Archive for November, 2013

Workaholicism

Friday, November 22nd, 2013

I told God that I’ve figured out there are two types of “last week before vacation.” The first type is where I’ve made sure that nothing is going on at work, that I have the kind of week where I can sit and twiddle my thumbs.

The other kind is like this week. I end up putting in overtime trying to get everything in place and stable so that I won’t have to spend my vacation doing emergency fixes and maintenance from wherever I happen to be. Sometimes I end up putting in almost as much overtime the week before as I spend on vacation. Of course even that beats the one time I put in sixty hours of work the week while I was on vacation. For problems that weren’t even my fault.

And when I finished telling God this, she smirked. She didn’t just smile, she actually smirked.

Apex Inc.

Friday, November 15th, 2013

It turns out that even God sometimes uses inexact metaphors when trying to make a point. We were talking about things that are wrong with the United States and how they get all intertwined and twisted back on each other.

Some of what’s wrong is that we’ve got people in power who think that everything must be driven by a profit motive, that that’s the only thing that will lead to people doing a good job. God and I freely agreed that central planning only works when the planners are omniscient, but we also recognized that the free market leads to twenty different laundry soaps with little to no difference between them. And thinking that the free market can solve everything leads to absurdities like profit driven medical care.

It was right about then that God came out with his mismatched analogy. He told me that corporations are the apex predators of modern society and that government is supposed to serve as the immune system to protect us from them. But of course I pointed out that immune systems are not what takes down apex predators.

Now that I think about it though, maybe the analogy isn’t so wrong after all. Immune systems are good at taking out things the size of bacteria, not the size of lions and tigers and bears, so maybe that’s why the government has become so poor at reigning in big business. Corporations have been pushed by evolutionary pressure until they’ve grown too big for government to effectively keep them in check. No wonder they want to keep government small.

Ender’s Boycott

Friday, November 8th, 2013

I’m going to explain myself. God says it’s a mistake. He says that no one is asking for an explanation, so why stir up the muck.

Here’s the thing, I saw the movie “Ender’s Game.”

A friend of mine was of the firm opinion that all our decisions are made emotionally and only after the fact do we justify them with logic and reason. I think I’ve done about as well as anyone in making that not be the case, in making the majority of my decisions be reason based more than emotion based, but I think in this case my friend might well have been right. Still, even if I did see the movie mainly because I just wanted to, and I’m not copping to that, maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, I don’t really know, but if I did, just if, I’d still like to explain my choice away, justify it with reason.

And fair warning, this isn’t a carefully laid out case, it’s all kind of fuzzy in my mind and so I’m going to come at it from different directions and try and give you the shape of my understanding more than a listing of reasons.

For those of you that might be sitting there, reading this, and thinking, “why does he need reasons to see a movie?” it’s because of the whole call for a boycott. To sum up quickly: Orson Scott Card wrote the book on which the movie is based, he also has said insane things in the fight against Gay rights and in particular in the fight against Equal Rights for Gays and Lesbians to Marry. And beyond just saying things as an individual citizen, he was on the board of directors of an organization that was near the forefront of the fight against marriage rights. So a lot of people want to see him not get additional money to use in that fight, not get additional attention to use in that fight, and not get any sort of validation that might lend credibility to his views.

And I get all of that. I even kind of agree with most of that.

But I don’t want to shut him down. I want him, well really I want him to come to his senses, to get over whatever programming or fear or whatever it is that’s causing him to not use his considerable intellect to understand that we aren’t the problem, that our right to exist and our right to marry doesn’t have any impact on his life, doesn’t hurt him or impact him in any way that isn’t of his own doing, but, well, barring that, I want him to choose to shut himself down, to at least realize that he’s not doing himself any good and that the tide he is fighting against will come in with or without him. For us, whoever us may be, to shut him down is a form of censorship, and I abhor censorship. And for all of you that say it’s only censorship if the government does it, oh grow up.

Right now the tendency is for people within the queer spectrum to be accorded our rights and for the list of rights that we are accorded to be expanded. More than a dozen states now grant us the right to marry. An ever-increasing list of other countries also grant that right. Ten years ago many activists in the Gay Community told us not to even try to get marriage rights, that it was a step over the line that would cause a backlash and set our fight back. They said we would be in danger of losing rights that we had fought hard for not very long ago. When I was a child, homosexuality was barely mentioned, I don’t remember even hearing of it before I was in high school. When I was a young adult it was an act of bravery to buy the gay newspaper in a bookstore instead of out of a vending machine. People fought for the right to say they were Gay, to make it safe for any of us to say we are Gay.

And that’s part of why I care so very much that people have the right to speak out, to say unpopular things. And yes, even to say things that are wrong and stupid. Because what people believe is wrong and stupid today may turn out to not be so.

I’ve never read Ender’s Game. I had friends, gay friends, recommend it to me, fifteen, twenty years ago. I told them then that I wouldn’t read it because of Orson Scott Card’s published rants against homosexuality. I didn’t begrudge him his right to speak then, when he was much closer to mainstream in his views (it’s not that he’s changed as much as that it is that “mainstream” has changed), but reading a book is one of the closest things we have to a Vulcan Mind Meld. When you read a book, ideas, both explicit and implicit, are passed from the author to the reader. Knowing that my very being was repugnant to Mr. Card, I chose to not put my mind in such close proximity to his. I told my friends then that I would see a movie based on the book, but I wouldn’t read it, but obviously that was before any sort of semi-organized boycott.

There’s also more to it than that, more to seeing the movie but not reading the book. Reading a book, as I said, is like hooking up two brains together and passing information between them. A movie is not like that. A movie is art by committee. The director, and often also the producer, is in charge and puts the clear stamp of their vision on the project, but for all of that, it’s still a group effort. How big a group? Well judging by the ever-lengthening time I spend sitting through credits, a very, very big group. These people are craftsmen but also, many of them are artists in their own right. So there’s a strong argument to be made that it’s not fair to all of those people to boycott the movie because of the views of an artist who is a step removed, albeit one without whom the work would not exist at all despite that level of remove, for his views and actions which are not expressed within the work itself. It’s not an argument that everyone buys, but it carries weight with me. Does it carry that weight just because I wanted to see the movie? I don’t know.

And back to all those people involved in making the movie, with the possible exceptions of hair salons and interior decorating, I think it’s safe to say that no industry has been more supportive of gay rights than the film industry. I think they’ve earned a little slack here. I think they’ve earned the right to not be boycotted by the queer community.

So that’s my thinking, such as it is. Maybe the real reason God didn’t want me to try and explain this is because he knew it would come out an incoherent mess.

The All Saints Party

Friday, November 1st, 2013

So yesterday was Halloween. I asked God if she ever takes on the form of a little kid, dresses up in some costume, and goes out trick or treating. I was hoping she did, because I was wondering what kind of costume she’d choose, and would it look homemade or store bought, things like that.

She said no, she’s always too busy getting ready for All Saints Day. It seems the saints expect her to throw them a party up in Heaven and she’s always busy putting together the last minute details. She also told me that it’s surprising how many saints have dietary restrictions. I mean I kind of expect St. Francis of Assisi to be a vegetarian, but apparently a lot of saints are now claiming gluten allergies.

And then she started to complain about how much beer they drink, but she stopped herself. She said she had only herself to blame for that one. I asked what she meant. She told me that the monks were right, she did invent beer to show us that she loves us and wants us to be happy.