Kindling

A few days ago, Ruth got a Kindle from Amazon - actually, the Kindle was an early birthday present from her mother. We've often talked about getting a Kindle - or a pair of Kindles - but I didn't want to make what I considered an extravagant purchase, figuring that once you got into Kindle culture, you'd basically be repurchasing every book you owned. I'm old enough to remember watching vinyl replaced by cassettes, and cassettes replaced by CDs, and CD replaced by digital media. (I'm still stuck on the CD stage, wanting nothing to do with iTunes.) Likewise, I remember the VCR format wars and then watching as cassette tape was replaced by DVDs. (*)

Here's how the Kindle works, based entirely on the two or three times I've held it in my hands. It's a very thin and light device, less than a quarter of an inch thick. Its dimensions are not much bigger than that of a birthday card. The device does require power - and there's a charging cord - but seemingly, it doesn't seem to require much of it. Apparently, the device is always on, going into "sleep mode" when not in use.

There's a wireless connection. I don't know if it connects to one's home wireless or to a set of towers maintained by Amazon.com, but the device can put you in touch with Amazon's main server of e-books. You can look for an e-book, and purchase it, with your Amazon.com account being credited. The contents of the e-book are then loaded into the Kindle, which can hold up to thousands of books.

So why would one have a Kindle, versus say an actual tangible book?

1) Storage. For every Kindle-ized book you own, it's one less real book that you have to own. If you relocate a lot - or even if you just travel a lot - the amount of books you can take with you is limited by the physical dimensions/weight of the books. If you have a Kindle, you simply take your entire library with you.

2) Cost. This is the funny part of the equation. First, just about every book published before 1920 is in the public domain. This means that copyright on these books cannot be violated. (This was in the days before copyright became a tool for the heirs of prominent creators to obtain free money, forever.) When you look up a public domain book on Kindle, you will find that its download cost is...$0.00! Which means that you can stock your library with the classics at no cost to yourself.

I believe every single book that Ruth has on her Kindle - save one - is a public domain classic. A lot of Jane Austin/Bronte Sisters stuff. All absolutely free. If these books were in dead tree form, they'd require a lot of bookshelf space.

The only one that Ruth had to pay for is an amusing story. Let's assume that you want a free copy of Jane Eyre. It exists. However, when you look up Jane Eyre on Kindle, you'll find not only the free author's copy but a bunch of annotated copies either for student use or for literary criticism. Those books cost money. Ruth's classic was buried under a pile of annotated versions with the same name, and in disgust Ruth bit the bullet and purchased an annotated version.

The other amusing story on cost comes from the fact that no one has figured out the price point of a Kindle-ized book. The reason books cost $20 at the bookstore is that you have to take in the cost of paper, publishing, the yacht storage fees of the CEO of the publishing company, etc. etc. The question then becomes "what is the fair price to charge a Kindle-ized book?" When you look at the prices of non-public domain e-books, they're generally cheaper than the dead tree versions.

Of course, there are some limitations. You're limited to the books that have been converted to e-books form. For example, if you're interested in women's basketball (and who isn't?) you only get the piss-poor collection of women's basketball books that have already been switched over. On the other hand, if you're a John Grisham fan (**) you can probably find his complete works in e-book form for no problem.

This leads to an article on Cracked I read about e-books and the concept of artificial scarcity. If you think about it, in the digital age there is probably nothing easier to copy than a book would be. Give me enough time, and I can create a perfect copy of a book. Even if you decide never to sell your new masterpiece It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in e-book form if I have 1,000 spare hours of free time I could just buy the dead tree copy, open it to Page One, open up a .doc file on my computer - and start typing. By the time I'm done, I have a computerized version that is almost as good as the real one, and for a lot of people it would be "good enough". It would be much more difficult for me to, say, self-copy the latest Franz Ferdinand album (I can't play guitar) or Debbie Does Dallas (no comment).

This opens up the possibility that sooner or later someone will be able to hack the Kindle and you'll be able to duplicate e-books and download them off megauploadtorrentspyware.com. Or be able to shove your own .doc or .pdf files into Kindle, or scans of books, or porn. I can't wait to see how that all plays out.

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(*) - There is a real push from "the industry" to have DVDs replaced by Blu-Ray, but it doesn't seem to be taking hold for the same reason that Betamax never took hold over VHS in the cassette tape days. Yes, the picture and sound were (supposedly) better with Betamax, but there becomes a "good enough" threshhold where you're high enough on the quality curve that any gains beyond the present can only be appreciated by connoisseurs. VHS was "good enough" and people didn't need Betamax. Furthermore, VHS tapes could record six hours of tape compared to two hours for Betamax. Likewise, DVDs are "good enough" for most people and I don't see myself replacing all of my DVDs with Blu-Ray versions.

This is why I obtain most of my music through...YouTube. YouTube is "good enough" for my music listening; a connoisseur would be aghast.

(**) - If you are, you're reading this at the airport on the red-eye waiting for the 6:20 am flight from Denver to New York.

The Bigger World

I remember the first time I came into contact with the Bigger World.

I don't remember the specifics, but I must have been in my room with its tiny black and white television when I was in seventh or eighth grade or so. This much have been some time after January 1978, which was a red letter month in the CINCGREEN household because it was the month we got cable television. Undoubtedly, I was flipping through the channels (twisting the dial, not pushing the buttons) to see what was on television and the dial came to rest on a bunch of guys wearing robes. I knew they weren't Klansmen because they spoke with British accents.

The robes were not from some sort of backwoods social club, but were Roman garb. Our state's education television network was showing I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theatre. I have to say that State Educational Television was a godsend. I saw both The Prisoner and Monty Python back-to-back on Saturday nights, and as it turned out Monty Python ended exactly when Saturday Night Live began...but back to I, Claudius. I ended up starting with Episode Three or Four just when the really good stuff was happening and I made sure never to miss an episode after that. As far as I knew, I, Claudius was an independently-realized television drama springing from no source other than the mind of some British scriptwriter.

In junior high school, our math class took a field trip to the fine establishment of learning known as Eastern Kentucky University. (I suspect we were there to watch a basketball game, the particulars were extremely hazy.) Part of the field trip involved visiting the college bookstore. Most of the kids picked up a banner or a sports T-shirt or something, but I enjoyed looking at the books - even in Richmond (*), the selection at the college bookstore beat the sorry-ass offering of books in my hometown.

And then, I saw it. I, Claudius. It was a book! I didn't even know that! Having been given a few bucks to buy lunch or something, I spent all of my cash on buying that book, and I didn't even wait to get home to start reading it. I tore into Robert Graves's period piece like a starving man at a Chinese buffet. I was so eager to consume the book that I skimmed over a lot of it, the equivalent of gorging. As I got to the end of the book, I realized, "hey, the writer's never going to get to the stuff about Messalina by this point." I would learn sometime thereafter that the miniseries covered not just I, Claudius but its sequel Claudius the God. I only owned half the story.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with I, Claudius, let me explain it. It was written by Robert Graves, a British writer and poet well-versed in the classics. It purports to be the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, the step-grandchild of the wife of the Emperor Augustus through a previous marriage. Unfortunately for young Claudius, he suffers two maladies from birth - a horrible stammer and a limp from a weakened leg. The result is that he's considered an idiot and a cripple by the rest of his family, and is either ignored, insulted or outright abused by most of them.

My understanding is that there were two overlapping entries into the Roman political world of the optimates era: one could be a patrician and pursue a career as an Equestrian and then a Senator, or one could serve in a level of political offices with progressively increasing responsibility supplemented by a successful career as a military officer. Due to his infirmities, both of these avenues were closed to Claudius. With scholarship as his only comfort, Claudius retreats into a world of books and resolves to be a historian.

This gives him a great advantage, for as a member of the Imperial family he has a front row seat to Roman power politics. Furthermore, his stammer and limp prove useful in a perverse sort of way. The rest of the family concludes that Claudius will never amount to anything and in their world of power plays and political murders Claudius is always overlooked for the simple reason that he's not worth killing. He survives the reign of his step-grandfather Augustus, his uncle Tiberius, and even his insane and murderous nephew Caligula. After Caligula is killed by his own bodyguards the Imperial genetic timber has been whittled down to firewood during the reigns of the previous three emperors with few surviving contenders for the throne. After Caligula's death the Imperial Guard run riotand decide that if there's going to be another emperor, they'd better be the ones choosing him. They find Claudius hiding in the palace to avoid the killing and looting, and decide that Claudius has the pedigree if nothing else. (**) Therefore, Claudius is implausibly installed as the next emperor. (That's Book One.)

In Claudius the God, Claudius attempts to be what he considers a "good emperor". Years of experiencing the a Rome where the Republic exists in name only convince Claudius that only the true restoration of the Roman Republic can save Rome - he shall turn over power to the Senate, and then retire. However, the problem of power-hungry senators and surviving relatives is a serious one - they believe that due to Claudius's reputation of being an utter imbecile that he can easily be removed in a coup. Claudus knows they'd never let him survive if he turned over power, as the potential would always exist that some faction could yank him out of retirement and force him to become their figurehead. Therefore, Claudius has to hang on to the throne to save his own life....and then, since he has to repair the damage of the previous emperors to strengthen Rome, the restoration of the Republic is moved further and further down on the agenda. Claudius always promises himself that he'll get around to it when the conditions are right.

But the greatest danger to Claudius is...at his side in the form of his teenage wife Messalina (whom he was forced to marry by his crazy nephew Caligula). Messalina is sweetness and charm, and Claudius is enthralled with her - but Messalina has designs on the throne herself. Eventually, Messalina's plot is discovered at the last second before the coup and Claudius is forced to have Messalina executed. A bitter Claudius concludes that people would never accept the Republic even if he did bring it back - things have to be very, very bad for a revolution, so Claudius will speed one along. He decides to marry his niece Agrippinilla who already has a child from a previous marriage - Nero. He knows that they should never be entrusted with power, but that's exactly who he intends to trust it to. Agrippinilla can never rule as a woman, and she'll have to run the Empire through Nero, and Nero will then rebel against Agrippinilla because he's a douchebag and will assume absolute power and then Nero will ruin the Empire, and after that, people will be clamoring for the Republic...won't they?

Luckily, Claudius has a Plan B that will ensure that the next form of government shall be a restoration of the Republic. Shame that Plan B falls apart, and Claudius knows in the end that he - and the Republic - are screwed. The End.

If any of the above sounds interesting, wait until you see the BBC version.

Derek Jacobi as Claudius.

Brian Blessed as Augustus.

Sian Phillips as Livia.

George Baker as Tiberius.

Patrick Stewart (yes, Captain Picard, when he still had hair, or at least a good toupee) as Sejanus.

Patricia Quinn (yes, Magenta) as Livilla.

John Hurt (yes, that John Hurt) as Caligula.


It's absoutely kick-ass. I'd recommend it to anyone.

So why do I call this post "The Bigger World"? I think that my introduction to I, Claudius was my first inkling that there was a bigger world out there beyond the television shows of the 1970s and the required reading from middle school. It was the first notion that serious books - and serious television - could and should be fun. For better or for worse, what I am today is because of I, Claudius - so if you ever get to Robert Graves's grave, you know where to spit.

"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud - hatch out!"

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(*) - An amusing side-note is that as Kentucky became populated in the 19th century town founders looked to European cities as town names. Therefore, there is a London in Kentucky, as well as a Paris and a Richmond and a Madrid. However, just because you name a town something doesn't mean that the common people can pronounce the spelling. Therefore, you get Athens, whose "a" is pronounced just like in the word "day", and Versailles, which is pronounced to rhyme with the word "sails". This never fails to astonish both visitors and Kentuckians, amused that someone would ask where Ver-SIGH is.

(**) - It helped that Claudius's brother was Germanicus, a much-admired Roman general and potential ruler until he succumbed to not having his food tasted.

Things I Shall Ask God (*)

* The names of every girl that was ever interested in me. Just for giggles.

* Whether or not Abraham Lincoln was gay. Not that I have any personal interest, I just want to solve a mystery.

* What was it that actually killed the Roman Empire?

* Would capitalism/communism/Christianity ever have worked if practiced 'properly', whatever God decides to call proper practice? (CINCGREEN's Law of Philosophical Practice: The faults of any abstract philosophical system will sooner or later be blamed on malpractice.)

* The mathematical correlation between hard work/intellectual effort and success in life. (**) I suspect that the correlation is definitely not high, and might be low...but if it's negative, I'll truly be astonished. (***)

* Did we really get Hitler in World War II, or did he run away and escape under an assumed name?

* What my 'perfect job' would have been.

* What one particular decision I made changed my life for the best - and which one for the worst.

* The various outcomes of certain branching decisions. ("What would have happened if I had chosen to do 'X' instead of 'Y'?")


Note that none of these questions deal with theological questions, like 'how can God allow suffering in the world?' I'm not interested in the answers to stuff like that; I want to swat fungoes with Babe Ruth.
_____

(*) - Assuming that he/she exists.
(**) - This reminds me of something I recently read in Sports Illustrated about a coach asking his players what it took to make it in the NFL.

Talent? No, unrecognized talent is almost a cliche.
Hard work? Ditto.
Luck? Luck is usually a function of opportunity and preparation, which basically means that luck correlates to time.

So what do you need to make it in the NFL? "The willingness to take another man's job away from him."

(***) - I can name several people who are successful in life and who don't seem to work very hard. Likewise, I can name several people who turned out poor but who work quite hard.

Squeeze

I have squeezed under the midnight deadline again. Unfortunately, I'm too tired to put together a real post. This post was going to be about NaNoWriMo - but hell, if I go to the well at 11:45 pm and draw up an empty bucket, what chance do I have at NaNoWriMo?

To Hell with Realism

I've jumping on the bandwagon of a new HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. I've heard it described as a combination of The Sopranos and The Wire. The show is set in 1920 - Atlantic City, USA just after the signing of Prohibition. City treasurer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is as corrupt as they come, and he plans to make a killing with the banning of alcohol. However, there are other people around who plan to make a killing as well.

We've watched the first two episodes and we like what we've seen. We'll hang in there.

Interestingly enough, I was flipped on to an essay by George Orwell who writes about the difference between two modern crime stories, Raffles and No Orchids for Miss Blandish. The difference is that in the older story, Raffles - ostensibly the bad guy, a gentleman crook - has a sense of morality. He only steals whenever he's been invited to someone's home, and he only steals from the other guests and never the homeowner. He would never think of killing anyone. Whereas, No Orchids for Miss Blandish is what we call a realistic crime novel. Orwell has this to say about realism:

[The author of No Orchids for Miss Blandish] is a popular writer — there are many such in America, but they are still rarities in England — who has caught up with what is now fashionable to call ‘realism’, meaning the doctrine that might is right.

Funny, that seems to be the doctrine of The Sopranos. And The Wire. And Boardwalk Empire, for that matter.

Orwell concludes:

Several people, after reading No Orchids, have remarked to me, ‘It's pure Fascism’. This is a correct description, although the book has not the smallest connexion with politics and very little with social or economic problems. It has merely the same relation to Fascism as, say Trollope's novels have to nineteenth-century capitalism. It is a daydream appropriate to a totalitarian age. In his imagined world of gangsters Chase is presenting, as it were, a distilled version of the modern political scene, in which such things as mass bombing of civilians, the use of hostages, torture to obtain confessions, secret prisons, execution without trial, floggings with rubber truncheons, drownings in cesspools, systematic falsification of records and statistics, treachery, bribery, and quislingism are normal and morally neutral, even admirable when they are done in a large and bold way. The average man is not directly interested in politics, and when he reads, he wants the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals. He can take an interest in Slim and Fenner as he could not in the G.P.U. and the Gestapo. People worship power in the form in which they are able to understand it. A twelve-year-old boy worships Jack Dempsey. An adolescent in a Glasgow slum worships Al Capone. An aspiring pupil at a business college worships Lord Nuffield. A New Statesman reader worships Stalin. There is a difference in intellectual maturity, but none in moral outlook. Thirty years ago the heroes of popular fiction had nothing in common with Mr. Chase's gangsters and detectives, and the idols of the English liberal intelligentsia were also comparatively sympathetic figures. Between Holmes and Fenner on the one hand, and between Abraham Lincoln and Stalin on the other, there is a similar gulf.

Ouch.

Orwell's point - to repeat it - is that No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a Fascist novel, even though the book has absolutely nothing to do with political philosophy. I don't know if Orwell is making the unintentional point that everything is political, down to the shows we watch, the books we read and the clothes we wear. All of these choices are choices grounded in philosophies of one sort or another, and all politics is is philosophy applied to human relations on a large scale.

You know you've read something great when it makes you think about the choices you've made in your own life. And furthermore, it makes you think about the meaning that is taken away from media. A person can watch The Wire because it reflects her own philosophy that an political system, corrupted by modern prohibition (the Drug War), will grind people up. Another person can watch it and say "if I ran a crew, I'd run it like Marlo Stanfield". Same medium, different philosophical interpretation.

Casablanca on the Big Screen

Last night - I'm still on Friday - Ruth and I went to see Casablanca over at a place called the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta, GA. The website is here, if you want to learn more about it. The Strand was an old-fashioned, one-screen only, non-Cinemascope type theatre built in 1935 which fell victim to the disappearing town movie theatre blues in 1976.

We went there to meet Eric and his wife Andrea, and his sister and brother-in-law. We couldn't meet them before the movie and we managed to get there about fifteen minutes before the movie started. By the time we got there, there was some sort of curator going on and on and on about the theatre with some corny wisecracks. (It looks like, just as today, you had to sit through a lot before the movie started.)

The curator played a "sing along" with the pipe organ as titles flashed on the screen. I would like to say that this was really something special, but there wasn't so much a singing as a sort of very quiet mumbling. They need to have some plants seated in the audience to sing loudly, and to shame everyone else into singing. Part of the problem with the sing-along is that they generally play the general melody of the song once - to give one an idea of the rhythm - and at some point, you jump in. (I think there's an artificial pause which serves as the cue.) But I kept missing the cue. It was pretty frustrating. The attendees actually need to be taught how to sing along.

Anyway, after this disaster it was time for the movie. The quality of the movie was extremely good, so good that I could only assume that this wasn't an actual film at all - it was a "computerized print" projected against the screen. Okay, so we don't get to watch the reel change cues in the upper right corner. Big deal. The movie was crystal clear and you could see so much detail that you'd never see if you just watched Casablanca on television. Humphrey Bogart is one of those actors that they said dominates the big screen...and for once, the screen was as big as Bogart was in Hollywood.

I have to tell you - if you get any chance in your life to watch a great black-and-white movie full screen, you must take it. It is an incredible experience, which puts even HDTV to shame. I wish I could write more about the Art Deco style of the theatre, but unfortunately I forgot my camera. I can only write that the theatre experience is authentic, at least in architecture. This is just what a small town, high-falutin, art deco single screen theatre would have looked like. But instead of rotting curtains and the upholstery falling out of the seats, everything is in tip-top shape.

Ruth and I want to go again, but the only question is "when"? We're thinking about seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Halloween Weekend. The problem is that we're old farts now. When you're young, it's much more fun to stay out all night, and sleep is something you just have to put up with. As you get older, and sleep becomes lighter and lighter, you come to treasure a good sleep. I just don't know if I've got it in me to stay up until 2 am with a bunch of teenagers.

Maybe the problem with my life is that I belonged in Bogie's era, and not in Rocky's.

(I was toying with providing a review of Casablanca. The problem is that Casablanca is almost told in another language, despite the fact that it is an English-language film. If you weren't an American citizen in 1942, you wouldn't have understood it. And it wouldn't be understood today. "Everyone coming together, and making a real sacrifice for the country? For an ideal?" That wouldn't play on either side of the aisle.)

Outsourced

Today, my wife was told, "Oh, by the way, we're outsourcing your job in two months to Schaumburg, Illinois. If you want the job there, you'll have to re-apply for it."

What the f--k?

To say my wife is distraught is an understatement. No specific time frame given. Just, "oh, we'll move your job at some point in the future, with just enough time to fill you with dread and uncertainty". It gives you f--k-all time to prepare for that, and it throws all of our plans into a trashcan. Thanks for nothing, Unnamed Idiot Company. (Oh, the stories my wife could tell about trying to deal with these legacy processes!)

Of course, Friday is always the day they tell you this stuff. They figure they can get four productive units out of you the rest of the week, and if hearing the news curtails your mood severely, well, it's the weekend anyway. And of course, they f--k that up, too because now my wife has no incentive to provide anything beyond the bounds of the most minimal of competencies for the remaining tenure of her employment. As for giving notice when she finds a new job, well, sucks to be you, Former Employer.

I have been thinking about the whole world of employment recently. Note that I said "employment" and not "work".

employment: the condition of a contract - implied or written - wherein labor is theoretically exchanged for wages, with the hours or tenure of the labor understood by both parties. This differs from a job, wherein the contract is one which is legally recognized and which offers protections to both sides.

work: the condition of implying effort - physical or mental - to a task, either self-determined or determined by others.

There is no correlation between a job and work. There might be one between employment and work, but one of low value.

Back in ye old days, a job was something that was very difficult to lose or to be moved. This was an implicit contract betwen the employer and the employee. "If you do the things I ask you to, and I'm satisfied with them at a minimal level, I will keep you here as long as you want to be here." It was probably the closest thing to what the Brits call "the Dole" that a capitalist society would ever get; almost guaranteed employment. For employees to labor for thirty, forty or even fifty years at the same company was not uncommon.

Enter the 80s. (Really, if you think of it, probably the 70s.) I don't know the exact reasons for it, but there was a seismic shift in how employees were treated. Now, they were to be treated like disposable commodities, downsized or rightsized or otherwise euphemistically fired, shifted, or outsourced. It took about 20 years for the employees to catch up and treat employment not as a possible lifetime contract, but a contract of convenience, one to be disposed of whenever one felt that there was a better opportunity somewhere else. Of course, this merely gave the employers the justification to downgrade the status of the "ungrateful" employees even more.

As I believe, "Office Space is a documentary, but Mike Judge never intended it to be." The solution for his main character was to become a contract employee, building houses for his neighbor. I wonder how that's working out for him with the housing crisis.

I've never been great at offering condolences. Even offering sympathy, I find it hard to think of things to say. What I'd really want to do is punch the guy in the nutsack who called my wife to tell her this, but it wouldn't do to have both of us potentially unemployed.

It's The Thought That Counts

* Today I received a birthday card from my company. Which was really nice, except for the fact that it was almost two weeks later. Oh well. At least I got a party four days after my birthday - the party was combined with that of another employee. Perhaps birthdays should simply become floating holidays. "I was born Octoberish."

* Incidentally, I'll be going on a cruise in early November. November 2nd is Election Day and I'll be leaving that same week. Which means I get to avoid the wailing and the gnashing of teeth when the Democrats take a hit in the midterms, as well as avoid one week of the mindless news cycle. Truly, this was a fortuituous trip. Furthermore, if one was really depressed about the elections - which I am damned well not - one could just get off the boat at a foreign shore and not get back on again.

* Ruth has volunteered - or is preparing to volunteer - to cook dinner for her best friend and our pseudo-goddaughter that live one state away. (Three people would have to die for such an outcome. Since the girl in question just hit double-digits, not very likely.) It's a very nice gesture, at the least, and guarantees that four people get a decent meal.

* Recently, we received some gifts in the mail from a married couple whom we hosted for a weekend visit. (Before our cruise departs, we go to Florida and attend their wedding.) There were some cute Halloween-themed mugs, coffee and cocoa, and...pumpkin-flavored gummi bears. Ruth thought that the bears tasted okay but she thought the texture of the candy was terrible. I had trouble with the whole concept.

* It appears that Malcolm, our black cat, likes fruit. Mangoes. Peaches. Grapes. Applesauce. Obviously, he can't eat human proportions - two grapes is a lot for him. I suspect that he's been leaving us a lot of "gifts" as a result - that's like high-fiber for a cat.

* The Chilean miners were rescued recently. I haven't paid much attention to the rescue porn that passes for news, as the miners seemed to be in fairly good shape despite the fact that they were several hundreds of feet underground. I'm glad that they got out - it much have sucked to be down there - but they weren't exactly starving, just horribly lonely and miserable. If this accident had happened in Appalachia, I suspected that the mine owners would have blasted the passage underground shut and told the government, "Miners? Who told you there were miners down there?"

* Work is holding a costume party on October 29th. I hate these bursts of planned gaiety - I think it's the curmudgeon in me. On the other hand, work is offering a chance on that same night to see the Atlanta Thrashers play the Buffalo Sabres at just $10. I thought that $10 was a bit much to ask (!) but Ruth and I have decided to go to "Blueland" as they call it. We'll let you know how it turns out.

Call IT for Assistance

I shall explain an IT situation at work which will be amusing only to those who have experienced similar situations, or perphaps to anyone working in IT.

Every three months, my department runs a process which we have been running for years. However, there was a key component to that process which was provided by a specific member of IT. The process was automated, but this specific member - with a lot of seniority - adjusted the output of that process to fit our specific needs. When this process was created in 2007, IT asked our department to verify the output. Unfortunately, since verifying the output would require obtaining historical information that was just about impossible to obtain, everyone sort of looked the other way, IT kept complaining about our department not verifying the process, and we used whatever data the IT department supplied.

Then...that person quit. And the secrets of how that process was performed walked out the door with her. We have the query she ran, but we know nothing about what she did to the output to bring it to its final form.

Therefore, for almost six months now, we have not had this critical information. We have completed information up to March 2010. June 2010 came, and went. Still no IT support. We finally got some IT support last month, they managed to run the existing query for us - which provided incomplete information - and then...we fell off their radar. Now it's coming up past September 2010 and...still no data.

I have no authority to compel IT to give me what I want. Neither, I suspect, does my boss. So here is how it will go down.

1) My boss asks me to complain to IT. I complain to IT.
2) IT does nothing.
3) After 1) and 2) cycle for a while, and after we need to supply this information outside of the company, my boss kicks it upstairs to his boss - which is one of the four men in the company who are the bosses.
4) His boss assigns the IT shakedown to his partner in the Gang of Four, who I suspect is the designated nutcracker.
5) The nutcraker goes over and shakes down IT, the way the Mafia shakes down a storeowner.
6) IT devotes emergency resources to the problem. The result is a half-assed result that is very different from what we needed, but which we're forced to use in the end.

Currently, this is how our IT department works. "Busy" does not even remotely describe IT. IT's responsibility is not to information technology, it seems, but crisis management as IT is called upon to use its magic and put out a never-ending series of conflagrations as more and more of the company's business goes through IT.

The reason IT can't put out my small bonfire is because right now they are dealing with a massive ten-alarm bring-down-the-thunder conflagration which threatens to turn our business into ashes and will make weeping widows and distraught children. Yes, it is extremely hot where I'm sitting but trust me - the asbestos-clad forces of IT have seen much, much hotter things. "I can't deal with your piddly bonfire now - I'm up to my ass in fire hoses."

From my understanding of business - this will get much worse in the coming decades. With automation and artificial intelligence taking a greater and greater role, most functions of business will either be supplemented by computer technology...or replaced by it. (Read "Data Dump", on this website.) More and more jobs will become IT jobs. More and more of the business of a company will be influenced by something that happens in IT.

This will require an expansion of IT at some level. Maybe not at the data entry level or programming level - those levels are being outsourced - but at least an expansion at the watchful eyes level. At the "take the requests from the angry executives/workers/customers" level. At the input and output levels. Jobs might end up shrinking across the board, but IT's share of the remaining jobs that humans can still do will increase more and more over time.

I remember reading something said about computer programmers, namely that an good programmer is worth 10 average ones...and an excellent programmer is worth 10 good ones. My hope is that somewhere on site we have a good programmer who can solve our conundrum. Honestly, I'd be happy with an average programmer devoting his or her time to my bonfire, or even a poor one.

(* * *)

My mailing pledge to you:

a) If I ever send you an e-mail, the e-mail will have a subject header, one which is in some way relevant to the content of the body of the e-mail. It will not be "[No Subject]" but instead something like "Where's that library book you borrowed from me, you rat bastard?"

b) There will be more than a simple mysterious link as the body of the e-mail. The only exception to this rule will be in cases where I've actually exchanged e-mail with you and the body of the last e-mail message contains something like, "I'll send you a link in a follow-up e-mail, but I'm rushed for time so I might just send the link instead." Even then, it would be rare that I would send a link without any accompanying text.

c) If there is text in the mail, the text shall use proper grammar and capitalization, and it will eschew loose slang. You will not read anything like "hey guys :) check thizz out" but rather, "Here's an interesting link on the relationship between murder and bullying - I picked up this link at Fark.com and it's worth looking at." (This is merely a sample, as I would not repost any of fark.com's links.)

d) If the text uses proper grammar and capitalization, it will not read like a Markov Chain.

The above was inspired by three people I know whose e-mail accounts have been taken over by spammers. Cutting too close to home. I might end up dropping yahoo.com as a reachable e-mail address.

(* * *)

So I’m in the car and I’m in my new pants, getting ready to go to work, pulled up to the traffic light that’s just off the mall. And then I look down and notice….

…I can see my underwear. Not just the outline, but the white underneath. The pants are see-through. Ruth says that this is called the "pantyhose/slip moment." And even though I intend to wear these pants because they're so damned comfortable, work’s not the best place for that. So I turn around, go back, put on a pair of new jeans and I’m in the office at 9:15 am.

About 10:30 am, I feel something on the back of my leg. I forgot to take the sticky tag off. Good thing I was seated most of the day and no one noticed it.

Ate lunch. Some pizza sauce got on my white Land’s End shirt. Agh. Ever have that kind of day?

Today's Blurbs

* Ruth has bought our tickets to see Casablanca in an actual theatre.

* She also bought me two bow ties. Not clip-ons. Actual ties. I'm sure there's a YouTube clip somewhere with instructions.

* The Nanny: It's good as light-weight sitcoms go: occasionally funny, rarely insulting and essentially harmless.

Where Jamie Oliver Failed

I can't remember that name of that show with British chef Jamie Oliver coming to some sad town in Appalachia - in West Virginia, I believe - with the extraordinarily difficult goal of getting the horribly unhealthy people there to "eat healthy", whatever that means as of October 2010. They don't seem to show the program anywhere on American TV right now; I saw a few episodes, lost track of it, and have never watched it since.

Oliver faced multiple pressures. One was the assembly-line nature of food and the natives' lack of free time to prepare healthy foods or the knowledge of how to prepare it. Another problem was the institutional pressure against "outsiders", a common one in Appalachia where I grew up. Oliver raised the ire of a conservative radio host who was unhappy that some furriner (probably a liberal to boot!) was coming in and slagging this wonderful slice of Middle America - God-fearin', gay-bashin', gun-lovin' etc. etc. etc.

There was an interesting segment - now highlighted on Metafilter - where Oliver wanted to wean the elementary school kids off chicken nuggets (like, say, the McDonald's McNugget). This was his plan. He would actually make a chicken nugget out of the various spare parts of the chicken used to make the nugget, parts so odious and disgusting that you don't even want to be in the same room with them under the best of circumstances. After kids saw how the nuggets were made - and had the choice of eating healthier and better fare - surely, the kids would choose the better food over the nuggets? Am I right?

Wrong. When Oliver asked for a show of hands, the overwhelming majority of kids picked the chicken nuggets. Maybe one young contrarian chose Oliver's fare, the rest wanted the nuggets.

So why did Oliver fail? He failed for lots of reasons. The first was that to the kids, chicken nuggets tasted better than what Oliver was offering. When people decide what to eat, there are only a few who decide, "okay, I'll eat that because it's healthy". Most people choose to eat what they eat because it tasted good. To the kids, the chicken nuggets tasted good and the taste issue trumped all other issues.

"But CINCGREEN!" you cry. "Chicken nuggets don't taste better! They taste like shite!" Well, maybe to you but not to the kids - and how are you going to tell someone that X tastes better than Y when they know otherwise? "Who are you going to believe, little girl, me or your own taste buds?"

Yes, most of the "taste" of chicken nuggets comes from meat with liberal applications of fat and salt. But Oliver failed to realize that this was the traditional diet of Applachia, heavily processed, fatty salty food. It was the only food the kids really knew. They had become attenuated to it, they were used to it. They were definitely not used to his healthy alternative, and for most people, taste is a matter of teaching. If you give a kid cinnamon with every meal, he's going to want the taste of cinnamon with his meals when he's a teen. He was fighting eight years of taste memory, if such a thing exists.

Furthermore, he thought that the gross factor would be enough to turn the tide. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. Frankly, many foods are made in a disgusting way, cutting the meat off of some poor animal. Even vegetables grow in muck and shit. Life is disgusting. The only way you can avoid that in food is if you eat rock. My wife often says to me, "I'm so hungry I'd eat a rat's asshole if you put the right kind of sauce on it." And you know what? I've started to say it, too. Because it's true. I know what's in hot dogs; I ain't stopped eating them.

The final way Oliver failed is that he naively assumed the following:

My opponent has belief X.
I present my opponent with new information which clearly refutes X and supports my belief, Y.
My opponent, therefore, will switch his belief from X to Y when presented with the new information.

This is not only not true, it is only rarely true in the best of circumstances. It's only true if the opponent is already inclined to believe Y, or if the world makes a lot more sense if one believes Y instead of X. The belief will switch only under those two circumstances. As they say

A man convinced against his will/is of the same opinion, still.

Think of religious conversions, for example. How do you convince an atheist or a Muslim or a Christian to become Mormon (*)? Either the prospective convert is already inclined to go with the argument - his life is miserable and Mormonism is a great life preserver - or the person is rationally convinced that everything in his common experience makes much, more sense under Mormonism than it does under any other belief system.

In the end, the kids went with what they knew. They weren't unhappy with the food they had been previously eating. And, realizing the amount of trouble they'd have to go to switch over - even if they liked Oliver's new fare or had time to get used to it - it simply made little sense to switch. Health issues can't play into it because nine-year olds think they're immortal.

The information that Oliver presented wasn't an ultimate weapon. On the contrary, it was a man bringing a pen-knife to a bear fight. Either the bear has to be sick - or suicidal - for the man with the little knife to win it.

____

(*) The argument is still out as to whether Mormonism is a subset of Christianity, or is so distinct that it should be called an entirely separate religion. Islam has Jesus, too, but Muslims generally aren't considered Christians.

The Politics of Cat Football

Things that I have to know for work:

* That Georgia defeated Tennessee 41-17 in football. I should know three things beyond the score. Let's see:

** Georgia is 2-4 and 1-3 in the SEC.
** They play Vanderbilt next
** Quarterback Aaron Murray had a good game: 2 TD passes, 17-for-25 passing, and a touchdown run.

* That Georgia Tech defeated Virginia 33-21.

** Georgia Tech is 4-2 and 3-1 in the ACC. Easy to remember. Turn the Georgia numbers around and you get Tech's numbers.
** They play Middle Tennessee next
** RB Anthony Allen: 195 yards, 3 TD runs.

* Georgia State is 4-2. I don't need to know any more than that.

So what does this have to do with work? Well, for one, it allows me to have a conversation with one of my cubicle-mates who follows Georgia football. It allows me to have something to talk about with the other jockish guys. I really don't give a damn about college football one way or another - it's the same to me if Georgia is 6-0 or 0-6, but to thousands of people in the state it's a freaking crisis or a cause for celebration.

* The Simpsons had a great line in this week's episode. Lisa is feeling down because Springfield Elementary's only Yale graduate - and only Ivy League University graduate (what, Ralph Wiggum couldn't get into Cornell?) - has criticised Lisa's list of extracurricular activities which is clearly not extensive enough for admission to a school like Yale.

Lisa, seeing her chances at an elite education disappearing, is consoled by her mother who believes that Lisa can go to McGill University - "the Harvard of Canada". Lisa answers with something I'll call "Lisa's Law".

Lisa's Law: "Anything that's the 'something of something' isn't the anything of anything."

* The ASPCA's commericals are horribly ineffective. The idea is that they'll guilt-trip you into contributing. There is nothing wrong with guilt-tripping people into giving to an organization - it's a great approach to any charitable commercial.

The problem is that the entire commerical is sad looking dogs and cats in cages. It's too sad - it's so unnerving and horrifying that people change the channel the very second they figure out what the commercial's about...and no one ever gets to the message at the end. Sad dog + Enya = channel change.

* Today's Cat Evil: we put out some frozen chicken to thaw before dinner. Ruth goes out shopping. I go out for a 40-minute walk. I come back and Malcolm and Eartha are eating the frozen chicken!

You can't turn your back for a second before the cats have your food. The cats slept most of these evening. No wonder. All that protein.

* There's a gubernatorial election in the state of Georgia this year. Two guys, both good old boys (or at least, they can talk the lingo), both running the same commercial about two old goobers in Georgia ruminating about...

"Did you hear what Candidate X said about Y?"
"Really? That ain't Georgia home spun wisdom!"

This makes me glad that most of the stuff we watch is recorded, and I can speed past this crap. After this, the state goes back to sleep for two years.

* Political thought exercise: stolen from another blog.

There's an election of some sort. A voter has four options: vote for D, vote for R, vote for I, or don't vote all. Assume that voting for I and not voting at all have equivalent effect, i. e. I is the kind of party that no one votes for.

Furthermore, assume that D is always a better choice than R. (Or, likewise, R is always a better choice than D.) The inequality sign has no bar underneath.

Questions: If D is always better than R, how bad does D have to get before you won't vote for D?

* Planning to see Casablanca on the big screen sometime this Friday. Will write about that later.

More Drabble

Since I got nothing, I'm going to puke up something that I read somewhere else. I don't know to whom it should be attributed - for all I know, I might have blended together other sources. This is the fate of building ideas. There are few original ideas; most are stolen from somewhere else.

The idea was based on which message boards are more vulnerable to trolling - or, if not trolling, to having conversation generally derailed. The agreement was that the vulnerability was based on three ideas:

1. Ease of entry: if it's easy to join a message board or online community, it's easy to troll it - trolling, in effect, becomes cost-free. For example, my wife belongs to Metafilter, and you can't post on Metafilter unless you're willing to pay $5 for a membership. The five dollar cost is so low that just about anyone could pay it, but high enough to repel people who want to make hit-and-run posts. Likewise, if you have to fill out some sort of application to join, or if you have to be approved to join, or whatever. It's just a simple law - the harder it is to join the board, the more resistant it will be. Trolls are much like lazy theives - if there's anyone watching, they move on.

2. Amount of moderation: There are various levels of moderation, from Moderation What Moderation? to Fascist Groupthink. Most boards seek some sort of golden middle amount, based on two general rules:

a. Everyone has the right to be heard, and
b. No one has the right to derail a thread - when you've had your say, shut up.

Both extremes are bad - if the mods are wishy-washy, the trolls drive everyone out. If the mods are fascist bully-boys, the mods drive everyone out. This is a sort of high-intensity version of #1.

3. Anonymity: The Penny Arcade Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was first written in 2004.



On the other hand, if you're required to post in your real name, or if you have to fill out some identification that specifically indicates who you are - even if the admins are the only ones who know about it - the chain is broken. It's hard to say nasty crap when a potential employer might read your mean-spirited rant five years later.

(* * *)

Okay. We have an interesting theory. But here's the crux of the nub: let's assume that these places exist that either have a) barriers to entry, b) good moderation, or c) a lack of anonymity. They are relatively free of trolls. But the big question is do these places have the kind of smart, intelligent conversation we've been hoping for since Day One of the internet?

The answer is "not always". For each of the above, I can give an example. Metafilter has some useful comments, but it also has really stupid ones as well, and most Metafilter comments are contests along the lines of "who can be the snarkiest?" As for b) we've all seen PPMB and know well of its excesses. Friendly, yes? Intelligent? Not always. I know about The Well, which exemplifies c) above. I've not read it, but someone I've talked to who was once (?) a member said that the conversation was ofttimes no better than that on a message board where everyone used anonymous handles.

Getting rid of the trolls is great, but it won't make your message board smarter. After all, you can bring peace to a rowdy town but there are a lot of quiet, peaceful places in America - and some are so dull as to be barely worth living in. There is, however, a lot to be said for not getting shot.

(* * *)

Some other useful social laws:

Poe's Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

Poe's Corollary: It is impossible for an act of Fundamentalism to be made that someone won't mistake for a parody.

Poe's Paradox: In any fundamentalist group where Poe's Law applies, a paradox exists where any new person (or idea) sufficiently fundamentalist to be accepted by the group is likely to be so ridiculous that they risk being rejected as a parodist (or parody).

Bechdel Test: In order for a movie to pass the test it has to have,

a) two women, who
b) have a conversation with each other, a conversation which is not about
c) men.

Bechdel's Measure: d) the women actually have to have names.

Campbell's Law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Pareto Principle: Roughly 80 percent of the effects come fro 20 percent of the causes.

Postel's Law: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you allow.

Doctor Who: The Aztecs

Since I'm enjoying the Doctor Who that I've watched over the most recent season, I decided that I would try to watch some of the earliest episodes. As it turns out, I managed to find a website (or websites) that have stored the complete Season One of Doctor Who. This is the 1963-64 season, with William Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford.

As of now, I'm 2/3 of the way through. Last night I finished "The Aztecs"; I'll need to get through twelve 25-minuteish episodes of "The Sensorites" and "The Reign of Terror" and I'll have a complete season of Doctor Who under my belt. "The Aztecs" exists in four black-and-white episodes and if you watch them back to back you can probably finish in an hour and thirty minutes.

The ride has been slightly bumpy. One problem with the Doctor Who of the 1960s is that the BBC did not have a policy of archiving all of its broadcasted material. The sad result is that Doctor Who episodes of the 1960s were treated the way a video cassette was treated in the 1980s - if you ran out of space and didn't have another cassette you just shoved the cassette back in the machine and taped over what you had previously recorded. There are several episodes of Doctor Who which are "lost episodes" - although the hope still remains that some of these episodes can be recovered. Some were recovered when it was learned that the BBC sent an episode overseas for broadcast and the episodes were relocated in the vaults of some other country's television archives. In all cases, devoted science fiction fans would record the episodes on their tape recorders - a very primitive way of saving the episodes, but the audio exists or has been recovered for every single episode.

For episodes whose video was not recovered, a handful of promotional clips might survive. For episodes that don't even have that much, some episodes had a lot of promotional photos taken. I also suspect that these photos exist for continuity reasons - if a glass is on the right side of the table in one scene, it should not move to the left side of the table during the next day's shooting. Photos help keep track of what's going on.

Luckily for Season One only one sequence of episodes is lost: "Marco Polo". The seven episodes that comprise "Marco Polo" are all missing. However, there were a crapload of photographs taken and I watched these episodes in a recreated form with audio backing. It was like watching one of those old slide shows for those old enough to remember the classroom experience of the 1970s.

In order to set up "The Aztecs" I should explain Doctor Who for those unfamiliar with it. In the first season, a pair of schoolteachers - Ian and Barbara - find themselves trapped in a time-traveling device piloted by a crotchety old man known as The Doctor and his granddaughter Susan. The device can not only travel through time, but through space as well, allowing a variety of adventures.

Here's a thought exercise: suppose it's 1963 and you're writing a first season episode of Doctor Who. The first question that would come to my mind would be "if the travelers get in trouble, why don't they just jump in their magic time machine and fly away?" All episodes would naturally fall into two categories:

a) they would fly away, but they can't get to the machine (or it doesn't work)
b) they could fly away, but they don't want to fail at our objective and flying away would be an admission of defeat.

It seems that just about every Season One writer jumped at "a" above as a tension-building device.

"One Hundred Thousand Years B. C. ?" Can't get to the ship. Cavemen.
"The Daleks": Ship's broken.
"Inside the Spaceship": Takes place inside the ship. Ship's sort of broken, anyway.
"Marco Polo": Can't get to the ship. Marco Polo.
"The Keys of Marinus": Can't get to the ship. Force field.

After "The Keys of Marinus" I would have never left the ship. Normally, one would assume "well, there must have been some cases where they left the ship, fooled around somewhere, and nothing bad happened" but the episodes are put together in a way that implies that each episode directly follows the preceding one - an amazing string of bad luck for the TARDIS inhabitants.

There might have been a break between "The Keys of Marinus" and "The Aztecs" which convinced the crew that, "no, if I leave the ship I won't be attacked by some interplanetary monster". Bad bet. As "The Aztecs" starts the TARDIS materializes in an Aztec tomb which contains a skeleton dressed up like Lady Gaga. Barbara helps herself to a bracelet and the crew decide to explore the tomb. They find a secret trigger which pivots one of the tomb walls out, and go foolishly exploring beyond the tomb as the triggered wall does not return to its former position right away. Unfortunately, the wall closes back and the TARDIS is now trapped behind several inches of stone with the crew on the opposite side of the wall.

The Aztec priests then arrive to figure out what's all the noise. When they notice Barbara's bracelet, they assume that she is the reincarnation of Yetaxa, the high priest buried in the tomb and begin to treat her with God-like honors. In order to fete her, they invite her to an Aztec ritual sacrifice. Barbara, a history teacher, specialized in Aztec history and has always believed that if ritual sacrifice wasn't a part of Aztec belief then the Spanish invaders might have let up a little on the Aztecs. She therefore calls a halt to the sacrifice - which upsets the man being sacrificed as to be a sacrifice was one of the highest honors an Aztec could earn, and he hurls himself from the pyramid.

Barbara's desire to end ritual sacrifice throws Aztec society into a tizzy. (There's a famous speech by the Doctor, who warns Barbara that she cannot change history - "not one word!") The chief sacrificer believes she's a false god almost immediately, but the Head Smart Guy still thinks that she's a god - but is somewhat confused.

The tension comes from the TARDIS crew having to keep these pretense up while trying to find a way to get back to their ship - they can't ask the Aztecs to do it because a) knowledge to the entry is lost, and b) wouldn't Yetaxa already know the way to get in to his/her own tomb? In the meantime, the chief sacrificer has a strong motive to prove that Barbara is a false god. It then becomes half-race, half-conspiracy episode as the crew hopes to find a way back inside the temple and locate their trapped TARDIS before things blow up in their faces.

I learned a few interesting facts about the episode. The author of the episode had studied Aztec life and culture before writing the script, having lived in Mexico. One problem with the portrayal of the Aztecs/Mayans/Incas is that since people write TV/movie scripts without caring about the particulars of a culture, all three cultures are sometimes mashed together, an "Indiana Jones" version of Central/South American history. Many details are mentioned - particularly regarding the intricacies of Aztec mythology - that give the script authority. For the most part, the writer doesn't mix in any detail more properly associated with either the Mayans or the Incas.

The costumes are surprisingly good - I can only dream of how they must have looked in full color. This is typical of Season One Doctor Who, where it appears that they spent a lot more on the budget than late 1980s-Doctor Who, a victim of the rubber mask syndrome well known in science fiction. As I watched the episode, the costuming was almost movie quality, and the sets looked pretty realistic for the 1960s. Some fans thought that the Aztecs were covered up because prudes at the BBC demanded that the Aztecs wear more clothing - but apparently, it can get cold in Mexico and the Aztecs did not dress like Tarzan when not wearing their elaborate headdresses and ceremonial gear.

It's not merely noteworthy that, "oh, they spent more per episode on Doctor Who in its first season". The scripts of Season One were high quality, and "The Aztecs" is no exception. Doctor Who has been on television in one form or another for at least 30 years, but no one really thinks about why the show has lasted so long. A lot of Doctor Who from the 1980s and beyond is negligible, and even some of the Tenth Doctor episodes are a little ridiculous. Clearly, in order for the show to have lasted for so long it had to have a solid foundation. Episodes like "The Aztecs" show that the present writers of Doctor Who clearly stand on the shoulders of giants.

Think about Star Trek, the very example of a successful series. (*) Most of Star Trek's tropes are now laugh-worthy, but you have to remember exactly how ground breaking that Star Trek really was, a dramatic science-fiction series that at least tried (not always successfully) to ground their episodes in hard science. The original series was only on television for three years, and yet the quality of the writing over those three years was generally good enough to spark four sequels, several full-fledged movies and a reboot attempt. I suspect that most of Doctor Who's success depends on its first season. The Daleks - even though they're very different from what a modern Who fan would think of as Daleks - were so popular as bad guys that they created a sort of Dalekmania in the UK. And "The Daleks", in my opinion, is one of their weaker serials!

All of the other serials in Season One have been great so far. Even "The Keys of Marinus" and "Inside the Spaceship" - pretty much written as throwaways - are exciting, interesting, and well-acted. William Hartnell is great as the grouchy and mysterious First Doctor. I'm surprised at how great Carole Ann Ford, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell were. During Season One, the acting is clearly that of an ensemble cast - with the slight exception of Carole Ann Ford, each actor is given interesting things to do and an interesting piece of the script. (As opposed to later incarnations, where they was one Doctor - clearly the star - and one second banana whose only job was to get tied up or end up in peril.) The same was true in Star Trek, with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and (to a lesser degree) DeForest Kelley carrying significant shares of the load.

I've got about twelve episodes more to go. I've always felt a little inferior to Doctor Who fans who have seen more episodes than I have, even if they episodes they've seen are all "New Who" episodes that are the 21st-century incarnation of the Snogging Doctor. But now, I can smile and say, "Oh really? Well, I was there when it all began...."

____

(*) Before 1980, "successful series" mean "one whose acting or writing quality stands the test of time". After 1980 it means "one where we can make a shitload of merchandising money". Star Trek has been very successful in both cases.

Too Late

I have an idea for a post, but I'm too tired to type it. Expect some drabble in the morning.

Gleaming the Cube

Dull work anecdote. You can skip this one.

* About a couple of weeks ago, there was a guy who was fired at work. He was fired right in front of me. Everyone in the accounting department disappeared, except for me (I'm not in the accounting department, but I used to sit there) and this guy. I'm paying attention to my own crap, and I see the guy talking to someone in HR.

I then realize that this guy is being handed his papers. So I decide to leave so that there's one less person watching his most embarrassing moment. I also wonder what the hell kind of circumstance could lead to someone in the morning being fired without being given notice.

...

Today, I learned two interesting pieces of back story, at least to me.

As it turns out, they hired someone to replace the guy who was fired. I learned today that he was only on the job for one week. And, then...he quit.

Why? It seems that he had interviewed for a lot of places - and then, after accepting the job where I work, another place at which he had interviewed got around to offering him a position - a better one. So he dumped my workplace like a hot potato.

Very uncool. But in some circles, it would be considered very cool. He showed as much loyalty to a company that the company showed to the guy he replaced.

The other part of the story: remember the guy that got fired? Well, as it turns out, he's going to the MBA program of a local university. Remember the guy that replaced him and then left after a week? That guy's wife goes to the same MBA program.

As it turns out, the two know each other. She was telling Fired Guy that her husband - Replacement Guy - was interviewing at Fired Guy's company. This was two weeks before Fired Guy was actually fired. Furthermore, Replacement Guy's wife was telling Soon-To-Be-Fired Guy all about this new position that her husband was interviewing for. As Soon-To-Be-Fired Guy listened, he was telling himself "wow...that sounds just like my job...."

Wondercraft

The great thing about Twitter is that it is limited to 140 character messages. Sometimes, you don't have 140 characters going through your mind.

I finished that awfully long HHoF story. 82 KB.

That's about all that's going on. Sometimes, the font of knowledge has its faucets turned off. The only thing going through my mind right now is tumbleweeds.

E. A., thanks for the offer to watch the cats. Trust me, in November we shall call upon your resources.

Fatigue

My apologies for not updating the blog yesterday. Yes, my string of one-post-a-days has come to an end. Two days ago - Saturday - we drove about 300 miles to my mother's house, and on the exact same day drove 300 miles back, so that the cats would not get lonely. (Or at least, wonder where the foodbringers went?) That's 10 hours in a car, ladies and gentlemen, and the next day neither of us were good for much of anything.

As my pillow hit the bed, I told myself "You know what? I owe a blog post." But I was just too damned tired. I cursed fatigue and went right on to sleep.

The fatigue is not merely a product of the long trip. In my present weight-loss regimen, I've been trying to work out about five days a week or so. One of the devices I use is a treadmill at work. This treadmill has an aerobic setting where the goal is to get one's heart rate up to 140 beats per minute. The first week I worked with the machine, it wasn't a problem - I did this for thirty minutes. The next week, I increased the time to 35 minutes, also with no problem.

However, last week I set the machine at 40 minutes - and could not get my heart rate about 140. The two days I managed to contribute 40 minutes with a (mostly) 140 beat/minute heartbeat left me wiped out for the following days. I only worked out 20 minutes on Wednesday and Thursday, with nothing at all on Friday. I felt like a dead man walking during the latter half of the week.

As for mental fatigue, well, I have HHoF to provide some respite. But not recently. I'm about four or so installments ahead of my beta reader, and I've been working and revising various parts. I have a loose outline with which I work - keeping in mind certain things I'd like to see happen in each chapter. Generally, a chapter takes about 13-20 K as a text file.

The biggest a story has ever been is 39 K. The visit to the Fielding campus for unforced labor was that big. The trip to Atlanta was that big. And now, I have a story that is 74 K. And it is still not finished. What the hell? What am I thinking? The only person who writes stories that long is TAG, and I'm not as good as TAG is. Who is going to sit through 74 K of something?

Spanish women's basketball starts on October 10th. College ball starts in November. It's going to be a busy winter.

By the way, about "True Prep?" I read that - out loud - to Ruth to and from my mother's house. It's about 250 pages, and around 230 of them were read out loud. If you want to know my list of HHoF reference material, that list would include:

The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbaum
True Prep by Lisa Birnbaum
The Debutante's Guide to Life by Cornelia Guest
Class by Paul Fussell
The Prep School Cafe at College Confidential

True Prep is scary, particularly given its list of prep school grads. Did you know Barack Obama and John McCain both went to prep school? You couldn't swing a stick in Washington without knocking someone's class tie off.

There! I think it would be easier to build a prep school from pine and twine and attend it for twelve years than to commit all that to memory. Although, reading me botch it up shall be hilarious to one and all.

Drive, We Said

Drove 300 miles to see my mother.

Then, on the same day, drove 300 miles back.

Tired.

Early Birthday Present

Heading up to see my mother (yes, I have one) tomorrow. Will be reading this to Ruth on the way up and back, and will be committing the contents to memory.