Down from the Mountain

I've had a great week so far in the mountains, more productive than I'd expected. This picture is supposed to make you jealous.

The novel, Lauderdale, is coming along well. This first draft of it has 100 chapters, though they're all short and, anyway, a first draft will be long anyway. That's what editing is for. I'd set for myself the goal of finishing chapter 64. I'd picked this number because I'd actually already written a scene from the chapter back in October, primarily because I was concerned that one of the characters, based on and resembling a real person, came off as a silly old man, which was not my intent. I wrote this scene to redeem him while I was still writing chapter 40, and closing the gap had been my goal.

Last October I'd written chapters 27 through 46, which was pretty damn good for three weeks I thought. In the time since, I'd managed to write a whopping two and a half more chapters. With 100 total, this meant I was still shy of halfway finished. So Monday when I sat down to write all I really needed to do was finish chapter 50; then I could say I was halfway done. Instead I finished chapter 52. Tuesday I went hiking and didn't start writing until after dinner, and was trying to watch the American Idol final, and I still managed to get through chapter 56.

Wednesday I spent all day writing, up until five or so, and finished chapter 61, and then later in the evening I finished through chapter 63, a strange chapter covering only one day in the timeline, but for which I had made no notes. I'd blocked of December 10th as important enough to be its own chapter, but had written no notes as to why it should be so important. I actually like what I did with it, enough that it's more likely to stay intact than some of the other chapters that did have notes.

And this morning? This morning I did 64 and 65 before lunch, and, feeling thrilled that I'd done in three and a half days what I thought would take a week, decided to come down from the mountain and drop in at the internet cafe.

I've been down the mountain other times, of course. I go to a little gym here that has a decent daily rate, so I've done that every day. Monday I went shopping. Tuesday I went hiking. Yesterday after I went to the gym at 5 I had dinner at a cajun place that makes the best bread pudding I've had in years. Mm-mm. So it's not like I lock myself away from all human contact. I think the idea of writers hiding from humanity to work is a bit silly. I may not be using the interaction I have with people up here to write stories, but without daily human contact I think I'd find my muse getting bored and wandering away. Then where would I be?

Ahem. As you might expect there another topic I wanted to discuss. Namely: Taylor Hicks won! I don't freakin' believe it. I'm amazed. I'm happy--I mean, I hope it's what he wanted. I'm sure it is. It was a really spectacular finale show, by the way, for those of you who of course had to watch anything but American Idol last night. Best finale show I've seen in four seasons, by far. And I was reminded of a few contestants who left us too soon.

You see, by the end, I was a little bored with Katherine McPhee. She smiled too much. She smiled like a crack fiend during blues songs, and sad songs, and all sorts of songs that it wasn't appropriate to smile through. I missed Mandisa. I missed Bucky. I missed Melissa McGhee. And they were all back last night! Hooray!

Melissa really did leave the show too soon; the little that she did get to sing last night was an absolute breath of fresh air--her voice is wonderful. I hope the extra exposure might help her get work singing. And Mandisa was back--and let me tell you, when all the women were singing together, it just proved how powerful her voice was in comparison to all the other contestants. She makes McPhee sound like Alvin the chipmunk. And there was Bucky, too--Bucky'd sort of crept up on me there, the one guy who definitely got better with every show and, surprisingly, left after his best performance. I hear he's been talking with the country group Sawyer Brown. Good for him.

And now we have to put up with "So You Think You Can Dance." Spare me. My little tv will be back to nothing but DVDs and the Simpsons in syndication until next year. And you can all tell me I'm a loser, and I really don't care. The country's going to hell whether I watch American Idol or not, so I may as well.

Congratulations, Taylor Hicks. Now I'm off to the gym, then back to the cabin for more Lauderdale. I have my own little dream to live.

A Surprisingly Sober Smitty Ramble

There are people who think I don't "go out" very often. People who feel that I "stay in" too much. I'm not sold on this idea, myself.

For example, on Thursdays normally I would "go out" to Brandon, to a group called Drinking Liberally, people who are interesting and fun to be with (though my personal political philosophy differs somewhat from most of my drinking companions). I enjoy my time out there on Thursdays. But I can already tell you, at this early hour on Thursday, that I won't be doing a thing tonight aside from fretting about the loss of civil liberties in this country--and that I'll be doing in the back of my mind, silently. Silence would be nice right now.

This has been quite the week, in case you're wondering why I haven't been posting. The blog can survive a few days' absence, as I hope can you dear readers, though of course I'm very much present here in Tampa at the moment. Monday, for example. What did I do Monday?

No really, I'm asking. What did I do Monday? I don't recall, exactly. Probably nothing. It was a Monday, nothing goes on on Mondays, here or anywhere else for that matter. Tuesday, then. Surely I did something Tuesday...

Yes, that's right. I went to a baseball game. It so happened that on Tuesday morning our local Major League Baseball Team called up my buddy J.R. and offered him four free tickets behind home plate for that evening's game. This was a great deal; free tickets to anything are worth having, for the most part. Even if the Devil Rays can't usually carry a bat, much less win, free tickets to see the reigning world champions (that would be the White Sox of Chicago, for those of you who don't follow baseball, you commies) are always a plus. And when the Rays actually win the game… well, it's hard to beat that.

Oh wait. I forgot. It's hard, but not impossible, to beat a Devil Rays win over the Sox. For example, you could call up a girl you met recently and invite her to the game, and have an absolutely wonderful time with her. That would beat a simple win. Meeting a girl with whom I can feel comfortable after just one night? Yeah, that's a win no matter what. And what's better, we're going to go see the Marlins play (and hopefully lose to) the Rays on Friday. Sweet. Maybe this time I won't be quite such an awkward schmuck. Oh wait… it's me. Of course I'll be an awkward schmuck. My only hope is to find someone who thinks that's charming.

Oh, and what about Wednesday night? I ask this past tense, since it is technically Thursday. Odd, actually; I was home before 3'30 tonight, earlier than I expected. I wouldn't have been home so early, but the DJ stopped spinning and they kicked us all out of the club about, oh, forty-five minutes or an hour ago.

That's right. Smitty went out. To a club. Where there was music.

And he danced.

I know what you're saying. "Smitty, I thought it was considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions on torture to make anyone watch you dance." See, that's what I thought, too. But apparently, if you dance with wild enough abandon to the number 1 trance DJ in the world, DJ Tiesto, nobody really cares. I even spent most of the night on the platform in the center of the dance floor.

That's right. The platform in the center of the dance floor. I had to make multiple assaults on the summit before I finally made it to the top. The key, as I determined early on, was to find an attractive female so we could make the assault together. Alone, a male stands no chance, certainly no male as average as Smitty. But with a lovely young thing by my side no summit is too steep.

Let me point out for the record that I do not know the name of the girl I ascended the center platform with. Nor does she know mine. Does it matter? I believe she was actually at the club with some other guy, but he was too much of a slacker to actually brave the daring ascent to the center peak of the dance floor. After scouting the available, um, talent, through several aborted attempts at the summit, I picked this pretty young thing out, grabbed her hand, and off we went. In no more than ten minutes we were there, at the top, dancing amid a throng of, oh, six other people (it's a small platform; there were hundreds more on the dance floor, insignificant plebians compared to us), and we stayed there for much of the evening, at least an hour or more. And not once did the jealous boyfriend attempt to attack me, and not once did the girl try to hide from my hideous gyrations. Indeed, it was a wonderful time.

Of course, Tiesto stopped spinning eventually, around three or so I'd guess, and once he finished his set and the house lights went up the girl disappeared, and I drained my seventh or eighth bottle of water, while the guy who bought the tickets (ten tickets he bought, and of the ten of us only he and I bothered to stay until the end) tried in vain to close his tab, and eventually we were all thrown out onto the street (7th Ave. to be exact) and had no choice but to make our way home.

How my friend made his way home I cannot say. I rode my bike. This was considered something on the order of high comedy—even the cops I passed on my way out of Ybor City had to chuckle at the idea of a skinny white guy riding a bicycle home through the ghetto in clubbing attire at three-thirty in the morning. I suppose I'd have thought it funny myself were I not used to the situation. If you seem serious enough and intent on where you're going the odds of your being molested are probably more remote on a bicycle than in your car. Going through the ghetto. Going through the suburbs I'm sure would be far safer but some of us prefer to live someplace a little more real than out in one of the burbclaves.

Besides, no matter how much water I drank no one would think I should be driving home. Not because of alcohol; I stopped drinking by midnight. I shouldn't be driving because I still can't hear anything. I'm aware of the fact that I'm typing, for example, but I can't hear a sound. Good ol' Cinders has been crying for his dinner (which I've now fed him), but all I had to go on was his open mouth; I heard not a sound. It's not that I'm deaf and locked in a world of silence; it's that the roaring in my ears blocks out all regular sounds. That's why I'm here, typing away, rather than trying to sleep. I could lie down, of course, and probably should. But it sounds like a jet is taking off in my head right now and it hardly seems worth the effort to lie down and try to sleep. Earplugs don't work on sounds that are inside your head.

Tomorrow will no doubt be a thrilling day, consisting of going to work and trying to imagine I'm not there, and leaving at lunchtime. I had intended to leave at lunchtime today, as I had intended yesterday, but to no avail. There are errands I have to run. I have a nice fat property tax rebate coming my way if I can ever get around to driving up to the VA office on the north side of town and filing the paperwork, but I haven't got out of work before three-thirty any day this week (and then it was to get to the gym). I'm inclined to just stay up and go in to work early, but why would I want to do that? Nobody I need to talk to at work will be there if I show up before eight. Hell, half the time nobody I need to talk to is there when I show up after eight. Office hours seem to be sort of a freestyle thing these days, not that I'm complaining. I just have some issues to deal with at work and want to actually get them dealt by lunchtime so I can go to the gym and come home.

Ah, coming home early. If you've never skipped out of work early on some flimsy pretense (medical appointments always work) then you are truly missing out. Nothing beats coming home at one and taking a nap on the couch. Really. I mean, I suppose certain things would beat that, but nothing that a single man has access to on a regular basis.

Anyway. As for tonight… well, I plan to grill up a nice steak on the gas grill downstairs, and read the rest of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and generally behave as though I have nothing at all of consequence to do, regardless of what the truth may be.

That's for tonight. Friday, as I mentioned, there's a baseball game, and Saturday I will be departing for North Carolina, though I won't make it there til Sunday. I plan to spend a week writing, and hiking a bit, and hopefully getting closer to finishing the first draft of Fort Lauderdale. This means, by the way, that I won't be posting to the blog. I know it will be difficult, but you'll have to survive for a week or so without any brilliant insights from Smitty. How ever shall you cope? I don't know, really, but I suggest you go out to Ybor and dance the night away at some club to a terrific DJ. That makes the time pass quickly. I'll be back before May is over, with something brilliant and significant to tell you about, I'm sure. Til then, I hope you have at least as grand a time every day as I've had tonight. May all your assaults on dance floor summits be successful, and may the ringing in your ears diminish enough to allow some sort of peaceful sleep each and every night.

Smitty Invests in Tin Foil

ABC News reports today that the government is tracking the call patterns of journalists. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you Creeping Totalitarianism®, by the Bush Administration.

If you really want to get creeped out, read all the comments at the bottom of the article (which is itself quite short). Here's a selection:

"'Bout time you guys are roped in."
"Excellent the media needs looking after, traitors most of them....."
"good, you seditionist creeps deserve what you get."
From a claimed journalism student and veteran: "I hope they catch every government leaker of classified secret information and put them in prison for life. And any reporter publishing known classified secret information should be shot. It's called treason, not first amendment rights."
And the finally, the icing on the already inedible cake:
"You do realize people are being paid by the Bush administration to attack the press publically on comment pages like this. I personally was offered a job doing it."

If the last one is true, it's despicable but I'm not surprised (see here for a list of dirty tricks we know this administration and its stooges to be capable of). If the first four are genuine and the last one is not true...

You know, I just saw this very interesting movie called V for Vendetta. It's about people who got scared and sold away their liberty to someone who promised to protect them but did so by keeping them scared. Let me see... H.L. Mencken had something to say about that:

he whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Ah, Mencken. Always trenchant. Of course you can argue successfully that the current hobgoblin is not imaginary. Hardly matters. I'd rather die than give up liberty. This quaint notion was one of the driving factors behind my desire to join the service. Am I the only person left who feels this way? A life spent monitored by the government, a life controlled by disinterested third parties bent on maintaining their power by ordering my existence, is not a life worth living, not at all.

The monarchist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (who, let's recall, was writing against the backdrop of English Civil War) argued that free men would willing band together and give up most of their freedoms--if not all of them--for protection from one another and from outsiders. Hobbes is famous for describing life in the state of nature (an entirely mythical state that presupposes man at some point lived outside society, which he didn't; whether Hobbes believed in a genuine state of nature or not I can't say) as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" and consists of a "war of all against all."

Hobbes was not the pessimist some people think; he argued the Leviathan should only act to prevent one man causing harm to another. Hobbes was thus essentially the first modern libertarian. Unfortunately, he either never considered the possibility that the Leviathan, who had no checks on his power, might one day rather drastically curtail the rights of his subjects in the name of public safety, as has happened in numerous cases in the past. Whether Hobbes truly believed his Leviathan would be above that sort of thing, or whether he thought it didn't really matter, I don't know.

In any event, it matters to me. I think our particular Leviathan is grown to big for its britches and needs to be cut down a bit. I find myself wondering whether that might ever actually happen. Given the course of American history--a nigh unbroken uptick in federal power from July 4, 1776, until today--I doubt it.

Boy, this got off topic in a hurry. Let me rein it back in.

The idea of secret warrantless wiretaps may not be all bad (though it's mostly bad in my book) if the targets have verified links to terrorism before the wiretapping starts. That's where I stand. I don't believe that prior verification happened, ergo, I don't think the NSA wiretaps were justified.

Leaking information to the press, when the information involves the government breaking its own laws and engaging in clandestine illegal surveillance of its own citizens and/or breaking the laws of other countries and organizations (the EU for example) in ways that contravene human-rights treaties to which we are a signatory (illegal secret prisons in Eastern Europe for example), does not meet the threshold for treason in my book. In fact leaking information to the press is a felony, spelled out in federal regulations. Using the government's national security apparatus to catch people in felonies seems... petty.

To then start surveillance on the press... Nah. No justification. I brought Hobbes into this because, as I said, Hobbes never discussed what the Leviathan would do if he took his power and then decided to abuse it. Similarly, tracking the phone calls of members of the media opens you up to a vast realm of information you don't need. With this government especially, but with all governments generally, I don't trust them to not use information they shouldn't have.

Which is a really long and round-about way of saying, this here is bad news. Really bad, in my opinion. Totalitarianism doesn't always come to you in the form of a revolution, but one is required to bring a totalitarian government down. Let's hope this tide turns before one becomes necessary.

Exciting Reading for the Weekend

CBS News' Dick Meyer writes a fun and fascinating opinion piece (only 1200 words, shorter than most of my posts) about how to go about creating a viable third party for 2008. It needs wider dissemination so I'm going to do my part here.

Meyer writes of a five step process for building a party:

1. Find a name. He picks "Independent Party." This is probably as good as it gets; better names like "American Party" are already taken, often by fringe groups with frightening political philosophies.

2. Find a top of the ticket. Meyer explains why the party has to be built top-down and not bottom-up, and he's probably right. He selects New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg. I'm not convinced Bloomburg is the guy (If Giuliani could be persuaded he'd certainly be better), but no one clearly better comes to mind. Meyer puts retired Marine Corps General and Iraq war critic Anthony Zinni in the number two spot. Nice pick if you can get him.

3. Build an organization. Nothing will be accomplished without one--a national committee to raise and distribute funds, state committees to do the same and recruit talent, etc. Meyer correctly points out that for the first two years (2006-2008) the most important party activity will be training candidates and doing research to determine better ways of connecting with voters than fake debates and tv ads. Meyer believes, as do I, that a properly marketed party would have little trouble raising funds from people dissatisfied with the current choices.

4. Recruit a stable of distinguished Senate candidates in a variety of races, people with high name ID and respect--in other words, not Ben Affleck. Meyer makes several great recommendations, to which I'd add inventor John Koza in California, who's made note of wanting to fix the political system. Unfortunately there will be no Senate contest in California in 2008. Still, it can't hurt to have names in mind for 2010; he may not be interested but I would definitely ask.

5. Recruit House candidates, as many as possible but not wingers or lunatics. Meyer believes--and I agree--that "there is a huge population of talented, community-oriented people in their 30s and 40s who have been successful...and who would like to be in government — but who think, like you do, that the current process is repulsive." Meyer says there's probably such a person in every district, and he may be right, though whether these people can be convinced to run is up in the air. They'll have to raise a lot of money, and most decent people hate the idea of calling strangers and asking them for money.

Meyer also lists a few key positions for the party, most important of those being "belligerent toward the custom of making hot button side issues (gay marriage, flag-burning, partial birth abortion, arts funding, a Spanish national anthem) the main issues..." Couldn't have said it better myself.

All of you should read this article and think about it. And then post it on your blogs or send it to your friends. And if you can think of somebody better than Mayor Bloomberg, or of other name Senate candidates, or if you're one of the aforementioned reasonable, talented, community-oriented people, write to Dick Meyer and let him know. He may not want to be the central repository for all ideas about a third party, but he's probably stuck with the role now whether he wants it or not.

Straight Man

I've been going through life for quite some time thinking Snow Crash was my favorite novel, and I've read it enough times that I need to purchase a new copy. Among the top several I've long included Straight Man by Richard Russo, which I picked up again on Friday because after the wretched disappointment of Charlotte Simmons I wanted to read something very good.

So it is an amusing coincidence that after this second read, Straight Man has replaced Snow Crash at the top of my list of favorites, and I need to purchase new copies of both.

The first several pages of my copy of Straight Man are now forever affixed to one another with two-ton epoxy. The chair for which I bought the epoxy remains broken and probably needs to be replaced. The sequence of events that brought this about were absurd, but of course anyone who knows me would have been able to predict what would happen as soon as I cut open the tube. At least the cat didn't step in it, which had been my biggest fear going in.

Anyway. Why do I like this book so much? Is it just a case of comparison against a very bad book? I don't think so; on Saturday morning I reread The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the umpteenth time after watching the movie, so I had a good book in between Charlotte and this one. I think it's something more.

For starters, Richard Russo has a gift for marrying melancholy with farce that no other writer I know of can match. It's not enough simply to have a melancholy scene followed by a funny one; at the heart of Russo's funniest moments is a touch of sadness, a feeling that the characters know exactly what they're doing and that it won't end well, but can't stop themselves nonetheless. Fatalism is a very melancholy attitude. And, too, some of the saddest and most affecting moments in this book coexist with an ironic humor born of the characters' ability to step back and see their lives for what they are—no matter how much it may seem that fate has intervened, that something was inevitable, there is always the knowledge that in fact it isn't fate at all, that every moment is put in place by some earlier action.

We should all be so gifted as to see—or even have shown to us—the chain of choices that bring us to our greatest sadness or greatest joy. But we aren't. This is what literature gives us.

In thinking about the contrast between Straight Man and Charlotte Simmons I was struck by how few times—exactly once—in this book I felt a character did or said something that didn't connect, didn't make any sense. Comparatively I was constantly jarred by the bizarre characterizations in Charlotte Simmons. I couldn't even what it was that bothered me in this book, when I went to find it just now. It must not have been important.

And I like that. That's good writing. The fact that the book is an uproarious scream and a sad introspection at the same time is good writing, and entertaining, too. That our narrator, Hank Devereaux, is undergoing a midlife crisis so easily recognizeable to things in my own life just makes the story better.

I can't wait to go buy a new copy and read it all over again.

Straight Man

I've been going through life for quite some time thinking Snow Crash was my favorite novel, and I've read it enough times that I need to purchase a new copy. Among the top several I've long included Straight Man by Richard Russo, which I picked up again on Friday because after the wretched disappointment of Charlotte Simmons I wanted to read something very good.

So it is an amusing coincidence that after this second read, Straight Man has replaced Snow Crash at the top of my list of favorites, and I need to purchase new copies of both.

The first several pages of my copy of Straight Man are now forever affixed to one another with two-ton epoxy. The chair for which I bought the epoxy remains broken and probably needs to be replaced. The sequence of events that brought this about were absurd, but of course anyone who knows me would have been able to predict what would happen as soon as I cut open the tube. At least the cat didn't step in it, which had been my biggest fear going in.

Anyway. Why do I like this book so much? Is it just a case of comparison against a very bad book? I don't think so; on Saturday morning I reread The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the umpteenth time after watching the movie, so I had a good book in between Charlotte and this one. I think it's something more.

For starters, Richard Russo has a gift for marrying melancholy with farce that no other writer I know of can match. It's not enough simply to have a melancholy scene followed by a funny one; at the heart of Russo's funniest moments is a touch of sadness, a feeling that the characters know exactly what they're doing and that it won't end well, but can't stop themselves nonetheless. Fatalism is a very melancholy attitude. And, too, some of the saddest and most affecting moments in this book coexist with an ironic humor born of the characters' ability to step back and see their lives for what they are—no matter how much it may seem that fate has intervened, that something was inevitable, there is always the knowledge that in fact it isn't fate at all, that every moment is put in place by some earlier action.

We should all be so gifted as to see—or even have shown to us—the chain of choices that bring us to our greatest sadness or greatest joy. But we aren't. This is what literature gives us.

In thinking about the contrast between Straight Man and Charlotte Simmons I was struck by how few times—exactly once—in this book I felt a character did or said something that didn't connect, didn't make any sense. Comparatively I was constantly jarred by the bizarre characterizations in Charlotte Simmons. I couldn't even what it was that bothered me in this book, when I went to find it just now. It must not have been important.

And I like that. That's good writing. The fact that the book is an uproarious scream and a sad introspection at the same time is good writing, and entertaining, too. That our narrator, Hank Devereaux, is undergoing a midlife crisis so easily recognizeable to things in my own life just makes the story better.

I can't wait to go buy a new copy and read it all over again.

Break

Wow, a whole week without any posts. All to change shortly, I assure you. By way of explanation, let me quote a passage I read this afternoon in Richard Russo's Straight Man.

But my daughter belongs to a talk show generation that seems to be losing the ability to discriminate between public and private woes. She sees no reason she shouldn't tell her friends about her marriage, even encourage them to take sides, pass judgment. It's not even the knee-jerk confession mode that worries me most. It's my daughter's fear of silence and solitude that seems unnatural. If she weren't talking to her friends, she might be listening to other voices in her own head, voices she might benefit from hearing out. Instead, she telephones. When she runs out of people to call, she opts for electronic company, the television in one room, the stereo in the next. She may even consider these part of her support group, for all I know.

I'm having a discussion with the inside of my head this week. It's going well. I haven't wanted to intrude.

The Shrimp

Behold the shrimp. How wonderful that God has given us a food that is not only delicious and nutritious, but which conveniently turns colors as you sauté it so you will know when it's done?