Blackmoor Vituperative

“Things have changed forever.”

We heard this after the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed. We heard it after the Virginia Tech massacre. We heard it after the Cinemark massacre. On Monday there was a bombing in Boston, and we are hearing it again.

It isn’t true. We have had bombings and tragedies before, and we will have them again. We pick up the pieces, comfort the survivors, and we move on. Nothing has changed. None of this is new. Some of the worse bombings in US history were in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The worst school massacre in US history was almost 100 years ago, using a bomb. “Things have changed forever” is nonsense. It’s delusional, in fact. Yes, bad things happen, but there is nothing anyone can do to prevent them. Fortunately, bad things of this particular nature are extremely rare. So why do we pay disproportionate attention to them?

A few people die in an explosion, and that’s major national news, but around 100 people die in car crashes the same day, and that’s barely mentioned in local news, if it’s mentioned at all. And 100 more die the next day. And the next. One-fifth of those 100 daily dead are children. No press conference are held where a sad but resolute politician vows to find those responsible. No “town halls” are gathered where politicians with private chauffeurs insist that we must place “reasonable restrictions” on car ownership.

We ignore a pile of bodies that accumulates like clockwork every single day, but we wail and gnash our teeth at rare and impossible-to-prevent tragedies and vow to implement “solutions” which have absolutely no chance of doing anything to prevent the next rare and isolated tragedy. Our reaction to these things is exactly backward.

More importantly, it isn’t true because the people who commit these crimes are not the norm. We are — the normal, peaceful people who want to live our lives in peace without being robbed, murdered, blown up, violated, spied on, or detained indefinitely. As Patton Oswalt said recently, “So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, ‘The good outnumber you, and we always will.’ “

I watched a squirrel making its nest today. It would climb down to the ground, grab as many leaves as it could stuff in its mouth, climb up a tree next to its nest, jump over to the nest-tree, stuff the leaves in, and then climb down to get more leaves. It did this for as long as I watched it, which was only a few minutes, but it made several trips. It was really interesting to watch.

Susan saw a group of four bunnies this afternoon, chasing each other and playing at the feet of a couple of deer. No photos, alas.

I spent this weekend at RavenCon, a SF&F convention in Richmond, VA. RavenCon was started by Michael Pederson, Tony Ruggiero, and Tee Morris (who, like Tony, left the staff a few years ago and has gone on to a successful writing career). I didn’t start it, but I am old friends with Mike Pederson, and I was there helping out at the beginning. This is the first year that I’ve attended that I haven’t been on staff. For the first few years, I helped design, print, and hang the large schedule signs, and I ran the movie room for a year or two until it was decided (and I agreed) that the room could be put to better use. For the past couple of years I did the programming, taking over from the previous program director, Tony Ruggiero (who was already a successful author, and is now even more so).

I had a couple of reasons for stepping down from being the programming director after RavenCon 2012. The main one is that, like Tee and Tony (or so I hope), I want to focus on my own writing. Setting up the programming for a convention is not terribly difficult, but it is ridiculously time-consuming. There’s also the matter that Susan and I have moved away from Richmond, so driving an hour or more each way for meetings was no longer something I really wanted to do.

While I did twitch a few times at things I would have done differently, it was nice not working during the convention. I could actually attend panels from the beginning to the end, and if I was having an interesting conversation I didn’t have to cut it short to go put out fires.

If you find yourself a convention volunteer some day (everyone on staff at a con is a volunteer), I have a suggestion for you: be gracious. Be gracious to the attendees, who pay good money to be there. Be gracious to the guests, who are doing the convention a favor by attending (often at their own expense), and for whom this is their livelihood (or at least an aspiration). Be gracious to the other volunteers who do the real work of the con — sitting for hours at the registration desk, or keeping the con suite supplied, or pushing carts full of audiovisual equipment from one end of the hotel to the other — all of whom are sacrificing their weekend, not being paid for their time, and who usually aren’t even able to enjoy the convention they are making happen because they are working the whole time. Be gracious, try to do a good job for the attendees and the guests, and try not to take criticism personally.

Folks, if you are fighting to infringe on the civil rights of other people, you’re on the wrong side. That means if you are for *any* of these, you are on the wrong side: “gun control” [sic], marriage discrimination, censorship, *any* religion being given preferential treatment by the government, warrantless wiretaps, warrantless searches at airports, warrantless surveillance, detention of civilians without a trial, assassination of civilians without a trial… I’m tired of typing. You get the idea.

I’ve started watching Stephen Fry In America (on Netflix). I’m scarcely 13 minutes into the first episode (there are six episodes, I believe, and each of them an hour long), but I am already charmed by Fry’s affable approach and his obvious affection and admiration for what is best about the people and places he visits. In a world with so much cynicism and so many reasons to be bitter, it’s really quite lovely to see someone visit the USA and find reasons to like it.

He says, while visiting Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont, “In a hard and harsh and unpleasant world, we need ice cream. That’s my feeling.” Well, in a hard and harsh and unpleasant world, I think we need Stephen Fry.

Here are ten tips which you can use to drastically reduce the quantity and increase the quality of your television viewing:

1. Do not watch “reality” shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
2. Do not watch game shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
3. Do not watch award shows unless you have a friend who is on the show.
4. Do not watch sports unless the broadcast is live.
5. Do not watch television shows that have a “laugh track”.
6. Do not watch television shows that feature musical numbers.
7. Do not watch movies that have been “formatted to fit your screen” (i.e., pan and scanned).
8. Do not watch movies that have been “edited to run in the time allotted” (i.e., butchered).
9. Do not watch movies that have been “edited for content” (i.e., censored).
10. Do not watch movies that are interrupted by commercials.

This is what being Southern is all about: standing up for what’s right and standing by your neighbors. It’s about doing the right thing and going the extra mile to help out people who need help. Some Yankees might not get it, and even some people who live in the South might not get it, but this is exactly what that rebel flag you see on cars and trucks down here means: standing up for the right of individuals to live their own lives.

Bravo to Quality Auto Paint & Body.

P.S. Susan asked if the guy from Quality Auto Paint & Body had a rebel flag tattoo or something. The answer is that I have no idea. That wasn’t my point.

Susan and I just finished watching a movie called The Skin I Live In. I want to discourage you from Googling it or looking up too much about it, because there are some twists you may not see coming, and that’s a pretty rare thing. Better not to spoil it.

I will share some things that won’t spoil it for you. First, it’s in Spanish with English subtitles. Hopefully that won’t put you off too much. Now for the plot: Antonio Banderas is a mad scientist. He has a young woman locked in a room in his mansion (and wow, is that some mansion!). He appears to be using her as a Guinea pig for his artificial skin experiments. She doesn’t seem seem to be there willingly, but at the same time, she doesn’t seem altogether unwilling, either.

That’s as much as I can say without potentially ruining it for you. It’s a weird, weird movie. As Susan would say, “Why are foreign films so foreign?”

I do recommend it, though.

Susan and I had a conversation earlier about Sherlock Holmes, and whether the 125-year-old character was in the public domain (it should have been in the public domain before either of us were born, but that’s another topic).

In process of researching our discussion, I turned up this article regarding a suit filed recently in federal court in Chicago. A top Sherlock Holmes scholar alleges that many licensing fees paid to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate have been unnecessary, since the main characters and elements of their story derive from materials in the public domain (as of 2004, only 9 of the 60 Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle are still covered under US copyright).

Half a billion dollars, twice a year. Not to mention the needless deaths and injuries. Stop the madness!

[...]the phenomenon known as daylight saving time can disrupt people’s lives to the point where society experiences an increase in heart attacks, workplace injuries (particularly in the mining and construction business) and more aimless web surfing that hurts overall productivity. Collectively, the sudden jolt forward costs the U.S. economy $433,982,548 in 2010, according to an analysis by research firm Chmura Economics & Analytics.

[...]

And while the whole point of losing an hour of sleep was to save energy, there’s research that suggests the practice doesn’t even confer any such benefit. One illustrative example is the unique case of Indiana, which up until a few years ago, only 15 of the state’s 92 counties observed DST. Researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara compared the electric meter readings registered during the time period before the change to the overall usage after and found that residents ended up paying $8.6 million more than we would have if they stayed on Standard time.

(From “U.S. economy lost $433,982,548 because of daylight saving time”, SmartPlanet)