Let's Drink Water and Make Fun of Hitler's Mustache
When you know you’re skirting Godwin territory, you might as well jump right in. So. Hitler has a goofy mustache.
There. I said it.
And when I complain about Hitler, I’ll concentrate on mocking that dippy nose-skirt of his. What a ridiculous look! What kind of barber would agree to those premature borders on a hair growth? I’ll make LOLcats mocking Hitler’s mustache, and I’ll encourage my friends to add funny captions to pictures of Hitler mocking that misplaced soul patch of his, and by the time I’m done he’ll be a laughable cartoon to anyone who reads me. Just a big old mess of facial hair.
What? The Holocaust?
The wars he started?
The brainwashing of the young and the overthrow of a democratic government?
Well, as it turns out, anyone not paying real attention to Hitler (and getting their news through your feed) won’t hear a fucking thing about any of that. Because instead of focusing in on the real and very tangible crimes the man committed, you have decided to focus in on the childish, school-room superficiality that a fifth-grader would find humorous.
Good job! What you’ve done to the folks not paying attention – which is most of them – is convinced them that the reason you don’t like Hitler is because of facial reasons. Which will strike many of them as unfair, and mean-spirited – which, yes, you totally are being. And they won’t get to hear about Hitler’s many murders, because BWAH HAH HAH LOOK AT THAT MUSTACHE is what you’re spending the majority of your time publishing. In fact, by turning Hitler into a cartoon, you’ve actually made it easier to not discuss his policies, which lets your opponents spread the damage that your Hitler-hatred is personal and immature, which in turn lets them keep thinking that there can’t possibly be any valid reasons for disliking Hitler.
You wonder why there’s no real debate any more. Well, that’s because you – yes, you, you nimrod – have supported this infantile desire to mock a mustache over the real work of dissecting Hitler’s reasonable-sounding policies and explaining the many subtle evils they will cause. You’ve ignored a serial killer’s murders to focus in on his lack of fashion sense.
Good. Fucking. Job.
Likewise, today’s idiocy is that in rebutting President Obama’s State of the Union Speech, Marco Rubio took a rather awkward swig of water. When I log into Facebook and Twitter, what do I see? Tons of “HA HA RUBIO LOOKED SILLY ON CAMERA” jokes. Not, you know, a breakdown of the actual promises in his speech, or a Fact Check of his statements, or even a discussion of why the Republican promises won’t work this time. Just animated GIFs of a man drinking water.
Are we fifth graders? Are we so idiotically concerned with style over substances that a man tripping, or coughing, or dressed slightly funny, is enough that it will obliterate everything else that person says? These are the people running America, and when we reduce their many and potentially harmful policies to “neener neener, look at that stupid spray-on tan” you lower the fucking level of discourse for everyone. You elevate a cheap, senseless laugh over content. You train people to start looking for other funny bits to chortle after instead of actually using their fucking brains to debate.
“But it’s funny,” you say, getting surly. Fuck you, buddy, that’s the point. Sure, you can interrupt your CEO’s speech with a whoopee cushion and that’s a big fucking hoot, and when that’s all anyone talks about instead of, you know, potentially unionizing to protest the insurance cutbacks he just announced, then you can sure laaaaugh your goddamned way to an absence of doctor. This is shit that affects people’s lives, and by shrinking it down to a punchline what you’ve done is squashed the level of discourse to an Adam Sandler movie. Good on you! You’ve made the world very funny. And not at all functional.
So stop it. Stop mocking politicians for the stammers and stutters on-camera, the bad suit choices, the ugly wigs. Concentrate on the ugly ideas. Because their wigs aren’t going to hurt you, their funny suits won’t take away your rights, but their policies will cut your budgets and erase your freedoms unless you combat them…. and there you are, making it seem like the most noteworthy thing that Rubio did was drink water funny. No. He was outlining the Republican opposition to Obama. He’s convincing people who didn’t think the water drink was all that notable. And you are drowning in a tiny bottle full of insipid humor.
A Little Druggy Today, A Little Traumatic
So yesterday was a nice, bold return to work and progress until the evening struck. Then I cried for three hours straight.
I’m battling a lot of emotions right now, because that ventilator was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, and the feelings of isolation and powerlessness are still hitting in weird ways. I woke up, completely helpless, with no one I knew around me to comfort me, and that’s a loneliness I didn’t know I could experience. I’d always thought Gini would be there for me, and she was in that technical sense, but in reality I was in druggy blackness, manhandled by paramedics, and with no one to explain what was happening.
That’s backfiring in weird ways. I’m terrified all the time now that Gini will leave if I’m not brave enough. If I cry. If I need her help for just one more thing. And she won’t, I think, but there’s that animal terror of coming to, paralyzed, confused, choking, and then I just want to cling to someone and never let them go. And the lid slipped a bit on that last night and it was literally three hours of tears, including a low-grade sobbing throughout a family viewing of Hotel Impossible, which is really not a show that produces mourning.
Any reference to any character being alone now will cause sniffles, including shows like King of the Hill. (The Bill Dauterive episodes are weepfests.) I’m just sort of feeling terrified like this whole life I’m living now is a sham, and any moment they’ll pull the curtain away and I’ll be back in bed. I double-dosed on Ativan last night and still was trembling until I fell asleep.
I’m told this is normal. Depression and disruption come in the wake of these things. Still, I hate crying so much that I wish it was anything else; I feel weak enough without my body betraying me again. My reaction to crying is sexist, and programmed, and completely stupid, but my own tears make me feel genderless and weak and pitiable.
I have an appointment with my therapist later this week. Today, I’m staring at code, trying to make sense of it through a brain-haze of last night’s double-dosage, and the variables are just dropping out of my mind. Things will improve. But I don’t want that moment of blackness to become an axiom of my life, because I’ve got enough bad things embedded in my memory and I don’t need a trigger pull that huge this late in life.
But that waking up was the greatest terror I’ve ever felt. Not knowing what was happening. Not knowing where anyone was. Not knowing how to get help, or how to get my body to respond. And that trauma has saturated my psyche in ways that are subtle and hard to track down. They’re fine threads woven through my mind that I only notice when something plucks at them.
I’ll be fine. I’m doing what I always do: documenting. Maybe others have been through this and they won’t feel quite as alone or weird when they see it. Maybe I’m the freak, and it’s just a personal quirk. Either way, I lay it at your feet, and expose myself, and hopefully this cold wind whipping through will carry something away from me.
A Important Announcement About My Recuperation
I have decided, as of today, that I am 51% healed.
This is correct in that I am literally over the hump. There will be bad days and inconveniences, I’m sure, but I am coming back to work and I am coming back to writing and I’m coming back to life. I can smooch my wife and girlfriend, write chapters, text jovially, and walk without too much trembling.
So yeah. It’s only better from now on. Eventually I’ll get back to normal, but I am as of this moment more normal than not.
A Longer Essay, Packed For Today: Why The Fuck Do Dudes Treat Women Like Vending Machines For Sex?
At some point I’m going to unpack this thought further, into a larger essay, but after seeing numerous examples this weekend, I’m just sort of still mystified by the behavior.
Why the fuck do dudes treat women like vending machines for sex?
Like, okay, if you treat them like puzzle boxes, it’s not great, but at least you’re accepting that there’s a kind of entertainment to be found. But the number of guys who literally want nothing to do with women if they’re not dispensing sex terrify me. They have zero female friends, except for the ones they’re pretty sure they can bang one day, and when it becomes apparent that the banging isn’t going to happen, they walk away without an ounce of shame or discomfort. In fact, they walk away with such an absence of shame that it’s as though they genuinely believe the entire world is like this, and the women should have known better to be fooled.
At which point I sputter. People are interesting. Women are people. Do you treat your guy pals with the same psychopathic coldness – your dudebros are just there to deliver an experience, and when that’s gone, so are you? Or are you so conditioned to see women as an alien race that you literally have a negative interest in connecting?
And do you realize how awful this methodology works? I mean, I guess you can go out and Pick-Up Artist the bars, finding new chicks every night, but that fails for most guys. Even if you just wanted nothing but mercenary sex, pretending to be pals with women is still your better option, because women know other women. If you hang around a girl, she’ll introduce you to her friends, and eventually one of them will likely show an interest with you. As opposed to burning every bridge you walk across the instant it becomes apparent there’s no juicy treat in immediate site. A smart psychopath would do better.
I dunno. It’s a cold approach, one abhorrent to everything I believe about the way you should treat women, and people. But it’s also insanely prevalent, this whole schism between women and men, where men treat women like an ugly foreign land to be endured. And that prevalence just shows a whole mindset that I find repellent and scarring and yet those dudes will probably find some wife who also believes in it and will raise a new generation of dysfunctionals. Which is, you know, creepy to the maxicreep.
A Request For Help, And A Bunch of Cool Stories You Can Read
1) My good friend Kara is trying to start up a non-profit shelter for homeless LGBT youth in Atlanta. Which is, I think, an awesome project to take on – but it also requires a lot of logistics as to how you best do it on the cheap, and knowledge of the legal issues you’re going to run into, and all sorts of other questions she needs answered. And so I’ll ask that if any of you have any experience with such a thing, please contact her at her blog with whatever help you can offer. The number of valid online resources for this sort of service are thin on the ground, so anyone who can contribute expertise would be doing a good thing.
I’ll vouch to her strength and talent, if it’s any concern.
2) Those of you who are not authors probably pay little attention to the annual race for awards, but this one’s a little different.
One of the most exciting, and rarest, awards in sci-fi is the John Campbell Award For Best Writer. You’re eligible for two years after your first professional story was published, as this is an award for new writers. After that time passes, you can never be nominated again. Not to dismiss the Nebula or the Hugo, but I’ve got many shots left at those awards, should I ever hope to win one; my Campbell days are past forever.
The Campbell is also an exciting time, because these are new authors, the best of this year’s crop, and you get a chance to see what they’re doing! They’re just starting their career, and yet they’re filled with talent! But unfortunately, the Campbell award is one of the lesser-voted awards, simply because there’s so many new authors published that it’s hard to keep track of who’s even eligible.
But lo! If you’d like to read a bunch of the latest tales from new authors, Stupefying Stories has put together a free e-book with tons of Campbell-eligible people and their tales. I know many of them, and can vouch for their work. Some of them have even critted my tales. As such, if you’re looking for a good free trove of stories, head on over now while it’s still available.
It Helps Her On Her Way, Gets Her Through Her Busy Day
I hate pills because my family loved them.
Tommy was the most arguable addict you could ever have; he had a chronic condition that wasn’t going away, and a constant pain that would have felled a water buffalo. Still, he did reach for the bottle a little quicker than either family or doctors were comfortable with, and burned through a lot of drugs. But what could you do?
My Dad believed firmly in the healing power of antidepressants, locked in a constant and ever-mutating battle of finding the right pill this week – he’d get to a good level, then his body would adjust and wham he’d fall in the pit again. So he’d find some other Prozac-style thing to patch him along, with the concomitant side effects of distraction and high blood pressure and lowered sex drive and sleepiness and insomnia and the thousand other lousy things that can happen to you when you’re trying to balance out your mood chemically. I listened to his litany of unwanted additions to his life and thought, no.
Even my Mom, who I thought was relatively free of issues, confided in me that during the 1970s, she was quick on the trigger when her doctor prescribed her Valium, and spent some effort coaxing that monkey off her back.
So I vowed: do not take the pill unless you absolutely have to. There’s no shame in taking them… but there is a cost, and you will have to pay it, so use it sparingly.
So Gini knows my habits: if I take an Advil for my headache, that means it’s splitting my skull. I avoid taking any optional medication when I can, because I have a very addictive personality (hello sex, hello booze, hello blogging) and I just don’t want to deal with anything. I have too many friends who can’t sleep without the pill, can’t have sex without the pill, can’t function without the pill, and while many of those are legitimate cases where they need the pill to get the body to work, I know some percentage of those issues come because people have relied on them like a crutch and their bodies have forgotten how to function without outside assistance.
When my doctor told me, “Ativan is addictive,” I immediately stopped. I don’t want an addiction. I love the way Ativan makes me feel. I love the floaty, itchy feeling of Vicodin. I love being wrapped in that feeling of artificial bliss, to the point where I find my hand drifting towards the bottle even when I’m not in any real pain, because this is just so damned good.
But for the past two nights, I’ve been up until 3:00. I’m exhausted and strung out and unable to function, sweaty in a bed, breathing shallow. And I can’t do this. Right now, as the wise Dr. Kaldon points out, I need sleep to heal, and for that I need this pill.
It feels like defeat. It fills me with the worry that I won’t be able to tail off when everything is done. It fills me with too much glee because inside is a little Gollum dancing with joy that I get the Ativan again, and God damn I want that little happy pill.
But I can’t. Not right now. And that just reminds me how far, how very far, I have to go.
How To Interpret All This Angry Shouting
“These science fiction conventions must be terrible places to go,” a friend of mine said. “All I ever see is you posting articles on women getting harassed, on the crudely expressed racism that emerges there, the unwashed geeks who ruin it. I can’t see why anyone would attend.”
Which took me aback, because I love going to cons. It’s where I make a lot of new friends, and have the fine and absurd conversations I can’t have in the “real” world, and unite with kindred spirits who we can geek out about wonderful things. My life is enriched by people I met at cons, who I then friend on Twitter and deepen the friendship, so by the next time I go to that con, hey! I have transformed a “shared a drink with one night” into “Ohmygodit’sYOU! Gimme a hug, you big lug!”
And yes, I’m a white dude. But I have a lot of female friends and non-white friends who also go to cons, and continue to go to cons, and they’re all willful enough that if cons were really no fun for them, they wouldn’t go. Yes, into every con a dash of jerk must fall, and I’m not saying my women and non-white pals experience no harassment or annoyance at cons – but considering many of them go to four or five cons a year, and squee about the upcoming cons on Facebook and blogs and whatnot, the good sides must outweigh the occasional “Jesus, really?”
Which is not to perpetrate the shielding illusion that all my friends do go – some are in fact so put off by the ugly shenanigans that they don’t want to deal with it. And their opinion’s not to be washed away, since like all things, geek conventions have serious problems that could be bettered.
Still. If cons were such a universally terrible place, they wouldn’t attract any women. They’d all be like that awful comics shop staffed entirely by neckbearded mouthbreathers who post posters of women in refrigerators on the walls, and the female quotient would be next to zero. Which it ain’t. The cons I attend have a lot of women, and a fair number of non-white people (though efforts like Con or Bust always help that). Cons are, in general, a fun place to be.
So why do they look so terrible?
Likewise, there was an essay on FetLife posted by someone who said, essentially, “There are a hundred posts on rape and consent and weeding out the troublemakers at fetish events, since there are Doms who are basically abusers in disguise. But do you realize what all this talking about the problems in our community looks like to outsiders? Hell, I don’t want to go to an event, because all I hear are all the terrible things that happen, and the tales of the psychodramatic people who tear communities apart, and all I can think is Jesus, why would I want to go there?”
Which is true. All this airing of dirty laundry makes our fun world look terrible to outsiders. If you’re dropping in on the conversation, it must feel like the world’s falling in on our heads, and you’d be best served by getting the fuck out, quickly.
But I read a piece today that talked about a place that had perfect silence. All of the problems were resolved cleanly, neatly, behind the scenes, and the place remained as welcoming as ever. The silence was resounding… mainly because it was about priests abusing deaf children, because the deaf kids couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
Now, I am a Christian, but this is why I don’t belong to an organized religion. Andrew Sullivan wrote a stunning and horrifying piece explaining just how the church, fearing that they’d look bad to outsiders, swept it under the rug… and I’d suggest you all read it right now. It’s a very good example of what a nice, quiet place looks like – and the effectiveness! After all, people kept coming to the Church. They didn’t lose faith. The Church didn’t lose donations, or have to deal with any ugly questions. Quite a benefit, and all it cost were thousands of abused children and a ticking time bomb that would explode decades later.
If the Church had handled it honestly, as Christ would have, then we would have had an ugly discussion in the 1970s. The Church would have looked like, well, what it actually was – a place where a young boy could potentially get hurt by a pedophile in clergy clothing. And many would have reacted negatively. But in actually addressing the problem, fewer boys would have been hurt, and the problem would have actually been addressed, and there would be much shouting and angry discussion on how could this have happened, and what the right way to handle it would be.
Yet that angry discussion would help ensure the problem – which could never truly go away entirely – would be as minimized as possible. That it would be fixed to a human extent. Because there’s always going to be some scummy guy in a priest’s cloak, or a predator pretending to be a friendly Daddy Dom, or a grabby jerk at a con. We can shield as much as possible, but unfortunately such wastes of human skin exist and the best we can do is to establish best practices to identify and then remove from our good places as much as possible.
So yes, these noisy discussions about the Church, and harassment at conventions, and violation of safe space at dungeons? They’re all ugly. But that’s because the problems are ugly, and we’re trying to face them head-on. And yes, we could and should do a better job of promoting the good times we have at Church and at con and in the dungeon… but part of the solution has to come from people growing up and understanding that justifiably angry discussion about real problems does not mean that “Wow, what a terrible place this is.” The solution comes from realizing that fixing a house is going to involve some noise as the hammers and saws do their work, and that noise is not an evil but rather the sound of progress taking place.
You can hear the badness, of course. But when you assume that’s all there is, what you’re telling people is that if you want us to come, you should be silent. Silent as deaf children. And in encouraging organizations towards suppression as opposed to discussion, you create a place where monsters feast.