Herman Cain Pisses Me Off

So allegedly, when a woman asked Herman Cain how he could help her find a job, he pushed her head towards his crotch.  This claim, the fourth in a series, may be enough to sink Herman Cain’s run for President.
This pisses me off.
Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m as down on rape and sexual harassment as anyone.  If the accusations are true, Herman Cain’s a scumbag, and he’s not getting any invites to my birthday parties.
But really?  Herman Cain’s blatantly awful 9-9-9 tax code wasn’t enough to scuttle his chances?  His ignorance that China already has nuclear weapons?  The many other dumb-ass ideas he’s floated aren’t enough to take him out of the candidacy?  Look, I get everyone says something dumb from time to time, and when a million cameras are trained upon you, they’re going to catch every brain fart you have and magnify it.  But Cain’s been consistently numb-nutted enough that it should be apparent that this is a habit.
In a sane world, voters would have analyzed the 9-9-9 plan and gone, “As stated, that’s actually going to cost the average taxpayers more money, give the rich more cash, and take in less money overall than our current system.”  And the majority would have said, “A dude like that doesn’t have the brainpower to make it as President,” and would have chucked him out on his ear.
But no.  What’s killing him in the polls?  Evil sex.  Because the voters of America don’t give a good goddamned if you can’t add two numbers together as long as you’re a nice guy… But yhe minute your personal character’s in question, then you’re not fit.
Here’s the deal: I don’t want a scumbag rapist in office who takes advantage of his position to try to force women to suck his dick.  But that’s the lowest level, on a par with the obvious statement of “NO SERIAL KILLERS PLS.”  That should be our last level of filter, not our only filter.
Because I don’t want a guy who can’t do math in the Oval Office, either.  I don’t want an ignoramus there.  I don’t want a guy who is almost willfully ignorant of international issues.  I want a guy who knows what the fuck he’s doing.
But unfortunately, at this stage of the game, it doesn’t matter how fucking stupid you are.  The only way to get a definitive knock-out is to try to put your dick in the wrong place.  It’s as though we’re trying to elect not a President, but a Nicest Guy In Chief.
I know a lot of nice guys.  Many of them are incompetent.  Can I be so bold as to ask for a maybe-not-so-nice-but-not-a-rapist-either competent dude?  From either party?  Thank you.

Book Review: 7th Sigma

If you are a writer who goes to conventions, you will rapidly ascertain that there is very little correlation between how much you like someone and how much you like their work.  This gets awkward when you find someone who you adore personally, but whose fiction you cannot stand.
Steven Gould, author of Jumper, is one of the nicest guys in sci-fi cons – quietly witty, fun to talk to, perfectly willing to apologize for the wretched movie based upon his book, which he had nothing to do with.  Which is why it’s such an extra-special triumph to report that his latest novel, 7th Sigma, is as fine as his company.
The pitch for 7th Sigma is nothing like the book itself, which is good.  The pitch, designed to get you through the door, is, “Welcome to the territory. Leave your metal behind, all of it. The bugs will eat it, and they’ll go right through you to get it… Don’t carry it, don’t wear it, and for god’s sake don’t come here if you’ve got a pacemaker.”  Which makes it sound like this book is all about battling the ferocious metal-eating piranha bugs that bore through human flesh – a good hook to grab teenaged boys.
But no.  The bugs are simply an excuse to transplant modern sensibilities and knowledge into a frontier lifestyle – what would it be like if we had to live with our medical knowledge and technology, but in a world without computers and construction equipment?  This isn’t a slam-bang action adventure, but rather a series of well-told incidents that outline the cleverness and compassion with which humanity survives in a world made new.  The cleverness inherent in the worldbuilding is filled with the kind of down-home, reassuring solutions that make you go, “No matter how bad things get, we’ll find a way to get by.”
Gould wisely avoids turning 7th Sigma into a Little House on the Prairie Clone by having the lead character Kimble, a young teenaged boy running away from his father, take up a job on an apprentice dojo.  As such, there are many localized lessons on Buddhism and martial arts philosophy from his teacher Ruth, all laced in with the endless chores one has to do to stay alive.  Kimble is a smart kid, sympathetic and brave, and as he learns how to fight, he learns when to fight, and eventually gets caught up in trying to remove the drug dealers and pimps that are making life worse in the territories.
The absolutely brilliant thing about 7th Sigma is that it wisely avoids any semblance of plot.  Which is to say that part of my love of 7th Sigma comes from its sleepy rhythm; each chapter is a parable, mostly self-contained, and it would have been all too easy to knit it into a big slam-bang freight train of a plot that would have moved the story along but lost most of its charm.  No, like All Things Great and Small, each chapter’s an anecdote of Kimble having a mini-adventure, and there are themes that overlap and amplify to provide a sense of movements, but there’s no point at which the Great Bug-Generator is found and everyone must take up arms to defeat the boss monster before it explodes and destroys the world.  This is all intensely personal, at a low level.
(Not to toot my own horn too much, but if you liked the day-to-day rhythm of my Little House-inspired space station novella “Sauerkraut Station,” which came out last week, I almost guarantee you’ll love 7th Sigma.)
The only real ding about 7th Sigma is that it ends with a lot of questions unanswered – not personal questions, since Kimble’s personal journey is wrapped up, but this book is clearly sequel-bait in the sense that hey, you know those crazy metal-bugs, there’s clearly more to tell.  And that’s fine.  When a book’s this good, I don’t begrudge the sequel-baitness of it, but rather look at it as the first salvo in a series of tales I’m quite anxious to hear the rest of.
In the meantime, I’ll just say that 7th Sigma has been responsible for a lot of hot water usage around here, as I devoured a quarter of it at a time in the bathtub, then handed it off to my wife for her bath.  We’re wrinkled, but happy.

The Mysteries Of The Hand Dryer

Here is a picture of a hand dryer. You know, that thing where you wouldn’t have washed your hands if you’d known you had to use it instead of towels.

The hand dryer’s weak cough of a drying solution is well-known. Sure, there have been modern versions of it like the Xcelerator and the Dyson AirBlade, but the classic hand dryer’s asthmatic flow means you’ll be wringing your hands for eternity, and still leave the men’s room with clammy palms. I’d actually prefer it if I pushed the button and got bacon, as the info schematic promises.
But it’s the the lower right-hand corner that gets me: “Other patents pending.” They developed this in, what, 1920? Haven’t they actually finished completing the patents on this fucking thing by now? The goddamned dryer’s been inconveniencing the stinkfingered since I was a kid, which is irritating enough – but the idea that they also have a lazy set of patent attorneys, their feet on their desks, going, “Yeah, we’ll finish those other patents some time”? It just pisses me off more. They can’t get my hands dry, and they’re slackers to boot.
What if those other patents are, like, cures to cancer? Cheap space flight? Fat-free chocolate that doesn’t taste like stale candles? I picture the World – and note that they’ve fucking copyrighted THE WORLD in their fucking logo, like they’re the fucking Illuminati or something – anyway, I picture the World(R) Dryer headquarters like that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, just all the lost secrets of the Incas lying around in huge stacks while two gray-haired lawyers doze in the corner, oblivious to the improvements they could make in this world if they just got off the fucking couch.
And it just makes me hate these air dryers more. Grr. You fucking air dryers, with your fucking tenuous zephyr emanating from a lukewarm nozzle, now you’re not just making my fingertips wrinkled, your endlessly pending patents are causing kids to starve in Botswana. You’ve got the fucking world-savers in there, World(R) Dryer – fucking cough it up! GIVE US THE TECHNOLOGY! You fucking assholes.
I typed this with wet hands because World(R) Dryer sucks.

I Love My Wife Because She Disrespects Me

Gini is yelling at me to go to the damn party.  Gini is incorrect.
Gini is demonstrating a very tricky part of the carefully-cultivated disrespect that good relationships need to thrive.
The problem is that I am in hibernation mode and do not want to go to the damned party, even though it will have my favorite people there.  I would not have a good time if I went to the party. I’m in my asocial mode, and I will be far better served by sitting here in my underwear and playing X-Box until midnight.  This will recharge my introvert social-batteries, and make me much better prepared to enjoy the next party.
Gini is quietly removing the controller from my hand.  Gini is yanking me off the couch.  She is telling me that if I do not come to the party, I will be making a mistake, and so she is not really giving me a choice in this matter.
I shuffle off to get dressed – not because Gini is right, but because it’s less trouble than getting into a fight with her.  We’ll go make a quick appearance, show up for the requisite forty-five minutes…. and then I will come back home, strip to my underwear, and play Rock Band.  What I need is solitude.
We return home at one in the morning.  I’ve had a fantastic time.  I loved hanging out, and I got to talk with Kal, and flirted with Emmy, and Jack and I had this great discussion on technology, and what?
…oh yeah, I was wrong.
We humans often are.
The thing about relationships is that there’s a lot of talk about respect, which is important.  Vitally so.  But we rarely talk about the corner cases where it’s necessary to disrespect with love.
“Respect” is often a synonym for “I do whatever s/he says s/he wants”… but while that guideline’s a solid wall for strangers that should be abided, it gets tricky when you’re dealing with someone you’ve known for years.  The “I do whatever s/he says s/he wants” logic assumes that Person X knows exactly what they want when it comes to life, and by giving them everything they request, you’re giving them everything they need.
Problem is, what we desire does not always get us what we actually want.
If, in a long-term relationship, you just hand people what they want like you’re handing out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween, you often encourage their worst habits and make them unhappier.
Take me, for example.  I have depressive tendencies.  When I’m in a bad mood, which is more often than I’d care to admit, I’m absolutely 100% certain that going out anywhere will lead to disaster.  But if I follow my instincts and stay home alone, my thoughts just loop and amplify, and at the end of the evening I’m usually even more depressed.  Going out to a party actually breaks that cycle, gets me focused on something else, revitalizes me.
Gini knows that.  So she disregards my wants to drag me out to get me to what will actually make me feel better.  Even though I don’t know that at the time.  (I may know it intellectually, but this party is different, like every party we’re ever invited to.)
Likewise, Gini loves being sexy and attractive, but as she hits her early 50s, her natural instincts these days are to dress conservatively, like other older women do, and to damp down her natural flirtiness.  I have to remind her, no, you’re wearing that sexy dress tonight with the low-cut neckline, go back and change, don’t argue.  She’s uncomfortable when we set out.  At the end of the evening, when she’s swimming in compliments, she’s happier.
Now, it should be noted that this pressure is not an absolute; there are times Gini’s tried to pull me off the couch when I did know better, and I fought to stay, and won, and was right.  There are times when I’ve said, “Wear something sexy” and Gini’s retorted that it’s not that kind of party.  But overall, the pressure we apply to force each other to our happy zones is often intense, and could be interpreted as disrespectful by an outsider.
Yet I’ve seen relationships where each partner hands the other whatever they desire without question, and very often what you wind up with is a rock-stable relationship with two desperately unhappy people at the center.  They stay because they’re with someone who “understands” them – why would they go elsewhere when they get along so well with their partner?  Heck, they can’t go, anyone else would question them, they have to stay.
And all the while, the rest of their lives are miserable, with them steeped in long depressive fits that they just can’t seem to shake.  They’re comfortable, and miserable.  Because of a deep respect, or at least something masquerading as that.
The disrespect technique is a dangerous one, because obviously it can get out of hand if you a) don’t know your partner as well as you think, or b) are not able to separate your desires from their needs.  (Certainly there’s any number of dudes who’d haul their fiancee to the football game because that’s what makes them happy.)  And it’s a lot easier to not fight with your spouse, to just hand over the loot, because you never get into conflict when you give them what they asked for over and over again.
Yet while it’s a tricky thing to get right, I think it’s something that ultimately has to be mastered – because though we hate admitting it, we’re not always the best judges of what’s going to work for us.  We’re the final arbiters, certainly, but to assume that we have 100% absolute correctness in what we require at any time to be happy is to assume that we are machines and not fallible human beings.  Having a partner who not only supports you, but pushes your limits to ensure that you’re going where you need to, is vital.  Questioning someone’s motivations often leads to insight and evolution.
Sometimes, your partner will haul you, dragging and screaming, from your comfort zones and into a place you do not want to be.  Sometimes your partner is going to be absolutely correct to do so.  And there will be more conflicts as you determine what’s actually going to work, but in the end what you’ll have is a relationship that brings both of you to the happiest place that both of you can find.
If you have a good relationship, a bit of carefully-constructed disrespect is what can transform it to “great.”

Things I Do Not Get: Virginization Fetishes

Looking through swingers’ ads, there are all these couples touting, “WHO WANTS TO TAKE US FOR OUR FIRST TIME?” And judging by their follow-up posts, they get a ton of responses.
Me?  I always think of FOR DUMMIES books.
See, when I used to purchase computer books for Walden’s, everyone was used to the sales pattern of other books: Stephen King’s latest novel was out!  And it would sell great guns the first week, pretty good for a month, then slide downhill.  If you didn’t have it in stock that first month, you missed out on something like 70% of the sales.
Computer books weren’t like that.  My management would pressure me to buy thousands of copies of WINDOWS 98 FOR DUMMIES, because Windows 98 was coming out this fall and when it did, hoo boy!  We’d be rolling in the dough.  They were frustrated when I lowballed the inventory, even though the publishers were offering all these incentives and sales to stock our stores to the roof with WINDOWS 98 WINDOWS 98 WINDOWS 98.
The trick was this: realizing that the day that Windows 98 came out was the day that the fewest people would own Windows 98.
That first month was actually the slowest, because most people don’t buy upgrades to their PCs the way they go after a movie or a game.  They get it when they get a new computer, or when a game they need demands Windows 98 to run.
So that first month of Windows 98 books was actually inevitably a slow, disappointing sale.  The first three months were slow, actually, panicking the higher-ups.  But as time went by, and more people converted, WINDOWS 98 FOR DUMMIES was our hands-down bestseller for 1999.
When I think of virgins, that’s what I think of: you’re the least knowledgeable you’re ever going to be about sex at that moment.  It’s not a bad thing, certainly not something to be shunned…
…but I don’t get why anyone would specifically seek out virginity as a specific kink, just because they want to take that virginity.  Those virgins are the new Windows 98, at their weakest; come back a year or two, when they’ve gained all this power, and it’s gonna be awesome. But now, they’re just experimenting, and chances are pretty good it’s going to end messily in one way or another as they make mistakes.
I don’t want inexperienced women sexually; I like women who’ve had a lot of sex and know what they’re doing.  I don’t want inexperienced poly partners; I like women who’ve got a good handle on what they need, and have spent some time protecting their boundaries.
And yes, my first time at the club was with someone who was as inexperienced as I was, and it was awesome… But I’m pretty sure whatever I do will be even more awesome a year from now.  If I was out to swing with a couple, I’d be scanning their profile to see if they were attractive, if their posts had proper grammar, if we looked like we’d be sexually compatible – and not at all allured by the promise of breaking that ground before anyone else.
I dunno.  The whole virginity fetish strikes me as having this nasty undertone, the moral equivalent of fucking someone and shouting “FIRST!” in their sexual comment thread.  If you want someone because they’re hot, sexy, and compelling?  Great.  But if you want them just because hey, you get to pop that cherry, well fuck you and keep your goddamned paws off of anyone around me.
People are people.  Not records to be broken.

An Interesting Quote, And Musings

Here’s a quote I’ve run across that strikes me as interesting:

You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful, but you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn. I know you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath but the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.

That’s from the 1994 movie Wolf, which appears to be one of those films that managed to be terrible despite a stellar cast.  And it’s troublesome because the original line is spoken by Jack Nicholson, doubtlessly with all of his usual hyper-masculine, oh-you-wimmen, raised-eyebrows intonation, which adds a spiteful flavor I’m not thrilled with.  When I first read it, I imagined it spoken by a young Dustin Hoffman – earnest, perhaps a little sad.
As a general thing, I don’t entirely agree with it (though I have known women like this), but it is resonant with something I’ve seen that damages a lot of beautiful women: they get so used to men coming after them in every shape and form, glomming onto their every interest with an eager “Oh, I love to do that!” that they become blase.  At some point, expressing enthusiasm becomes a hazard to them, because horny dicks will use this to try to surf their way in… So they shut down, becoming distrustful of enthusiasm in general, both other people’s and their own.  And they lead their lives oozing a cynical boredom, living behind sunglasses and not particularly interacting.
I dunno.  I’m a big ol’ golden retriever; if I like you, or anything, my tail will be wagging so hard it knocks over your coffee.  Maybe that damped-down life works for them, and that crooked smile they only half-give when something amuses indicates a deep inner life.  But to me, it just strikes me as sad that they have to be aloof just to get by.
Then Frank Zappa comes to mind, as he always does:

Beauty knows no pain
So what you cryin’ about
Girl