Re-exploring the Whedonverse

I just watched one of the best ever episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now, if for any reason you just turned up your nose, or perhaps snorked milk through it, I will assume you’ve found it difficult to appreciate Buffy for what it is.  Let’s start with its pedigree: there are essentially three television show creators for whom I will watch basically anything they create:¹ Alan Ball, Aaron Sorkin, and Joss Whedon.  At this point, I’ve watched almost everything those three gentlemen have ever done,² although sometimes I have to go fill in gaps.  A couple of years ago I had to sit down and watch/rewatch the entire 7-year run of West Wing.  And, currently, I’m embarked on the same mission for Buffy.

Now, as it happens, I saw most of the Buffy episodes when they went into re-runs the first time, which I believe would have been before its original run was even complete.  But that was 15 years (and three children) ago, and I certainly don’t remember all the ones I watched, and I never watched them all.  Plus I never watched a single episode of Angel, which means I totally missed out on all the crossover fun.³  And, somewhere in my various and sundry pokings around the Internet, I discovered the excellent Watcher’s Council viewing guide, which tells you exactly what order to watch every episode in, and, as it mentioned, the entire run of both series is available streaming on Netflix, so it doesn’t even cost me anything.⁴

Buffy is an interesting story in Whedonosophy.  First there was the movie, which Whedon wrote but then didn’t have much else to do with.  I had seen it: I thought it was an interesting enough piece of fluff entertainment ... nothing to write home about, perhaps, but a not unenjoyable way to kill an hour and a half.  If nothing else, it’s always fun to see Pee-Wee Herman playing a vampire.

Reportedly, Whedon said he didn’t like the studio’s treatment of the Buffy movie because they had made it too campy.⁵  Which is kind of funny, because there is no way to take Buffy completely seriously.  The trick is to understand that you don’t have to take it completely seriously to have fun with it, come to love and empathize with its characters, and appreciate the genius of its creator.  When I first saw my roommates gathered around the television, excitedly watching a show based on a movie about a cheerleader who chased down vampires, I thought, man, that’s silly ... how can you really get into something like that?  But the more they watched, the more dialogue I heard just passing through the room, and the more I got sucked in.

See, dialogue is Whedon’s true talent.  Very like Sorkin, and to a lesser extent like Ball, Whedon writes sharp, clever, engaging dialogue.  Oh, it’s completely unrealistic: listening to a conversation between two Whedon characters is like listening to two people re-enacting a conversation they had yesterday, only now they’ve had time to think of all the witty comebacks they couldn’t come up with at the time.  No one really talks like that, but it’s oh so entertaining to listen to.  Just as Sorkin sucked me into Sports Night even though I hate sports, the words that Whedon put into the mouths of his characters easily overcame my reservations about the subject matter.

Now, this was Whedon’s first show, and you can tell.  It’s great, but it does take a little time to get there.  The first two seasons are good, definitely, but you have to stick with it until season 3 for the greatness to kick in.  Once it does, though, it becomes a bit of a thrill ride, and it’s difficult not to binge watch it.

While the snappy dialogue is the most often cited evidence of Whedon’s genius, it’s certainly not the only one.  Another thing his shows have is organic relationships amongst the characters.  His shows tend to have large casts of central characters (Buffy season 3 has 7, for instance), not to mention many more recurring characters.⁶  And yet all these people have particular relationships with each other that somehow never seem forced.  The best example is when he needs to introduce a new character.  In most shows, character A disappears at the end of season X, and character B magically appears in season X + 1, and everyone just accepts them with minimal adjustment.  One of the most egregious examples of this would be Criminal Minds (another show with a large cast), where Mandy Patinkin’s Gideon never really returns after season 2 and Joe Mantegna’s Rossi shows up out of nowhere in season 3 to replace him, and the team dynamic changes not a whit.  The writers attempted to explain this by giving Rossi the backstory of being Gideon’s old partner—the cofounder of the whole unit, in fact—so he was well-known to all the existing characters on the show.  Unfortunately, this sort of thing is easy to overdo: Rossi was apparently so well-known that, in nearly 50 hour-long episodes, no one ever thought to mention him before Joe Mantegna showed up on set.  The truth is, this is just the shit that happens when one actor leaves the show and is replaced by another.  We in the viewing audience just accept it.  What’s the alternative?

Well, Whedon has an alternative.  He doesn’t always have time to build a logical story arc around an actor’s exit,⁷ but a character’s entrance is always under his control. Let’s take Seth Green’s Oz.  Oz first appears in season 2, episode 4, for about 30 seconds.  He then shows up again in episodes 6, 9, and 10 for equally brief amounts of screentime, before becoming a pretty regular guest star in episode 13 and finally a series regular in season 3.  So, by the time you need to accept him as a full-fledged member of the group, you’re already used to having him around.  He didn’t just show up one day and become an integral part of the story.  He’s that guy we kept bumping into and then he struck up a relationship with one member of the group and then he started having plots revolve primarily around his character and he just naturally became part of the gang.  It’s all very organic and feels very real, which, if you think about it, is pretty bizarre for a show with highly stylized, unrealistic dialogue about high school kids fighting supernatural monsters.  But the reality of characters is something you just can’t fuck with.  You can have outlandish situations, and you can have over-the-top dialogue, but the people on the show must feel very real, even when they’re vampires.  If the audience doesn’t identify with your characters—doesn’t see in them people they know and love, or even themselves—then you’re done.  No amount of cleverness and ingenuity can save that show.

So the characters are the main thing I praise Buffy⁸ for, but not the only thing.  Being that it is a show about high school kids fighting supernatural monsters, it could either be a cool high school show, or a cool monster show.  But, with Whedon at the helm, it’s somehow both.  Sometimes it takes turns going from one to the other and sometimes it really does pull off doing both at once.⁹  It’s also a fun action-thriller show at the same time it’s a clever (not broad) comedy.  When it’s doing action, it’s blood-pumping, edge-of-your-seat thrilling.  And when it’s doing comedy, it’s tickle-your-funnybone funny.  And, again: he can even do both at once, sometimes. 

One thing it’s generally not, though, is scary.  With a premise like “high school cheerleader takes on vampires”¹⁰ you can do funny pretty easily, and you can do thrilling if you work at it, but scary requires taking the show way too seriously.  I said up at the top that you can’t take Buffy seriously and you don’t need to, and that’s true.  It’s also true that Whedon doesn’t try to take the show too seriously (just seriously enough to make it awesome), and for the most part that’s the right choice.  When creators try to take their stories too seriously, that’s when they become silly.  So with the writer not being entirely serious and the audience just in it for the fun (and the awesome), actual scary is a pretty unlikely outcome.

And yet, the episode I watched recently, that inspired me to write this post, is actually totally creepy.  It’s not going to give me nightmares or anything, but damn if the monsters in this particular episode creep me right the fuck out and give me a serious case of the shivers.  The episode is called “Hush”, and, while following that link will show you a picture of the monsters in question, it’s not just their appearance that made them so damn freaky.  It was also the way they moved, and their expressions—one of the main monsters is played by Doug Jones, and, if you don’t know who that is, go back and watch Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies again.  So we’re talking actors who are gifted at expressing emotion without talking, which is handy, because the gimmick of these monsters is that they steal everyone’s voices.  After the first 15 minutes or so of the episode, no one gets to talk any more.  And that just makes the whole thing even creepier.

Which is not to say that Whedon shorts us on the funny, though.  The Buffyverse wiki article linked above says that one of Whedon’s inspirations for writing this episode was constantly hearing that his scripts hinged on the dialogue.  Well, if his intention was to show that an episode of his could succeed without the clever dialogue, he failed abysmally.  The scene where Giles explains the nature of the danger and how to defeat it (using visual aids since he can’t talk), is one of the funniest Buffy scenes in the series, in my opinion, and it’s all because of the painstakingly crafted¹¹ pictures, gestures, facial expressions, phrases hastily scrawled on signs, and artfully placed silent mouthings of words, few enough that you can read their lips without any issues.  All Whedon managed to prove is that he can even write clever dialogue without using a single spoken word.

And on top of the creepy and the funny, there are still plenty of great character moments, including an unexpectedly sweet gesture between two characters just starting a romantic relationship, and the first appearance of a character who I happen to know will become a crucial part of the show in later seasons.  I’d missed this episdoe the first time around, and, now that I’ve had the opportunity to see it, my faith in the genius of Whedon is only reinforced.

So, if you’ve never thought to give Buffy a try, but perhaps you appreciate some of the other Whedon properties, such as Firefly or The Avengers, let me encourage you to fire up your Netflix and take it out for a spin.  For a show about high school kids fighting vampires and demons, it’s surprisingly enjoyable for adults and kids alike.

__________

1 Barring premature cancellation.  Television network executives being as moronic as they are, I often have to wait a season or so to make sure they’re not going to cancel the show out from under me before I get too invested.

2 Except for the premature cancellations (see previous footnote).  Specifically, Oh, Grow Up, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and Dollhouse, respectively.  I don’t count Firefly because of Serenity (natch).

3 Not to mention I never understood where Cordelia went.  Now I get it.

4 Well, above and beyond what I’m already paying Netflix every month.  Which is a bargain, really.

5 Specifically what he said, according to Wikipedia, was: “I had written this scary film about an empowered woman, and they turned it into a broad comedy.  It was crushing.”

6 This is another characteristic he shares with Sorkin and Ball, actually.

7 Although sometimes he does.  The character who leaves in season 4 (no spoilers!) was a real blow, but I thought the exit was handled gracefully.  Less so the first actor to depart Angel, but, as I say: sometimes things are just out of your control.

8 And Angel.  From now on, let’s just pretend they’re a single entity, and every time I say “Buffy,” you translate that as “Buffy and Angel.”

9 See?  Balance and paradox.  No wonder I love this show.

10 Although, to be fair, Buffy was only really a cheerleader in the movie version.  By the time she hit the series, she realized her life was never going to allow her to do something as normal as cheerleading.

11 Obviously I don’t know that for sure, but as an aspirational fellow writer, I’d put money on that assessment.

Too much/not enough

I don’t think I’m going to do a proper post again this week.  Oddly, my problem today is not having nothing to say, but rather having too much.  I’ve had several ideas for posts this week, but couldn’t settle on any one of them, with the result that I’ve got 3 or 4 half-finished^* ideas and no hope of actually completing any of them.  I’ve been worrying at a technical post for my Other Blog for a couple of weeks now.  I’m also due for a follow up on my first full-length Heroscapers post.  I’m deep into my rewatch of the original Whedon brilliance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer intertwined with Angel, and it’s inspired at least two post ideas in my brain.  Plus I now have twice as much experience with the Iron Druid books as I did when I last wrote about them, so I feel an update there is warranted.  I’ve been pondering a much longer series-version of my salad post.  And several other less developed neotonous thoughtlets.

Of course, one of my richest source of blog posts is questions people ask me.^**  Someone will ask me a question, then I give them the answer that springs to mind, and then I get to thinking about it, and pondering, and mulling it over, and worrying at it with my little mental teeth, and suddenly blammo! I’ve got a new blog post.  This weekend’s question was from my eldest, who I introduced to roleplaying games like Pathfinder and Darwin’s World at a fairly young age.  Now he’s a teenager and handling the GM duties for his own circle of friends.  Although in many ways he’s a typical teen, which means he spends all day in his room in front of his computer avoiding talking to icky parents and annoying little siblings, every once in a while he comes out for air and actually engages with me on some topic or other.  Yesterday, he asked me: which D&D/Pathfinder race did you think was the most exciting when you read it?  Quickly followed by, which class?  These are some weighty questions, and they could easily balloon into a whole series of posts, but I think I’d like to give them time to germinate a bit before I just leap into them.  Also, I want to finally get off my ass and put some of my homebrew classes up on the web somewhere so that I can reference them in these posts.

Anyways, that’s a long rambling way of saying that I’m fiddling around and not actually going to give you a full post this week.  Hopefully you’ll recover from the crushing disappointment.

* This is me being generous to myself.  They’re all less than half finished.  None of them are really a quarter finished, most likely.

** Most recently seen in my post on craftmanship.

All Mixed Up

I’ve been working on my mixes today.

By “mixes,” I mean music.  Sort of like making mix tapes, back in the day, except these days we don’t actually use tape any more.  Everything’s digital: digital playlists of digital music, bought digitally, or digitized from CD.  More and more the music we listen to was even created digitally, especially if you’re into electronic, or chill, or ambient, or new age, or any of several dozen other genres and subgenres.  So it’s all manipulating files on disc, which, as a programmer, I’m not that bad at.

Of course, most digital music these days is inside programs like iTunes, or up in the cloud in services like Pandora or Rhapsody.  So few people have actual .mp3’s (or other file formats, if you’re more of an audio snob than I am).  I would love it if I didn’t have to keep lugging around my digital files, which my handy dandy space checker script tells me now total 81 gigabytes.  But there’s still too many things I have that the cloud doesn’t know about (or care about, in the case of some of my older and/or local band music).  So it’s a challenge keeping everything backed up and whatnot.  Of course, these days, you can get 128Gb thumb drives.  So it’s not as painful as it used to be.

I started making mixes back when they really were mix tapes, of course.  The art of the mix tape is somewhat lost these days, I fear.  It’s mostly replaced by music discovery services like Pandora, which has algorithms for choosing music you want to listen to (even when it’s music you never heard before).  And Pandora is great, don’t get me wrong: I’ve discovered some fantastic music by listening to Pandora.  It’s just that I then want to buy my own copies of that music and mix it up in my own ways.  That’s what “music discovery” should be: I discover some music, explore it further (e.g., was it just one great track, or is there a whole great album lurking underneath? or maybe an entire great new artist?), then I buy it, if the exploration proves fruitful.  Using music disovery as a personal playlist doesn’t really appeal to me, although I know it works well for some.  I’m a little more comfortable with curated Internet radio stations, like Radio Paradise, but I still like to take away what I learn there and mesh with other stuff I already have.

Mix tapes have played important roles in literature and movies, like Hi Fidelity or Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, although in most of those (as in those specific examples), it’s all about making a mix tape for someone.  Which is fine.  For me, though, I make mixes for myself.  Or occasionally for parties, or other special occasions.  For instance, I made a mix for our recent week-long vacation in Las Vegas.  ‘Cause, I mean, we’re driving to Las Vegas for my eldest’s birthday, and I’ve just discovered the Weepies and their excellent song “Vegas Baby”, and how can you pass up an opportunity like that?  It’s practically begging for a mix.

But those are the minority.  Most mixes I do, as I say, are just for me.  I build mixes around a theme.  Generally, the themes are lyrical (all the songs have similar subject matter) or musical (all the songs have a common instrumentation or musical structure) or emotional (all the songs invoke a certain mood).  So then, when I feel like listening to a certain type of music, I just break out the appropriate mix.

How it usually works is, I’m listening to an album, and a certain song jumps out at me.  I think, hey ... that song reminds me of this other song, which is also like these three or four others.  That first song, that provides the inspiration, is what I call the “mix starter.”  It’s generally emblematic of the whole mix, for obvious reasons.  When I’m just starting out, I don’t even make a playlist yet: I just jot down the starting tracks in a text file.  As I stumble across other songs that might fit, I add them too, until the list is long enough to start working on in earnest.

Now, back in the days of actual mix tapes, mixes were about an hour long, and that was it.  Nowadays of course a mix is a playlist, and playlists can be infinitely long.  I have some mixes that are six or seven hours long, and still growing.  As I’m continually discovering new music (both new and old), I’m continually find more tracks that fit the existing themes, in addition to finding new themes.  So a mix can fairly quickly grow unwieldy—way too long to listen to the whole thing in a sitting.  So I divvy each mix up into “volumes”: about 60 to 80 minutes of music, which is, not coincidentally, exactly what can fit on a recordable CD.  I do sometimes burn volumes of mixes onto actual CDs, but usually not until the list has settled down a bit.

See, at the beginning of the life of a mix (or a new volume in an existing mix), I just throw songs at the list, constantly rearranging them according to rules (more like guidelines, really) that mostly only make sense to me.  Songs that sound alike go together, but not if they sound too much alike.  If I have multiple songs from the same artist (quite common, since some artists really embody certain themes in all their work), they have to be spaced out so that the mix doesn’t devolve into a greatest hits compilation.  It’s all about variety.  Likewise, not too many slow or fast songs in a row; in fact, I generally like to amp up gradually to a fast song, then back through a few mid-tempo tracks until I get to a slow song, then start over.  And one track needs to “flow” into the next.  Sometimes you get really lucky with this, like being able to butt “No One Knows” up against “Underneath It All”: if you use the album versions and you can manage gapless playback, you won’t be able to tell where the Queens of the Stone Age end and No Doubt begins.  Mostly you don’t get that lucky, but in this area I’m deeply influenced by Hearts of Space.  The first time I heard that show on NPR, I was blown away by how seamless the transitions were, and it’s been the goal I’ve striven for ever since.

Thus, I constantly fiddle with the ordering.  I keep little notes to myself in my text file about which tracks go together so perfectly they can’t be separated, which transitions are not bad but are still open to finding a better one, and which are mostly just wishful thinking.  As a result, none of my mixes are ever really “finished.”  But some I’m so happy with that it seems unlikely that I’ll change them.  For instance, 3 years ago, I presented volume I of my Christmas mix, entitled Yuletidal Pools.  That one’s pretty unlikely to see any changes.

Which brings me to the topic of mix naming.  All my mixes have pretty abstract names.  In fact, “Yuletidal Pools” is one of the more comprehensible ones.  The names are mostly two word titles, often with transposed syllables or other linguistic tricks, and they’re meant to evoke a vague feeling which might give you some hint about the theme of the mix.  So for instance, my mix which has songs which are not necessarily sad but a bit wistful-sounding is named Wisty Mysteria, which manages to wrap up “wistful,” “mysterious,” “misty,” and “wisteria,” with its associations with gothic architecture.  Or there’s my mix of songs whose lyrics are all a bit abstract and weird: that one’s called Bleeding Salvador, which is meant to make you think of Salvador Dalí, and perhaps picture some of his melting clocks dripping blood, for added effect.  Pretty much all my mixes have names like that.

On the other hand, the volumes within the mixes have names which are generally drawn from a line in one of the songs on that volume.  Typically not a line from a chorus—not a line that’s repeated over and over.  Just a single line, something that struck me while listening to the volume: a pretty turn of phrase that also seems to relate to the theme of the mix somehow.  For example, volume I of Rose-Coloured Brainpan (my mix that puts me in a nostalgic mood) is subtitled “Billion Year-Old Carbon,” which is of course a line from “Woodstock” that I always felt had a nice ring to it.  Sometimes I deviate from this general principle; the subtitle of Yuletidal Pools I is “featuring Michael Bublé,” which obviously isn’t a line from a song, but refers to “Elf’s Lament.”

So these are the things that I fiddle with when I fiddle with my music.  I like playing around with my mixes, and a lot of the time when I’m listening to music, I’m planning which mix to add the current track to, and what position to put it in.  Perhaps I’ll share a few more of my mixes here, from time to time.  I like talking about music.  And you, dear reader, apparently have nothing better to do.

All work and no play is pretty much the same as all play

I’m doing some work this weekend, so I’m not doing a normal blog post.  Let me stress that this is not like a Lumbergh type situation.  In fact, this job has been quite courteous of my weekends, especially compared to $last_job.  So when something comes up and I know that people would be inconvenienced if I didn’t work on it over the wekend (which happens pretty rarely), I actually want to put in the extra work.  Plus I love what I do, so then is it really work?  As Confucius (supposedly) said:

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Of course, saying “I love what I do” is not the same thing as saying “I love my job,” but, as it happens, I do that as well.  I don’t know that I could describe it as a perfect job, but I also don’t know what any of my bosses could give me that they haven’t already, so perhaps that’s as close to perfection as makes no never mind.  In my blog post about what employees want, I said that the most important things are respect, trust, and freedom, and I have those in spades.  So it pleases me to do nice things for those I work for, and it’s fun, so sometime I do a little extra, if the mood strikes me.  Which, this weekend, it has.

So I’m going to go immerse myself in some Perl code and try to accomplish a few things to make my coworkers’ lives easier.  Perhaps next week I’ll be inspired to write a more complete post.

Heroscapers post #1

Remember how, just after Thanksgiving, I said I was going to post something on my Heroscape forum about the big game the boys I played?  Well, I never did.  But today I finally decided to put some time into that, and produced this post.  Check it out, if you’re so inclined.  It might not make a huge amount of sense to those not steeped in the game, but it might be mildly entertaining nonetheless.

Perl blog post #38

I didn’t actually miss a post last week.  I just forgot to post a pointer here to my Other Blog.  So here’s a belated such pointer.

And, due to the magic of computers, it even looks like I posted it last week, when I really should have!  But I didn’t.  Because I’m lame.  Sorry.

A Lament for a Lost Post

Well, I missed another blog post last week: only the seventh one since I started this blog almost five years ago.  So, more than one a year, but not so many as two per.  (The exact statistic is 7 out of 250 weeks, or 2.8%, for those with a more pedantic turn of mind.)  I suppose that’s not so bad.

The reason, such as it was, was simply the holidays ... last Sunday fell 3 days after Christmas, which of course is 3 days before New Year’s Eve.  There was still a lot going on, and I’m guessing I was playing Little Big Planet, in its latest incarnation with my boys.  That’s quite a common post-holiday pasttime currently.

I thought it might be interesting to go back and review those 7 occasions when I missed posts.  Here they are:

• On 6/27/10, I was in the middle of a two-week vacation and apparently just spaced.
• On 11/28/10, I was in the midst of moving into our new (current) house, and everything was in flux.  I can probably be forgiven for that one.
• On 6/26/11, 6/2/13, and 6/22/14, I was traveling to or from a YAPC.  For some reason, I have a tendency to miss a week around my yearly Perl conferences.  Less excusable, but not entirely feeble, hopefully.
• On 7/24/11, I missed a post for no reason that I can determine. 
• And 12/28/14 was last week.

Of course, all this virtual hand-wringing over missed blog posts presumes that anyone cares, and, as I am constantly reminding you, you, dear reader, should not.  Because you should not even be reading this blog.  Nonetheless, I’ve tried to maintain a consistent schedule, and, when I miss a week, I upset that schedule.  And it tends to bother me.  Perhaps it might be appropriate at this juncture to ponder exactly what my goals are for the blog itself.

The blog was originally a suggestion from The Mother.  She pointed out that I was an aspiring writer who never wrote anything, as well as a technogeek, for whom theoretically at least the creation of a blog would be much easier than it would for most of the rest of the populace.  I had no excuse, she pointed out, for not creating a blog and writing a post a week.  I resisted this at first, of course, given my staunch opinion on blogs in general.  But eventually I gave in and agreed to make the commitment.

And the commitment, once given, should be honored.

Of course, there’s still no particular penalty for missing a week.  But, the thing is, now that I’ve gotten into a rhythm, it’s an excellent way to keep me on track producing work.  Without the commitment, I’d probably just spit out a few thousand words every 9 months or so, instead of a moderately steady 1500 words a week.  Oh, sure, even when I don’t skip a week, I often produce an anemic, underfed post (such as this one), which I mark as “interstitial,” and which doesn’t come close to the 1500-word mark.  But, even so, I’m still writing something ... and I find that’s often sufficient.

So I’ll apologize for another missed week, even as I tell you that you really shouldn’t care.  And I’ll tell you once again to tune in next week for another blog post that you really shouldn’t read.  Because it’s become something of a habit.  A good habit, I think.

Merry Yule

Today is Yule.  This is the darkest night of the year, the night when the Great Mother will give birth to the new Sun King.  I hope you all are lighting your yule logs tonight and gathering around them with your loved ones to wait out the dark night of our souls and welcome the spark of thew new year.  The Lord of Light shine on you, and the Goddess bless your ways.

Tonight we’ll light our yule log and a few candles, say a few words, and eat some soup, and perhaps watch a holiday movie.  (There aren’t any good Yule movies that I’m aware of, but I’m sure we can come up with something appropriately festive.)  Hopefully this is the start of some peaceful times which can last us into next year.

Today I’ve mostly been wrestling with CD burning software, and mostly losing.  For some reason, I’ve had horrible luck with GUI programs such as K3b or Brasero.  Either they don’t have all the features I want, or they can’t easily deal with my playlists, or they just don’t burn properly (which admittedly could be more of a hardware thing).  So I’ve moved on to fiddling with the command-line burners, primarily cdrdao.  Now I’ve discovered that they hate me as well.  I’ve been fighting with cdrdao for two days now, and I finally managed to produce a CD with it, but I didn’t get the CD-Text, which was one of my primary goals.  Still, I’m starting to think I need to be happy with what I’ve got.  Perhaps I can gradually improve my functionality over time, as I get a little more familiar with how all this stuff fits together.

The CD I managed to burn, by the way, was a copy of my Yuletidal Pools mix, which I developed 3 years ago and which (unlike most of my mixes) hasn’t been changed since.  I’ve been very happy with it over the years.  And while, in that introductory post, I claimed that “only 3 of the songs could even remotely be considered serious,” I find that, over time, I can get just as choked up over “Christmas Wrapping” as other people can get over “O Holy Night” or “The Little Drummer Boy.”  I mean, come on: that is a 5-minute nugget of Christmas miracle going on right there.  How can you not be inspired by that?  And while Run-D.M.C. does advise us to “give up the dough on Christmas, yo,” they also give us “one you won’t believe: it’s better to give than to receive.”  Truly, can’st thou gainsay such instruction?  And, as for “Oi to the World”, it practically makes me tear up these days.  If the punks and the skins can get along, then surely there’s hope for the rest of us.  Go back and listen to it again, and really listen to the words.  Then you too can rappel down the roof with the rest of your turban and go back to the pub and buy each other bourbon.  ‘Cause that’s what the holidays are all about.

Wishing you and yours safe and happy.

Obstreperousness as a Virtue

I am sometimes a giant pain in the ass at work.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not always a giant pain in the ass.  Often I’m quite pleasant.  Sometimes I’m even agreeable.  But occasionally I lock into stubborn mode and I won’t let go of a point of view, even when I’m hopelessly outnumbered.  When one is younger, one can look upon one’s obstinacy as persistence, can see refusal to compromise as being a bastion of integrity.  Of course, as one gets older, one realizes that they’re really both the same thing.  And, once you realize that every good quality you have is also a bad quality, sticking to them no matter what because they’re “the right thing to do” doesn’t fly any more.  You need better justifications than that.

Thus I keep examining my own motives in an attempt to figure what makes me tick, even though I know that’s doomed to failure.  In fact, on this very topic I’ve already waxed authorial not just once, but twice.  I’m not saying either of those posts are wrong now ... just that I continue to look for something more, even more to help explain my behavior.

The first time I concluded that I hate seeing people make what I think is a mistake, and that’s a part of it.  Maybe a smaller part than that post made it out to be, but it wasn’t a completely useless observation.

The second time I talked about my number one source of frustration in the corporate world.  That’s still relevant too; in fact, at work this week I trotted out that very same story to tell my coworkers.^*  But I still think there’s more to be teased out here.

After quite a bit of reflection, I’ve come up with this:  I figure if you’re going to hire someone like me—by which I mean someone with this much gray in their beard who is this much of a pain in the ass—then you do it for two reasons: you want my experience, and you want me to be vocal about it.  If you didn’t want my experience, you could hire someone younger.  And if you didn’t want me to be vocal about it, you could definitely hire someone who was a lot easier to put up with.

Hiring someone for their experience means hiring them for their mistakes.  As a popular quote tells us:

Learn from the mistakes of others.  You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.^**

So, if you’ve hired me, and you’ve kept me around for a while, and you genuinely seem to value me, then I assume that you want the benefits of my mistakes, and you want me to let you know in no uncertain terms when you’re about to repeat one of them.  And to keep on letting you know if you continue to keep on trying to make that mistake.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you always have to agree with me.  In fact, I think it’d be pretty disastrous if everyone always agreed with me, or always agreed with anyone.  Difference of opinion, as I am fond of saying, is what makes the world go ‘round.  Which is to say, the world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed on everything.  And how would we ever learn anything without other people challenging our assumptions?  No, if I’m saying that me disagreeing with you is a good thing (which is what I seem to be saying, if I’m saying that my pointing out that a plan of yours may be a mistake is valuable), then I have to accept that you disagreeing with me must be an equally good thing.  In the big picture, I mean.  On any given point, I’d really prefer you stop disagreeing with me and just do as I advise.  But, overall, I can accept that, some percentage of the time, you’re going to disagree with me, and, some percentage of the time, I’m going to lose that fight, and, overall, that’s good.  But I think there are different ways to disagree.

For instance, if I say “if you do this, things could go wrong” and you (“you” in this scenario are my boss, remember) say “yeah, they could, but the rewards outweigh the risks” ... well, that’s a tough argument to beat.  Maybe we can debate the value of the rewards a bit, or the seriousness of the risks, but in general if you know the dangers and you’re willing to risk them for whatever the upsides are, I can’t argue with that.  Business requires risk.  Opportunities have costs, and sometimes you just have to pay them.  You roll the dice, pray the worst never comes, but, if it does, you just deal with it.  Because it was worth it.  If you don’t take risks in business, you get left behind.  Rapidly.

On the other hand, if I say “if you do this, things could go wrong” and you say “nah, I don’t think they could,” or perhaps “well, they could—after all, anything could happen—but the chances are so low it’s not worth worrying about” ... if you say that, then I may just have to dig in.  Because what I’m telling you is, here’s a mistake I’ve already made.  I’m not talking about some theoretical consequence here: I know it can happen because it already happened to me.  I’ve lived through this, at least once (and, the older I get, the more likely it was more than once), and the resulting unpleasantness is burned into my memory, and I’d really prefer not to suffer through it again, thankyouverymuch.  This is why I also tend not to accept an answer of “yes, that could happen, but that’s okay; we’ll just deal with it.”^***  ‘Cause, trust me: if it was no big deal to “just deal with it,” I would not be doing my giant-pain-in-the-ass impression.

Now, let me stress that I’m not unhappy with the way the these sorts of debates are unfolding at my current job.  In fact, curiously, the fact that the discussions have been so reasonable has been the impetus for my meditation on why I get so stubborn.  In past jobs, the pain of beating my head against a brick wall has somewhat dulled my capacity for self-reflection.  In this job, I have some confidence that the folks who hired me can and will take my obstreperousness in the spirit in which it is intended.  Still, I think it’s worth exploring why I feel so passionate about some of these positions, and examining which circumstances trigger my response and why.  Even it’s only for myself.  Because I think that understanding ourselves is one of the hardest things to get right, but one of the most worthwhile endeavors we can undertake.

__________

* If they would just have the good grace to read this blog I keep telling people not to read, I wouldn’t have had to retell the story.  But one can’t have it all, I suppose.

** Like many quotes floating about the Internet, this is attributed to a bewildering multitude of people, including Martin Vanbee, Sam Levenson, Hyman Rickover, John Luther, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Groucho Marx.  Most of whom I have no idea who they are.

*** This was the favorite tactic of my previous boss.

Perl blog post #37

Today I’ve done a technical post on my Other Blog.  Check it out if you’re into Perl.  Elsewise, check back in next week.  Or don’t.  That’s your perogative.

Thanksgiving fallout

Well, Thanksgiving was lovely.  We had plenty of deviled eggs and cornbread stuffing with cranberry sausage and we sat around and told each other what we were thankful for.  The 2-year-old happily proclaimed she was thankful for “DINNER!!”  The rest of the holiday weekend has been predictably lazy.

While I haven’t done the writing necessary for a full blog post, I have managed to eke out a few bits and bobs.  I replied to a comment on one of my old Perl blogs, and, if the Time Gods are willing, I’ll yet have a chance to post on my Heroscape forum about the marthon game my kids and I just finished up yesterday.

If you are visiting my page from the US, I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.  If you’re from a different country, I hope you had a lovely ... Thursday.  And Friday.  And whatnot.

Taking a week off

This week I have a sick child, a new puppy, and a lot of work to catch up on.  So I’m taking a week off of blog posting.  This is different from when I normally post an excuse about how I ran out of time, in that I pretty much knew from the get-go that I wasn’t going to be able to make a post this week.  Of course, either way you get nothing to read, so I suppose that’s not particularly different from your perspective.  But I feel better about it.

This is the part in a post like this where I tell you to tune in next week and I’ll have an actual post for you.  Of course, next week is Thanksgiving.  So it occurs to me I’d better not make any promises I can’t keep.  In my mind, I think that I’ll have two extra days off, so surely that means I’ll have even more time than usual to compose a post ... right?  Unfortunately, what happens in my mind and what happens in reality rarely coincide.  So we’ll just have to see how it falls out.

Perl blog post #36

Today I returned to Perl blogging with some actual code this time.  Even less useful for those of you not technically inclined.  But fun for those of you who are.  I hope.

Check it out.

An excuse and a pondering ...

As I mentioned two weeks ago, this is my birthday weekend.  You were lucky to get a real post last week, if you think about it.  It was Halloween-on-a-Friday, a moderately rare occurrence, and we did lots of Halloween activities and collected boatloads of candy (although less than I’d expected).  But I still found time to write my roughly 1,500 words for your perusing pleasure.  What an awesome fellow I am.

And now this awesome fellow is another year older (yawn) and he am celebrating by ordering his family around and totally letting the power go to his head.  Also eating terribly.  Also also I forced my children to help build a rather large Heroscape map.  And watch silly movies with me.  And there’s more to come today.

So I’m much too busy to spew forth a chiliad and a half of lexemes for your oblectation.^*  But next week you may score, so tune back in and try again.  After all, birthdays are fleeting, as are all measurements of our span on this earth.  So let me wallow in my sorrow over the inevitable passage of time for just a bit longer; I’ll get back on track next week.

* Look ’em up.

Between the Lightning Bug and the Lightning

There is a German word that I’m quite fond of: Weltanschauung.  It means, roughly, “worldview,” although it’s both a little more specific and a little more general than that.  More specific in that, technically speaking, it is a term used in German philosophy with a very particular meaning.  But also more general in that we’ve somehow watered down the meaning of the word in English.  That is, “worldview” is a calque of Weltanschauung, so it really ought to mean the same thing.  But, after we borrowed the phrase, we started interpreting it literally (in English, that is), so that nowadays “worldview” often means (or is taken to mean) the way a person views the world.  But that’s actually too specific for what Weltanschauung means (or can mean, when used outside of its technical philosophical sense).  Weltanschauung, according to Wikipedia, “refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it.”  That is, not just how you (one person) views the world (the physical planet you live on).  But how any person, or even an organization, or a nation, sees and interprets not only their physical surroundings, but also the social and emotional context in which they are living.

This is related to what I learned of as “the fishbowl effect.”  Nowadays, Google will tell you that the fishbowl effect is a feeling of constant scrutiny, experienced mainly by astronauts and reality TV stars.  Which does make a certain amount of sense, particularly if all you know about keeping tropical fish is those little bowls with goldfish in them that you win at the county fair.¹  Slightly less sense if you understand that keeping fish in a small enclosed area with no cover terrifies them so badly that it cuts their life expectancy by an order of magnitude.  But, anyway, my point is this: when I learned about “the fishbowl effect,” it meant something else entirely.  It was the idea that the fish in the fishbowl has no concept of what a “fishbowl” is.  To him, it’s just the world.  You need to be outside the fishbowl in order to comprehend that it is a bowl at all.  For me, “Weltanschauung” encompasses all the connotations of that: that your worldview not only frames your entire outlook, but also limits it in certain ways.

Similar to how it’s difficult for people to understand a concept that their native tongue lacks a word for.  Like how English doesn’t really have a word for “Weltanschauung.”

German has a few words that we don’t have in English, so we just stole them.  “Weltanschauung” is my favorite, but ”Zeitgeist” is also good, as is ”Schadenfreude.”²  These are great words, and remarkably useful.

The other day I came across an online article outlining ten more German words that there really ought to be English equivalents for.  Sort of like the German version of sniglets.  I find very many sniglets to be remarkably useful: I have a friend who’s afflicted with bovilexia, and how can you tell the story of the guy who invented bumperglints getting 10¢ for each one and therefore becoming a millionaire without the word “bumperglint”?³  And the number of times I’ve committed the act of carperpetuation at this point in my life is pretty ridiculous.  So I’m perfectly fine with coming up with new words to paper over cracks in our vocabulary.⁴  So much the better if they happen to already be real words, just in a different language ... right?

So this list of ten German words was pretty entertaining, in my view at least.  None of the ten are are as great as the big three I mentioned up at the top of this post, of course, but there were some keepers there: who hasn’t wanted a word to express the excess weight you’ve put on from emotional overeating (“Kummerspeck”), or, possibly even more useful, a word to describe the feeling of depression you get when you contemplate the world as it is compared to the world as it might be (“Weltschmerz”)?  Two of the words in particular stand out as pretty damned useful.

The first is “Fremdschämen,” which is defined herein as “the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are.”  This words rings a rather large bell with me.  For years now I’ve been experiencing this exact feeling without knowing what to call it.  Because of Fremdschämen, I can’t watch reality TV, or shows like Springer.  And there are entire avenues of comedy that are closed off to me: I can’t listen to the Jerky Boys or their ilk, I didn’t make it through even a single episode of The Office, I regularly have to fast-forward through Stephen Colbert’s “Better Know a District” series ... hell, I couldn’t even properly enjoy a recent rewatching of Fawlty Towers on Netflix because of constantly feeling embarrassed for Basil.  Also, fully half the comic ouevre of Ben Stiller.  Have you ever noticed that Ben Stiller comedies fall into two groups?  On the one hand, he does some great movies where he plays a wacky character, like Zoolander, or Tropic Thunder, or Mystery Men.  Then there’s the other half of his movies—such as There’s Something about Mary, Meet the Parents, and Along Came Polly—where the entire movie is about him doing stupid, embarrassing things, and we’re supposed to laugh at his misfortune.  I’m sorry, but I just can’t find amusement in the pain of others.⁵  So sue me.

The other great word here is “Torschlusspanik,” which the article defines as “the fear, usually as one gets older, that time is running out and important opportunities are slipping away.”  I live in an almost-constant state of Torschlusspanik.  There are many reasons for this.  Probably the biggest one is something I’ve alluded to before: as you get older, your ability to judge the passage time slows down, resulting in time appearing to go faster.⁶  And I’m pretty much right at that point in life where most men my age have already snapped and gone out and bought a motorcycle or a Porsche, or quit their job to pursue their lifelong dream of being a rock-n-roll drummer or performance artist.

But there are other reasons as well.  I’ve never been a very organized person.  My mother’s side of the family is populated with people who overplan everything, and I find it annoying.  Going on vacation with my grandparents on that side of the family was a nightmare of schedules, itineraries, and lists.  Aren’t vacations supposed to be relaxing?  How are you supposed to relax with all that rushing around trying to make your schedule?  So I never subscribed to all that organizational crap.  Which wasn’t a huge burden when I was younger, although I find that the older I get the more I regret never having put much stock in it.  I’ve tried various techniques for keeping track of my todo list(s), but so far I’m pretty terrible at it.  Which only exacerbates my feelings of Torschlusspanik.

There are lots of things I want to do.  Of course I have a family, including 3 lovely children, and I want to spend time with them.  I want to do my writing: not only my ongoing novel, but this blog of course, and my Other Blog.  I have a few CPAN modules that I’m responsible for, and other programming projects that I want to work on.  Then there’s my hobby, and my other hobby.  And my job takes up some time, which of course I don’t mind at all because I love my job, and there are holidays and birthdays and things to do around the house or things to fix on the car and all the ordinary little things we have to do just to keep on functioning in life.  So sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled in many different directions, all of them desireable, surely, but one still can’t do everything at once.  Sometimes I sit down at night, knowing I probably ought to be working on something, but unable to properly fixate on which something I ought to do first.

So I do my best to spread out my activities.  Being someone who puts so much faith in balance and paradox, I believe one should try to do as many different things as possible, and also sieze any opportunity to do several things at once (like playing Heroscape with my kids, or working on one of my CPAN modules for work).  And I try to fight through my feelings of Torschlusspanik so that I can still enjoy things like finding German words for concepts we don’t have in English.  Or deep philosophical ponderings.  Like wondering if euneeblics are really just trying to overcome their Weltschmerz.

1 Although, technically, goldfish aren’t tropical fish.  Probably you don’t care about that distinction.  But I mention it so that I can prove I know the difference in case I’m verbally attacked by aquarium nerds.

2 German nouns are always capitalized, in German.  There is some debate as to whether German loanwords should be capitalized in English.  You can see which side of the debate I come down on.

3 Fair warning: I’m pretty sure that story is an urban legend.  But still a good story.

4 Remember: “sniglet” itself is defined as “any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but should.”

5 Hey, look: Schadenfreude!

6 I really ought to write a whole blog post on this.  I keep referring to it, but a longer exploration of this interesting scientific theory is probably in order.

In Between Days

Yesterday I got so old, I felt like I could die.  Possibly that’s because I finally noticed Facebook’s alert that my best friend from high school had to have a cardiac ablation.  No, I didn’t know what it meant either.  On the plus side, I pay so little attention to emails from Facebook that, by the time I noticed that my friend was scheduled for this scary procedure, he had already returned home, safe and sound.  So that’s some suspense saved.  But, on the other hand, it’s a bit sobering to realize that people you went to school with are now old enough to be getting strange ailments you never heard of.  How old does that make you?

By which I mean me, of course.

This weekend is the one between National Heroscape Day and Halloween, and two weekends before my birthday.  It’s the first full weekend of Scorpio Season ... a surprising lot of my friends are fellow Scorpios, including the aforementioned best friend from high school and my best friend from my last job.  Also another of my best friends from just-after-high-school, and my best friend from just-before-moving-to-California.  Also a former business partner, a former office manager, and any number of roommates, friends of roommates, friends of my brother, former workmates, former employees.  I suppose it makes sense, if you think about rationally: one-twelfth of all the people you meet in your life are going to have the same zodiac sign as you.  Of course, my feelings towards astrology (which I touched on ever-so-briefly when discussing balance and paradox) are anything but rational.  Rationally, it’s probably not particularly meaningful that four out the five people I’ve considered my best friend at various times have been Scorpios.  Still, I continue to see a bit of meaning in it.  I know I was wrong when I said it was true ... still ...

So this week is a little bit of in between days.  A bit of a respite from the busy schedule, but not so much that I really have enough time to devote to a full blog post.  I rather thought I would have enough time, but after going down a couple of blind alleys and not really making any progress with anything, I ended up here.  And now I’ve drug you along with me.

Halloween will likely be fun this year.  Our littlest is two and a half and is planning to be a unicorn with pink wings.  I didn’t know unicorns had pink wings, but apparently they do.  The the Smaller Animal (who gained that moniker, recall, when he was the younger of two) will be Tree Rex, which is a thing from a video game—if you have an eight-year-old, you probably know what I’m talking about.  The demonspawn (that is, our eldest, who gained his nickname before he was even born) is of course too old and jaded to be trick-or-treating, but he has a costume for attending parties: sort of an evil jester thing.  When he was the only potential trick-or-treater, Halloween was a very meh holiday.  He’s mildly anti-social and not particularly motivated by candy, so he never had much patience for the whole thing.  OTOH, the Smaller Animal is completely motivated by candy, and the newest one is motivated by anything edible (or anything she can perceive as edible, which is a disturbing distinction to have to make) and she’s very social on top of that.  This year I’m imagining that we’ll have to drag the two of them back home kicking and screaming.  Almost made me shudder just now, thinking about it ... I got so scared I shivered like a child.

And then another birthday.  I’ve reached the age where, when people ask me how old I’ll be, I have stop and do math.  The Mother keeps asking me what I want to do for my birthday ... I dunno.  I don’t want to have to be in charge of thinking about anything, mainly.  Holidays in general are so stressful for us, because everyone has expectations, and they’re generally conflicting, and we get ticked off at each other when we keep the other folks from fulfilling their expectations because we’re so busy trying to fulfill ours.  And in the end it’s not worth it.  I think we spend too much time trying to plan life, but we always seem to be happier when we just let life happen.  Too much time worrying about trying to have a perfect birthday—it froze me deep inside.

Anyway, that’s my completely long-winded excuse for why I didn’t write a full blog post this week, when most likely you couldn’t care less.  But feel free to ignore me.  Go on, go on, and disappear ... see if I care.  Other than the fact that it would mean I now owe all that royalty money to Robert Smith for nothing.  Ah well.  Maybe I can owe him a battle against Mecha-Streisand or something.

National Heroscape Day 2014

It’s been a busy weekend for us, since it was once again National Heroscape Day.  So I can’t say that I have time for a proper post.  But here’s some references to what the hell I’m talking about:

• what Heroscape actually is
• what C3V (part of the larger group called “VC”) actually is
• NHSD 2012 (including a bit about what NHSD actually is)
• NHSD 2013
• a bit about this year’s tourney prep

And some references that may only make sense if you actually play the game:

• forum thread for our tourney, the SoCal Slaughter (I’m Xotli on that forum)
• forum thread for my tourney report

You may recall (from very recently if you just read through some of those links up there) that, two years ago, I brought my eldest, his analogue in our Sister Family, and the Smaller Animal (although he and I played together as a team).  Last year, the Smaller Animal was sick, so I brought the eldest, his analogue, and two of his other friends (these four don’t have a formal name yet, but I often refer to them as the Merry Men ... which I suppose you could consider sexist of me, since one of them is female, but that’s not intended, I assure you).  This year, it was all those people, plus the Smaller Animal’s sister family analogue as well—they played together as a team, but without any adult supervision, which I consider a major advance.  So I provided 6 of the 10 participants in the tourney, and provided all the armies for 7 of the 10, which on the one hand makes me feel like I’m almost single-handedly keeping the game alive in our area, but then again I’m glad it’s still alive no matter how.

I think everyone had a great time.  The Smaller Animal (and associate) came in ahead of his older brother, which he was pretty jazzed about, especially since that came about primarily because they were paired together in the second game of the tourney and the two younger boys beat the older—I think he got cocky and played a bit too recklessly.  My middle child isn’t terribly competitive yet, certainly, but he’s no fool either, and he knows how to capitalize on any bit of luck that swings his way.  I myself had a bit of luck in my second game, when I was paired with the fellow I thought sure would win the day.  The dice weren’t going his way, definitely, but I was able to capitalize on that by playing very conservatively and forcing him to come to me while I shored up my position and shot him from afar.  In the last game, I lost on points by a measly 7 (that’s out of 520) to the other guy who was a real contender, thus securing him the tourney victory.  But I came in fourth, which is the best I’ve ever done.

The real Cinderella story here, though, is my eldest’s close friend.  This was his third tourney, and only his third time playing the game: he hasn’t been playing outside of our once-a-year event at all.  By being very low-key and seeming like he wasn’t a threat at all, but playing smart and fairly conservative and going for small gains instead of big flashy moves, he won 3 out of 4 games (including one against me, where he beat me far more badly than the fellow I considered the bigger threat) to place second overall.  It was seriously cool to see a relativele newbie do such fantastic work.  He did have a bit of luck, but I’d say his skill was the more decisive factor.

After the tourney was done, my eldest and another friend played one more game of Heroscape.  She had done decently (seventh out of 10) with her elf wizard pod and never touched her backup army (which was a Wolfpack build), so she wanted to try it out.  In turn, the demonspawn hadn’t done that well with either of his armies (as mentioned above), so he took her elves to see if he could beat her with her own army.  She dismantled her former champions with brutal efficiency, having the wolves take out the offensive powerhouse first, and then immediately slicing up the defensive bulwark.  In the end it came down to two figures on either side, just beating each other senseless back and forth, but finally the elves were able to eke out a phyrric victory.

Then we moved on to Monty Python Fluxx, where the second game went on so long and we were all drawing so many cards at once that I had to reshuffle the discards 3 times.  Finally someone won pretty much by accident and we had to head off to get everyone home.

As always, we must thank our gracious host, whose apartment complex’s rented-out rec room has served as our headquarters for the past 4 or 5 years, and the folks who brought and assembled the rest of the maps we played on, and everyone who participated in making this one of our best and most fun tournaments in quite a while.  Some of our normal diehard fans couldn’t make it this year, but I hope that doesn’t turn into a trend.  And I hope that our newer players are all firmly hooked on this great game.  And, finally, I hope we don’t end up waiting a whole ‘nother year to get together and play.  There’s no excuse for that.  This is just too much fun.

Chapter 21 concluded

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What is this?

Johnny tightened his grip on the railing, and he saw Aidan do the same.  Welly and Larissa hustled over to join them, and Bones gave an unholy squawk and shot back towards the rear of the ship.  Johnny’s brain was still trying to figure what to be most afraid of when there was a jarring thud as they hit the beach.  The Sylph didn’t stop when it hit the sand though—there was a grinding scratching that vibrated the hull and the great wooden airship just drove itself right out of the water.  Johnny waited for the wailing of metal that would indicate that the ship’s rudder was scraping along the sand, but he never heard it; Roger must have done something to hoist it up out of danger.

Their momentum could only carry them so far, of course, and there was only about five feet of torn up beach behind them when The Sylph gave a final shudder and came to a sudden stop.  Roger appeared almost immediately afterward.  “How long do we have?” she demanded of Aidan.

Aidan shook his head as if to clear it.  “Hard to say,” he admitted.  “I couldn’t get a definite fix on it while you were bouncing us around like juggler’s pins.  But I’m guessing no more than two or three minutes, if that.

Roger spat.  “Goats’ bollocks!” she cursed.  “Bones!  Get yer ass up that thar tree!”  She pointed to the obligatory palm tree in the center of the barren island.  Bones magically appeared from somewhere and lept off the forward edge of the flying bridge, gliding all the way to the trunk of the palm, where he scampered around it in an upward spiral until he reached its leaves.  Once there, he shaded his eyes with one hand and looked out over the water behind them.  Johnny could hear his beak clicking furiously.

“Welly!” Roger barked.  “Yer the opener, ain’t ye?  Get ta openin’!  Right in front of the boat, mind, so I don’t have too far to chuck crates.  I hope it don’t come to that, but I ain’t yet sussed out how we’re gonna get my girl unbeached.”  She turned back to Aidan.  “Priest!  Sorry to have to ask this, but I need ye down on the beach.  Ye’ll have to hold it off singular while we get supplies through.  Elsewise we’ll end up just as cadaverous on the other side as if we stay here to be monster chum.”  Aidan nodded and scrambled aft where the rope ladder was.  Roger turned to Johnny and Larissa.  “Swabby and missy!  We need to start shuffling around crates.  Prioritize food and warm clothes, and get ’em all up in the bow and clear of any lines or beams.  Hop to, like yer life depended on it, ’cause by damn it just might.”  She turned and strode off to the crates, whipping out her knife to cut lines.  She never bothered to look back and see if any of her orders were being followed; she knew they were.

As he started pulling crates towards the bow, he could see Welly down on the sand below.  He was tilted at an impossible angle, like a mime walking against the wind, but motionless.  Johnny couldn’t see why he didn’t just fall over.  His hands were in front of him, back to back, fingers stiff, as if he were trying to force open invisible elevator doors.  From the rear of the vessel, Aidan’s liquid chanting began to drift towards them; he must really be belting it out if they could hear him with the bulk of the ship between them.  Johnny glanced back and discovered that Aidan wasn’t directly behind them, though: he was facing the lagoon, with his back to the rear corner of the deckhouse.  The ship had hit the beach at a bit of an angle, Johnny saw now, and it looked like the sea monster was cutting across the corner their path made when they’d changed course while trying to outrun it.  Assuming Aidan knew where it was and was facing in that general direction, that is, which Johnny felt confident was true.  Roger caught him woolgathering and flicked his ear.

Johnny went back to lugging crates.  Larissa wasn’t a lot of use in pushing the large boxes around, but she had a knack for knowing exactly where each box had ended up and could reel off the contents of anything Roger pointed at, which Roger somehow knew and was taking full advantage of.  Once Roger had everything identified, she sent Larissa back to the deckhouse for “paraffin caulk” (which Larissa promptly objected was neither paraffin nor caulk, but she knew where it was, so she did her objecting while walking away).  It seemed like it must have been more than three minutes at this point; Johnny paused again to check on his shipmates.

Welly actually did have his fingers in the crack of a door, it seemed: a glowing blue line had appeared in the air in front of him, and he was trying to widen the crack, his muscles straining with the effort.  Aidan’s chants were booming out over the water and rolling around the island.  As Johnny watched, it actually got darker, for the first time since he’d stepped through the strange round door into the swampworld.  Startled, he looked up.  The clouds overhead were getting thick and menacing.  It was impossible to guess if they were blocking out some of the light, or absorbing it, or not reflecting as much ... without knowing where the light source was, there was no way to know.  But it was definitely darker—not much darker, but the difference was noticeable.  A wind was starting to swirl around too: just a slight breeze so far, but it was gaining momentum.  Aidan was standing with his staff upraised in one hand, his other flung out to the side, his back ramrod straight, and his voice continued to peal those liquid syllables.  “Shallédanu,” Johnny heard, and “tisharallein” and “loralleilaray” and “whellenaisharenn.”  And not only were the clouds and the wind responding, but the usually calm lagoon was growing choppy, and waves began to form off the coast of the island.  Then Bones gave out a high-pitched shriek and Johnny’s eyes were drawn out to the water, where he got his first glimpse of the creature that had chased them here.

Johnny’s first fleeting impression was that it looked like a huge puddle of dirty milk.  But the dark streaks were too regular; they almost seemed to make a pattern.  As it oozed toward them, the image suddenly clicked for Johnny: it was something like cerebral grooves, only barely peeking above the surface.  In fact, now that he had seen it this way, the whole thing looked more like an alabaster brain coral that had somehow melted into a gelatinous ooze, like that old monster movie The Blob, and it was now slowly coming to eat them.  And, indeed, when the first long, white limb shot out, Johnny could see that it was less tentacle and more pseudopod.

That limb went straight for Aidan, and Johnny felt his breath stop in his throat.  But Aidan merely flicked his staff out to meet it, and, where they touched, blue sparks shot out.  The feeler diverted course and floated toward the ship.  Another pseudopod came at Aidan, but he deflected that one as well, and it too moved towards The Sylph.  Once they reached it, they attached to either side.

“Bloody hell!” Roger grated.  “Bloody priest is going to let that thrice-damned goatsucker pull my bloody boat right off the bloody beach!”

But when the monster finally managed to move the ship, they actually pushed forward a notch.  Roger’s mouth fell open.  Johnny blinked.  “I don’t get it,” he said finally.  “What’s ... ?”

Roger’s voice started out as a whisper, the words coming slowly, but they rapidly increased in both volume and speed.  “Our ... mad ... priest ... is getting ... the bloody monster ... to DELIVER THE SHIP FOR US!”  She whooped and pounded Johnny on the back, knocking the wind out of him.  “Forget the crates, Johnny me boyo, just get everything that might go overboard tied back down.  If Aidan can pull this off it’s like to be a bumpy ride.”  She strode over to the forward rail and leaned down to call to their opener.  “Welly, my lad, ye’d best open yer openin’ a mite faster, else ye’re liable to get a ship up yer backside.”  She cackled with glee and headed back to the wheelhouse.  Bones was back on the ship now, and Larissa had reappeared with a wooden box about the size of a large cigar box.  She looked around for Roger, and gave Johnny a raised eyebrow when she couldn’t locate the captain.  Johnny shrugged, and he could feel the stupid grin returning to his face.  Bones settled the issue by snatching the box out of Larissa’s hands and scrambling off with it.

Then it was just tying knots and pulling ropes taut while Welly Banks ripped an ever-widening hole in the air and Aidan de Tourneville mentally wrestled a giant sea monster into submission.

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After that, they couldn’t do much other than hang on.  Welly disappeared back into the deckhouse.  Johnny rejoined Aidan; they held fast to the rails and tried to keep a lookout for further monstrous tentacles.  Roger didn’t reappear, but her voice continued to issue colorful pirate curses through the speaker.  Bones appeared to be scrambling around, running errands for Roger.  Only Larissa seemed calm: she stood, near the railing but not holding it, swaying easily with the motion of the ship, absently stroking the snake around her wrist and just ... observing, Johnny supposed.

Johnny’s mind was working desperately.  “Maybe the flare gun again ... ?” he asked Aidan.

Aidan shook his head.  “Trust, me: that thing is much too big to care about a little flare in its guts.  Even if you could hit its guts.”

Well, Johnny thought, you wanted some excitement.  He bit back a laugh, which he felt sure would contain more than a note of hysteria.  “Can’t you do something?” he asked Aidan.

“Not at this speed,” Aidan returned, maintaining his grim hold on the rail.  “As long as we’re moving this fast, I can’t stay stable enough to do anything significant.  Of course, if we were to slow down, then I might not have time to do anything significant.  So I fear we’re parched either way.”  Johnny’s brain translated “parched” as “screwed.”

“Just a tick,” buzzed Roger’s voice from the speaker.  “I think we’re gaining a bit of headway.  Aidan, can you still feel the bugger back there?”

Aidan rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother to complain.  “Johnny, come help me.”  He turned around to face out over the water again as Johnny stumbled the few steps to join him and regrabbed the top rail.  “This is an uncomfortable thing to ask,” he said apologetically, “but I need you to put your arms around me, grab the railing on either side, and press me up against it.  Tight, so I can let go and still not jostle about too much.  Can you do that?”

Johnny shrugged.  “Sure,” he said.  He didn’t think it was that uncomfortable, actually.  Although once he tried it, he could see Aidan’s hesitation: like riding behind someone on a motorcycle, it was practically impossible to do without inadvertently grinding your crotch into the other person’s butt.  But, compared to getting eaten by a sea monster, that didn’t seem all that worrisome.

Once Johnny was in position, Aidan let go and leaned out, and Johnny knew that his grip was all that was keeping the water priest on the ship.  With one ear pressed against Aidan’s back, he could hear the man’s breathing and his heartbeat, and he could see Larissa staring at them in that dispassionate way she had.  As Aidan started to chant once again, Johnny felt a buzzing vibration settle into his bones, and the sounds from Aidan’s lungs began to sound more like waves crashing on the beach.  Aidan seemed like he was glowing, in the same way that the door into the swampworld had seemed to glow—there was no visible light, just a perception in Johnny’s other sense that seemed to connote glowing, somehow.  It was warm, and oddly comforting.  Rocketing along an ocean-like lagoon in a giant wooden flat-bottomed boat, in danger of being eaten by an unknown monster while they ferried a blue-skinned boy-man who spoke in corny comedy routines and sighs to an unknown location so they could retrieve a mystery object, Johnny still couldn’t help but feel like everything was, suddenly and unexpectedly, okay.  He closed his eyes and breathed more slowly.  “Shallédanu lei shonta,” he said softly, almost unaware he was doing so.

Then all that was drowned out by a freezing blast of cold that nearly froze his otherworldy sense solid.  He gasped, and he actually saw steam coming out of his mouth.  Larissa opened her mouth, no doubt to tell him that it was condensed water vapor and not actually steam, but he didn’t wait.  “Go tell Roger we’re almost there!” he shouted at her over the rushing of the wind.  “Tell her to turn just a bit to the right ...”  Johnny stopped as he realized he couldn’t point without losing his grip on Aidan.  “Like two marks past one o’clock,” he said finally, hoping Larissa would know what he meant.

Apparently she did.  She strode over to the speaker, thumbed the brass button, and said “42 degrees to starboard.”

“Aye, aye,” came Roger’s reply.

The boat turned ever so slightly, and now Johnny felt like his heart had been replaced by a large chunk of ice.  It hurt to breathe, and he began to shiver.  Aidan stopped chanting and turned around, which was good because Johnny’s grip was slipping.  He slumped into the priest’s arms, and he heard Aidan whispering to him, but it was hard to make out over the howling winds blowing through his core.  He looked up at Aidan’s face, and he realized the man wasn’t whispering—he was shouting.  Johnny couldn’t hear anything, but he could almost read his lips ...  Off? he thought disjointedly.  Is he saying “off”?  Oh, yeah ... turn it off.  That’s probably a good idea, now that you mention it.  Only ... how do I turn it off?

Aidan was shaking him now, but it was very distant.  Then he felt the older man grab his head between both hands, index fingers pressed into his temples, and a strange sensation, like warm water trickling over him, started at the top of his head and slowly seeped over his entire body.  The arctic winds began to quiet, and he didn’t feel so cold any more.  Gradually his shivering stopped and he unclenched teeth he just now realized he’d clamped shut to stop them chattering.  Aidan was staring into his eyes, chanting quietly.  He stopped as Johnny exhaled and blinked up at him.  “Better now?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes,” Johnny tried to say, but found that his mouth was completely dried out, like he’d been holding it open in a blizzard.  “Um hmm,” he managed finally, rubbing his tongue back and forth to try to work some spit back into his mouth.

When he got back to his feet, he found that Welly had returned to the deck and was eyeing him speculatively.  “You look like a talent scout for a cemetery,” he said, but his gaze was weighing Johnny.

“Henny Youngman,” Larissa said under her breath, as if she knew no one really cared but couldn’t stop herself from saying it anyway.

“Thanks,” Johnny said to Aidan.

“You have to learn to control it,” Aidan said, still holding him by the shoulders and looking into his face.  “It’s not like seeing or hearing.  It’s more like touch: you can choose how much pressure to apply.  When you get this close to something this big, you need to just barely brush it with your fingertips ... you follow me?”

Johnny nodded.  “Dial it down a notch,” he said, still a bit shaky.  “Check.”

Aidan grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.  “Yes, exactly.  Otherwise it’s going to overwhelm you, like it did just now.  Are you okay now?”

Johnny massaged his chest to try to get some bloodflow back into it.  “I think so.  What did you do?”

Aidan smiled.  “All I did, son, was to quiet your mind.  That made it easier for you to ‘dial it down,’ as you say.  Or turn it off altogether ... is that what you did?”  Aidan moved his head, as if trying to get a better angle to see into Johnny’s mind through his eyes.

Johnny nodded.  “Yeah, I guess I did.  Not consciously, but ...”  Johnny stopped, then shook his head, losing whatever tenuous grasp he had on how to complete that thought.

Aidan squeezed his shoulder.  “Don’t worry.  We won’t need it again for a while, I’m thinking.  Seems like we’re pretty close at this point ...”

“Land ho,” Welly said, deadpan.  All eyes turned to him.  “That’s the proper expression, right?”  He pointed directly ahead.  Another cartoon desert island had sprung up out of the distant mists.  They were headed directly for it.

“Shit,” Johnny said.  Aidan’s comment was not in English, but it sounded very similar in character.

Larissa thumbed the speaker.  “Island, twelve o’clock.  Sandy beach, no visible rocks.”

Roger’s voice sounded grim.  “Well, better hang on to something, then, missy.  ‘Cause we canna stop now.”

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To the Edge

Johnny ran to the bow and looked, but could see nothing.  “Where?” he called up to Roger.

Roger was sliding down the ladder (which was boatspeak for “short set of narrow, very steep stairs”) in that casual way she had: boots hooked around the outside edges, gloved hands gently resting on the inside edges, let gravity do the rest.  She could go from flying bridge to deck in about a second and a half.  “Submerged,” she said shortly, striding purposefully toward the wheel.  “But we’ll be changing course withal.”

Johnny naturally turned to Larissa.  ”‘Withal’?”

“Nevertheless,” she replied.

“Ah.”  He paused.  “Where’s Aidan?”

Aidan was right behind him, as it turned out.  “Yes, I heard.  Let me see if I can get a fix on it, at least.”  He leaned out over the railing, and began chanting his liquid chants while stretching his arms out as if to embrace something.

For a long time, nothing changed.  Then Aidan’s eyebrows turned downwards and somehow he managed to mutter under his breath without stopping the fluid chant.  “Shallédanu lei shonta ...”  His tone was one of disbelief.

“What?” Johnny asked.  When he got no answer, he turned a worried eye to Larissa.  “That didn’t sound good ...”

Suddenly Aidan straightened and called out “Hard to port!”  Bones screeched and flew-glided back to the stern.  Seconds later, The Slyph turned sharply ... at least, as sharply as her bulk would allow, which was still enough to make Johnny grasp frantically at the railing to keep his balance.

Welly appeared in one of the doorways to the deckhouse, blinking sleep out of his eyes.  “What in the name of Witt and Berg ... ?” he mumbled.

The boat was now listing hard enough to make the deck feel more like a steep hill, so Johnny didn’t have time to look at Larissa.  She started to answer anyway: “Bob Witt and Cy ...”  At that moment Roger did something which caused the back of the boat to hunch down in the water; The Sylph straightened, but now the deck was slanted aft to fore instead of port to starboard.  The flat-bottomed boat surged forward, like a draft ship cresting a wave, and then the world shuddered as they tipped in the other direction and hit the water with a jarring thud.  They were all immediately soaked as water crashed over the rails.  So Johnny never got to hear about Bob Witt and Cy, presumably Berg.  It was a safe bet they were old comedians, and Johnny figured he had more important things to worry about.

Larissa was briefly sliding towards the front of the ship, and Johnny felt a moment of panic for her before he realized he should save all his panic for himself.  The railings were parallel to the deck, with about 2 feet between the bars, so there was plenty of room for someone on their back to slide under the bottom rung.  Larissa was already in that position, and Johnny felt his ass hit the deck and knew he was almost there as well.  He flailed out with one hand and felt his fingers brush Aidan’s boot, which the water priest had apparently flung out for Johnny to grab.  Out of the corner of one eye he could see Welly clutching desperately at the doorframe.  But most of his field of vision was full of Larissa’s small body, spinning and sliding slowly towards the rail.

She didn’t seem concerned.  She flung out one hand behind her head and it seemed like a blue whip shot out and grabbed one of the crossbars of the railing.  A disoriented thought flashed across Johnny’s consciousness (was that the snake??) and then time seemed to slow down.  He knew he’d missed his opportunity to grab Aidan’s foot, but he felt his hand grasping at the air anyhow.  Ahead of him, Larissa’s arm pulled taut, and her legs swung down towards the nose of the ship, which was just now starting to come back up ... too late to stop the inevitable slide.  Suddenly a crate spun sideways across Larissa’s path.  She kicked it hard with her black and white sneakers, using its bulk to push herself back towards Johnny.  The crate changed course too and fetched up hard against the forward rail; it cracked with a sharp splintery noise, but didn’t come apart.  Johnny suddenly realized he was aimed right for it and managed to get his boots pointed in the right direction before he struck it.

By this point the ship was righted, if still a bit wobbly.  Johnny got to his hands and knees, huffing “lucky” under his breath, over and over.  Larissa sat up calmly; the little blue water snake uncoiled its head from the railing and resettled itself on her wrist.  Aidan, slumped against the railing a yard or so up the deck with one arm still hooked around a crossbar, stared at the snake with fascination, or perhaps disbelief.  Welly let out a long breath and said in a small, quavery voice: “If at first you don’t succeed ... so much for skydiving.”  Larissa looked at him, but refrained from supplying the attribution.

A tinny voice came out of the closest brass speaker.  “Sorry, mates,” Roger called.  “I was just ..”  Her voice was cut off by a deafening crack, like the bullwhip of a giant.  A pale tentacle, white like the underbelly of a corpse, was waving in the air behind them, tall enough to be seen clearly over deckhouse and flying bridge.  Johnny felt his mouth gape open.  “Trying to avoid that,” Roger finished in a tight voice, and The Slyph shot forward as if someone had shoved a rocket into its rear.

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