Cognitive Dissonance and C.S. Lewis' Stable

I think I owe C.S. Lewis an apology.

Okay, that probably needs a little explanation. A while back, I decided to re-read the Narnia series. This would probably have been close to a decade ago, but it was the first time I'd read it as an adult, and I was really hit hard by how didactic and preachy the books were when I was old enough to recognize the Christianity metaphors for what they were. The books weren't all bad, don't get me wrong, but some scenes and a couple of entire books felt a little bit arrogant and off-putting in their defense of religion. (To throw out a minor example first, the ending of 'The Silver Chair' seems to convey the message that it's okay to beat up little kids if you feel like God is telling you it's the right thing to do, because God wouldn't make you want to do bad things. I don't know if that's the best message to send, is all I'm saying.)

In particular, 'The Last Battle' felt really insane and creepy. There was a lot of material in there about how religious tolerance is really just a lie told by Satan to corrupt the faithful (and this felt especially awkward when you consider that Tash drew inspiration about equally from Allah and Satan, and Lewis clearly intended his audience to conflate the two) and the whole thing ends with everyone cheering about the revelation that they all died in a horrific train accident and so did their parents.

...um, you can probably tell that this is going to be a pretty back-handed apology. Not much I can do there.

The bit I want to apologize for, though, is the bit about the dwarves. For those of you who haven't read the book recently (or who have never read the book and are busily looking it up on Wikipedia to see if I made up the bit about everyone being really excited that their parents are dead just like them) there are a group of dwarves who refuse to believe that Aslan's returned...which is theoretically good, because he hasn't and it's all a fraud. But they take it too far, at least in the opinion of Lewis, and decide they're not going to believe in anything anymore. They wind up going to Aslan's country with all of the other characters through a mystic portal in an old stable, but they don't experience it the way everyone else does. To them, it's just the grimy stable that they were locked into. Every bit of evidence they're provided is just another lie to them, because they believe deep down that there is no Aslan and no Heaven Aslan's country to go to.

And while I think that this is a pretty uncharitable view of atheism and shows Lewis in a pretty poor light (have I mentioned this is a back-handed apology yet?) it does strike me as a very useful metaphor for cognitive dissonance in general. Once you allow yourself to believe very strongly in a narrative, it really is very easy to twist and contort the facts to fit that narrative and become imprisoned in it. In reality, you're free--there are blue skies and singing birds all around you, and green grass underneath your feet--but all you can see is the walls you've built for yourself.

For one example out of literally thousands, let's look at Obamacare. By any reasonable standard, it's a success. Healthcare costs are falling, the number of uninsured is at an all time low, people all over the country are getting the lifesaving medical attention they need and the system is paying for itself. But there are a lot of people out there who have invested their emotional well-being into opposing Obamacare based on reasons that are integral to their sense of self more than on facts. When you confront these people with the numbers, they insist that the numbers must be wrong, because Obamacare is a disaster and a failure and we have to repeal it immediately to save the country. When you point out that real people will die if the law is repealed, they insist that you simply can't be right. If you press them with too many truths, they'll preserve their sense of self and their understanding of the way the world is supposed to work by deciding that you're simply not trustworthy. You are consigned to the "them", the shadowy and nefarious group that opposes right-thinking people, and everything you say is discounted as a malicious lie.

Obamacare is only one example. You can probably think of plenty yourself--people who've unfriended you when you started pointing out holes in anti-vaxxer propaganda, people who made the news for calling Sandy Hook Elementary and demanding to speak to people who were killed in the shootings, people currently analogizing themselves to North Korean political prisoners because people were mean to them on the Internet...all of them, in some way, have become prisoners of their narrative. They've closed themselves off from the truth because it conflicts with what they need to believe, and they'd rather believe a terrible lie than live a wonderful truth because they're too scared to give up what defines them. It really is an amazing metaphor, one that serves as a cautionary reminder to open yourself to reality rather than cling to a narrative. It's worth more as a metaphor than I thought it was, and for that, I owe C.S. Lewis an apology for dismissing it unfairly.

Still not buying that "Tashlan" stuff, though.

Sad Puppies and Cargo Cults

I've read a lot of arguments the last few days. I'm pretty sure that anyone who's got more than a few writers on their Twitter feed or Facebook page can say the same thing, thanks to the Sad/Rabid Puppies and their attempt to essentially build their own Hugo Awards with blackjack and hookers. They have made a lot of writers upset, and one thing you can guarantee when you get writers upset is that you're going to get some pretty interesting blog posts out of it.

They've been arguing back in turn, both with their own blog posts and with comments on the posts they disagree with, which has given me a lot of opportunities to see their reasoning in action. And it feels, well...familiar to me. I've seen it with GamerGate, with Duck Dynasty, with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, with the Trayvon Martin shooting...it's a style of argument I'm getting to be pretty familiar with, regardless of the specific cause it's employed in support of. Let's call it "cargo cult reasoning".

First, a bit of background for those of you unfamiliar with the term. During World War II, both the Japanese and the Americans used the Melanesian Islands as a staging ground for their operations. The natives of these islands had never been in contact with any other civilization, and had no experience of modern manufacturing techniques, technology or warfare. Soldiers on both sides attempted to befriend the natives with gifts of food, clothing, medicine and other useful items right up until the end of the war. The natives, with no cultural framework that they could use to understand these events, created a religion around them. (Actually several, but I'm simplifying here for the sake of brevity.) (Yes, I know. Probably not enough.)

The religion, which has come to be known as the "cargo cult", revolved around trying to bring back the gods so that they could dispense their gifts of "cargo" to the natives. They knew that the airplane was a powerful totemic symbol to the gods, that they cleared land for it and watched the skies for its gifts, so they made their own airplanes out of wood and straw. They replicated the form in an effort to gain the power of the symbol, but they never understood what actually made it fly. They cleared airfields to give the cargo planes a place to land, they replicated the wooden crosses that they saw the soldiers pray to in the hopes that the soldiers' gods would hear them...in short, they saw something powerful and attempted to mimic in order to gain its blessings without ever once understanding what they were really looking at.

What does this have to do with the modern day? Well, there are a lot of people out there who are trying to exclude women, minorities, people with different sexual preferences and different sexual identities from what they view as their exclusive purview. Maybe it's TV, maybe it's science-fiction, maybe it's video games or weddings or pizza parlors--there are a lot of different battlegrounds on this particular front. But the fundamental intent, when you break it down, is to keep people who aren't like them from positions of authority or power in various spheres of influence.

Now, their basic argument for this is, "These people aren't like us and having to be around them makes me uncomfortable." But these days, not only is that not a winning argument, it's an instant losing argument. They can't even hint to others that this is the real reason for their behavior (in fact, some of them can't even hint it to themselves) because the vast majority of people no longer feel that this is an acceptable reason to ostracize or oppress people. So they basically have no real arguments that they can use.

And so they respond the same way the cargo cult does. They ape the form of arguments they've seen succeed in the past, without ever really understanding the underlying structure that makes them meaningful. This "cargo cult reasoning" sounds like a line of rational debate--it sounds very similar to the exact line of argument that once worked on them. But the similarity is entirely superficial, and the actual argument, well...it just doesn't fly.

Take "oppression", for example. The cargo cult debaters understand that a majority oppressing a minority is a bad thing, because every time they've tried to argue for legalized discrimination, that argument has been given in opposition. So they look at themselves, and they say, "Well, we're clearly a minority--almost nobody agrees with us. And we're clearly oppressed--there are things that we want to do that we're not being allowed to do. Therefore, we are an oppressed minority!" And so they use that argument whenever anyone tells them that they have to include women and minorities. "You're discriminating against me by forcing me to be inclusive!"

But of course, this willfully misunderstands the meaning of 'force', 'discriminate', 'minority', and 'oppress'. The underlying structure of the argument--that people should not be punished for something beyond their control like their gender, sexual preference or skin color, or for tightly-held and fundamental beliefs like one's religious identifications--is lost in a claim that sounds superficially similar, but that really means that people shouldn't be held responsible for their opinions or actions as long as they're not universally held.

Likewise, cargo cult debaters understand that it can be argued that societies establish codes and taboos and punish those that disagree with them, and that when those codes are unfair it's hard to speak up for fear of upsetting that establishment, and it takes courage and an unwavering belief in the rightness of one's cause to overcome that fear. But they omit a key part of that argument when they use it--"when those codes are unfair". Suddenly, the fewer people that agree with them, the righter they are!

The list can go on virtually forever--co-opting members of a minority to claim that they represent the minority stance (the "some of my best friends are" defense), defending extremist tactics as "fair" by pointing to extremists they disagree with who used them, claiming a "right to free speech" as a right to present their opinions or beliefs entirely unchallenged...but they all have a central commonality to them. All of them attempt to erase context from the debate in order to make their arguments seem like those of the people opposing them, in order to make them appear reasonable to people who aren't paying close attention. They look like arguments everyone supports--for freedom! Against oppression! Pro-equality! Anti-establishment! But they can be easily exposed for the sham they are simply by restoring that context. Ask yourself if it's really likely that these efforts to restore an ethical relationship between game companies and game journalists would never focus on a AAA studio. Ask yourself how 'The Avengers' can be cited as an example of the kind of "populist" movie that couldn't possibly win a Hugo when it did, in fact, win a Hugo.

In short, don't be afraid to get into the airplane and have a look around. Because the arguments that might sound good from a distance probably won't do so well up close.

The Hugo Awards

I've spent a little while wondering exactly what to say about the Hugo Award nominations. Part of me wants to do a savage, scathing, detailed, point-by-point takedown of the utter mendacity, stupidity, hypocrisy and unmitigated gall that it takes to claim that you're doing the right thing by attempting one of the most prestigious awards in your field so that an unrepentant racist, misogynist and general terrible human being stands a good chance of winning...

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like a point-by-point takedown is exactly what the Sad and Rabid Puppies are looking for. More than that, it's what they live for; they want people to engage them and their ideas in an honest, good-faith debate about their intentions and methods and what it all means for the future of science-fiction. Because that accords them a legitimacy that their actions have not earned; more importantly, it bogs their defenders down in a constant and unending treadmill of verifying and fact-checking and debating and refuting denials and proving credibility and apologizing for mistakes and correcting mistakes and re-refuting things that have already been refuted because a new denial has come out and debunking and rebunking and refuting character smears and refuting denials of character smears and and and and and and and and...

And there's no need for that. The Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies openly ginned up a slate of nominees who agreed with them politically, purely to show that the Hugos could be hijacked by a small group of sufficiently dedicated assholes. Everything else about this, from the "it's really all about the stories" to "Scalzi did it first" to "but my wife is black so I can't be racist" to "GamerGate didn't get involved" to "Correia declined his nomination" to "you have to read all our garbage entries before you can vote against them or you're the hypocrite here" to "voting 'No Award' just shows that you're a tool of the Man (the black, lesbian Man)" to "the real victim is us white male science fiction fans who can't get Hugos anymore" to "the rules don't explicitly say you can't do this" to "how DARE you, sir!" to every other defense, obfuscation, dodge, lie, and bad-faith argument they have advanced is all just an attempt to conceal that basic fact.

Nothing they say matters, because none of it is being argued in good faith. Their words are just an attempt to distract you from their actions. That's an insult in and of itself, because when you're talking to one of the most literate and intelligent groups of people in the world about books, the last thing you should be doing is trying to pretend that you don't know what a subtext is and that nobody should read anything into your statements. But the point is, they're never going to stop lying. They're never going to stop arguing. They're always going to try to turn everything into a rhetorical victory for their side, because their viewpoints are slowly receding into the dust of history and all they have left is empty rhetoric. If they lose, they will claim they're being oppressed. If they win, they will claim their ideas have been validated. If the rules change to prevent them from acting in bad faith again, they'll claim that they would have won if things had been "fair" (ie, if they had been able to game the rules sufficiently to win). Nothing you say will ever force the kind of introspection they'd need to undergo to understand why they're terrible people, and everyone else already knows it. So it's not worth talking about.

So don't argue with the Puppies. Just vote "No Award" in the categories they dominated, and leave them right the hell off the ballot. Because Puppies don't understand "No". They understand a newspaper to the nose.

Review: Prudence

New Gail Carriger book new Gail Carriger book new Gail Carriger book WOOOOOO!

So as you may have guessed, I was a bit excited at seeing 'Prudence', the new book (and new series) from Gail Carriger in my local bookstore. (I was even more excited that between the various discounts I got and coupons I had, I paid approximately eight dollars for it. What can I say, I'm thrifty to a fault.) This one jumps ahead some twenty-odd years and follows Rue, Alexia's shapestealing daughter, on her own series of adventures in the steampunk werewolf/vampire-founded British Empire.

And 99% of this is even better than the previous series. For one thing, we get out of Europe and see some of the consequences of Queen Victoria's use of supernaturals to ensure the perpetual dominion of Britain over the world. Rue travels to India, ostensibly in search of a new variety of tea leaf, only to get embroiled in a nasty supernatural war with a whole host of players, and questions that Rue's sheltered life of privilege never prepared her for. I'm not saying that this is all about revolution and a post-colonial examination of the inhumanity of the British Empire using literally inhuman creatures as a metaphor--not yet, at least. It's still the first book. But 'Prudence' takes the bold stand that maybe the British Empire wasn't an unalloyed good for the indigenous peoples of the Imperial territories (SARCASM ALERT!) which is more than the previous series did.

Plus there's some really cool world-building involving other supernatural species (I'd say spoilers, but when a lioness shows up within the first hundred pages, vanishes suddenly, and a mysterious woman walks out of the room it was in, what conclusions do you draw?) and as always, excellent and witty prose. Oh, and there is an adorable kitty and a charming working-class kid named Spoo who should get her own series of books about being a child laborer on a dirigible. These are also great things.

If I had one quibble, it would be that the central romantic relationship between Quesnel (a minor supporting character from the previous series, now all grown up) and Rue feels a bit like it's relying on inertia rather than chemistry--you recognize Character A, you recognize Character B, why not ship them? But the story doesn't sell me on it. Plus, after four solid books of bisexual subtext with Madame Lefoux, I'm ready for Carriger to quit beating around the bush and have an openly bi lead. I'm basically shipping Rukhmet for the rest of the series, is what I'm saying here.

That's just a quibble, though, with what was otherwise an excellent book in what I'm sure is going to be an excellent series. Huzzah for Gail Carriger!

God Dammit.

Just...god dammit.

He was too good to die. He was too goddamned good to suffer and die like this, losing everything that made him a genius bit by bit with still so much to say. He was the best writer I've ever read--and I say this as someone with a classical education, someone who's read Shakespeare and Miller and Brecht and Faulkner and Hemingway and Austen and any number of Great Authors you would care to name. He was that good. He was better. He was the best satirist since Jonathan Swift--and I don't mean "best" in the sense of funniest or wittiest, although he was that too. He was the best because he understood humanity and he understood people, the vast mass of us and the individuals, and his satire illuminated the human condition and made you a better person for reading it.

He taught me an infinite amount about the craft of writing, simply by reading him. Every book was a masterclass on the art of plotting, the art of storytelling. But more than that, he taught me the art of having something to say--his books were driven by passion, by a deep and abiding belief that you could use art to illuminate the injustices of the world, both great and small, and that illuminating them went some small way to curing them. Not enough, never enough--he knew that, which was why he kept writing right up until the end, but it was better than nothing.

His writing may never get the respect it deserves. It's fantasy, and it's funny fantasy at that, and the arbiters of quality have never really been comfortable with the idea of humor being as important as everything else in the human experience. But he deserves all the respect in the world. I never met him, but goddammit, he's the kind of man you have to mourn simply because he was the best ever and we will never see anyone his like again, and to lose him is to see the world diminished. I'm crying right now while I write this and I don't care.

And because I will never have the skill with words that he did, and I will never be able to eulogize him the way he deserves, just...goddammit.

How Has This Never Been a Series, DC?

I was thinking last night about shows set in prisons, like "Oz" and "Prison Break" and "Orange Is the New Black", and it popped into my head so quickly that I spent the next fifteen or so minutes checking to confirm that it had never been done simply because it seemed so obvious: 'Arkham Asylum'.

I mean, of course they've done things set in Arkham. Grant Morrison did the classic Arkham story, but there've been tons of mini-series and one-shots about the history of the iconic mental institution where all of Batman's villains are kept, and the video game is a classic as well. But they've never done an ongoing series, and they've never done a series that focused on Batman's enemies. It seems to me like this is just a natural, perfect extension of DC's current focus on damaged protagonists and anti-heroes and grimdark, but it's one that has the potential to actually be done well. A regular series, set in Arkham, with the Batman villains as the protagonists as they try to survive life in the worst prison in the world.

You have so many interesting characters to play with. The Penguin, who somehow contrives to get locked up in Arkham despite having no apparent mental health issues, and who no doubt maneuvers and manipulates the other inmates to get what he wants. The Joker, a terrifying force for chaos who even the staff fears. The Mad Hatter, a seemingly gentle soul in his own way but one with terrifying depths. The Riddler, an unpredictable and manic prisoner who sees everything but gives out his secrets sparingly. The Scarecrow, who takes the role of psychologist with his own cellmates. Harley Quinn, a former staffer who wound up going too deep into her understanding of madness and has no way back out. There's a huge ensemble cast with built-in name recognition and fanbases, and you can rotate the cast as needed because they'd be constantly escaping to appear in the next Batman story. (You could even show the escapes.)

I'd have to brush up on my prison dramas if I wanted to write this, but it seems like such an easy win for DC that I honestly don't understand how they haven't done it already. It'd be the best elements of a crime drama mixed with a horror story, all featuring the most famous villains in the world. A no-brainer like this should at least get a trial, dangit! Who's with me?

This Started to Sound More and More Like Fanfic as I Wrote It

I don't know if you're aware of this, but we are just a year or so away from the 20th anniversary of the Daily Show. Now, obviously the series is very much in the public eye right now, what with Jon Stewart's impending retirement, but I've been brainstorming some ideas for how to keep the buzz going for the big 2-0. To wit:

1) Bring back the old hosts. Tell me that it wouldn't be absolutely thrilling to have a big twentieth anniversary special where Craig Kilborn and Jon Stewart team up with the new host to tackle a really big news story that none of them could handle alone. There'd be tremendous potential for comedy there, as the three hosts bickered amusingly about whose style was best suited to the situation, along with some witty meta-commentary on how the show has changed over the years. (Maybe have Kilborn deliver a quip like, "You've redecorated, I don't like it"? I'm just blue-skying here.)

Maybe even, for extra dramatic effect, we could find out about a "lost" season of the series, where a comedy legend was the anchorperson? I bet they could get Bill Murray. He'd absolutely kill with the way he kept suggesting that the "new boys" were too young to do proper comedy. Of course, in order to be big enough to bring all four hosts together, you'd need...

2) Returning villains! Really, one of the things that 'The Daily Show' has always been famous for is the monsters. Now, obviously you can't bring back some of the really monstrous villains--Saddam Hussein and Moammar Khadaffi are dead, for example. But there are still a lot of good B-list villains to choose from. Dick Cheney's still out there, and George W. Bush has been laying low for a long while. Ken Starr hasn't been seen in almost fifteen years, and a lot of us still have fond memories of his time on the show. We could see a huge gathering of these classic baddies, led by maybe Bill O'Reilly or Glenn Beck? It'd be really exciting, especially if they...

3) Incorporate the spin-offs. After all, if it's the kind of crisis that forces all the incarnations of the series to work together, it's got to be big enough for the Host's old allies to return. Picture them standing side by side, Jon Stewart and Craig Kilborn and Bill Murray and (host to be named later), overmatched against the Fox News anchors, when all of a sudden Stephen Colbert shows up! And just behind him is Jon Oliver and Larry Wilmore, and Steve Carell! All the Classic Series correspondents, teaming up with the new blood to help out the Host of the Daily Show in his...er, their...hour of need. It would be breathtaking.

And then the Brigadier could show up! ...okay. Maybe not.

Why It's Going to Be Hard For the Republicans to Avoid Jeb Bush

Even though we're almost two full years away from the next Presidential election, we've already got Republicans jockeying for position in their party's not-even-close-to-happening primary season. The reasons for this are many--24-hour news networks start talking about the next election for the same reason that the NFL Network starts talking about the draft five minutes after the Superbowl ends, the sheer amount of money required these days means that you have to have your donors lined up months before actually campaigning, but a big part of it this time out is that Barack Obama isn't running again for fiddly legal reasons, and so these guys think they have a chance of winning. (Say what you will, but Obama was not a candidate that the Republican party wanted to tackle.)

So that means that there's a very crowded field, because a lot of these guys have been waiting a long time for their shot. Which means that each candidate needs to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack, and that means they need to start campaigning early. So we've got Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker and Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie and Rand Paul and Rick Perry (did I miss any?) all trying to make headlines for themselves by visiting the primary states early and often and getting to know everybody there, and declarating their opinions all over the news like a cat marking his territory (except that you can probably distill something useful out of cat piss). And it's becoming clear to everyone concerned and most observers that Jeb Bush is slowly turning into the frontrunner.

This means, of course, that the knives are coming out for him. Because if there's one thing it's tough to be in a race this long, it's the wire-to-wire frontrunner. The earlier you emerge from the pack, the longer the other players have to drag you down. So we're already getting a lot of speeches from all concerned about how Jeb Bush is insufficiently right-wing, how he doesn't understand what motivates the modern Republican base, how he may in some way shape or form have expressed empathy for another human being in his past...you know, deal-breakers. Basically, the rest of the field is going hard at Jeb Bush, and they probably won't stop.

But in this case, I'm not sure if it's going to matter, any more than it did for Mitt Romney. Because right now, the Lovecraftian Horror Show That Is the 2016 Republican Nomination Contest (TM) has a field that consists of a bunch of head-trauma patients and Jeb Bush. And, like with Mitt Romney, we're dealing with elementary game theory here--Jeb Bush has pretty much the entire non-head-trauma vote locked up, and while that's a depressingly small percentage of the Republican vote, the head-trauma vote is split between lots of candidates. And if Jeb Bush has twenty percent of the vote, but the eight other guys only have ten percent each, he wins.

Now, if some of the other guys dropped out, then it would spell trouble for Jeb. But each of the other guys know that if they stick with it and let everyone else drop out instead, they'll get all of the head-trauma vote and beat Jeb. Which means that none of them will drop out, which means that Jeb will keep trucking along with his twenty percent, and eventually take the nomination right out from under the noses of all those "true" conservatives who would make much more entertaining horror shows in the general election.

I don't think any of this matters, because I think that America wants to see another Bush in office like Germany wants to see a Chip Hitler candidacy, and Bush is the most electable out of the Lovecraftian Horror Show That Is the 2016 Republican Nomination Contest (TM). By far. But I do think that the coming primaries are going to be some of the most vicious and nasty infighting you'll see in a long time...and coming from the Republicans, that means something.

OK, Just One More...

If you have a dirt-floor basement where you keep your dancing plants, is it a Groot cellar?

And the Hits Just Keep On Coming!

Did you hear about the mathematician who sold a new line of shoes called "Contrapositives"?

They were just Converses turned inside out.

Today's Thing I Should Be Ashamed Of

I want to createa a pulp pastiche hero named, "Bick Pentameter", and every time he announce himself to an audience there would be a long debate about why he's not speaking in Shakespearean verse.

The Five Words That Are Destroying Civilization

...are, "The customer is always right."

I have to be honest; I have never seen these words deployed in a situation where the customer is actually right. I've worked my share of retail jobs over the years, I've done a few stints in the restaurant business and I've certainly been a customer enough times to be present during a situation where someone invokes this particular piece of "wisdom". And without exception, it is used by a deplorable human being in order to bully people who are required by the responsibilities of their position to treat them politely into giving them something they don't deserve.

And it seems like my experiences are representative. There's an ongoing series, "Behind Closed Ovens", on the Gawker network that serves as a clearinghouse for stories about the restaurant industry, and they are filled with people who demand food not on the menu, complain that the well-done steak they ordered isn't sufficiently tender, tip like they've got a lock on their wallet, and generally carry themselves like maladjusted toddlers in public. And when there is the slightest resistance to their bad behavior? "Haven't you ever heard that the customer is always right?"

Perhaps at some point, in theory, this was a good idea. Maybe in some distant era, customers were routinely subjected to horrific abuse at the hands of cruel business owners, bilked and neglected and generally mistreated, until finally that legendary customer of yore insisted that they were, in fact, right! But whatever the origins of this practice, it's become a tool used by jackasses to bully people. They firmly believe that they can demand discounts, comped items, returns on goods not actually sold at the store they're going to, and treatment that goes beyond polite and even past obsequious well into dehumanizing grovelling with the threat of a bad Yelp review, and the way that they're treated on a daily basis proves them one hundred percent correct.

I think this is more than just a problem for the unfortunate individuals who have to deal with them on a daily basis; I think it actually does bad things for our society as a whole. I don't believe that you can teach people that at times, you can treat people like dirt and bully them into submission with impunity without that lesson rubbing off in other areas of behavior. The person who calls the waiter "retarded" for not leaving the pitcher of water at their table--do you really imagine that they're kind and generous in all other areas of their lives?

Frankly, I think there needs to be something of a line in the sand; yes, the customer deserves respect and consideration, but they are not "always right". Nobody is. No business can always satisfy every customer, because some customers have unreasonable expectations. And it's not rude or inconsiderate to let them know that. And the people who work at a business, whether a retail store or a restaurant or an office, are people first and foremost and deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity due to human beings. If a customer believes otherwise, then they are most definitely not "right". And if a manager or an owner believes that a good Yelp review is worth more than the dignity of their employees, then they don't deserve to have a business.

So if you find yourself prepared to use the phrase, "the customer is always right", take a step back and think about how you'd feel if you were on the other side of events. You may be surprised at what you find.

Recovering from Pneumonia

So how was your week?

A Review of the First Fifty-Five Pages of 'House of Leaves'

I can imagine, having been around in 1999 when 'The Blair Witch Project' became such a sensation in the public consciousness for several months, exactly how the genesis of the novel 'House of Leaves' came about. Remember that one obnoxious wannabe stoner who saw it before you did and dragged you to it talking the whole time about how bad it would mess with your head, and how scary it was, and how cool it was, and how it was totally based on a true story and the actors were all really dead, and how all this bit was totally symbolic because Plato talked about how there was this cave, right, with shadows on the wall, and there were shadows on the wall in this bit and that made it so deep, and how he was going to totally get laid later that night after he scored some pot with these guys he knew who were in the Jamaican Mafia, which is totally a thing and you just don't know about it because you're not cool like him, because he's really cool and deep and does drugs and everything, man, and...

I can only assume that author Mark Z. Danielewski had a similar experience, and wanted to replicate it exactly in novel form. The innermost nested narrative, the story of a family whose house slowly begins to get bigger on the inside than on the outside, is effective and creepy, and made me want to read more. But I cannot imagine--I literally cannot imagine a situation in which someone came up with that central concept and said, "Hey! You know what would improve this? If it was narrated by a rambling half-baked pseudo-philosophical pompous windbag who frequently interrupted it with long pointless digressions on linguistics that aren't nearly as intelligent or interesting as he/I think they are, which are in turn repeatedly interrupted by a narcissistic douchebag who spouts off alternating lines of BS about how scary you're going to find the rest of the novel and about how much trim he gets!"

That's the central problem of the book, and it's an insurmountable one--there literally is no amount of time I can spend reading the authorial voices of "Zampano" or "Johnny Truant" that is too short. These are two people I wouldn't want to spend five minutes in an elevator with, and Danielewski seems to be under the impression that there's no digression too trivial to break away from the Navidson narrative in order to spend several pages with these two gentlemen as they explain the various mytho-poetic and symbolic meanings of the word "echo", or talk about their endless attempts to pick up women and the boring lies they told to get laid. It doesn't just halt momentum, it actively guts any interest I have as a reader in continuing. Knowing that there was another goddamn Johnny Truant sequence coming down the pike in a few pages made me want to put the book down and play video games. Or read io9 articles. Or spend a good few minutes watching paint dry. Anything, really, so long as it didn't involve reading the text in that Courier font.

Was the editor drunk? Did they leave the room? Did they edit the novel blindfolded as some sort of challenge? Or did they just finally, after repeated warnings to the author about how they were taking a really interesting horror novel and turning it into an obscure cult novel that was only going to appeal to pseudo-intellectual stoners, give up and let the author publish it as it was? This is a question that will keep me up at night far longer than any of the supposed terrors that the narrator warns me about.

It's a shame, because I'd really like to read an expurgated version that focuses exclusively on the Navidson record. Or give it to someone willing to adapt it ruthlessly, like William Goldman did to his own novel of 'The Princess Bride', and turn it into a film. (Which apparently Danielewski has refused to allow on multiple occasions. I'm giving him a lot of flack here for turning out a novel that I can't imagine ever ever ever wanting to read because it's awful, but I will admit to admiring him for sticking to his guns and refusing to alter his artistic vision. It's just the artistic vision itself that I can't stand.)

Basically, what I'm saying is that this book now joins a highly exclusive club. I will be turning forty this year, and I'm a voracious reader (I read maybe a book a week? Sometimes two or three?) Let's say that equates to roughly 2000 books I've read over my lifetime. I can think of exactly two off the top of my head that I didn't think were worth finishing. 'House of Leaves' is one of those two.

The Important Thing About 'The Librarians'

If you're going to watch TNT's new series 'The Librarians'--and let me make it clear at this point that I am doing exactly that, every week, and that I consider it to be "appointment television" in a way that about three other shows on the air right now are and I'll freely admit that I let two of the others pile up for weeks on the DVR in much the same way that this sentence clause is piling up in this paragraph--then there's something you should understand first. Because if you don't, you're going to hate it.

Namely, the show is crushingly unsubtle. Deliberately, hilariously, thuddingly unsubtle. Not a thing about this show is subtle. I feel reasonably safe in saying that it's by design and not by accident, but this is a show that works in big, bright, obvious strokes like a live-action cartoon. It's ludicrously straightforward about everything it does, and if you don't see that as part of its charm, seriously. Stop watching. Now. Because I don't see it changing.

How unsubtle is it? The Christmas episode is all about Matt Frewer's recurring villain Dulaque (whose true identity has been given a few crushingly unsubtle hints here and there) and his plans to kill Santa Claus. This is the level of subtext we're operating on, people. They're establishing who the villain of the season is by giving him a story where he attempts to kidnap and murder Kris Kringle. (Jolly old Saint Nick, by the way, was played by Bruce Campbell. I never knew how much my life had been missing a scene between Matt Frewer as a Bondian supervillain threatening the life of Bruce Campbell's Santa Claus until I got it.)

Does this make the series bad? Hell. No. As I say, it's being done for a deliberate purpose--they have a lot of silly action-adventure ground they want to cover in any given episode, and dancing around with the setup takes up valuable time that they can use doing the fun stuff later. Why bother with subtle, understated character arcs when you can get that stuff out of the way in one early scene where everyone talks about their ideal Christmas? It's not like dwelling on it is going to make it any better, and this way you get to the stuff everyone wants sooner (like Bruce Campbell delivering the immortal line, "Someone jacked Santa's ride!")

This week's episode is another perfect example. It's about fairy tales coming to life and turning a small town into a rolling disaster-broth of big bad wolves, trolls, and wicked stepmothers who accidentally fall into their own ovens. Does this need subtlety? Like a fish needs a bicycle.

Ultimately, I think that Ezekiel Jones sums up the series perfectly. There has been a scene in just about every episode where someone tells him that he needs to change, he can't just be a happy-go-lucky dimwit who coasts on his luck and thieving skills to replace intelligence, empathy and strength of character. And every episode, it turns out that nope, he's just going to keep being a live-action cartoon and it'll all work out awesome for him because he's just that awesome. That's the series in a nutshell--be awesome enough and you can just glide right past all your flaws. Hey, it's worked so far.

Stupid Things You Realize About Yourself

I just realized that for years, I've gotten Right Said Fred (the band that sings 'I'm Too Sexy') with Drop Dead Fred (the Rik Mayall movie). Only one way, mind you--I never heard anyone talk about Drop Dead Fred and think that they were about to inform me that they were too sexy for various items of apparel. But whenever there is a discussion of Right Said Fred (which may possibly happen someday, and no this doesn't count) I immediately think of a movie that I've never actually seen because frankly it looked pretty dreadful.

I wish I could tell you that this had some deeper meaning, but sadly I'd be lying.

Fantastic Four: Noir

I was recently thinking about all of the changes made to the Fantastic Four for the upcoming movie (and I'll probably be blogging about that soon, here or elsewhere). In specific, I was thinking about all the previous "reconceptualizations" of the FF we've seen over the years, from the Manga FF to the Elizabethan FF to the Zombie FF to...and I sort of mentally trailed off there, half-remembering that there'd been a 'Marvel Noir' line but unsure whether they'd actually done 'Fantastic Four Noir'.

So I went back and checked. And when I found out they didn't, well...

It's the 1950s. Sue Storm is a private investigator in Los Angeles barely keeping the rent paid and the bill collectors happy. Her kid brother Johnny sometimes helps her out with a case, usually when it involves driving too fast or thinking with his fists. But out of the blue one day, an old friend of hers named Ben Grimm turns up looking to cash in a favor.

They met during the war--Ben was a rock-solid pilot who flew infiltration missions for the OSS, and Sue was his cargo. She was an expert in stealth and infiltration, nicknamed "The Invisible Girl" for her ability to get in and out of secure facilities. The two of them had a romance, but it ended badly. Now he's here to ask her to spy on the United States government.

Ben, as it turns out, has gone on to bigger and better things; he's now a test pilot for the government's experimental space program. His old college buddy, Reed Richards, is designing the actual rocket with the help of a defector from Communist Eastern Europe, an egghead named Victor von Doom that also went to college with Reed and Ben. But Ben thinks that someone is trying to sabotage the rocket tests. He wants Sue to find the culprit before the first big space shot, three days away.

Sue and Johnny head out to the small town near the testing grounds, frequented by scientists and pilots alike due to its possession of the only bar within a hundred miles. There are a wide variety of scientists there, a boatload of eccentrics with nicknames like "The Mad Thinker" and "The Wizard", but all of them respect Reed "Mister Fantastic" Richards and Doctor Victor von Doom (who has made it icily clear that he considers nicknames obsequious and small-minded). Sue blends in with the eggheads, while Johnny gets to know the fighter jocks.

That night, someone tries to kill them both. The mystery assailant sets their hotel on fire; Johnny only survives because he has a fire-retardant suit he uses for drag racing, and he bursts through the flaming door to rescue Sue. The two of them realize someone must be on to them. The next morning, they quiz Ben to see if he confided his plans to anyone...and sure enough, he mentioned them to his good friend Reed.

Sue questions Reed, but the interrogation quickly turns into flirtation as the two discover a mutual attraction. She's quickly convinced that Reed's no Commie...this space-ship is the culmination of his life's work. He'd never sabotage it. But she also learns that he mentioned Ben's fears to his own colleague and good friend, Victor.

At this point, Sue is convinced that Victor isn't the defector he claims to be, but a spy. She tails him as he comes back to the testing grounds, late at night, and sneaks on board the experimental rocket ship. Just as she watches him making furtive modifications to the engine, she's hit from behind by an unknown assailant...

Sue recovers consciousness, tied up in the cargo hold of the ship. She sees the person who knocked her out--a Soviet spy she worked with during the war, back when the Russians were our allies. Ivan Kragoff, nicknamed "The Red Ghost", an infiltration expert every bit her equal. She realizes that Kragoff must be behind the sabotage attempts. Kragoff admits it, but isn't particularly worried about being caught...the launch is in less than ten minutes, and she won't tell anyone after the ship crashes and takes the cream of the crop of the American rocket program with it. As it turns out, Reed and Victor both have stowed away on the rocket out of a determination to see the results of their labors first-hand.

Just then, he's tackled from behind by Johnny. The two men struggle, accidentally knocking the cargo bay door shut in their fight. Johnny finally gets the upper hand and KOs the Ghost, but it's too late. The rocket is already lifting off. As it turns out, everyone's riding this rocket together.

As the rocket goes up, Johnny unties Sue. She figures out how to get through from the cargo bay to the crew section, slipping through areas of the ship that are already dangerously underpressurized. She makes it to the cockpit and tells Ben to abort the launch. Victor and Reed both insist they go on, but Reed pales when Sue informs him of the sabotage. The two scientists immediately pull on spacesuits and go out to make a risky attempt to repair the damage.

Ben struggles to control the ship--he knows he has to keep it as steady as a rock to prevent the two men from falling off. Reed and Victor quickly get into an argument about how to repair the damage, and Victor is forced to admit that he's made secret modifications to the engine of his own design, arrogantly convinced that he knew better than Reed about how to best make the rocket work. Just as he's about to tell Reed what needs to be done, the ship shakes, and Victor is thrown off.

Nonetheless, Reed manages to repair the engine, having to reach as far as he can to reset both ignition boosters manually. (GET IT?) The ship makes a safe landing, the Red Ghost is apprehended, and Sue offers to buy Reed a drink. Ben winds up going out drinking and bar-brawling with Johnny instead.

And somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, a half-burned, half-shattered figure floats. He is determined not to die, not so long as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm live. If they'd only listened to him instead of wasting time with petty arguments. If they'd only followed his lead in repairing the engines. If they'd only held the ship steady like they were supposed to. But they failed him. Everyone failed him. And Victor von Doom will make them all pay...

A Bit of Race Catch-Up

We're now quite a way into the current season of the Amazing Race (Season 25, for those keeping track) and I have to say, this is one of my favorite seasons since I first started watching the Race. Amazingly enough, there are at least four teams I'm actively rooting for, out of the six remaining, and even the two teams I wouldn't mind overmuch seeing off (married dentists Misti and Jim, and dating wrestlers Brooke and Robbie) are entirely tolerable. Jim's only bad habit is his desire to let everyone know how awesome he is at the Race...oh yes and his wife who is definitely a person who exists in his immediate vicinity...but he's not a jerk to Misti, which puts him head and shoulders over the usual fillers of the "hypercompetitive Alpha-male jackass" slot in the program. And Brooke and Robbie, the fillers of the "nice but waaaaaay too intense" slot, at least are managing to be cheerful and funny for the most part, even if it's clear that Brooke's coping mechanism is to blither and moan about how impossible whatever the current challenge is.

And Adam and Bethany are adorable--he's so obviously besotted with her, and she is knocking it out of the park with each challenge. I don't want to say, "She's doing amazingly for someone with only one arm," because that would imply that she's not just doing amazingly well in general, but her success is all the more impressive when you remember that she is doing everything all the other competitors are doing just as well as they are, one-handed. I know she's incredibly evangelical in real life, but as long as she doesn't use it as an excuse for intolerance or bigotry (and based on what we've seen of her interactions with Tim and TeJay, it doesn't seem that she is) I'm happy to see them go as far as they can.

Tim and TeJay are an adorable couple, by the way; it takes a lot of courage to come out to your family, and to do it on national television is even more impressive. They do bicker a little, which is something I generally don't have much patience for, but it's pretty clear by now that it's just their mode of communication and they're very much in love. They could definitely win this and I'd be happy.

The cyclists, Kym and Alli, started off a bit too hyper for me but quickly grew in my affections. They're having a lot of fun, they're kind to each other and to the other Racers (apart from a little bit of drawing on dusty windshields) and they're competent and no-nonsense. That's exactly the kind of team I root for. No drama, just race hard and enjoy the experience.

And although I suspect they're not going to be in the final three, my favorite team is unquestionably Amy and Maya. They're both so freaking adorable that I want to invite them over for tabletop gaming just to watch them smile, they're both smart and competent (but with a recurring navigation problem that I think is going to bite them in the butt), and they're both smart and patient and low-drama to boot! The challenge where Maya made goat butter using her knowledge of food chemistry was just a stand-up-and-cheer moment, and I'm Team Wonka for as long as they're on the show. (And I'll root for them to come back in an All-Stars season, too.)

So yes, this is so far as close to a perfect season of the Race as I think I'm ever going to get. And even though I think we're heading towards an unfortunate Finish Line full of perfect teeth, I'm still digging the heck out of the current season. That's pretty good for twenty-five and counting.

This May Only Amuse Me

I just had a male GamerGater accuse me of "mansplaining" to him for saying that I didn't think that "GamerGate" could be salvaged as a movement.

He said it was "the most discriminatory remark I've heard in the past 24 hours".

Surprisingly, he is not being greeted with sympathy and comfort for his bruised feelings.

We Need a Science-Fiction Holiday

One of the things I love about Halloween, the holiday now a long, sad 363 days away from now, is the way that it brings out the lover of scares in everyone. The holiday has gleefully expanded to the entire month of October, simply because everyone delights in letting out their creepy side to play. The candy and the trick-or-treating is only one night (usually) but the parties, the costumes, and especially the scary movies last all month long. We get scary movies on every single channel, all month long, a smorgasbord of the classics and the best of the new scares for horror junkies of all ages, shapes and sizes. People spend the whole month talking about their favorite scary movie (and usually referencing 'Scream' while they do so)--it's a month where everyone acts as though the twisted and perverse is normal and fun. What's not to love?

It does, though, make me wish that there was a similar day for science-fiction and fantasy. Not necessarily with the trick-or-treating, but a holiday that incorporates science fiction and fantasy in the same way that Halloween incorporates horror, in the same way that Thanksgiving incorporates insane amounts of food, and in the same way that Christmas incorporates joy and hope and sappiness to a degree you wouldn't tolerate any other month of the year. I want a holiday where we spend a whole month watching our favorite movies, dressing up as Jedi and wizards, and generally letting the other side of our inner child out to play.

Perhaps we could work something out with February? I know it already has Valentine's Day, but it's otherwise the worst month of the year. It could do with a little love. Maybe we could designate February 8th, the anniversary of the birth of Jules Verne, as "Imagination Day", and call it a day to celebrate the pioneers of the mind? After all, we create the future in our heads before we ever explore it in person, and I don't think we could have the wonders we do without people like Verne and his myriad successors showing us the possibilities (good and bad) of the future.

And on February 8th, we'll all dress up like our favorite sci-fi characters and make delicious chocolate steampunk gears for each other, and feast on cloned turkey and synthetic mashed potatoes. (That part's still a work in progress, but I think you get the idea.)