Category: Angst

Selfism

July 7, 2008 /

Sumana has managed to combine almost all the reasons I read her blog–inspiration, clarity, critical appraisal of systems and examination of self–into one spectacular post. You should read it.

There’s a quote from Count Zero about being taken up from a low place, rotated through “invisible stresses,” and emerging changed. It’s actually kind of negative in context so I’m not going to reproduce it here. But at some point I have to write about how my interaction with propelled and propulsive people has changed me: how my internship at Dixon Design, followed by meeting Leonard and Sumana, followed by living with Kevan and Holly, reshaped me into someone who no longer fits anywhere outside the self-determined life.

I would have to actually achieve that life first, so I’m not writing it yet. But Sumana’s post brings up another connected point: work that matters for its own sake is superior to work that matters by fiat, which is to say that academic work is worthless in the short or long term, which is to say that I think the lecture-test educational system used in the United States (and, in my understanding, most of the rest of the world) is a sham, a wreck and a hindrance. I graduated with awards and honors from a large public high school and an elite private college, and I still say the system failed me. The intersection of what I learned in classes and my work, play and continuing interests is almost nonexistent; meanwhile, I’m still dealing with the fear and shame endemic to those institutions, and the ways they damaged me.

Under all that I continue to grow more absorbed with the idea of having children someday. I’m starting to consider my life choices in terms of where they’ll grow up, how I’ll support them and how they will learn. (How I’ll actually go about having them is almost secondary.) Could I in good conscience send them down the path less traveled, without having checked it for perils myself? Could I ever prepare them enough for the perils of the path I did take? Sumana again: isn’t it possible to sidestep the bad parts, with enough planning? Well, no, Brendan. Don’t deny the imaginary kids their own invisible stresses.

But if I start seriously working on my own propulsion, maybe my example can reshape someone else.

Book news!

June 12, 2008 /

Item! After a last-minute sprint, I have now scribbled in and shipped out all the remaining personalized books that were ordered in May. This means that, despite a surprise spate of orders this week, I can finally announce that

Item! The Ommatidia Author Edition book is back in stock! Not that it seems to have stopped people from ordering anyway; I should have been resupplied weeks ago, but I’m not exactly getting them in bulk and the trickle of orders was consistently just enough to eat them up before I could edit the store page. Don’t think I am ungrateful, order-tricklers! I have invested your beautiful money by purchasing other people’s Lulu books, thus continuing the endless Circle of Paypal™. But this whole thing coincides neatly with

Item! The last Cosette story, which goes up online tomorrow morning and marks more than one sort of closure; I wrote it for the book two years ago, so it’s been languishing in the drafts folder for a very long time. Fans of the storyline might wish to reopen the wound today in preparation for its salting.

Oh, I almost forgot! Item! Don’t forget that the newest Hour of Knowledge went up yesterday, and that new ones will continue going up on all Wednesdays, forever. I won’t keep reminding you here every week, since the CHK has all kinds of its own feeds, including iTunes and LJ. But I will give you one last disclaimer: none of them are ever going to last an hour.

Twenty and seven

May 2, 2008 /

People have taken up this idea of “challenge: draw yourself as a teen” and changed it to “draw yourself ten years ago (ie as a teen) versus now.” Since tomorrow’s my birthday, I thought it appropriate to chip in.

Ten years of Brendan!

Iron Man: Recommended

May 2, 2008 /

But with the caveat that it really isn’t subversive at all. I mean, I shouldn’t have expected it to be, but it is a story about an arms dealer who undergoes a radical change in personality. I was hoping for an equally radical challenge to the idea that peace must be achieved by superiority in arms; instead I got a story about how you should blow up weapons, but only the ones that belong to bad guys–preferably while the bad guys are standing on them–with your newer, shinier weapon.

Plus it was lathered in all the typical American movie race issues. White hero, white love interest, brown mentor/sage, brown sidekick, good brown person dies nobly, bad brown people die en masse, hero is only actually challenged by white villain: check! Sigh. Um, and the love interest and her rival were literally the only women with speaking parts in the movie. Except for some strippers?

I kind of like it less after writing all that, but it really was fun. Jon Favreau managed to give himself a twenty-minute cameo.

Days 3 and 4: Texas

April 5, 2008 /

Day 3 also included Louisiana and Mississippi, but even before I left Alabama, Taylor and her friend Cheryl were mocking my car for its filthy appearance. When I took a closer look, I discovered something intriguing: that wasn’t dirt on it at all! It was pollen! My poor little Fit was encased entirely in a light, even coating of tree jizz.

Like heaven sprinkles from unicorn flowers. See, a flower is a kind of penis.

Man, you know what’s going to be great? Not living in the South.

But after that: Texas! Things do not seem to be bigger in Texas, but Texas is definitely bigger than anywhere else. This photo should give you some sense of scale:

See, it’s like the star is Texas, and Hugner is Earth.

Kris and Erica were kind enough to put me up for the night, even under the stress of their still-in-progress move and its pipe-related disasters. While there I got to meet Oxford, who demonstrated that it wasn’t just Hugner, but all Jinxlets who make dogs want to chomp them. And snuggle.

Like heaven kisses from unidog peepee.

Like kissy kisses from kissface kiss.

That latter shot features not just Kris and Hugner, but the original Hieronymous B’Gosh himself. I’d label them but come on, they’re pretty easy to tell apart. (NO Kris is in the MIDDLE)

I spent the remainder of the day and most of the night trying to get out the other side of Texas. I made it just barely over the border before collapsing in Las Cruces, which is a little pilgrimage to me for Anacrusis-related reasons. Hugner was tired of the whole thing a mere five hours out.

You have to kind of work to make him look sad.

After that he went over to the fence and peed because there was not so much as a gas station for two hours either way on I-20. Bad Hugner! But how can you even try to yell at that face?

Day 1: Louisville

April 2, 2008 /

You have to read “Mallory,” Leonard’s newly published short story: not because it’s good (it’s very good) but because that way you can understand all the “Mallory” references I’ve been making in the over-a-year since I got to beta read it. As someone on a road trip to California that includes visiting some of my role models, I find the story perhaps a little too pat in its publication timing. I smell retcon, Richardson.

Speaking of which, The War on Clarity has been updated, due mostly to people wanting their names put on or taken off the “Lasersharking” entry. If only that could have been posted on some kind of user-editable repository.