These Things Happen

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, I took a cantaloupe-sized green egg away from a father whose kind has been unchanged for some 80 million years.  I was nervous, because he weighted nearly as much as I did, and had claws far longer and sharper than mine. And besides which, he was a parent and I was only hoping to be one with his stolen child, which I imagined gave him an advantage.

But he was confused, new to the game, not really that concerned, and I stepped past him easily enough and took the small pipping green egg, this hatchling critter who, when she was finally free of the hard shell, fit easily into the palm of my one hand.

I raised her inside for months until she was big enough, then outside in a greenhouse. She was beautiful, of course, and smelled fabulous to me, with my mother's eyes and nose.

When I left that far-off land, I left her in the care of both new human parents and the parents of her own kind. Knowing she was well was enough.

She died today, at five and a half years old.  It happened suddenly, mysteriously, in her sleep. These things happen.

Having recently been through the death of a beloved fur-child that was not sudden, not mysterious, and not fast, I do see the advantages in this quick transition.

And yet, and yet. It is not all that much easier.

But these things happen.

Snot Funny

I'd like to be able to say that aside from this particular habit, Kitty is a loving, generous and intelligent creature.

Not quite. Kitty is demanding, touchy, and temperamental.

Like most cats, Kitty naps. Unlike most cats, when she wakes she shakes her head vigorously, sliming everything in the surrounding area. We're not talking a little spray here, friends, but amounts of wetness that lead one to first wonder where she keeps it all inside that tiny head, and second where a towel might be. I usually say something loud as well.

So I decide I've had enough. It's time for the vet. As I reach for the phone, I imagine the exam in my mind. I have a very good imagination.

The vet says, "Well, she seems healthy enough.  I wonder if it's allergies."

Uh oh. I know more than a little about allergies. I know what comes next.

"Does she do this after anything in particular?" the vet asks. "What do you feed her? You might want to consider trying a new food, see if that helps. Give it a month or so and check back."

"Okay," I say. "We'll give that a try."

And there it is: the vet visit has taken place in my mind. No need to schedule or stuff Kitty in a box for transit. Quite convenient.

So I switch Kitty to some new and expensive cat food. (Not in my head, no, but thanks for checking.) High protein, low carbs, and no grains. As the (yes, imaginary) vet suggests, I give it a few weeks.

A few weeks go by and by golly Kitty is no longer a snot machine. She still shakes her head but nothing goes flying. Now she's merely demanding, touchy, and temperamental.

I'm impressed. Points to my imagination. Well done. Have a kitty treat.

The Main Stream at Last

I was raised on science fiction and fantasy and when you're raised in a fiction genre you often aspire to stay there. It's what you know, after all. Across the years, my stories have been published only in SF&F--books, anthologies and magazines. Until now.

Yes, friends, I have just sold a story to a mainstream publication, one I have been familiar with for decades, that I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined would one day contain my fiction within its colorful covers.

I've just had a story accepted for Uncle John's Bathroom Reader "Flush Fiction" anthology. (Do note the small pun in the title of this post; I'd be so disappointed if you missed it.)

Uncle John has bought my 1k story "Biggest Fan! Ever!" for this upcoming anthology. I am particularly amused because this is satire taken from my experience with SF&F fans. Which would all be a lot funnier if I could share the story with you, which of course I can't because it's not yet published.

But when it is I will announce it on my publications announcement mailing list. Do join if you'd like to be informed.

Thinking about the SF Ghetto that I have (momentarily) escaped (I know my place) brought me to this intriguing article, which starts with two very nice quotes, one of which has long been a favorite of mine. From Bruce Sterling's preface to  Gibson's Burning Chrome:

If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins makes us seem harmless.

This quote always makes me feel warm and fuzzy about my little ghetto. And a little proud. Big Ideas! Harmless! Hah!

The Prince of Cats

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

--Kahlil Gibran

Splendid journey, my Beloved. Dance and sing in grace.

Am I famous yet?

Context is everything. Check out the implications of this quote from the bbc's tech news:

"Intel's Tomorrow Project draws on the work of writers such as Corey Doctorow, Sonia Orin Lyris and Charles Walbridge to create visions for the future that can inspire the public, and act as goals for engineers."

Feelin' smug over here. Just a tad. Yeah.

(Okay, for those of you who have replied to me with "huh?" about this, I'll explain. Doctorow is a big name in SF&F and future tech and the co-editor of Boing Boing. He's famous, he's a fine writer, and to be listed after him in this BBC article says a lot about my name recognition value and makes me feel all yummy.  Now, it might be a mistake -- maybe they just like my name (I do) -- but let's assume the best.)


As for the anthology itself, the pdf is still available  here, and still free.

The Educated Tongue

Last weekend I went to the Northwest Chocolate Festival. I figured I'd have some chocolate and maybe even get some entertainment. Instead I was stunned. In a good way.

With table after table of high quality ("fine") dark chocolate, it's hard -- nay, for some of us, impossible -- to pass up the opportunity to educate our tongues. Educate I did. Until I was nearly sick.

Education

Yes, it is possible to consume too much superb chocolate. You just have to work hard at it.

I also learned a tremendous amount about chocolate. I had no idea it was so complicated to make or that the difference between the wealth of the cacao farmers and us consumers was so great that most farmers never even taste the chocolate that results from their work because they can't afford it.

I also understand that making us consumers feel bad for eating chocolate does the farmers no good at all. The key is to gently educate us about what it takes to make really good chocolate, get our tongues involved, and then -- as happened with coffee -- we will gladly pay for the quality we will come to demand. Everyone benefits. Even the farmers.

A little simplistic?  Sure. But Big Chocolate (Hershey, Nestle, etc.) are not interested in creating educated consumers. They know how to fill out their few percentages of actual chocolate with sugar and emulsifiers and artificial ingredients to make it taste sort of like chocolate to the uneducated. It's cheaper that way. Never mind the farmers. It's business.

Cacao fruit

And that's pretty simple. Unpleasant, but simple. That's the corporate entity for you.

While I'm at it, don't bother to choose your chocolate based on the "fair trade" certifications. Farmers get maybe a percent at best for your buck-fifty extra. It's the certification company that's raking in the bucks. I know: I wanted it to be that simple, too. It will get simpler, but for now it's just messy.

I predict chocolate will change in the upcoming years and for the better. Remember when you used to drink instant coffee every morning and now you drink fresh-brewed lattes? Keep watching chocolate. Keep educating your tongue.

And if you didn't go to the festival this year, don't miss next year's. It was seriously fun and decadently wonderful. And oh-so educational.

"How are you?"

"gumballs!" is how I am.

How to answer? It depends. Who is asking? What is the context of that particular relationship? Did we just meet or have we been friends for years? Do we have an audience?  It depends on what aspects of my life -- the "you" in the question -- this person is actually asking about.

Aside from the part to do with me, I am faced with the need to quickly build a complex mental model of the asker, who I may have only just met. There's rarely time to do the person or the question justice before they follow up with the inevitable: "something wrong?"

Uhm.

It's hard to explain all this on the fly. I do try sometimes, especially with the cashiers at Trader Joe's, who seem very nice but I don't think quite follow my reasoning.

XKCD to the rescue! Now all I have to do is whip out my phone and point to this page, which explains everything.   Surely with this tool at my disposal there will be no more less confusion.

Flow Chart Much?

Need a laugh? I do. XKCD delivers with this guide to understanding flow charts. So is it just geeky me, or did you laugh, too?

Days Like Years

Each day, minute and minute, sipping slow to make it last. Days like years, minutes like hours; we sit outside together in bits of sun and breeze, sipping. His eyes close just a bit, soaking up, soaking in, every inch of him solar-powered.  His lanky, emaciated form stretches out across cement with startling ease. Finest-kind feline. He looks at me, cat-content, as if to say, "you know, this is not so bad."

Art, Order, Meaning

There is something so compelling, humorous, and startling about these photos.  They make me think about meaning in a new way. Take a looksee.

"Every world spins in pain"

Today I'm watching my cat die from kidney disease. He's hurting and nauseated. Hiding it admirably well, even by feline standards.

I'm reminded of a quote from Terry Pratchett:

"I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log.

"As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children.

"And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

Grab Tight, Learn Lots

"But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful."

 -- from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain, (aka Samuel Clemens, 1894)

And that, my friends, is what Mr. Twain actually wrote. Not "A man who grabs a cat by the tail learns something he never forgets" which, while more succinct, is not what the man said.

So there.

But does it really matter what he exactly said? I have fallen prey to the idea that an accurate and direct quote means more, but a moment's reflection shows that to be absurd; language is always evolving, so why shouldn't the wisdom built of it likewise evolve?

Hmm.

All right, then.  I'll try my hand at this.

"She who grabs a cat's tail tightly learns something she is unlikely to forget."

Or even:

"He who grabs an unwilling cat will remember the lesson."

Not bad. Now I think I'll go try it and see if it's true.

Witnessing Hell

I just watched a reconstruction and a documentary of 9/11. I didn't expect to spend 3 hours on this, but that's what I did.

I started with 9/11 De-Edited, Reconstructed & Synchronized, an hour and forty-five minutes of various coverage. The documentarists gathered all the news and video sources they could find, from dozens of sources, and synchronized them each passing second, presenting the entity without comment or opinion. Powerful stuff.

For some reason I felt I had to watch this whole thing. Not to try to make sense of it -- that's beyond me. Not to see falling people and wonder what it must be like to jump from a burning building to sure death. As one firefighter asked, "How bad is it up there that the better option is to jump?" Later someone says "it was raining bodies."

I watched because of my own need to have compassion, to witness tragedy so that maybe those who suffered, those who died can, however distantly, have had one more human being in their company.

On one of the top, burning and smoking floors I saw someone waving something white from a window. I can imagine them thinking that maybe somehow someone could still save them. I can imagine them thinking: "please don't let me die alone here, with no one caring."

We all die alone, whether on a bed or a morning jog or when we hit the ground from 70 stories up. Not much anyone can do about that. But just like ten years ago when it happened, I feel like I have to do something.

So I watch. I witness. I care. That much I can do.

Then I watched 9/11 Documentary (The Naudet Brothers), which gives amazing in-building and on-street views of the firefighters inside the building and on the street. This is a documentary, with high-quality filming, so you can see a lot of detail. I felt like I was there. The expressions on the firefighters' faces, the eyes of people on the street. The aftermath.

In retrospect, the firefighter crew's initial confidence is astonishing. But then again, is it? We do what we've always done, day in and day out, because it's what we know. I've seen disasters unfold and they always start just like the non-disaster version of things. You have to deviate from what you expect, and that's hard to do until you're sure. You have to recognize the world has shifted. You have to do something you've never done before, which is hard.

Ten years later, 9/11 is still shocking, outrageous. All the unanswered questions about what really happened and who was really responsible don't change that people's lives turned to dust and ash that day.

What happened? "Hell is what happened," said someone. It's worth remembering that hell happens to someone on this earth every day. And even if we can do nothing else, we can have compassion, we can be witnesses, we can care.

Hugs and Kisses from Death Valley

A funny thing happened to me when I slept in the high desert of Death Valley last week...

I saw one of these...

...and I heard the song of crickets, as never ever before...


...and a strong, sweetly scented, laughing breeze nuzzled my face and played with my hair...

...and I understood that "Death Valley" is a noun, not a verb; that sometimes it is harder to look at a thing than to be afraid of it; that magic comes in many forms.

xxoo, as they say.

Cell Phones Don't Kill

It's hard to tell how many auto collisions are caused by drivers who talk -- or, powers forfend, text -- on a cell.

Why? Says WA state patrol: "In a speed or DUI related crash, investigators have physical evidence they can rely on. But a crash caused by cell phone use or texting requires self-reporting by the causing driver. Only in the most serious collisions can troopers get a search warrant to examine someone’s cell phone."

So what do those serious crashes say? The national safety commission says that hospital records indicates that drivers who talk on cell phones -- hand-held or hands-free, folks -- it doesn't matter -- are four times more likely to crash.

And, says the NSC, thousands of deaths annually can be directly linked to cell phone use. That's thousands of people who might be alive otherwise. What if one of them was your mom? Or kid?

I drive a car. I ride a motorbike. A bicycle. I also walk and jog in this fair city. I think I have some perspective.

And I use my cell phone a lot. But not while I'm driving. Lives depend on me knowing exactly where I'm pointing my many tons of deadly steel.

Lives. Depend. On me.

Studies clearly say that driving while using a cell phone is just as unsafe as driving drunk, hands-free or not. You knew that, right?

I'm standing at a city corner, waiting to cross, cars streaming by me ignoring pedestrian right-of-way laws, and as I watch something like one out of every four drivers is on their cell phone.

This is still a $125 ticketable offense.

You probably know that if you're driving drunk and you kill someone, you'll go to jail for many, many years. But did you also know that if you're talking on a cell or texting and you kill someone you'll merely pay a fine for that killing? I think it's about $250.

I'm not sure it ultimately matters what society does to you for killing someone accidentally while driving, because at that point your life is a massive mess -- because you've killed a human being. You've taken a life, without cause, without intent. It changes you. You can never, ever undo it.

So tell me: what is so essential that it needs talking about while in a moving vehicle on city streets? What phone conversation is so critical that it can't wait? Why not pull over?

What could possibly matter more than not accidentally hitting a fellow human?

Cell phones don't kill people. People who are foolishly, stupidly, and lamentably distracted by social media kill people.

If you drive, hear my plea: hang up, pay attention. Lives depend on you.