Things I'd Be Way Behind If It Wasn't For That

I’d be a lot more comfortable with groups using their persecution as a way of inspiring their other members to act… if humanity was good at recognizing when they’ve won.  But we’re not.
The latest evidence in this “poor ability to demarcate victory” comes from this essay on “Invisible Christian Privilege,” wherein American Christians genuinely believe that they are a persecuted, minority faction who are being silenced by large, powerful forces. Their evidence?  Well, people are trying to change aspects of the culture they live in. Though Christian themes are largely dominant in America (check the link for some good examples), the fact that there is any resistance at all means that they’re being backed into a corner.
Thing is, it was true once.  Christians did start off as a small, persecuted sect.  (And to be fair, there are places in the world where they are still.)  But though that sect grew, the self-image of themselves as a small band of people fighting against a world that hates them remained a tremendous marketing tool. I always think about Garrison Keillor’s observation that he never felt more Lutheran than in New York – in Minnesota, being Lutheran was an assumed thing that you never had to fight for, but in the tussle and rumble of New York, he felt defined (and, one suspects, energized) by the competing forces.
This isn’t just Christians.  You can see it in conservatives (who don’t see how thoroughly their ideas of “anyone who raises taxes has done a bad job” and “government is inefficient” has permeated mainstream thought, thus defining even Democratic elections), and Israel’s often shameful treatment and justification of Palestine (even though, admittedly, Israel is in a place where it can lose badly if it drops guard), and, well, pretty much everywhere you have someone in power.  Considering that most powerful groups start out as a small group of rebels, they’re going to start out persecuted – and that air of persecution stays with them all the way to the top. At which point they use it as an argument to try to quash genuinely persecuted groups.
The problem I have is that these small groups are legitimately persecuted… for now.  And it’s useful, really useful, to be able to point to a clear enemy of The Other Side and say that they’re winning, and are always going to in, unless we fight them now.  But regardless, I always have a discomfort when any group uses that persecution as a way of energizing the base, because no group seems to notice that point when it’s started winning the battle. Even if I want them to win, which I often do, I’m pretty sure if they achieve victory that sense of outrage will then be used to elbow other, smaller, groups to one side.
Speaking of winning battles, I was thinking that in theory, I’m for the draft.  I think that America’s gotten too addicted to bloodless wars, fought by a small percentage of increasingly invisible patriots.  The needs of military families are such that often, only other military families really understand – so they cluster together to form their own culture.  Which means the next generation of America’s soldiers coming from a place that doesn’t really intersect with “mainstream” American culture – growing up in New England, I knew hardly anyone who enlisted in the Army, and out in Ohio, I’m not close friends with anyone who has multiple close family members in the military.
What that means is that we have our wars fought disproportionately by people who most of America never interacts.  Unless you’re in that culture, you don’t have anyone close that you’ve lost in multiple wars we’re fighting… So those wars become invisible, fought by people “over there” who do all the dying for you, while you stay in the suburbs and have a cappucino.
That makes those wars very easy to have.  Sure, why not go into Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq?  What does it cost most of America?  A couple more newcasts with flag-draped coffins – and certainly no higher taxes.  So we can just keep justifying them.
So in theory, I like the idea of a draft – if we’re going to have wars, we should have the sacrifice come from all over America.  So whenever we have some sort of conflict, America is forced to be constantly in touch with the human cost.  It can’t all fall on the shoulders of these poor valorous bastards over here; if you think the cause is just, you have to wager the most precious thing you have.
Unfortunately, then I realize what happens at the beginning of every war: we’re going to win it!  Historically speaking, if you listen to the politicians, every war that’s ever been fought will be over in a few months!  No casualties!  This will be easy!  The politicians never seem to consider what will happen if they’re wrong, and they always overestimate the abilities of Our Fighting Forces because we’re totally the best, how can you say we might lose to those scruffy nerd-herders over there?  And once we get in there and find it’s not quite that easy, we start tallying the costs of this unwise maneuver, and how can we pull out now without a clear victory?  Look at all those dead people!  Do you want them to have died for nothing?
So we find it easy to get into wars, because they’re sold to us as trivial things, and we find it hard to get out because once we’ve spilled blood we can’t admit we’ve made an embarrassing mistake – which means that really, reinstituting the draft just means we wind up with more Vietnams.  (Plus, yes, I know, our military is better as all-volunteer because the quality of someone who want to be a soldier is a lot better than “random dude who was dragged in against his will.”)
Sadly, I don’t see a way out.  The core problem is that politicians are eager to start wars – again, partially because of that whole persecution complex of “Those guys over there are evil and want to destroy us” makes it an easy sell.  That’s not really changing, and I don’t know how to fix that.
 

Bert and Ernie

There’s a movement that’s asking Sesame Street to allow Bert and Ernie, at long last, to become a happily married gay couple.  And I’m against it.
I’m not against Bert and Ernie getting married because I’m against gay marriage, for I am not; I’m not against it because I think that my childhood memories should never change.
It’s because I’m against the sexualization of every friendship in the goddamned world, that’s why.
That’s one of the things I dislike about most slash-fiction – that quiet assumption that every intense friendship must lead to hot’n’sweaty coupling.  If two people like each other, goes the thinking, then they must be sexually attracted!  And wham, all sorts of terrible fiction get written because if two people have shared an emotional intimacy, they must inevitably rush to entwine appendages.
Fuck that.  There’s all sorts of love in the world, and not all of it has to involve our genitalia.  Particularly to children, I think it’s necessary to accentuate the Agape and Philia along with the Eros.  I think there are a lot of damaged people out there who have bought into this idea that “If I feel an intense connection to X, I must therefore move to sleeping with X” – a concept that often ends in disaster.  There’s nothing wrong with staunch friendship, even with those who continually irritate you – in fact, if Ernie and Bert are a couple (cue the inevitable rendition of “My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada”), then they’re a bitchy dysfunctional couple who are probably going to get divorced in a few years.
No.  I think you can be good friends and nothing more than good friends. And that is not only a good thing, but admirable.
That said, there’s something distinctly disingenuous about Sesame Street’s insistence that puppets have no sexuality; some of the characters have girlfriends, which is a tacit endorsement of heterosexuality.  (I had no idea the Count had not one, but three girlfriends.  But for a man who loves counting, it seems appropriate he’d be polyamorous.)  So if you wanted to bring in a set of boyfriend-characters, or have Elmo pick up a lover, then I’m fine with that.  (Hopefully, shoving something in Elmo’s mouth would shut him up – and it would provide a lovely frisson the next time you saw someone tickling Elmo.)
I’m all for having more gayness in Sesame Street.  But Bert and Ernie?  No.  Let them remain friends.  Teach kids about gay relationships, but also teach them that not every friendship inevitably dissolves into lust – and let Bert and Ernie be that channel. At a time when our politicians are so hostile and divided that our government can barely function, this lesson’s more necessary than ever.  In fact:
“Bert and Ernie are characters who help demonstrate to children that despite their differences, they can be good friends.”  Wise words from the Sesame Workshop, almost twenty years ago.
 

Your Daily Question: Best Expenditure of Money?

About a week ago, I bought the soundtrack to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.  iTunes informs me that I have listened to it thirty times since then.
My wife’s getting weary of the emo re-envisioning of our seventh President, but every time I play it, I think: it’s getting cheaper.  I paid ten bucks for it on iTunes, and with thirty repetitions my cost-per-listen is down to thirty-three cents a song.  Heck, if you count the individual songs, I’m down to two cents per playing.
Compare this to my media waste of $9.99 for Cat Stevens’ latest album, which I think I listened to twice.  At best.  Or, worse, the DVD for Charlie Wilson’s War, which I paid $5 for and haven’t even taken it out of the packaging.
Judged on a cost-per-listening basis, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is a great bargain! In time, I’ll get the cost of that whole thing down to a thin dime per playing. That’s so much better than videogames I’ve paid $60 for and barely played.  I paid little, I maximized my experience.
So I wonder: on a cost-per-listening basis, what is my best media bargain?  What have I paid the least for, and listened/watched/played the most?
My first instinct was to say “Rock Band!” because I have probably spent literally a month solid playing that over the years – but then you consider all the plastic instruments and bonus tracks I’ve purchased, and suddenly Rock Band is a hobby that probably costs me $1 every time I step up to play it – worthwhile, certainly, but no bargain.  Likewise, I’ve seen Star Wars at least a hundred times, but fifty of those were in the theater, and the rest of the showings were split between three separate DVD/VHS releases – again, satisfying, but pricey.
Queuing iTunes, I see my most-played track (70 times) is Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacey’s Mom,” and I know for a fact my “most listened-to album” on iTunes oscillates between their “Welcome Interstate Managers” (a pure pop gem) and the soundtrack to Avenue Q (foul and surprisingly clever).  So is that my best media bargain?
Well, in modern terms, yes.  But back in the day, I paid $3.99 for a cassette tape of Def Leppard’s “Pyromania,” which as a teenager I listened to constantly, constantly, to the point where that music is engraved in my marrow.  That was the first album I identified with as me, and cassette tapes lasted a long damn time, so I think that price is probably somewhere in the range of half-a-cent per playing.  That’s my best media bargain.  (That, or George Carlin’s “Class Clown” on cassette.  Or, possibly, “Red Dwarf,” which I used to play every night in lonely houses to give myself some noise to drift off to sleep to.)
So.  With this in mind, I ask: What is your greatest media bargain?  What did you pay low and utilize the most? 
(And if the answer is “I Bittorrented it,” well, good for your cheapness, bad for actually recompensing the people who helped make the thing you love.  So we’ll leave out the illegal merchandise for now.  Though technically, things like Radioheads’ maybe-free albums do muddy the mix…)

The Care And Feeding Of Ferretts

I’ll be attending WorldCon in Reno next week, and – as with every convention I attend solo – I’m terrified.
See, if my wife is there, she makes me look good by making the introductions, shoving me into crowds, and otherwise serving as the social lubricant in my sticky New England gears.  But if I’m alone, I seize up.
I have a real issue with bothering people I don’t know that well – “that well” as defined by “would be considered damn near best friends under any circumstances” – and I’m convinced they never remember me, so even at a convention where I “know” a lot of people I often wind up sitting in the corner, waiting to be recognized.  It usually doesn’t end well.
Once invited into the circle, I’m friendly and gregarious, which is in some ways more of a problem; since they’ve seen me merrily chatting away with people earlier in the day, they assume my isolation must be me, purposely wanting some down time.  No, what’s happened is that I’ve become separated from the people I knew, and am alone again, stalking a social experience.  So I sit in the corner making puppydog eyes at everyone who walks by, and then there I am, feeling like the biggest loser in the world.
This happens at every convention.  Every damn one.  Even the really good cons have these moments of “Lord, you are a sad and asocial little bugger, aren’t you?”
So.  If you’re attending Reno WorldCon, let me know now!  I’d love to see you.  We’ll exchange cell phone numbers, text a little, hopefully hook up for a meal.  And if you should see me at WorldCon and I’m sitting alone, feel free to sit down and talk to me – remind me of your name, I’m great with faces but often get lost between people’s three or four online identities – and I will be cheerful.
I love people.  I’m just not convinced they love me.
 

When The Robot Uprising Hits, I Know I'll Be A Cult Figure

Ever wonder what my most popular piece of writing was?  Here it is.  It’s a short-short anecdote about how Gini and I thought the third episode of Sherlock was extremely slow-paced, until we realized that a background process was playing the video at about 75% speed.
Spambots fucking love this piece. I get three, four comments a day on it, mostly about prostitutes: “prostitutki moskva on layn.”  I clear them out overnight and come back to the applause of more spambots, happily commenting away.
I’ve considered locking this entry, but I’m actually curious to see how far it’ll go.  For the past three months, it’s like clockwork: I wake up, and the spambots have commented on my Sherlock post.  I’m not sure why they’ve settled on this piece, when there are so many others to choose from, but there you have it: spambots love Steven Moffat.
It’s good to know that the robots love me.  Maybe when the Singularity hits and the ad-bots rule us all, I can be their poet laureate.  Or a comedian.  Or whatever floats their boat about this entry, I don’t know.

New Story! "My Father's Wounds," at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

My latest story is live at Beneath Ceaseless Skies – have a sample of the opening, why don’tcha?

Father carries the knife, because I asked him to—but he keeps turning to look at me, earnestly, as if he hopes I’ll take it back.

 It’s hard to believe he knows I’ll stab him with that knife. Even harder to believe he’s eager for me to do it. But that’s my father; he thinks the world of his precious daughter. He’s thin yet unbowed in his ascetic gray Blacksmith robes as he leads me up through a cold forest to the Anvil.

It doesn’t matter whether my father will live once I stab him. That’s not the point. The point is all the questions that no one thinks to ask after we’ve healed their fathers, their soldiers, their daughters. Nobody questions our magic, except for us, the loyal priests and priestesses of Aelana.
We can’t stop asking. We can’t sleep for asking.

The origins of this story are either mildly embarrassing or total nerd cred, depending on how you look at it, since it stemmed from a question I had about D&D – how do those first-level priests learn how to Cure Light Wounds, anyway? Do they just stab each other and hope for the best? And I wrote a story that wound up answering questions not only about that question, but as to why a cleric who can cure wounds can’t mend a country.
I really like the ending on this one.  I hope you will too.