Author Dusty

Book Review: Cloud Atlas

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Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell

 

Okay, there are two possibilities here.

Possibility one is that I missed the intricate interweavings of the finest filaments of this novel’s plot. I saw some of them: there is a theme of reincarnation and rebirth that is fairly easy to spot, and also a connection based on storytelling. And maybe that’s the whole point: that we live new lives over and over again, and those lives are connected by the stories we tell, the words we write down. That’s a fairly interesting idea, but while I believe in reincarnation of a sort, I don’t believe in straightforward rebirth/transmogrification of the soul from one body to the next, so that connection was lost on me — and without it, the story connection becomes just kinda precious and clever.

Possibility two is that this novel is too precious and clever.

I am inclined, honestly, to believe possibility one. I think I’m a fairly perceptive reader, but — not always; most of my life has been spent reading genre fiction rather than seriously dense literature, which I’ve really only picked up since I’ve been a teacher. The book has a lot of blurbs by pretty impressive people, including A.S. Byatt and Michael Chabon; everyone says this is a magical, unbelievable work of magnificence. So it is entirely possible that I read right past the lyrical wonders of this novel, that this is one of the books which, as I tell my students, can’t be read, but can only be re-read.

But since the first possibility is not the only one, I’m not going to be re-reading this.

So the idea is that the book is a series of nested stories. It starts with an American traveling through the South China Sea in 1850; then it goes to a British composer in Belgium in 1931; then an investigative reporter in California in the 1970’s; then England in 2004; then a near-future Korea, and finally a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Then it goes back: Korea, England, California, Belgium, South China Seas. Each story is in some way recorded — the first guy wrote a memoir, the second a series of letters to a friend, the third story was novelized, the fourth turned into a movie, the fifth recorded an interview. And each person in the following story encounters the recorded story of the person before; and each of them, it seems, is the reincarnation of the one before. But my trouble with this book is: that’s it. That seems to be the only logical link. I was looking for more; I was hoping that the South China Seas/Korea/Hawaii connection would be meaningful, but I don’t think it was. I was hoping that there would be a causative link, that the revolution hinted at in the Korea story leads to the apocalypse which the Hawaii story is post-. That the composer in Belgium would have something to do with the modern-day England story, in terms of the plot of one connecting to the plot of the other.

And maybe those links were there. But if they were, I missed them.

So it seems to me that the novel is a set of short stories, without a common theme, with dissimilar main characters — because they may each be the reincarnation of each other, but that’s all they have in common — and no real plotline that runs through the whole thing. They are interconnected only the way a book of short stories set in the same town might be interconnected, which is — not really at all. Though of course, with Joyce’s Dubliners (which I’ve never read) and Faulkner’s Abercrombiewhateverthehellit’scalled County novels (which I’ve never read) and Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (Which I did read, and liked) all having that sort of connection, I guess that’s enough to make this a tour-de-force that lives up to its blurbs. But for me, it was not terribly exciting.

 

I probably should have taken the hint when I mentioned to my wife that I was reading this, and she said, “Yeah, it was a movie. We watched it.” Even though I have absolutely no memory of watching this movie. I’m pretty sure I slept through it. I should have slept through the book, too.

My Life

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#1: “I feel bad when I have a cold when I go to the doctor. I don’t want to get germs all over them.”

#2: The other night she shuffled slowly from the living room into the kitchen, set herself, drew back one slippered foot, and then gently kicked me – really more of a boof – in the shin. Then she said “You called me a poop. Don’t call me a poop.” (Actually what I had called her was Poopzilla.) I hung my head, laughing, and said, “Consider me properly chastised.” She nodded, said, “Okay,” and shuffled away.

She doesn’t wear curlers, actually. I just like the image.

Source

 

#3: Speaking of her students: “If I don’t keep spewing a steady stream of hatred towards them, they just want to talk to me.”

#4: Speaking to a student:

Student: “My brother moved to Utah.”

Jokingly: “Utah? Why, to become a Mormon?”

Student (baffled): “We’re Mexican. We can’t be Mormons.”

Teaching the Teacher Teachers

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I never want to be an administrator. I don’t like paperwork. I don’t like dealing with angry people. I don’t like solving people’s problems, unless their problem is, “How do you spell ‘necessary?'” I don’t really like making decisions that affect lots of other people, and I wouldn’t like listening to the bitching that would inevitably result. I know that sounds a little funny coming from a teacher, since I do all of those things; but all of them are less obnoxious for a teacher. I mean, yes, I have too much paperwork to do; but much of it is only seen by students, so the standards are not very high: what I write needs to be helpful, but it doesn’t need to be politic, nor even polite. My students laugh when I make fun of them in the comments. I don’t think the state department of education would chuckle if I put a troll-face meme on the Title I report. And yes, I do some problem solving, but really, most of it is related to my subject, which makes it easy for me to solve; when it isn’t related to my subject — and I have dealt with very different problems, romantic problems, job problems, serious personal issues like drugs and abuse and homelessness — then it is really just one person helping another, and has very little to do with my job. I mean, if a teenager came up to me while I was drinking coffee in a cafe and told me that he was being abused at home, I’d try to do all the same things I do as a teacher, so that doesn’t really feel like part of my job. And making decisions for other people, while also something I do, is something I can very easily dodge responsibility for — “We’re studying this because it’s in the curriculum.” Boom. Buck is passed.

By the same token, I wouldn’t want to be a teacher teacher. I wouldn’t want to teach teachers how to teach, not in a university setting, and not as an inservice trainer. I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to follow the current trends, and that’s all those people do; and I certainly wouldn’t want to be that superficially chipper about it. I mean, if I ran an inservice about something that was total bullshit — say, integrating STEM into a literature class, to pick a completely random example — I’d want to be honest, as I am with my students: “I know, guys, this is complete horseshit. But the administrators are making us do this, so let’s try to get through it and then we can do something fun, okay? Like read a poem, or have a debate on a controversial issue.” And if I did that, I’d get fired after the second sentence. If not the first. (Somehow, even though they are adults talking to adults, teacher trainers never let themselves swear. I suppose it’s more professional, but I heard a man, for the first time in my life, use the word “chump” in earnest. And of course it’s because he couldn’t say “asshole.” Or, considering the particular bro I’m talking about, he probably would have said “bitch.” But I’d have more respect for him if he’d sucked it up and said “asshole.” Though less respect if he’d said “bitch.” A little less.)

But despite not wanting those jobs myself, I’m going to give some advice to both administrators and teacher teachers, right now. Because all of those people, despite their general lack of qualifications in my field — their lack of knowledge, and their lack of expertise, skill, or insight — have no trouble at all telling me how to do my job. They do it several times a year, in fact. So now it’s time for me to tell them how to do their jobs.

All right, first, for the teacher trainers: know how to teach. I mean, come on; you are standing in front of a whole room, sometimes a large room, full of teachers. And yeah, a number of them may be new — but some of us have been doing this for a long time. And even among the newbies, many of us are actually quite good at it, and know the way it should be done. So why is it that almost none of you know what I know?

For instance: understand your technology. I get it if you’re bad at technology; I struggle with it sometimes, too. But if you’re going to use a PowerPoint presentation, then use it. There’s nothing more ridiculous than to watch someone skip through slides, saying, “No, we don’t need to go over that.” So then why is the slide there? Or when people set up those cool effects, fades in and out, bullet points that pop up one at a time; and then they just click through all of that stuff to get the final overstuffed slide, which they go through piece by piece. If all you want to do is throw a bunch of information up there all at once, why do the effects? It’s distracting, and it makes you look incompetent.

For another thing, know that you shouldn’t lecture for three hours straight. Give people a break. Include audience participation, maybe some group work. (I mean, I hate that crap, but most teachers are more social than I, and they like it; if you knew your audience, you would include some group work.) Certainly ask some questions, and listen to the answers; maybe have a discussion. Oh — and ice breakers. Don’t do ice breakers. Most of the teachers know each other, and you will never, ever see us again; you don’t need to know our names and what we teach and one wacky thing about ourselves. Don’t make us think of wacky factoids early in the morning the first day back from vacation. Don’t do it. If you really think the ice needs to be broken, then listen to the wisdom of Ogden Nash: “Candy is dandy; but liquor is quicker.”

And please, have basic competence. Speak audibly. Understand a microphone. Know how to make the image fullscreen. Understand how to make your movie clips work, and how to get sound out of them (And get an aux cord. Please don’t hold your microphone up to the laptop speakers, or even worse, crank the volume on the laptop and ask everyone to be real quiet.). Learn how to use the remote, OR DON’T USE IT. Grasp the physics of a whiteboard. Have your materials prepared ahead of time, and make sure they’re the right materials. (All of these, by the way, are things I have seen presenters fail to do, over the course of my 17 years in inservice — errr, I mean teaching. No — I mean Hell.)

Once you get past the same level of presentation competence that I expect from my students, let’s talk about what you’re talking about. Make sure that your presentation is relevant. I know you want the gig — I want to get paid, too! — but I would never take a job as a physics teacher and then show up and talk about poetry. If you are doing an inservice at a high school, don’t talk about elementary school techniques and concepts. Don’t present on English language learners to a school that has a grand total of four of them. I mean, that’s the administration’s fault, too, for hiring you to talk about something essentially irrelevant — but you’re the one that has to stand up there and waste the teachers’ time; I have to think that much hatred focused all on you at once has to be uncomfortable. And if a faculty has already learned everything you have to talk about, don’t go talk to them about it again. Think of something new to say, or cancel the inservice.

Once you know that your subject is relevant, the last key is: talk about your actual subject. Don’t talk about yourself. I’m sure you have fascinating stories about yourself, about your martial arts experience, or your motorcycle, or your world travels, or your penchant for organic gardening (All of those, by the way, were discussed by the same speaker. The only lie in that sentence is the word “fascinating.”), but now is not the time. Teachers, if you didn’t know, have shit to do, especially at the beginning of a semester. We don’t appreciate having our time taken up learning about you and how unbelievably macho you are (“I was doing MMA before MMA was a thing.” Actually, I swear to you, a direct quote. He also used the word “vicarious” when he meant “precarious,” in the sentence, “Now you have put them in a vicarious situation.” I don’t mean to nitpick, but this guy was actually a nit, and he should have been picked, squashed, and flicked at a garbage can. Too harsh? Hang on; there’s more.). Also, don’t insult your audience by saying that you are smarter than them because you got out of teaching (Same guy.), and don’t tell them that anyone who doesn’t sign up for your other, more extensive training is stupid (Yup: also the same guy. Want to guess what precipitated this particular blog?). And I know this is out there — the very idea that someone would actually do this is laughable! — but don’t compare teaching to slaughtering chickens, with the analogy showing how teachers get jaded — just like someone who has cut the heads off of too many chickens.

I really want to say that was a different guy. It wasn’t. Gave a three-hour talk, nonstop, no break, and at the end of it, asked if there were any questions. (By the way: this one is for the teachers in the audience. If, at the end of a multi-hour presentation, the presenter asks if there are any questions, then anyone who actually asks a question, thereby making us all sit there longer and listen to more inanity, is going to go straight to Hell, where they will be strapped into an Iron Maiden and forced to listen to presentations about the variations of Mahjongg, written in Sanskrit and then run through Google translate and read aloud by a drunk with no teeth. Keep your damn questions to yourself. Go up and ask them personally if you have to — AFTER THE REST OF US HAVE LEFT.) The question that was asked (And even though this was a good question, still: straight to Hell.) was basically, “So did you ever tell us the thing we actually need to know?”

To which the answer was, No. He did not. He proceeded to do so, taking about five minutes, which tells me that the entire presentation could have been done in about fifteen minutes, total. In fact, I could do the presentation more effectively in a series of haiku. (No, I won’t torment you with the actual haiku; this was still an education inservice, and nobody who isn’t a teacher should ever go through that, even as a joke.) But then we wouldn’t have heard about his experience pouring concrete, which is what led him into the world of education. Yes, I’m serious.

Administrators: I really only have one piece of advice. Don’t ever hire that guy. Everything else is relatively acceptable. Just. Not. Him.

On the Twelfth Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me . . .

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… A blog about love and epiphanyyyyyy!

 

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that I – like most people – don’t particularly like my job. In some ways, on some days, it’s fine; but all in all, it’s not where I’d prefer to spend my time. I’ll never get a bumper sticker that says “I’d rather be working.” As I tell my students, “If I win the lottery tonight, I won’t be here tomorrow.” I tell people that I’m a teacher, but I don’t actually define myself that way; I consider myself a writer, and a reader, and a nerd, and a family man. Teaching is my source of income, not my identity.

But since a source of income is a necessity, and teaching is a pretty decent one, I thought I’d share some tips for making work a little more manageable – that is, if you can’t get your boss to change your work hours so he/she will stop torturing you. (There’s a scientist who says we should start work around 10am.)

First, figure out when you can say No. I know it’s true for teaching, and I’ll bet it’s true for a whole lot of jobs, that your employer will keep asking you for more for as long as you keep giving what they ask. They’ll ask you to do extra duties, to join committees, to come in early, to stay late, to take work home, to give up your weekends, your evenings, and your vacations. In my case, they ask me to come to meetings, to go to seminars, to agree to be a mentor or a coach or a tutor. They are constantly after my lunchtime, and they’d love it if I could fill in for the various staff members they’ve laid off or cut back – at my school this includes the security guard and the staff psychologist. They want me to train myself, and then train others. And of course, they want me to give every ounce of energy and every minute of time to the doing of my actual job: they want me to grade eight hours a day, prepare new lessons and new curriculum eight hours a day, and spend at least eight hours a day with students, preferably one-on-one. And for all of this, they want me to do it the way they want it done, whether or not I like that way of doing things or think it is the right way: it is their way, and therefore they want it to be my way.

But with teaching, and I’ll bet with a lot of jobs, there is a specific thing or things I’m supposed to be doing. In my case it is two things: first, I need to be a responsible babysitter, meaning that students cannot be hurt under my watch, particularly not by me; and second, my students need to learn. The first is easy to measure: students getting hurt, or students complaining about how I hurt them, are no-nos. The second is more difficult to measure, but figuring out how the bosses measure it was the key to knowing when and why I can say no. For me, it is two things, one positive and one negative. The positive measure is test scores. My students’ test scores can’t be terrible. They don’t have to be perfect, but they can’t be terrible. The – I guess it’s an advantage? – for me is that I have students measured by multiple tests, and as long as they’re doing well on one, then the other is less critical; so in my case, since I teach AP classes, as long as my AP test scores are sufficient, then the school wants to keep me around and keep me happy, even if my state testing scores are less wonderful. They’re not terrible, but they’re not as good as the school wants them to be; but my AP scores are. That gives me more ability to say No. It gives me No-power.

The negative measure of students learning is even better, for me: there can’t be any students or parents complaining about me. As long as none of my students go to the administration and say that the class is unfair, that the grade was too low, that the test was too hard and that the students weren’t prepared for it, then the school feels confident that I am doing my job. And that gives me even more No-power.

It’s not that simple, of course; there is more to it. I do need the credentials that I have, a degree in my subject and years of teaching experience and so on; I get observed twice a year and I have to look like I know what I’m doing; there are meetings I have to attend and duties I have to perform. I have to go to staff meetings, I have to meet with parents on the scheduled days or when parents request it, I have to be available for extra help if students need it. But those are the main things: babysitting, test scores, no complaints.

How did I figure this out? I listened to what people said about the people who used to have my job. The person who had it the year before me actually had a doctorate and college-level teaching experience; but the students thought she didn’t teach them enough. They thought she spent too long on one unit, they thought she didn’t explain things well, and they thought she couldn’t manage a class well enough to get them to listen. I heard the same things about her from other teachers, too. The person before her was a bad babysitter: she left the students locked out in the hallway after the bell rang; she left early and left the students alone in the classroom; she cussed at them when she was mad. So when one of my students told me that I taught him more in five minutes than my predecessor had taught him all year, I knew I was pretty well set. (I already knew I couldn’t lock my students out of the room, nor leave them alone in it. But that’s kind of a gimme, isn’t it? I mean, really.) The other key was watching the person at the top: the best teacher at the school, the one that everybody listens to and looks up to, the one who seems like they can get away with anything. How does that person get to be that powerful? In my school’s case, it’s basically the same answer, though our top teacher is more of a teacher and less of a babysitter – which tells me that there’s leeway in the babysitting aspect, as long as the test scores are good enough, and as long as the students think they learn. In this teacher’s case, it is more than the negative measure, more than a lack of students and parents complaining: our top teacher earns praise from students and parents. He is the one they thank at graduation for having taught them so much. And that gives him all the no-power he could ever need: he openly defies administrative decrees in certain areas, and nothing happens to him. Because the students think he is their best teacher. Even though he calls them deadbeats and degenerates, and threatens to hide their corpses under the soccer field.

So that’s the most important thing: figuring out what is necessary to gain the power to say No, and then deciding where to spend that power – because nobody, not even the best employee, has limitless power to say No. You do still have to show up (too early) and do your job. You can’t spit in your boss’s face. But you probably can skip out of some meetings, or refuse to serve on certain committees, and you can certainly say you aren’t going to that three-day seminar out of town (unless it’s in a good place and they’re paying expenses). That’s the key to keeping your sanity at work. The first one, at least.

The second key is to keep doing your work. Don’t let it pile up. Because it will pile up, and then it will collapse and smother you in an avalanche of catch-up. In my case it’s grading, which I did in fact pile up this last semester’s end, and it did almost smother me. It wasn’t the first time, either; and if I ever leave teaching behind before I win the lottery, that will be why: because I let work pile up and collapse on me once too often.

In the past I have let the work pile up because I’ve avoided doing it: I’ve collected essays and then looked at them and said, “Not today,” over and over and over again. Sometimes for as long as two months, though I was doing other grading in that span. That’s one of the nice things about teaching, even though it doesn’t always feel that way; I doubt there are a lot of jobs that allow that much slacking for that long. But since I didn’t get students filing complaints with the administration, it didn’t get me fired. I did have some pretty serious grumbling by the end of it, and I now have a (well-deserved) reputation for taking too long to grade things; I have made a conscious effort in the last few years to keep that from happening again. This last semester, the work piled up for a different reason: because I didn’t plan well enough, and I had too many major things due all at the end of the semester. It was a sudden deluge instead of a slow build-up; but it still almost took me down. So now I have two things to be aware of: not letting things pile up, and not creating a huge pile that will all fall on me at once. I’m sure someday I’ll learn those habits. And then I’ll probably win the lottery.

But all of that, though I hope it will be useful for some people to know, is not actually the thing I wanted to talk about. There is something else, something that I think is actually unusual, something that I know that most people don’t. This is my epiphany, if you will. And it is this: if you have the chance, then work alongside of the person you love.

I’ve done it a few times, now. When I was a janitor in college, my wife (then unwedded soulmate) worked in the same facility, selling tickets and concessions for the box office while I cleaned the place. When I became a teacher, she spent two summers teaching summer school with me, once in the same room. We met because we were sort of working side by side: she worked in the college bookstore, and I sold student IDs in the same building; I used to get change from her, and she used to pass my table on her way to get coffee or a bottle of water. And now, by a fortuitous set of circumstances, she is the art teacher in the classroom right next to my English class. And it is the best thing about my job.

Now, it is better for me than it is for her. Teaching unquestionably gets easier with experience; this is her first year of full-time teaching, and it’s my seventeenth. I’ve been at the school for two and a half years now, so I have a better idea of how things work and who I can get help from and who I can’t; she is figuring all of that out. She also got screwed over by her predecessor, who cleaned the room out of any useful materials or curriculum, and left the art supplies in a hellish mess; I came to a classroom with class sets of novels and textbooks, and filing cabinets full of quizzes and worksheets and materials I could use. I have a department with three other English teachers who give me help and advice and share good stuff with me; she’s the only art teacher at the school, and one of two in the district – and the other is also brand-new. She’s starting completely from scratch, and it makes the job twice as hard. And it’s pretty goddamn hard to start with. Add to that the fact that she doesn’t particularly like teaching, either; that it isn’t how she defines herself or any part of her identity, and it’s easy to see that it’s been a tough year for her.

But she does have this advantage: I’m right next door. That means that she, like me, always has someone to cover for her if she needs to run to the bathroom. I always have someone to eat lunch with, and to sit with in meetings. When I’ve had a tough class or an annoying meeting, I can go to her and bitch about it. I can complain – no, scratch that; I never complain about my students, the little angel-babies.

No, sorry, can’t say that with a straight face. When I want to complain about my irritating, obnoxious, tiresome students, I can go straight to her and say whatever I really think, without any fear that she will judge me, or get me in trouble for it. I can get advice from her – and regardless of her inexperience with the profession or in the school, I do, because she is naturally brilliant, and because she knows quite a lot about working in general, having dealt with office politics in an actual office, where they are more pervasive and pernicious than they are in a school, where most people work behind closed doors all day. She’s also, it turns out (No surprise to me), a genuinely good teacher, though without the mixed blessing of test scores, it is sometimes harder for her to see it. And because she is a more dedicated artist than I am, being a good teacher means less to her than it does to me; she cares about being a good artist.

She’s that, too.

But it is a lovely thing to have another person there with you, in that place where you have to spend so many hours, and for such pragmatic, uninspiring reasons. (“I just worked a full day! That means I can pay my heating bill! And maybe the electric, too! WOO!”) We keep our behavior appropriate, of course; but I still get hugs, and even a kiss or two. The main thing is just that I get someone to talk to. We go to the water cooler together, and to the lounge to use the microwave. I walk up to the office with her when she has to drop something off, and I’ve helped her learn the eccentricities of our Xerox machine. She is already friendlier with the rest of the staff than I am, and we like and dislike the same people (But never the students! We love every one of them! Angel-babies, they are!). We drive to work together, and leave together, which makes it much easier to run errands after work and to arrange our morning schedules. It’s really been fantastic, having the woman I love with me all day, at work and at home. I know some people would get tired of that much time together; and we are in separate classrooms for most of the workday, which probably helps – but I have had nothing but joy from this arrangement. I recommend it highly.

And the best part is this: I have never, not once in the last four months, had to say goodbye.

On The Tenth Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me . . .

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…An angry rant from W.T.!

 

W.T. Fuck: Because I’m Less Polite.

 

Hello, friends. W.T. Fuck, here. I’m the last Fuck; sometimes a flying Fuck. When you have no Fucks left to give, I’ll be there. If you are angry as Fuck, annoyed as Fuck, hungry as Fuck – I’ll be there. When someone tells you to go Fuck yourself, you come to me, and I’ll show you how to be a little more like me: yes, I’ll Fuck you right up.

Wondering what the “W.T.” stands for? Good. Keep wondering. Because the W., at least, is rarely the same thing twice. “T.” is short for “the.” You probably guessed that. Well done, you. I owe you a prize gold-plated Fuck.

Today, W. stands for Why. Because today, I’m wondering: Why The Fuck are there computer viruses?

My computer has virus protection software. And it’s expensive. And it slows the computer down, and because it is an older, more tired computer, it screws the poor thing up. Every day the virus protection has to update, and then when it does, it asks me to restart the computer in order to sort out all of the elements of the program, get its little virus-fighting ducks in a row – though I like to think of it as a skirmish line, like in one of those historical war movies where the only thing that matters in winning a battle and saving the nation or the world or Whatever The Fuck they’re fighting for is: holding the line. Then the viruses are a horde of savages come running, screaming, from behind those hills over there, and I picture the pieces of anti-virus software quaking in their little electronic shoes, while some commander yells, “Hold . . . . Hold . . . HOLD!!!” And then the viruses are on them, and they have to fight for their tiny digital lives, and for the preservation of my computer. God bless them for their sacrifice.

So every day when I turn the computer on, it has to run a scan, and figure out which new anti-virus software bits have been sent – reinforcements; nay, The CAVALRY! – and then (after slowing the computer down terribly while it runs this scan and downloads the reserves), it gives me a popup that says it needs to restart. And as annoying as that is, the truly annoying thing is this: when I re-start the computer in order to let it collate all of its newly downloaded anti-malware bits, what does it do? It runs a new scan, and realizes that it has NEW bits of anti-virus protection to download and plug into the newly-carved holes in the line, and it tells me I have to restart AGAIN.

W.T. Fuck.

And sure, the problem would be solved if I bought a newer computer. And it might be solved if I changed virus software companies – mine is McAfee, because I had Norton and then changed, and removing all of the Norton stuff from the computer was worse than the freaking viruses could ever be. I’m sure there are still better anti-virus products out there, several of them probably free. But that’s not the best solution. The best solution is this: EVERYBODY NEEDS TO STOP MAKING VIRUSES AND GET A LIFE. Please. For Fuck’s sake.

I mean, I get that the majority of viruses are money makers. They either steal valuable information, or they perform tasks that someone is willing to pay for, like turning a computer into a spambot so advertisers can get their obnoxious emails into everyone’s inbox, so we can all find out how to keep our dicks harder longer. Especially the ladies. But seriously: if you have the ability and the knowhow to create malware, why can’t you just make something useful and sell it? How about a better grammar checker? Or a spellchecker that would recognize the word “knowhow?” Surely there are better ways to earn a living.

And then there are the viruses that people make for fun. People. Make viruses. For fun. Why The Fuck do people do that? Why The Fuck is it some kind of status symbol in the hacker world to be able to ruin millions of people’s computers? Why The Fuck is that cool? Why The Fuck are people like this?

I suppose there’s no answer. Cool never makes sense. Hackers are like many online people: they think trolling is funny. They think people getting angry is funny. They probably think this blog is hi-larious.

Well, you know what, virus-makers? I don’t give a Fuck. So Fuck off, please, and let me simply enjoy my little computer and my simple little internet needs. Do something useful, for a change: maybe figure out how to keep viruses off my computer without running a new scan every thirty-five minutes. Or better yet: figure out a way to keep my screen clean.

 

– W.T. Fuck.

What the F##k?

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For the Ninth Day of Blogging, here’s one from a fellow blogger. A nice message, and I like the title. Give it a read and check out his blog, squeezethespacemanstaco.com

kmelerine's avatarSqueeze the Space Man's Taco

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There I sat in disbelief. On the cold travertine tile surrounding the toilet flange, I chiseled away. Once again, brother-in-law Brett broke the commode. Although forty-five, he remains eternally twelve. Pulsating through the sewer pipes, Brett’s karaoke filled the room. “Living on a prayer,” my ass. The smell of poop was nauseating.

“Can life get any worse than this?” I thought to myself. Just then, a fragment of PVC pipe struck me in the eye. Holding my eyelid shut, I staggered to the medicine cabinet. There was an eye wash kit somewhere in the house and we finally had a need for it. Flipping through random first aid products proved to be pointless. A foreign object was lodged in my eye and the case of Pepto-Bismol we bought at the local wholesale club would do me no good.

“Hey what’s up?” Tilting my head back, I answered my phone.

The worry in my friend’s voice made my eyes open wide. “It’s…

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On the Eighth Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me . . .

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…A book review from Purgatoryyyyy!

A quick word: though I have said a lot about the uselessness of New Year’s resolutions, I’m still going to  make something akin to one. Because I’m not against promises, just against them being attached to January 1, and the promise I’m making has little to do with that, as it isn’t bounded on either end by 2017. But the promise is this: books. This year — and beyond — will be about books. I have a book to finish writing, and two books to publish, and at least 100 books to read, before another year has passed. This book is the first of this year, though I started it last year, and don’t actually care what year it is. Point is: books. Lots and lots of books.

This was a good place to start, if starting is what I’m doing.

 

Lost Gods

by Brom

This is the fourth book I’ve read by the illustrator Brom – the other three were The Child Thief, The Devil’s Rose, and the unforgettable Plucker – and I feel about this one much as I felt about the others: Brom has an incredible imagination, a good ability to tell a story, and a thorough obsession with blood and gore and hell. I still think he should stick to the illustrated novels, though, because The Plucker is by far his best work, including this one.

This is a good book. It’s a fantastic cosmology, with Brom following in the footsteps of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne and others, finding a way to unify ancient mythologies with the modern monotheistic religions; in this book, set largely in Purgatory/Hades/The Underworld, the idea is that the One Gods (And maybe my favorite word play in this book is that one: the plural “gods” after the number “one”) have taken over from the ancient pagan gods and driven them into the Underworld, where all souls go. There the gods have continued their ways, trying to draw worshipers and maintain their own power and glory, but still losing out to the modern religions and to ambitious and godless men.

Enter our hero, a man with a mission: to save his wife and child. Whatever the cost.

I don’t want to give away more than that – don’t even want to tell you which character is actually the hero, because the first impressions you get, from pretty much every character, are wrong. That was the best part of the novel, for me: the underlying idea that nobody can be taken at face value, neither good nor evil. That was done extremely well in this book, and it kept me guessing all the way. Kept me reading, and enjoying it. There are characters to root for, and ones you hope will be destroyed; many of them end up exactly where you want them to, and it is satisfying. But there are also some that make you change your mind: first you want them to fail, but then you want them to succeed; some of those resolutions were actually the most satisfying.

Other than that, the world-building was great, as I said, and the visuals are brilliant at times: Brom doesn’t always have a great gift for describing things in detail, but the pictures he imagines, and then puts into words, are stunning. It’s why I wish he’d stick with illustrated novels, because when he paints those visuals, then the whole story is elevated to magic. Fortunately, this book has a set of full-color plates, illustrations of the demons and gods in the Underworld, which are beautiful. Combine that with a good fantasy world, a good story, lots of action and violence and blood and gore, and with interesting characters, and this is something worth reading. (And spend the money for the hardback: you want the illustrations full-size. Don’t know what they’ll be like if there’s a paperback. If you find it in a store, check: they’re inset about two-thirds of the way through the novel, in a group. Not necessarily the best part of the book — it is a good story — but they are a necessary part of the book.)

 

In his acknowledgments at the end, Brom says a wonderful thing while thanking his editor for helping him put this book together. He says,
“When I started writing this novel I never stopped to consider the logistical challenges of my idea. I, like so many creatives, don’t have time for such silliness. I needed to plunge in, chase my muse before she slipped away. I did not realize until later that in order to make my particular vision of purgatory believable, I would need not only to invent an entire history, a system of government, a political/social structure for both souls and gods, tie it into all religions, add some kind of monetary system, define magics and spells and powers, but also to invent a physiology for the dead, figure out if souls eat, drink, and if so, what. Can the dead die? If so, how? And, as with most mysteries, answering one question often leads to ten more.”

He’s never been more right. And he’s done a good job of this with Lost Gods. I recommend it.

On the Seventh Day of Blogging, Just Dusty Blogged for Me…

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…A throwback to 20/Infinityyyyy!

The blog I used to have, 20/Infinity, was dedicated to the theme of time travel: I imagined having a time machine and the ability to travel back in time and change past events in order to adjust the present or the future; the title was a reference to infinite hindsight. It was a good blog while it lasted. And since this is New Year’s Eve, a time when we look back on the past, I thought that I had two options: either I could recount the events of 2016 (he says with a shudder), or I could re-post one of my essays from an old blog. And even though I agree with Cat Jones and others that 2016 was not the worst year on record — 2014 was so much shittier for me, I can’t even express it — I’d rather not rehash it right now.

So instead, here is one of the very first blogs I ever wrote, almost ten years ago today; explaining in greater detail how I feel about New Year’s Resolutions. My favorite thing about this one? The phrase “rut jump.” And it’s fun to see how I nerded out to words with two u’s together.

Enjoy! Happy New Year!

 

Resolved

Happy new year! Tak a cup o’kindness, fer the sake of auld lang syne. Gather round and watch the Bowl Games. Drink champagne, watch the ball drop, kiss someone you love at midnight.

I hope that everyone got a chance to do any or all of those things on the last night of 2007, and the first day of 2008. But I also hope that nobody made a New Year’s Resolution. In fact, that will be my first use of the time machine: I will flirt with paradox and play footsie with the space-time continuum (How cool is it that there are words that have two u’s together? Continuum! Vacuum!) by going back to the same day, over and over and over again, doubling and trebling and quadrupling myself in order to catch everyone I can on New Year’s Eve, so that I can try to convince everyone: don’t.

Don’t promise to lose weight. Don’t swear off alcohol or cigarettes or chocolate. Don’t make that champagne-infused oath to be a nicer person, to be a meaner person, to work harder, to work less, to find a lover or to lose a dozen. That is, make any, all of those promises — just don’t do it on December 31.

The New Year is one of the more artificial demarcations there is — right up there with Leap Year and Daylight Savings Time. The old year vanishes, and there is a clean slate! We start fresh! Yeah, right: you go to sleep under a cloudy/rainy/snowy/sleety sky, and wake up under the same. The nights are still long, the days are still short; the air is still cold. Public school students are (generally speaking) returning to school still in the first semester, or halfway through the second trimester; university students are only halfway through their winter break. If you were 38 when 2007 ended, you are 38 when 2008 begins (Unless January 1 is your birthday, but that puts you into a different category. So siddown, nitpicker.). Tell me, please, other than your calendar (16-month calendars are hereby discounted — vile heresies they are.), what changes between December 31 and January 1?

When you make a life-changing resolution, when you decide that things are going to be different, it needs to feel like it. You need to feel as though things really are different, as though you have changed and now you are seeing the world through different eyes: now you are a non-smoker! An exerciser! A teetotaler! Things should not feel just as they did the night before — and a January 1 champagne hangover is not enough of a shift in perception. If you make a change in your basic daily routine, then the day after you make that change needs to be a new day — otherwise you will not feel the change, and as countless diet industry millionaires can attest, if you do not feel the change, you will not change. You may change for a little while, but slowly you will shift back into your former routine.

Life is a rut in the road. Most of the time, we run along in our little ruts, moving forward, pretty much content, occasionally jumping up to get a glimpse of what is outside the rut. Sometimes, when we decide we no longer enjoy this particular rut, we can try to jump out of the rut; this is what a resolution is, a rut jump. But if all you do is jump to the top of the rut and keep running along the edge of the same old rut, sooner or later you’re going to ooze right back in, and be right back where you started — probably just in time for New Year’s Eve, 2008, and a brand new, though equally futile, champagne-fueled guilt-charged rut jump. To get out of your rut and stay out, you have to find a new rut.

What this means is just that you have to change yourself before you can change your habits, and to change yourself takes real willpower. You have to want to be different, because if you don’t really want to be different, you’re not going to change. It seems so obvious, but vast self-improvement industries have been built on resolution recidivism, the tendency to change one’s life without really changing one’s self, an attempt that is almost always doomed to be repeated, over and over again, at great personal and financial cost.

If you want to change, then don’t wait for a new calendar. Change when the time feels right to you. Listen to your own will, your own heart and mind. Take that day, whatever day it is that you wake up feeling like a new person, and count from there; that is the beginning of your New Year, of your year as the person you want to be. The day that you choose, for yourself, is always more meaningful than the one that is chosen for you. Want proof? Think of the difference between Valentine’s Day, the artificially chosen Day To Prove Your Love (also known as Hallmark Day, also known as Day the Catholic Church Wanted to Take Away From Pagans Who Had Yet Another Fertility Festival That Week [cf. Roman feast of Lupercal and read the description from Plutarch], also known as Day To Be Jealous Of All the Kids With More Cards In Their Construction Paper Letter Box Than You, Those Jerkfaces) and your anniversary. Which day seems more precious? Which has more thought behind it, the heart-shaped box of chocolates or the anniversary gift? When do you feel a greater difference in your world view, on February 15 — or the day after your wedding night?

If you are one of those people who actually feel a difference between December 31 of one year and January 1 of the next, then please: ignore what I have said. Hold up a hand for silence, and point me back to my time machine: a New Year’s Resolution is perfectly valid for you. If your birthday falls on the first day of the New Year, then perhaps you, like millions of others, feel a real difference on the morning when your age officially rolls over to the next number; you, too, are free to resolve to change with the coming of the new year of your life. But for the rest of you, forget the New Year. Celebrate it, sure; reminisce about the old year, look forward to the new year. But don’t expect to change yourself as easily as you change the calendar. Pick your own first day, and look forward to your own chosen anniversary.

And by the way: if you picked February 14 as your wedding day, you need to get a life.