longer reviews because I much enjoyed both book and movie, and both gave me something to think about long after I'd finished them (how often can you say of an action flick that you were still thinking about issues it raised hours later as you went to bed?), but other matters (detailed in a post later this evening) have occupied my mind rather a bit more this afternoon.

The Mother Tongue and Seven Samurai

I recently finished Bill Bryson's wonderful book The Mother Tongue. And, I recently watched Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai.

Both are highly recommended. Of the two, the book is the more accessible; if you have an aversion to subtitles you won't enjoy the movie, but then, if you have an aversion to subtitles just grow up. I'm no big samurai movie fan, but this is one of the great movies of all time (if we believe the AFI 100 list), and is well worth watching for characterizations. Unlike modern action movies that claim descent from Seven Samurai, this movie actually has three-dimensional characters and stands as a great film apart from its action sequences. It is three hours long, but if you watched Dances With Wolves or any of the Lord of the Rings movies you should be over that.

The Mother Tongue is an extremely amusing look at where English comes from and why it is the way is. It's not exactly a linguistics textbook, but for the vast majority of us who have no particular desire to take a linguistics course, that may be a good thing. The book covers the development of English, then takes a look in separate chapters at slang, names, swearing, and numerous other topics of general interest to anyone who speaks or reads English (which is all of you). It's an extremely entertaining read, so much so as to warrant not reading it anyplace that you'd earn disapproval for laughing out loud.

Again, both are highly recommended. I would have written longer reviews because I much enjoyed both book and movie, and both gave me something to think about long after I'd finished them (how often can you say of an action flick that you were still thinking about issues it raised hours later as you went to bed?), but other matters (detailed in a post later this evening) have occupied my mind rather a bit more this afternoon.

27 September 2005

A Vital Link in National Security

Recently, a friend posted to his blog a discussion about college, about how necessary it is to the jobs most of us college graduates hold. Not to disparage the institution, of course; he, like I, would fain go back and do college all over again in a heartbeat. Rather, he was curious about what he would do had he not gone to college, and about how necessary a college education is to many jobs available today.

I commented that I really could do my job without any college education at all, and I stand by that. In subsequent conversations with other people, this topic has come up, and lots of folks have expressed surprise that I would say such a thing. Why, I’m an Air Force pilot! Of course we need all that education. Flying is tough. Or, something. I don’t really know what people think. But I think you should follow the jump.


‘Pilot’ is a rather mysterious career. Because few people in general society have ever piloted an airplane, and because pilots on the only airplanes most folks have been on are sequestered away up in the cockpit, behind closed doors, and (back when it was still allowed) a trip up to sit in the cockpit was a rare special treat, most folks tend to think of pilotage as requiring some terrific skill or knowledge. In fact, it requires little beyond the ability to read and obey instructions. Until you are in the landing phase, no part of flying is or should be particularly mysterious.

So of course when I tell someone I don’t need my degree for what I do, there is of course some amount of surprise. Of course, if folks knew that in our squadron alone we have, in addition to the expected aeronautical and mechanical engineers, history, architecture, English, and economics majors, perhaps that would help. Clearly there’s no need of an advanced engineering degree to be a pilot. Nothing mystical occurs in the course of earning a college degree that suddenly qualifies you to fly a plane. In reality, pilots are required to be officers (and hence to have degrees) mostly as a way of granting a privilege to graduates of the Air Force Academy, who’ve put up with four years of crap and deserve a reward.

Of course, I’m not flying presently. I’m doing desk work. Like most people in America. Do I need a college degree for this? Let’s see.

Today, I arrived at work 45 minutes late because I was up late last night and knew nothing was going on at the office. I immediately commenced checking emails that came in during the morning or late last night after I’d gone to the gym. Nothing important there. For the next two hours I engaged in an email conversation with a coworker stationed in Diego Garcia, who when he is here at home does the same job I do with only 24 hours of college credit to his name.

Meanwhile, I surfed the internet. I read two newspapers (or the worthwhile parts thereof), checked a few of my favorite news blogs (How Appealing, SCOTUSBlog, and Political Wire, on my blogroll), then started picking my way through Wikipedia to pass the time until lunch. Around 9’30 someone came in and handed me three sheets of paper, each with a single credit-card sized phone list printed on it. “The OG wants these laminated.”

I assumed, of course, the OG merely wanted the card-sized bits laminated, not the entire sheet, which means that today, the million-odd dollars of training expense, my college degree, and my wonderful brain, were used by the Air Force to do some arts and crafts. Does the OG office not have anybody qualified to use a fucking pair of scissors? Or is it just easier to dump your shit work on me because, hey, the laminator is in my office anyway so I might as well do the rest of it?

That said, I have already shown that I wasn’t exactly doing anything useful today, so it’s not as if this was a major imposition on my time. I brought Chinese food back to the office for lunch and wrote this post while I ate. That’s almost certainly illegal, but given the value of the other work I was paid to do today by the Air Force, I don’t think they’d have much of a leg to stand on if they wanted to complain. I don’t actually post these from work, since I can’t reach my blog what with the strict content controls designed to stop us doing naughty things at work. Like not working.

(Not that these controls are all that effective anyway. For over a year, you could Google into any site that was blocked if you tried to go their directly by typing in the URL, or from a link in your bookmarks. They fixed that. And, of course, only this summer we had a major porn scandal on base (major in the sense of it’s being so big as to not be in the base paper, because it would embarrass the base itself instead of just a few people), and if nothing else you’d think the content controls would stop people downloading porn on government computers. Then again, you’d think a little brain wattage would be sufficient to stop people doing that, but evidently not.)

In the afternoon, after writing an email to the entire squadron threatening physical violence to the next person who steals one of my bottles of grapefruit juice out of the squadron fridge, I finally received an email that required actual work to be accomplished. Of course, this work hardly required a college degree. What it required was the ability to manage your written tone about halfway between jocular and irritated, possibly the most important skill I’ve learned in the Air Force.

Once a month, a report comes to my office detailing who in my squadron is not eligible to deploy for some sort of medical reason. I have a handful of repeat offenders, who I yell at, which accomplishes nothing. The rest of the people know that I hate this part of my job, because, really, I hate yelling at people. Even really stupid people; I’d just as lief ignore them as yell at them. So for all the non-repeat-offenders, I have to manage my irritation at their incapacity to take care of annual physicals and dental checkups on their own, so as not to piss them off and turn them into repeat offenders. The repeat offenders I could care less about. One of them I swore at and then told him if he hadn’t taken care of the matter by Friday I was going to show up at his dorm room, drag him to the hospital, and stick the needle in him myself. Maybe that will work; again, not anything requiring a college degree.

In any event, I was done 1’15 and, once again, forced to surf the internet for mental sustenance. For example, I learned that the term “halcyon,” as an adjective or noun, far predates the drug Halcyon. I had always assumed the word followed the drug. Shows how much I know, huh?

Understand, of course, that I’m not exactly complaining here. I could certainly make much better use of my time at work by, for example, not going to work at all and spending the day writing, or at the clay studio, or perhaps even moonlighting as a drywall repairman. I can skip all the work I want and not get fired, since the military doesn’t fire people—but there’s no free pass. Instead of getting fired I’d get marked AWOL, busted down a few ranks, and sent to Leavenworth. However, they no longer spend their days at Leavenworth making little rocks out of big ones; nowadays the inmates in the military’s largest prison for its own homegrown offenders spend their days making the flak vests and helmets that protect their brethren in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is some sort of delicious irony in that, but I’m not sure I can tell what flavor.

In an effort to maximize the amount of irritation I might cause in the squadron, I spent the afternoon playing Christmas music. I also spent about 40 minutes having a conversation with one of our deployers, a new mother. I don’t like being gone for 2 months; I can only imagine how it is for her.

The Commander in Chief’s Policy Letter on Air Force fitness gives every member of the AF an hour during the workday (not coincident with lunch) to work out, so I cut out at 2’30 to go to the gym. And here, finally, is the one thing I do in a day where college probably helped. It helped because, in college, I studied political science in addition to my actual major (architecture), and studying poli sci under the professorial staff at Clemson with their divergent views taught me to be hypercritical of anything that is presented as expert testimony. It is easy to invent an expert; students of law, politics, and architecture are well aware of this. And no industry invents more experts and dispenses more “expert” advice than the fitness industry, nearly every scrap of information that comes out of which is a blatant lie. Using my critical reasoning skills allows me to cut through the chaff to find the one or two occasional kernels of wisdom in any fitness publication (though that is a high estimate, two kernels per magazine. It’s more like two magazines per kernel).

On the way home from the gym, I was able to put those critical reasoning skills to work yet again at the grocery store, where I had to purchase bread, orange juice, milk, and yogurt. Should I buy the expensive, tasty orange juice (Uncle Matt’s Organic), or the regular kind? I might be poor soon, so I bought the cheaper juice. Of course, if I was really thinking, I’d have shopped at the commissary instead of the Platt St. Publix, which is surely the most expensive grocery in town. And I’d probably forgo the yogurt, and the protein shakes, and buy cheap sandwich bread instead of something nice from the bakery, but, ah hell. I’m not poor yet.

This is not, of course, meant as an indictment of college. As I said earlier, if I had a chance, I’d go back to 1995 and go through the entire experience again. I might change some things I did in college, but nothing important, certainly nothing that would have affected the friends and memories I’d make there. But that means, of course, that I’d study the same major—which I will never use—and that I would, thus, graduate with a degree, but not much else. And what about that degree? Is it really that important? Does the degree prove anything that my extended family of friends doesn’t?

When my sister was at college, one of her advisors was an old family friend, and had been teaching for many years. He once told her that she was in college to get a degree, and that education really happened out in the wider world. At the time I think this was a rather off-putting remark, but as time has gone along I think my sister and I have both come to see the truth in it. I got a degree in college. I didn’t learn much about what I need to do in the world until I’d had that degree for a few years already, and wasn’t using the knowledge I’d gained in classes. But I did get that degree, and the degree itself, not the education, is what people wanted to see. Could I have applied for grad school or my internship in Fort Lauderdale without it? No. Could I have applied to Officer Training School without it? Certainly not. The degree confers a certain amount of respect, respect that does not have to be otherwise earned by the degree-bearer. And it is that respect that so many jobs seem to require.

It is, however, somewhat absurd that the degree provides the foot in the door that is required to get a job that then does not require the degree. There are but precious few of us working in fields that require frequent application of knowledge gained in study at college; for the rest of us, college was a pleasant diversion, probably the last time we’d really have the chance to learn for the sake of learning, to have so much time to ourselves and so little responsibility. That’s really what college is about; it’s a last fling before the crushing weight of responsibility settles on our shoulders and infects all aspects of our lives.

There’s also much to be said for study merely for the sake of study. Philosophical discussions aren’t efficient uses of time, really, but they are exceedingly enjoyable and very hard to engage in at work. College allows that. It allows us to exercise our minds, to think about arguments, persuasion, and logic, and how to use those to proper effect. There are not enough opportunities for that out in the wider world.

The greater concern, rather than whether college is worthwhile or not, is whether the use of the college degree as a bar for potential employees to leap is appropriate, given the difficulty of paying for college. Kids who grow up poor and don’t ever consider going to college are locking themselves out of a lot of jobs that they’d be perfectly capable of doing, but incapable of getting hired for. With all the handwringing in the higher media about how Katrina has laid bare the class differences in American society, this seems an important issue.

But by the time I’d started thinking about that, I arrived home with the groceries. I had a trunk to unload, a shower to take, dinner to fix, and there was no more time left to consider that. If I was in college, I could have skipped the shower and ordered pizza for dinner and spent all night talking about this topic with my friends over a tasty Belgian ale or some cheap Miller Lite. We might have even solved the problem. Alas, it was not to be. I repotted a plant, cut the cat’s toenails, and settled onto the couch to read. It’s tough, spending all day at the office and accomplishing 11 minutes worth of actual work. I’m beat.

Political Dumbth Report

A few notes of stupidity from political news today:

1. "Show me another 87-year-old man who's got the energy that I've got, and I'll eat your hat," says West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd as he announces his intention to seek a ninth term, or something like that. This sounds like a good bet; you always read about these 90-year-old marathoners and such. I guarantee there's an 87-year-old marathoner or triathlete somewhere in this country. I want to see Byrd eat a damn hat.

2. "Nothing is my fault!" exclaims disgraced former FEMA head and Arabian horse spokesman Mike Brown, in a speech to a Congressional panel. During his remarks, Brown noted that Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Orleans officials all dropped the ball and failed to do their jobs, blamed his superiors at the Department of Homeland Security for not coordinating efforts well enough, and announced the he thinks he did, "a pretty darn good job." Brown has been rehired as a consultant by FEMA to figure out what FEMA did wrong in the Katrina aftermath, but clearly Brown isn't the man for this job, either.

3. Virginia Democrats admit futility of challenging GOP Sen. George Allen. Today's WaPo notes that state Dems are trying to get Ben Affleck or John Grisham to run for Senate, because as we know celebrities are highly qualified for every job in the whole word by dint of being celebrities. I think Schwarzenegger has proven this point quite well, I think.



24 September 2005

Disconnected Rambling, with Pictures

Update If you tried to read this post and noticed that there was no jump, I apologize. My .html coding skills are not what they once were. It's all good now.

Ah, me. Sorry for the extended absence. I've had a rather lousy week, and by Wednesday had no desire whatsoever to talk to anyone. Fortunately the week is behind me and I can look back on it and say it wasn't so bad at all.

So, I sat down to write up a little ditty about the week, each day, what awful things happened, and so forth, and I realized I could scarcely remember Monday or Tuesday at all. I got drunk on Wednesday because I was depressed, and, well, sometimes when you drink to forget, it works. By Thursday things were better; Friday was terrific. Today would have been great if my bike tire wasn't flat; as it is I can't even get to the library as I'd like to do, much less take my usual weekend ride round downtown to check on the construction. There's more after the jump.


Riding a bicycle around town to look at construction seems a bit weird, I'll warrant, until you realize just exactly how many construction projects are going on down here. And that I should do so on Saturday simply relates to my not having a death wish. Riding downtown isn't particularly brilliant even on Saturday, because of the quality of the sidewalks, but of course if I were to point that out to our wonderful mayor she would no doubt inform me that it's illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk anyway. And riding on certain of the roads would very much require a death wish.


My normal bike ride takes in 11 active construction sites, plus three more that seem to be stalled, and a few soon-to-become construction sites. I took this handy picture just this afternoon from my porch--click on it for a bigger view. I may repost this in the huge original size (my camera takes pictures at about 12x15 inches), so check back. There are 8 cranes in it, but you can be forgiven for only being able to see five of them. It will probably be another few weeks before the really large crane goes up at Trump Tower Tampa; meanwhile, many of the newer buildings in Channelside I will never see from my porch. I wish I had a room in the 20th floor of this building... if there was a 20th floor in this building.

In any event, I have been too lazy today to go buy a new tube for the bike, so it appears I shall do no riding this weekend at all. Oh well. A project for later in the week, like vacuuming out the car and such.

I did brush the cat today. Per request, here is another picture of Cinders, looking vexed because I woke him up with the flash. This picture does a slightly better job of showing his full size, but he’s the sort of cat you have to meet in the flesh. For all his dimensional capaciousness, he has the tiny squeaky cry you’d associate with a kitten, except a lot louder. And a lot more of it. I’ve figured out about four or five of his words well enough that I don’t think I’m insulting him when I talk to him. But I am probably just repeating, "feed me," over and over again.

So anyway, back to my week. Wednesday, as I mentioned, drove me to drink, but while so doing I sat down and wrote a six page letter to myself and seem to have straightened out most of what was going wrong. I've written a good many letters to myself over the years; they're not the sort of things that see the light of day (except in rare cases). In this letter, I did at least address a few problems: The Artiste is bored, and I'm overscheduling myself. So I spent some time Thursday evening, and again today, at work on Lauderdale (working title), not actually writing but at least sketching things out and thinking about the novel. That seems to have helped somewhat. And I gave up my carefully plotted designs on the rest of the week and decided to just go with the flow.

That's what I normally used to do, anyway. I've never been the type to make extensive plans for my time, or to follow them when I have. Five years ago I took a 10-day trip to France with only the most general idea of what I might do once I got there; this annoyed my father to a hilarious degree. As it was, I missed both the Eiffel Tower and the last bus out of Carnac for the night (forcing me to hire a cab, though I speak no French and he spoke no English), reason enough I suppose to at least do a bit of planning for some things. But, really, why bother? One of the most amusing memories of the whole trip is missing that bus.

In the last year or so though I've developed the habit of, by Sunday evening, having something of a plan for the entire week. I then get irritated when, bit by bit, the plan falls away, as it nearly always does. Then, every evening when I come home and don't have time to do something I'd planned to do all week, I get miffed and mope around, watch tv and chat on the internet all night and then wonder why in the hell nothing gets done.

So I've officially given up on scheduling events. Aside from long vacations, of course; I don't have to plan the vacation itself, but I do have to figure out when to take it. Try scheduling three weeks' leave with only a day or two notice some time and you'll see what I mean. We'll see how it goes; it's always possible this could result in my never cleaning the house again, or in not working on Lauderdale but once every few weeks, but I'm sure that won't happen; I managed to clean much of the house today, but unlike in previous weekends I didn't plan an extensive list of chores for today, just did what seemed necessary. It does, however, mean that since I won't have an intricate plan for every evening, I'll be available to do things, so feel free to invite me to dinner. I might even pay.

This has already had positive effects. Because I hadn't planned to spend the evening writing (Friday is one of the few nights I can safely start writing at 8 and get in four or five hours of work without paying for it the next day; note that this does not always mean I actually work on the book for four or five hours, given my laziness and dissatisfaction with everything lately), I finally felt free--for the first time in, what, a year? more?--to go out on a Friday night. Yes, that's right! I went out socially! I'll be riding this high for a week or two.

Of course, that high will stem at least in part from comments made during the evening, in jest, that I must be on steroids. That may sound an odd thing, but I've been working rather hard in the gym of late and it's nice when other people notice that. Now I must put it out of my mind and not start thinking I'm some sort of pulchritudinous (couldn't resist that word) Adonis. A brief glance in the mirror should do the trick... ah, that feels better. On to other topics.

Anyway, now that I finally feel free again and can do things when I want to instead of when I arbitrarily decided I should six days ago, I think I'll go and put on some dinner and watch a movie. I've had it in the house for days, you know. A review will, no doubt, be forthcoming.

Oh, for your viewing pleasure, here is another snap of downtown I took several days ago, the first day we had any real rain this past week. I just love storms, don't you? You'd better, if you live here.

19 September 2005

Mad James Read

Today was Talk Like a Pirate Day. I talked like a pirate, but only to the cat, after I'd come home, since I'd forgotten about this major and important holiday. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have to talk like a pirate to make up for it.
Scanime found a place where you can get your very own pirate name. Arr!

My pirate name is:
Mad James Read
Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. Even through many pirates have a reputation for not being the brightest souls on earth, you defy the sterotypes. You've got taste and education. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.


Arrested Development

The season premiere of Arrested Development is on Fox tonight at 8. Watch it. Especially if you're a Nielsen household.


14 September 2005

The Katrina Economics Post (part V)

I had intended to write something about my thoughts on the economic consequences, such as they may be, for those of us not directly affected by the Katrina disaster. I had intended to, yes, but every day I read something new that I must either reject or allow to refine my own opinions, and as all the things I'm reading are written by people much more wise about such things than I am, I'm still struggling to piece it all together myself. It would be the height of arrogance, and idiocy, to pretend to have something important to say on the matter. Besides, the Gas Guy already said something much more eloquent anyway.

Of course, me being me, I started writing this little one-paragraph bit, and it turned into more of a rant than I had expected. So there's more after the jump.


I had hoped to say that, maybe, the current gasoline crisis might change Americans' behavior vis a vis their driving habits. I now think, in light of the events I've seen around town in recent days, that this was foolish optimism on my part (I'm a glass-half-full type of guy, even if life tends to present us all with a series of nearly empty glasses). Fevered predictions that vacant land, KMart parking lots, and used vehicle dealerships would by this time be overflowing with abandoned SUVs and those of some means would be camping outside Honda and Toyota dealerships to buy Insights and Prii have proven to be, well, fevered. And stupid.

I suppose what it all boils down to is, we're comfortable. We'll keep putting the bloody money in the bloody gas tank because, after all, we bought these damnable gas-guzzlers as status symbols, and the real sign of your status is that you are so well off that you have no need of worry about the price of gas. So we'll keep on filling up at $3 a gallon, or more, or less, and reduce spending somewhere else. All to keep up appearances, to keep up with the Joneses.

Why isn't a Prius a status symbol--you know, a symbol of your intelligence? I can understand with the Insight, which is hideous, an automotive abortion worse even than the Scion Breadbox (which, incidentally, is remarkably fuel-efficient). But the Prius is at least somewhat nice-looking, if far too cartoony to be taken seriously (it would look terrific on a set of those big bubble tires you see on cropduster airplanes). Why don't these damnable auto manufacturers make a hybrid that looks like it might actually be fun to drive? You could make a hybrid convertible Mustang. It wouldn't sound the same or go as fast, but its owner would be able to buy many a steak dinner with the money he'd save by driving it. Is there some unwritten rule that a hybrid must look like something Roy Jetson doodled on his homework?

I don't know what to make of it all. The conventional wisdom is that large natural disasters do not affect the macroeconomy of wealthy, industrialized states. The theory goes that the loss of economic productivity in the disaster's aftermath is made up for by the new jobs created by reconstruction. Of course, it's all well and good to talk about macroeconomic stability, but the microeconomy of a lot of families in Louisiana and Mississippi is another matter entirely. I don't imagine the folks in the Astrodome are heartened by the fact that the nation's macroeconomy will be fine.

And I think that's why I find it hard to condense the whole thing down and talk about "what it all means," as if I knew the answer to that anyway. There's little enough I can do as an individual for other individuals. There are plenty of other people who's job it is to discuss how the nation as a whole moves forward. And there's plenty of people in Washington still worried about who's fault it is that nobody's knickers got in a timely enough twist over the whole matter. I think the best thing I can do, as an individual, aside from donating money to effective charities (note links on sidebar), is start riding my bicycle to work and hope for a hybrid Outback, regardless of what Subaru says on the matter. So that is what I shall do.

Once the weather cools down a bit, of course.

Political Joke of the Day

What was I thinking, saying the government was inefficient and bloated? I must have been off my gourd when I posted that.

Proof came today when the Smartest Man in Government, Tom DeLay, announced that the federal budget was as small as it could possibly be, and that after 11 years in power the GOP had finally got the budget "pared down pretty good." Of course, members of his own party and various conservative pressure groups immediately failed to agree with DeLay. Surprise, surprise.

What would posess a man to say something so patently ridiculous? Why, it's the political Joke of the Day! DeLay's just trying to gain some popularity back by pretending to have a sense of humor. Good one, Tom!

They're Trying to Take Our Wine

You knew it was only a matter of time before a protected industry decided to fight back against the forces of goodness and light. What interests me is that apparently, Florida wineries are joining the state’s idiot liquor distributors who don’t distribute their wines in the first place.

This article from the St. Pete Times only brushes the surface, of course. The three options given are wildly different and wouldn’t really attract both winemakers and distributors. More on this vitally important topic after the jump.


Option one, ban all wineries from shipping wine in state, including in-state wineries, seems counterintuitive if you’re one of the in-state wineries. Currently, they can ship direct to consumers. Few of Florida’s wineries produce enough to sell through any of the state’s liquor distributors. But many of them do make sales over the internet to Florida consumers. Why would they care to give up that portion of their business to please distributors who don’t do anything for them in the first place?

Wine is not a standard commodity. Each winery produces an entirely unique product from every other winery. No wine aficionado would claim that all chardonnays are the same, for example. So a Florida wine drinker who orders wine from, say, San Sebastian Winery in St. Augustine, would not necessarily stop ordering from there just because now he can order from California or Texas. San Sebastian produces the best cream sherry in the world (in my not-at-all-humble opinion) and unique Florida muscadine wines that are not reproduced by any other winery. So now that I can order wines from, say, Val Verde Winery in Del Rio, Texas, and perhaps I will (they have a very good and hard-to-get Sangiovese), does that mean I’m going to stop ordering cream sherry from San Sebastian? Hardly. One wine does not replace another. Since Florida wineries are selling irreplaceable commodities, I wouldn’t think they’d be too scared of out of state wineries shipping directly to Florida consumers. Certainly not so scared that they should want to ban themselves from shipping in state.

Option three, limit buyers to four cases a year from out of state, fails the constitutional test that prompted this whole debate in the first place. Would this also limit buyers to four cases a year from in state? It would have to. What interest do wineries have in putting limits on their own sales? It seems to me that the liquor distributors, who in this state amount to a cartel almost as powerful as Disney, have cowed the wineries into signing on to proposals that, ultimately, won’t help the wineries at all. I wonder if the distributors mentioned that they wouldn’t carry any state wines from wineries that didn’t support their legislative package? Hmm. I need to investigate this matter more thoroughly.

Option two is not awful. It is the only one of the three that does not involve the state’s wineries placing limits on their own sales; as such, I suspect it’s the only one wineries would actually support were they not being threatened.

Lobbyist and former House Speaker Don Tucker (why is it no surprise a former house speaker is now a lobbyist?) is lying through his teeth when he says he wants to pass a law to “make everyone happy.” He wants to pass a law that allows his employer, a liquor distributor, to maintain its current monopoly on wine sales in Florida. Why the hell else are they employing him? There is a very good chance Southern and its pals will win this battle and ban all wine shipments; you can bet they didn’t hire anybody who just wants to make people happy.

I hope all Florida wine drinkers would do their part and write emails or letters or make phone calls to their state legislators. My suggestion, take a lesson from other states that allow out-of-state shipping. Require shippers—either FedEx, UPS, or DHL—to get a signature from an dividual presenting proof of age before delivery. Then enact a reciprocal provision, which numerous other states do: reciprocal states allow wineries in other reciprocal states to ship, but not from non-reciprocal states. About 20 states have such a provision, including California, Oregon, and Texas.

The best of the options given in the article is the second, which may be the best we can hope for. It prevents the biggest wineries from shipping directly, but allows smaller ones to do so. This will satisfy the liquor distributors, who only distribute wine from big wineries in the first place, while still permitting wine drinkers to order from small wineries out of state with unique wines they can’t get elsewhere. The only question is whether that would satisfy the reciprocal requirement from other states. That would be up to other states to determine, and I suspect that California in particular (home of many large wineries) would be disinclined to call it a fair bargain. (Note that this puts us back at square one, but without the hope of a court case to change the law.)

This is one of the developing stories you can bet I’ll follow. Wine, after all, makes other people interesting. And you can never have enough of that.

12 September 2005

More about that city quiz

I should start by saying that it was Ayzair who tipped me off to this little quiz, lest I get undue credit for original thought.

After reading someone else's rather inaccurate results on this whole city culture test, I decided to look into my results a little closer. If you click on the "SCUAI" link, you find a more complete description. I was rather surprised at how well they nailed me. You can nail me after the jump.


Sorry about the above, but in addition to other personality traits, I can't resist a good double entendre.

I bolded the ones that are particularly true, and underlined those I think are probably the least accurate.

life of the party, not bothered by disorder, not afraid of doing the wrong thing, often late, level emotions, not afraid to draw attention to self, worry free, people loving, prefers unpredictable to organized, fearless, not apprehensive about new encounters, likes philosophical discussions, disorganized, not easily annoyed, not a perfectionist, enjoys danger, comfortable in unfamiliar situations, anxiety free, always joking, not very private, very curious, not embarrassed easily, adventurous, flexible, narcissistic, trusting, easy to get to know, easy to satisfy, likes crowds [yes, as long as I can get away from them!], ready to act on the spot, not a bad loser, outgoing, thrill seeker, not easily discouraged, optimistic, laid back, open to new experience, slow to judge others, thinks fun is the most important thing in life, socially skilled, easily talked into doing silly things, rarely prepared, willing to take risks, adjusts easily, passionate about causes, willing to explain things twice, spontaneous, relaxed, believes in universal harmony [not entirely sure what they're trying to say], eager to soothe hurt feelings

Yeah, pretty good. All in all, good enough to convince me that I definitely should move to the Caribbean on the advice of this internet quiz.

11 September 2005

Finding my intellectual and emotional kin

I am up very late, and am very wide awake. And I have to wake up very, very early in the morning. This means tomorrow is not going to go well.

But it also means I can waste time on the internet! Yaay! A friend of mine posted this odd little city quiz on her blog, and I decided to give it a shot. What a nifty site.

#################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### #################################################### ####################################################
Your personality type is SCUAI
You are moderately social, moderately calm, unstructured, moderately accommodating, and intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits.

The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Providence, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, San Antonio, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Portland/Salem, Nashville, Louisville and these international countries/regions Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Norway, Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Netherlands, Russia, Japan, India

What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org





The Caribbean. Hot damn. Clearly God is speaking to me through this quiz. Move to the Caribbean, He is saying. Plant mango trees in your yard and go hiking barefoot in the mountains. Write books and make pottery and never bother with politics or the military again.




Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Totally Spoiler-Free Review:


1. Well, I at least knew who wasn't the Half-Blood Prince, but I didn't guess who was.
2. This book was way, way better than Order of the Phoenix.
3. I had guessed correctly what might happen at the end of this book. I feel very smug about all this, especially given some of the theories I read.
4. Ms. Rowling has given herself a very, very big list of things to accomplish in Book 7. No wonder she said she would probably just "keep writing and writing and writing." I guess we shouldn't expect to see Book 7 before, oh, 2007. Enough time to reread all of the previous 6 beforehand.
5. It's not that this book is so much better than Neuromancer, but, you know, it took me two days to read it. As opposed to two months. I could have read it in one day if I hadn't started reading at 8'00 in the evening.
6. I now believe nearly the entire story arc of book 7 can be found in the six existing books.
7. Let's say the comments are nota spoiler-free zone, so we can feel free to talk about the book there.


Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Totally Spoiler-Free Review:


1. Well, I at least knew who wasn't the Half-Blood Prince, but I didn't guess who was.
2. This book was way, way better than Order of the Phoenix.
3. I had guessed correctly what might happen at the end of this book. I feel very smug about all this, especially given some of the theories I read.
4. Ms. Rowling has given herself a very, very big list of things to accomplish in Book 7. No wonder she said she would probably just "keep writing and writing and writing." I guess we shouldn't expect to see Book 7 before, oh, 2007. Enough time to reread all of the previous 6 beforehand.
5. It's not that this book is so much better than Neuromancer, but, you know, it took me two days to read it. As opposed to two months. I could have read it in one day if I hadn't started reading at 8'00 in the evening.
6. I now believe nearly the entire story arc of book 7 can be found in the six existing books.
7. Let's say the comments are nota spoiler-free zone, so we can feel free to talk about the book there.


08 September 2005

Karma's a bitch

About four months ago or so I had a minor brain fart and failed to fully lock the secure safe at work. It was behind a locked door and nothing happened, but nonetheless it was a minor security violation. As penance I was supposed to organize the secure safe, which has been a rat's nest of garbage for a long time. Everyone acknowledged that most of what was in there could be shredded--but nobody ever bothered.

And neither did I. I intended to, at some point, but never got around to it. More after the jump.

Today, I paid for it. The lock on that safe is, like most of the contents, garbage. It's an outmoded design, and is almost 20 years old. And today, it decided it had had enough. I opened it to put in a document, and when I went to close, it wouldn't lock. I could close it just fine, but nothing I could do would convince the thing to actually lock.

As such, of course, it was no longer secure. And as long as it wasn't secure I couldn't leave the room. I called the lock company; they said I'd need a locksmith. Interesting, since I can't let a locksmith into the secure room as long as the secure safe is open, and since I can't close the safe...

I called the locksmith. He wasn't there. I left a message. The girl says, "Now, are you sure you'll be at this number? Because I don't want to leave him a number and then you're not there."

"I can't leave this room."

"Are you sure?"

"Just give him the number."

Since I'm bored and waiting for the locksmith to call, and can't leave the room, I decided to start going through the safe. Thankfully, one of the guys who works in the office brought in a beer. I got through about half of the top drawer (I'd never even opened the bottom drawer) before the locksmith called.

It's an outmoded lock, he says. They haven't made parts for that in years, he says. There's nothing we can do, he says; you'll have to get a new one. Make sure you get an XO-9.

Later I find out an XO-9 probably costs around $2500.

Now, this is not my fault. Just like losing the keys to the squadron's pickup truck was not my fault. But, because I found the keys (I kicked them one morning while walking on the flight line), it just seems like I must have lost them. And because the lock broke while I was in the safe... well, you get the picture. Like I said, karma's a bitch.

I managed to get all the contents out of the safe, went through them, took them over to a nearby base agency staffed with former squadron members who are friendly with us. As long as we cleaned out the safe enough that they could keep a laptop in there, they'd let me store our stuff in there.

Well, by the time I'd been through it all, and shredded most of it (we had things in there from 1995. A whole damned decade!), I'd condensed two stuffed drawers into about five file folders. And spent over an hour shredding. And tearing the staples off the corners of pages, so my fingers are raw. I didn't get home until seven (in case you're wondering why there's no fifth Katrina post). And next week, I get to figure out how to pay for a new safe lock.

Karma. Bitch.

07 September 2005

Katrina's Politics

Mmm, the smell of politics. Like a mix of rotten eggs and stale beer, it gets into your nostrils and you just can’t get it out. It can stink up whole rooms, whole cities at times. And the Katrina aftermath reeks of it.

The overarching question here is, has a heretofore unrecognized weakness been exposed? And if so, is it Bush’s weakness, or is it the country’s weakness? Or is it maybe a little bit of both?


The easy answer, of course, is that it’s Bush’s weakness. And it has been well-hidden. The creation of a new cabinet department, Homeland Security; the strong talk after 9/11; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the constant talk about keeping America safe; it was these things that helped push Bush over the edge in 2004. Americans, even many Democrats, consistently rated Bush strong on homeland security, regardless of how they felt about him otherwise. It was assumed that whatever else he may have been doing, he was at least keeping the homeland safe.

And then this happens. A major natural disaster, true, not a terrorist strike, but in one sense far easier than a terrorist strike to handle—we could see it coming. And what did our emergency response teams do?
Actually, we’re still waiting for a good accounting of that.

Any way you slice it, this looks bad. Karl Rove and his marketing team will do their best to mitigate the damage to the Bush reputation, using standard tactics. This quote from Political Wire is telling:

"It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent. It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the 'blame game.'”


This is precisely why Bush has been called “the most partisan president in modern American history,” by U of Maryland professor William Galston (in today’s Washington Post. Galston, of course, was a Clinton staffer, so we can assume he’d never admit Clinton was plenty divisive in his time. That said, the Political Wire is right: the Bush/Rove public relations machine relies almost exclusively on ad hominem attacks and staged events and committees designed to move pressure away from the president. Typical has been the recent attempts by FEMA to blame their sluggish reaction on poor direction from Louisiana state emergency managers.

This divisiveness is in direct contrast to the post-9/11 world, when Bush had 90% approval and nearly everyone felt like we were “all in this together.” That's why Rove and company have had to go into full blame mode. As long as there's somebody to blame, then blame they shall.

Which brings up the question: can anyone profit from this? Can they do so without seeming to?

I have a gut feeling that the Bushies have pretty well screwed the pooch here. That said, with public attention focused on Louisiana, Iraq has dropped off the radar screen. This means the slide in public approval for the Iraq war has been halted, at least for the time being.

Bush being an inherently polarizing figure (much like Clinton), his support has always had both a floor and a ceiling. It's been brushing the floor lately; this won't help, but probably won't push him much lower, either.
Congress, unlike Bush, has a ceiling but no floor. Nothing about this disaster is likely to improve their numbers.
The Democrats, as a group, are currently ahead in the generic Congress question in polls--but again, I don't see how they can make this into something that raises those numbers. Nor should they try.

In fact, frankly, I don't see any way for anyone to make any political hay out of this tragedy. That doesn't mean they won't try. It just means that stink is going to be around for a while.


The Other Krazy Kat

It occurs to me that I have not once mentioned on this blog my Old Buddy, Cinders (Ruticus maximus). He also goes by Roo.

This is a picture of Roo eating tomatoes Florentine. Yes, you read that correctly: it’s diced tomatoes and spinach. He was, apparently, starving to death, although to judge by his rather ample girth and the food that was in his bowl at the time I guess he was just in the mood for some veggies. He also eats mushrooms and, on rare occasions, broccoli, and he once ate a potato. That’s why he’s fat, you know; it’s the carbs.

06 September 2005

Neuromancer

I have finally finished reading William Gibson's Neuromancer. It only took me, what, about two months?

Like Frankenstein and The Martian Chronicles, this was a book I didn't so much want to read as it was one that I felt I should read--because it is the first "real" cyberpunk novel. Like those other books, I was a little less than enthralled.
A not entirely negative review follows the jump.


I enjoy the "cyberpunk" genre as rule. I like detective stories and crime novels, I like dystopian fiction, and while I wouldn't call myself a sci-fi "fan," I do appreciate the genre. Cyberpunk tends to blend these things together, and I like blenders.

If I may be so bold as make some sweeping statements about cyberpunk: beyond what the Wikipedia article linked above says, there are a few other general similarities. Cyberpunk usually has a male protagonist, and a female protagonist who links up with the male, though not always sexually. This male is, at least in the outside world, usually a loser (an "anti-hero" in the literary jargon). The female is usually attractive and given over to leather and boy toys like motorcycles and skateboards; in particular she is tough and can fend for herself--but at some point in the story her feminine vulnerability will be exposed. At the end of the story, the man and the woman do not get together.
Cyberpunk endings are vague, and often dissatisfying. So is life a lot of times.
Cyberpunk's stock in trade is a fantastic but recognizeable near-future, or even present day. Like Tom Clancy, cyberpunk writers throw around a lot of jargon that they don't bother to explain. Context often takes care of this, and where it doesn't the mind is free to wander. A good cyberpunk novel introduces a lot of new concepts, and coins new terms, and some are often quite prescient.

I would like to try my hand at maybe a little cyberpunk short story sometime. The fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer gives me hope that I could do this. But, the fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers also shows through in this novel, in a way that Neal Stephenson's avowed dislike of the internet did not show through in Snow Crash (which is a superior novel in most respects). The novel, written in 1984, also shows its age.

Gibson's characters are at least temporarily interesting, but if you like backstory you won't find it here, unless the backstory affects events in the current story, as with Armitage. In other words, if you like to see where characters come from and why they might react as they do, if you like a good character study, this is not your book (some readers will disagree with me; I'll get deeper into this later on). You'll learn little about the twin protagonists, less about the periphery characters. I hate to say it, but it makes it harder to care about the protagonists. The mysterious nature of their quest, and its vague morality, make it hard to care about the outcome. And when you don't care about the characters or what they're up to... well, then it takes you two months to read the book.

Still, Gibson broke some new ground here. His imagining of the Freeside space station and the necessary oddities of a rotating, cylindrical space, is close to genius. His vision of Chiba City's Ninsei enclave--and his rationale for its existence--has echoed throughout the entire cyberpunk genre. Certain scenes in the movie Hackers look like a visualization of Ninsei. I love this description of the place's existence:
But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself.
I'm sure at the time Gibson thought this was a true and worthy insight. Nowadays it seems the companies at the forefront of this "burgeoning technology" are trying to shut down any potential playgrounds and keep the technology for themselves.

Gibson also managed to make a couple of contributions to the lingo--"ice" as a byword for network security, "construct" as a word for a digital entity based on a real person (think Halo), that sort of thing--but the real feat of this novel is that it was written in 1984. The internet as we know it did not exist, but Gibson came up with a plausible realization of it. His visual depiction of what the Net looked like to a hacker who had "jacked in" compares again to 1995's Hackers; note that the computer in that movie, which is depicted much like Gibson's "Net," is called "The Gibson" in his honor.

The book was ground-breaking. It more or less created, or at the least defined, a new genre of fiction. It is imaginative, fast-paced, and includes enough sex, violence, and drug use to keep even the most worldly and jaded readers interested.

Still, Neuromancer left me feeling somewhat empty. It wasn't the ending (hey, I just watched Cold Mountain; this ending was great in comparison). No, I keep coming back to the characters, to Case and Molly. Both are interesting as characters, but not interesting enough to really be worth caring about.

This may be part of the problem with cyberpunk. Anti-heroes and tough girls can be interesting because they break the mould, but if their characterizations do not go far beyond that, they don't hold your interest. Case and Molly are interesting character sketches. There's not a lot to Case--we know he's 24, that he used to be a great hacker cowboy, and that he got burned by a mega-corporation/crime syndicate (megacorps being an important aspect of this novel and this genre) for being naughty with their data. We know little else about him, and, since despite attempts to correct them he maintains his drug addictions and his impropriety, it's hard to see why we should care what really becomes of him. Case is a protagonist (unlike Cold Mountain's Inman) who's death would not sadden us. Molly has more backstory (which will be familiar to readers of Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic (though not to viewers of that film)), but her motivation--she's only doing it for the money--makes her hard to know, hard to get involved with, and hard to care about. The most interesting character in the entire story, apart the eponymous Neuromancer, is Armitage, a broken and twisted man who's backstory we get just a tantalizing hint of. But Armitage plays another role; he's more of a tool than a character, both in the sense of his role in the story and his characterization.

So how big a fault is this? Gibson was, as I said, defining a new genre, and sometimes in doing that, especially if one isn't doing it consciously (it's hard to believe Gibson wasn't conscious of it, even if it wasn't his primary intent), the genre itself, the plot and its direction, outweigh the characters. The question, after all is, "What is cyberpunk?" not "Who is cyberpunk?" Case is a shell, like Molly and, quite literally, like Armitage. These shells have been expanded on and fleshed out by later writers, and by Gibson in some of his later works. In the long run, my inability to care about Case is less important than my ability to understand what he is.

Still, this makes characters into mere tools. I don't like to think of them that way. In my own writing I've discovered that plot happens because of the characters; plot doesn't happen to the characters. Not all writers work that way; not all readers expect it. But I do. And for that, and despite all the great and interesting things about it, Neuromancer was a disappointing read.

Neuromancer

I have finally finished reading William Gibson's Neuromancer. It only took me, what, about two months?

Like Frankenstein and The Martian Chronicles, this was a book I didn't so much want to read as it was one that I felt I should read--because it is the first "real" cyberpunk novel. Like those other books, I was a little less than enthralled.
A not entirely negative review follows the jump.


I enjoy the "cyberpunk" genre as rule. I like detective stories and crime novels, I like dystopian fiction, and while I wouldn't call myself a sci-fi "fan," I do appreciate the genre. Cyberpunk tends to blend these things together, and I like blenders.

If I may be so bold as make some sweeping statements about cyberpunk: beyond what the Wikipedia article linked above says, there are a few other general similarities. Cyberpunk usually has a male protagonist, and a female protagonist who links up with the male, though not always sexually. This male is, at least in the outside world, usually a loser (an "anti-hero" in the literary jargon). The female is usually attractive and given over to leather and boy toys like motorcycles and skateboards; in particular she is tough and can fend for herself--but at some point in the story her feminine vulnerability will be exposed. At the end of the story, the man and the woman do not get together.
Cyberpunk endings are vague, and often dissatisfying. So is life a lot of times.
Cyberpunk's stock in trade is a fantastic but recognizeable near-future, or even present day. Like Tom Clancy, cyberpunk writers throw around a lot of jargon that they don't bother to explain. Context often takes care of this, and where it doesn't the mind is free to wander. A good cyberpunk novel introduces a lot of new concepts, and coins new terms, and some are often quite prescient.

I would like to try my hand at maybe a little cyberpunk short story sometime. The fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer gives me hope that I could do this. But, the fact that Gibson knew next to nothing about computers also shows through in this novel, in a way that Neal Stephenson's avowed dislike of the internet did not show through in Snow Crash (which is a superior novel in most respects). The novel, written in 1984, also shows its age.

Gibson's characters are at least temporarily interesting, but if you like backstory you won't find it here, unless the backstory affects events in the current story, as with Armitage. In other words, if you like to see where characters come from and why they might react as they do, if you like a good character study, this is not your book (some readers will disagree with me; I'll get deeper into this later on). You'll learn little about the twin protagonists, less about the periphery characters. I hate to say it, but it makes it harder to care about the protagonists. The mysterious nature of their quest, and its vague morality, make it hard to care about the outcome. And when you don't care about the characters or what they're up to... well, then it takes you two months to read the book.

Still, Gibson broke some new ground here. His imagining of the Freeside space station and the necessary oddities of a rotating, cylindrical space, is close to genius. His vision of Chiba City's Ninsei enclave--and his rationale for its existence--has echoed throughout the entire cyberpunk genre. Certain scenes in the movie Hackers look like a visualization of Ninsei. I love this description of the place's existence:
But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself.
I'm sure at the time Gibson thought this was a true and worthy insight. Nowadays it seems the companies at the forefront of this "burgeoning technology" are trying to shut down any potential playgrounds and keep the technology for themselves.

Gibson also managed to make a couple of contributions to the lingo--"ice" as a byword for network security, "construct" as a word for a digital entity based on a real person (think Halo), that sort of thing--but the real feat of this novel is that it was written in 1984. The internet as we know it did not exist, but Gibson came up with a plausible realization of it. His visual depiction of what the Net looked like to a hacker who had "jacked in" compares again to 1995's Hackers; note that the computer in that movie, which is depicted much like Gibson's "Net," is called "The Gibson" in his honor.

The book was ground-breaking. It more or less created, or at the least defined, a new genre of fiction. It is imaginative, fast-paced, and includes enough sex, violence, and drug use to keep even the most worldly and jaded readers interested.

Still, Neuromancer left me feeling somewhat empty. It wasn't the ending (hey, I just watched Cold Mountain; this ending was great in comparison). No, I keep coming back to the characters, to Case and Molly. Both are interesting as characters, but not interesting enough to really be worth caring about.

This may be part of the problem with cyberpunk. Anti-heroes and tough girls can be interesting because they break the mould, but if their characterizations do not go far beyond that, they don't hold your interest. Case and Molly are interesting character sketches. There's not a lot to Case--we know he's 24, that he used to be a great hacker cowboy, and that he got burned by a mega-corporation/crime syndicate (megacorps being an important aspect of this novel and this genre) for being naughty with their data. We know little else about him, and, since despite attempts to correct them he maintains his drug addictions and his impropriety, it's hard to see why we should care what really becomes of him. Case is a protagonist (unlike Cold Mountain's Inman) who's death would not sadden us. Molly has more backstory (which will be familiar to readers of Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic (though not to viewers of that film)), but her motivation--she's only doing it for the money--makes her hard to know, hard to get involved with, and hard to care about. The most interesting character in the entire story, apart the eponymous Neuromancer, is Armitage, a broken and twisted man who's backstory we get just a tantalizing hint of. But Armitage plays another role; he's more of a tool than a character, both in the sense of his role in the story and his characterization.

So how big a fault is this? Gibson was, as I said, defining a new genre, and sometimes in doing that, especially if one isn't doing it consciously (it's hard to believe Gibson wasn't conscious of it, even if it wasn't his primary intent), the genre itself, the plot and its direction, outweigh the characters. The question, after all is, "What is cyberpunk?" not "Who is cyberpunk?" Case is a shell, like Molly and, quite literally, like Armitage. These shells have been expanded on and fleshed out by later writers, and by Gibson in some of his later works. In the long run, my inability to care about Case is less important than my ability to understand what he is.

Still, this makes characters into mere tools. I don't like to think of them that way. In my own writing I've discovered that plot happens because of the characters; plot doesn't happen to the characters. Not all writers work that way; not all readers expect it. But I do. And for that, and despite all the great and interesting things about it, Neuromancer was a disappointing read.

Hybrid Dreams

I drive a wonderful, but expensive, car, a 2003 Subaru WRX (her name is Mary Jane). I love this car, but I have loved all my cars because I love cars generally. Mary Jane is as close to perfect as I've found in a car, though, despite the fact that she's not a convertible. But she is expensive--she drinks only premium gasoline (currently running at $3.19/gal on base) and only gets about 23 mpg overall. Keeping her fueled is not cheap.

Consequently I've been looking into replacements. I've been doing this for some time, since gas was down around $2/gal. I've gone to the Toyota website and built a Prius--$26,420--and I've even looked at the Honda Insight. But I hate the way the Insight looks--and looks are half the reason I buy cars. Obviously; otherwise I'd have bought the Echo back when I was shopping for Mary Jane. What I really want, though, is for Subaru to come up with a nice hybrid, with Subaru styling and Subaru construction (MJ's frame is stouter than my Mustang's was (her name was Sally), which is saying something), and Subaru all-wheel drive. And I like the fact that people occasionally think of Subaru's as "granola cars." I'm fine with being a granola person.

So the other day I wrote to Subaru of America, and told them that at night I dream of hybrid Outbacks, and did they have anything like that in the planning stages. Technophile types should definitely follow the jump here, to read what Subaru had to say in response. I'm not sure I understand much of it, but I take away three things: 1. A hybrid is coming, but it will be a few years; 2. It won't be an Outback; 3. Subaru and its partner companies are trying to corner the market on efficient batteries. Sounds pretty exciting. I'm going to write back and remind them not to make a car that looks like the Insight.


Dear Mr. Smith:

Thank you for visiting the Subaru Web site and for your inquiry regarding our hybrid vehicles.

Hybrid vehicle development involves many new technologies and designs. Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.(FHI), our manufacturer, is currently developing alternative fuel engines for future environmental measures, focusing on a compact-sized vehicle and aiming to commercialize it within the next few years.

A joint venture with NEC Lamilion Energy, Ltd. will advance the development of a manganese lithium-ion type rechargeable battery for automobiles. By integrating NEC's laminate-type manganese lithium-ion cell technology with FHI's battery pack technology, the new company will be prepared to develop the global de facto standard rechargeable battery. NEC Lamilion Energy, Ltd. plans to supply the test battery to all domestic and international automobile manufacturers for industry evaluation.

There is a more environmentally significant development over the battery/internal combustion engine hybrid in the long term. GM is making progress toward having fuel cell powered vehicles available in the future. In continuation of its history of adopting practical innovations, Subaru and its linkage with GM will be an eager partner in fuel cell vehicle developments.

While there are no specific dates or schedules available to us now, please be assured that you will be hearing more about Subaru's advanced technology vehicles in the future. If you would like further general information on FHI's efforts to preserve the environment, please go to http://www.fhi.co.jp/english/envi/env_report/main.html.

We appreciate that you took the time to inquire about our vehicles and give us your comments. We hope to continually improve our products. If you need any future assistance, you can always contact us through our Web site at www.subaru.com.

Best Wishes,

Natalie Cox
Subaru of America, Inc.


What they should have done

This here was intended to be part three of the five-part Katrina post (the last two parts of which are coming tomorrow), but, after pondering it much of the day at work and trying a couple different angles, I came to a single, obvious conclusion: there are already too many armchair quarterbacks. So-and-so should have done this; so-and-so should have done that. Well, So-and-so should shut up and get to work cleaning up the city and helping people get on with their lives. That's that.

I hate to sound like the President's stoolpigeon on this, because of course since he's taking a lot of flack he's simply saying, ad nauseum, that "we're not going to play the blame game." To get an idea of how stupid the White House sounds saying this over and over, read this amusing transcript on Wonkette of Scott McClellan trying to stick to the party line in today's press briefing.

I don't know what they should have done. Frankly, neither do Shepard Smith or Bill O'Reilly, though you'll note simple ignorance rarely prevents such people from making suggestions anyway. I won't bother.


05 September 2005

My Question for the New Chief

Things do tend to pile up. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's passing yesterday should not have been a great surprise, though the Chief's insistence earlier this summer that he would stay on in the post as long as he was able did tend to reassure us that he would, at the least, be on the Court into the upcoming term.

Instead, it appears that Judge John Roberts, lately nominated for Justice O'Connor's seat, will instead go through his confirmation hearings (beginning tomorrow) as a Chief Justice nominee. This puts to rest all the speculation that Bush might name Justice Scalia to the Chief Justice position. This is also only sensible, as naming a sitting Justice to CJ means two nomination hearings for only one new Justice. Bush has played this hand wisely.

Take a jump for more.

That this hand was dealt at all is still something of a surprise, albeit a little one. But perhaps the Chief knew something we didn't. Rehnquist was a major opponent of the idea of limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices. He wrote at length on the necessity of independence in the judiciary, and said only lifetime appointments provided that. And indeed, Rehnquist continued to serve on the Court, to take an active role in oral arguments, and to discuss, vote on, and write opinions, through the end of his last term on the Court. If he knew that the end was near, but still felt able to perform his duties, why would he have stepped down? I believe Rehnquist's final weeks were, as much as anything, the capstone of his argument for lifetime appointments. Look, he was saying, I can still do my job. I have been here for a long time, and I am old, and I am not well, by my mind is sharp and I can still do this job.

Whatever the famously private Rehnquist may have been thinking, he has passed on. A state funeral is no doubt in the offing and there will be a lot of talk in the next few days, when the cable channels can break away from hurricane coverage, about Rehnquist's legacy. I cannot speak to that legacy. But we do know that some things will change on the Court.

The Chief Justice (of the United States, which is the correct title, not "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court" as Bush says) does not have a great deal more responsibility than the Associate Justices. He presides over the Court's oral argument sessions. When the members of the Court meet to discuss cases, the Chief runs the meetings. And the Chief is responsible for selecting which Justice in the majority will write the Court's opinion (and when he's in the minority, the Chief assigns the writing of the dissent). These roles are capably filled by other members of the Court; Justices Stevens and O'Connor both presided at oral argument during the last term, while Stevens (presumably) ran meetings and assigned opinions in the Chief's absence. Roberts, then, in addition to sitting as a Justice, will have these other small duties to attend to. Since he is not philosophically far removed from Rehnquist, it will seem to us on the outside that little has changed on the Court.

But there is the matter of the Court's discussion meetings. Outsiders never sit in on these meetings, and we don't honestly have any idea how the Court decides on opinions and what these meetings are like. But Rehnquist, in his books, has given us a clue at least on how he liked to run things.

Rehnquist felt, not without reason, that most Justices arrive at the meeting with their minds already made up as to how and why they would like to see each case decided. For this reason, Rehnquist ran very structured meetings with limited debate. Beginning with the Chief and then moving through the Justices in order of seniority, each Justice would speak his or her piece about the case, how it should be decided, and why. Once every Justice had a chance to speak, if so desired, the Justices would vote. After the vote, the senior Justice in the majority would assign the Court's opinion; the dissenting Justices would determine who would write the lead dissent after the meeting.

Although some Justices, notably J. Scalia, have remarked that they would prefer more free-ranging debate, it seems that this system must have worked fairly well; after all, staying on the Court is a voluntary thing and nobody retired for almost 11 years. The work environment must have been fairly nice. The great question, then, is how will Roberts run those meetings, and will that have an impact either on the number of 5-4 decisions the Court hands down or on how those decisions are decided?

That's the question I would ask Roberts, if I was in the Senate. How will you run those meetings? And why?

As an aside, it's interesting to note that because Roberts, who will technically be the junior Justice once he is confirmed (as I assume he will be), will be the Chief, the seniority will remain the same. Thus Justice Breyer will remain the junior Justice in most respects. When the next term starts up in October, Breyer will be starting his 12th term as the junior Justice, which will be a record. Fortunately for J. Breyer, a new junior Associate will be along shortly.

Just who that new Associate Justice will be remains to be seen. It seems most likely, and you can read more about this at the Supreme Court Nomination Blog, that J. O'Connor will submit a different resignation and simply leave the Court, leaving her seat vacant until the next nominee is confirmed. As the above link points out, O'Connor's staying on the Court through October, for example, would be pointless, since she would not sit to vote on any cases she might hear argued. Unless it appears the next nomination will be greatly delayed--by several months--she probably will go ahead and make her retirement immediate, rather than conditional.

And Bush will get to name another Associate Justice. This time around, Bush should be able to name a nominee very shortly, I should like to think as early as this week. He's already created a short list and interviewed most of the folks on it, and done so within just the last two months or so. I should think it a simple matter for him to then move to the next person on that short list.

Like most other speculators I was way off the last time; Roberts wasn't even on my list. But, what the heck. Let's give it another go. I'm keeping Alberto Gonzalez and Edith Jones at the top of my list. Two other 5th Circuit judges, Joy Clement and Emilio Garza, come in at numbers three and four. I going to add Michael McConnell to my top five.

And I'll put in a few other names. Ted Olson, a friend of the president and non-judge (several Senators seemed to want a non-judge last time around), is an outside possibility. So is Larry Thompson, a corporate lawyer for Pepsi right now and a former deputy Attorny General (and Bush fund-raiser). Some folks think Janice Rogers Brown will get the nod; I disagree. I'd like to think of someone like Alex Kozitsky or Frank Easterbrook, but realistically Bush is about as likely to tap one of those fellows as he is to name his wife to the court.

I reckon I'll be made a fool of again with this list, and I'd bet it'll happen by Friday.