Oh, the Lies We Tell Ourselves

I heard/read not too long ago that if you lay still with your eyes closed for 15 minutes, you will absolutely fall asleep.

What a load of horse shit.

Instead, as the flickering streetlight broke the black monotony of my room, I wondered if we (humans) were really naive enough to think that if/when the eventual goal of science were to be realized--complete understanding of how everything in this universe works--then that will somehow fill the crushing emptiness inside us. As we encounter (or evolve into) intelligences that vastly outstrip our current comprehension, will they have a solution for fulfillment? The silver bullet that ensures a life free from pain? Or do we currently possess that, but are made fools by some mechanism that tricks us into being hollow?
So, yeah. Existentialism and shit. Now, on to the rant.

After scanning the general wonderfulness that is Breaking the Law, I found their article on a dodgeball ban in NH.  For a second there, I forgot I wasn't reading The Onion. I love the reasons behind it--risk of injury, and because it makes kids targets. I just want to say two things about this.

Numero uno- Injury? Really? with the foam-cored, soft-skinned things that pass for dodgeballs, these days?
We used to play it with slightly deflated rubber dealies that would leave the cross-hatched texture imprinted on your face. With bricks inside. On fire. And made of hornets. But in all seriousness, we act like any amount of physical discomfort is injury. Call me an ass, but it builds character, teaches kids that failure has consequences. Whatever you think, I survived--the shortest, scrawniest, most awkwardly bespectacled kid survived dodgeball, red rover, murder ball, and "hit Nate with pebbles" ball. Guess what? I fought back, toughened up, and am no longer a thin-skinned little kid.

"I'm going to crush your childhood!"

Nummer zwei- Do the pointed heads in the NH bureaucracy really think that dodgeball causes bullying? The complaining parent thinks so, but I'm certain that dodgeball is the least of the kids worries. There are hundreds of other, less visible ways kids are cruel to each other. If there were instances where kids were obviously going out of their way to single out one student and render him/her a sobbing heap, it's on the adults to end it. Maybe--stop me if this is too extreme for you--punish the bullies. My father, gym coach since I was a fetus, would find a way to cool the blood-lust fires in the aggressive kid. It's called time out. Even hockey has a "time-out" box where you go when you've been a knob.

We don't need to wrap our kids in bubble wrap and cancel chess club because some guy gloated after beating your precious snowflake.

Get a grip, humanity! End rant.

Honing the Soft Arsenal

So, this semester, which should have been my last, is going as hectically slow as I could have hoped. In fact, I'm actually writing this in my econ class. Yay, fractional reserve banking or whatever.

Anyway, I am taking advanced fiction writing class with Dr. Andrew Plattner. I thought "Oh here is another easy-peasy A." I don't think that anymore. Dr. Plattner has probably helped me hone my craft more than all other people on Earth. I know what I need to work on--information. I tend to leave things blank or at best vague. I rely too much on emotion instead of action. I mean, it makes perfect sense that so-and-so would be struck with grief--his mom just died or whatever. In any case, this class is helping me immensely.

Soon, I will start posting some flash fiction up here pretty regularly. Plattner thinks it will help me with brevity and poignancy. In any case, here is my latest piece of short fiction. I put it up on Scrib.com which is a great site, by the way.

                          Click for the reads!

I Don't Want to Live On This Planet Anymore

So, I have formally begun writing a science fiction book series.

Yes, the geek is strong with this one.

 When I tell people what I'm writing, the reactions are either "Way cool! Dr. Who! Star Trek! Firefly!" and they begin foaming at the mouth with pop-culture inspired suggestions, or in the opposite direction, "Oh. Well, I guess that's cool..." and then they walk away to their group of "cool" friends and make jokes about how I probably sleep with a Yoda plushy and have wet dreams about Deanna Troi. One of those may be true, but whatever.

I would like a reaction in the middle, occasionally. Something like "Oh? Which direction are you going to take it?" It is a genre among many. Like the spy novel, it can have just as many variations in tone/theme/hair color of damsel. There's your "soft" spy novel like a James Bond serial with all it's babes, gadgets, and Aston Martins with rocket launchers, and then there's you're "hard" spy novels--novels like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with a focus on things that could actually happen. No huge, metal-toothed henchmen or giant lasers in space.

This hard/soft separation also happens in sci-fi. Dr. Who, Trek, Firefly- variations on soft. Not much hard sci-fi makes it on TV or into movies because it tends to be depressing and post-apocalyptic or spends so much time screaming that its MacGuffins are based in real science that most people get annoyed unless they're they belong to the small faction who would rather read "How the Modern Laser Pistol Works" versus actually going into strange, new worlds, smooching alien babes, and punching their jealous alien boyfriends in their fleshy protuberances.

Rarely do you get a good blend of such hard logic and soft, actiony fun. I grew up on sci-fi, and can love it either way, but I don't just want to write some slight variation on a formula. Nor do I want to write what amounts to "Normal Life: WhooshLaserKapow Edition."

So, I have my work cut out for me. I already have a good start, I think, but I have a ways to go.

Science fiction will always have a place in my imagination that other genres can't approach. It's the kind of fantastic dreaming that leads people to wonder "Why can't I travel to Jupiter just to see it up close?" Then, years later, they work for NASA and design Voyager. I'm not saying anything I write will inspire future scientists to feats of engineering, but I will be a part of a tradition that does.

My Future Wife Looks Like Scarlett Johanssen

And it's awesome. She will argue against it, but I don't care. They have the same EXACT booty. Prove that I am wrong with science. Do it!

$8.25 An Hour Used To Be Awesome

I used to work for Quiktrip, I loved it. I was 17 when I was hired and 26 when I left.

In high school, I was one of two of my friends who had a job, and thus, money with which to spend ineffectively and on things I didn't really need. I bought a three THOUSAND watt stereo and woofers that I couldn't turn up too loud or the vibrations would make the trunk open instead of fixing the damn trunk and only getting a one thousand watt setup. however, I was young and dime rich and life was good. I find myself missing that right now.

I quit Quiktrip without my two weeks notice because a man in expensive shoes told me that he would pay me much more to not have to clean toilets and tell panhandlers to scram. I was let go because he meant to hire a magician instead of a technical writer.

Put your genitals here!

"You should read more," the dentist offered immediately after firing me for not getting him onto the front page of the WSJ, "that's how writers get good." 
Well, thank you for introducing me to The Legend of Writ, but I've gotten a handle on this newfangled "communication" whatsit. I knew for the entirety of my employment that the dentist's biotech side venture didn't really need a technical writer, but I stayed on, putting together presentations and writing SEO fluff. As it turns out, he didn't want any of it because all four of his writers were supposed to be working our magic and making him famous.   

Just an aside before I go on: if you find yourself thinking "I am a good communicator, but no one around me is a good listener" you probably know nothing about communication. 

He would call his 15 minute stream-of-consciousness styled infodumps "downloads." Each time he downloaded, the writers were supposed to be inspired by it--a fragment of his intellect--and mold it into... I have no clue what he thought we were supposed to utilize from it. God forbid having a question, contacting him was a Sisyphean task. 

I can deal with ridiculous bosses, but to have advice given to me from a dentist (granted he was a decent fellow and an excellent dentist) about a craft in which I am eight years educated is as heinous as... I don't know... let's say a bloody technical writer giving a dentist tips on flossing. 

I only have one regret "working" for Dr. Youmustbejoking. 

Upon being fired, I didn't answer his advice with, 

"go cuddle a table saw."

All Hail Xenu

I just had a bit of an open-eyed visual. Some scientologists might tell me that this is a "whole-track" memory fragment from a long-dead alien. 

Yes, and pineapples make excellent sexual partners.

I have only met one self-proclaimed scientologist, and I could not begin to fathom the levels of deep-seated gullibility that permeated her entire worldview. I mean, if you want to join an enriching, life-changing organization that will occupy years of your life, why not volunteer for the Peace Corps? It's cheaper, more fulfilling for you, beneficial to others, you get to keep your identity, and you don't have to read the shitty sci-fi that L Ron Hubbard pretends to be scripture. 

I earnestly tried to read some of his works just to say that I have some clue as to what is going on with the "church." Honestly, the infamous Battlefield Earth was not too bad despite some things based in science from the silly dimension. Sure, it was flat and firmly rooted in the sort of turn-your-brain-off freneticism akin to the Transformers franchise, but that's fine for pulp sci-fi written by a college dropout. (Believe it or not, I love many "uneducated" authors. Whitman, Melville, and Faulkner never completed university.)

 Dianetics, on the other hand, is pseudo-philosophical pineapple wankery at its weakest. It is at once intentionally dense and vague. Prenatal memories,  reincarnation, and a very (very) loose understanding of Freud's theories are present in the book. I can't tell you much more beyond that--I stopped paying attention after the third syllogistic fallacy ostensibly borrowed from psychoanalysis. For a "religion" that believes psychology kills, their daddy baked a ton of it in there.

In all, Dianetics reads like a middle-school kid wanted to merge philosophy, psychology, technology, and religion into a land of fantasy where he was popular and smart and no one wanted to pour rubber cement down his pants, anymore. It is a very sad, sophomoric attempt at an ideology. Hell, Whitman didn't attend school past age eleven, but his philosophical ideals are immeasurably more valuable and infinitely less convoluted. 

If Hubbard wanted the sort of "spiritual healing technology" to be real, he should have simply developed an electric enema that costs four thousand dollars.

Separation Is Difficult

I love being around my fiancee. Like tons. I think that if I didn't, I'd not have affixed my great grandmother's diamond upon her finger. However, we are both still in school and without steady/assured income (freelancing is not so stable), therefore, we have decided that we need to become a little less "things are crap and I'm going to console myself with your presence," and more "things are crap so lets fix stuff." This isn't an end to our relationship, just a step back to make sure that we're going about things the right way, fixing what we find faulty.

It's in these situations that I'm always going to end up the bad guy. Always. Until I die or invent time travel so I can coach myself when and to what degree I should express an emotion via text message to ensure her that not seeing her for an entire weekend sucks just as much on my end.

If I have to hear the "It just seems like you don't care as much as I do" line of argument again, I might actually start caring less.

I need more self-sufficiency from her. I can't work (whatever amount that might be) under those conditions. If she's out of town with family, I can only imagine her brooding in a corner alone, fuming at her cell phone because "Of course I  miss you" and  "Of course this sucks" have failed to assuage her irrationality. This is the type of stuff we should be working on, but woe unto me if I say that to her.

I know I'm not all the way in the right on this; relationships have their blind spots. All that I want is for her to believe that I can be missing her just as much as she misses me, but not dwell on it so long that neuroses creeps in and makes a permanent residence in your brain. 

I need more of the self-sufficient, confident, gorgeous Katie, and less this: