What Morris Wrought

So, this week I’m going to talk about the titles I came up with for my 13-part blog series on my relationship to Perl that I did on my Other Blog.  When you do a long series like that, you have a number of challenges: presenting the topic concisely, laying the groundwork for the following week, the simple grind of cranking out the next 1500 words.  But there’s also the issue of coming up with titles.  Naming things is hard.  In my technogeek life, it’s probably the thing that we fight most about.  In fact, there’s a famous quote we’re wont to trot out at times:

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. —Phil Karlton

Sometimes you see people online wondering why this saying is famous: naming things is easy, they say.  These are invariably young programmers who have never had to deal with users who can’t understand why a feature doesn’t (or can’t) work because they’re confused about what it is because it’s so poorly named.  Or the pain of having to use a word in one sense when talking to sales (because they use the industry standard definition) and a different sense when talking to fellow techies (because they use the literal meaning) and an altogether different sense when talking to management, because they use a completely arbitrary defintion that they got from the guy before the guy before the guy before you, who was invariably a young programmer who didn’t understand that naming things is hard.

So, yeah: coming up with good names for things is hard.  Coming up with consistent, good names for things is harder.  Coming up with consistent, good names for things 13 weeks in a row is very difficult indeed, and so hopefully I can be forgiven for doing only a mediocre job of it.

The first two or three came to me fairly naturally, and they established the pattern: quotes, either direct or paraphrased, that referenced different cultural things.  These might be songs, poems, television shows, movies, quotes by famous people, or whatever.  Several of them were as easy as the first few; some of them were so hard that I almost spent longer searching for a good title than I did writing the post in the first damn place.  Some of them are so obsure I don’t expect anyone else to know what the hell I’m on about; some were obscure enough that I didn’t know them myself until I Googled them for the purpose of the series.

Here’s the 13 titles I came up with, along with the hints I gave out last week.  Honestly, some of the hints are fairly obscure as well, but I didn’t want to make it too easy.

1. The Road So Far: a Winchester recap
2. The Power of OOP: Johnny Colla would have done a mean sax solo
3. A Møøse Once Bit My Sister: I apologize for the obscure references; those responsible have been sacked
4. A Worthy Program, Exceedingly Well Read: also, profited in strange concealments ...
5. Speaking with the Speech of Coders: a present from Vietnam
6. Perl is Engineering and Art: what’s to learn? it’s a snake ..
7. The Most Powerful Weapon Which You Can Use to Change the World: according to Tata, not Perl at all ...
8. Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful: there was grandeur in his view of life from the Beagle
9. That’s Why I Failed Recess: it was funnier when Rudy said it to Fat Albert
10. What We Talk About When We Talk About DWIM: involving two couples and a bottle of gin
11. Please Mr. Perl, Will You DWIM?: a plea to m’colleague Hugh
12. The End of the Beginning: once described as “sounding more like the Primitives than the Primitives”
13. Here’s to Future Days: why are they called “twins” if there’s three of them?

Now let’s look at which each one references, as well as discussing its relevance to the particular post it ended up tagging.

The Road So Far

This is what they put on the title card when they do a longer recap on the TV show Supernatural.  The card looks like this, or maybe like this.  The protagonists of the series are the Winchester brothers, thus this is “a Winchester recap.”

This was a fairly natural choice for the first post in the series, which told a highly abbreviated version of my programming life, from age 14 or so, up to the present.  It’s a cool reference if you get it, but it still works well if you don’t.

I think a lot of people think of Supernatural as a teeny-bopper series, probably because it’s on the CW along with other teeny-bopper series like Gossip Girl, or The Vampire Diaries.  Of course, I was watching Supernatural when it was on the WB ... which was the home of Charmed and Dawson’s Creek, so I suppose I’m not digging myself out of that hole very well.  I dunno; I suppose it is a teeny-bopper series in many ways, and it’s probably gone on far beyond when they should have called it quits, but I still enjoy it.  Call it a guilty pleasure.  Besides, every now and again Felicia Day shows up, and that just makes it all worthwhile.

The Power of OOP

My second post in the series was about object-oriented programming, or “OOP” for short, and what makes it so useful.  So it seemed natural to harken back to Huey Lewis & the News’ classic 80’s song, “The Power of Love”.  The hint refers to the great sax player of the News, Johnny Colla (who was also a co-writer of “The Power of Love,” as it happens).

I’m not actually a huge fan of “The Power of Love,” nor its companion piece “Back in Time,” both off the Back to the Future soundtrack.  As far as I’m concerned Lewis & the News peaked with Sports, and it’s all downhill from there.  By the time Huey was declaring that it was “Hip to be Square,” I was embarrassed to admit that I’d ever seen them live.  (But I did, with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble opening, and it was a great show, I gotta tell ya.)

A Møøse Once Bit My Sister

No self-respecting programmer should have missed this one, which is of course is a reference to the ultra-classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  As you probably know, all the credits of the film are at the begining, and the Pythons couldn’t let it get too boring, so they peppered it with lots of moose references (for whatever reason).  The title is a direct quote from the credits, and the hint is a paraphrased version of a later credits quote.

For a post extolling the virtues of Moose, but also lamenting a few of its warts, there was no way I could pass up this title.

A Worthy Program, Exceedingly Well Read

This is one of the ones I spent a lot of time trying to find a good reference for.  The post was about legibility: the idea that a good program should be able to be read like a good story.  After several fruitless Googles, the phrase “well-read” popped into my head.  I wondered what the origin of that phrase was.  Of course, if you’re a native English speaker and you spend any time at all poking at the origins of common phrases, you know what the answer is 80-90% of the time: Shakespeare did it.

As it is here.  I paraphrased the relevant bit for the title, and I used the surrounding context for the hint.  Here’s the full text, from Henry IV, Part 1:

In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,
Exceedingly well read, and profited
In strange concealments, valiant as a lion
And as wondrous affable and as bountiful
As mines of India.

This is Mortimer speaking about Glyndwr, whoever that is.  I never read Henry IV, personally.  Still a good quote though.

Speaking with the Speech of Coders

Every once in a while we Americans wake up out of our egocentricity and remember that not all our blog post readers share our Western heritage.  By this point in my blog series, I felt it was time to pick a reference from the other side of the world.  I spent some digging through the Tao Te Ching, which is normally my go-to source for pithy quotes from the Orient.  I poked around The Art of War and Hagakure, both of which I also like, but they weren’t very helpful for this post, which was about linguistics.  I think I even explored the Analects briefly, but I lean much more towards Taoism than Confucianism, as you might imagine of one so obsessed by balance and paradox.

Then suddenly, after long and futile searching, it hit me: I already had a great source which would be perfect for this.  “The Red Cockatoo” is a short poem by Chinese poet Po Chu-i (also romanized as Bai Juyi), who lived in the Tang Dynasty and is very popular in both China and Japan (at least according to his Wikipedia page).  There are several different translations, but I prefer the one by Arthur Waley, the great British sinologist who gave us excellent translations of both the Tao Te Ching and the Analects.  Here it is in its entirety:

Sent as a present from Annam
A red cockatoo.
Coloured like the peach-tree blossom,
Speaking with the speech of men.
And they did to it what is always done
To the learned and eloquent.
They took a cage with stout bars
And shut it up inside.

Beautiful, and piquant.  The hint refers to the fact that “Annam” is an ancient Chinese name for Vietnam (or part of what is modern Vietnam).

Perl is Engineering and Art

This one was obvious to anyone who read this particular post, which spent a good deal of time analyzing a sidebar from the O’Reilly book Learning Python entitled “Python is Engineering, Not Art.”  I almost didn’t use this title, actually, as it’s so much more obvious than all the rest.  But then I decided that this title was just too good to pass up.  The hint is obvious as well, or at least is so in hindsight.

Fun side note: the animal on the cover of Learning Python is a rat.  Write your own joke here.

The Most Powerful Weapon Which You Can Use to Change the World

Another tough one to title.  This post covered several different subtopics that didn’t really fit anywhere else, so there wasn’t a great choice for a title anyway.  One of the topics I covered was my school experience with programming, so I started looking for quotes on education and ran across this one by Nelson Mandela:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

There’s a bit of contention on whether he actually said this or not (and whether he used the word “which” in it if he did), but overall it seemed solid enough.

The hint refers to one of Mandela’s nicknames: “Tata” means “father” in Xhosa.  His other nickname is “Madiba,” but some have argued that it’s inappropriate for non-South-Africans to use that one.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful

This one was a little easier.  The post was about evolution, so it made sense to peruse the words of Charles Darwin, who was not only a very influential scientist, but also an eloquent writer.  The full quote is:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

This is from the conclusion of Darwin’s seminal On the Origin of Species, and is in fact the only time Darwin ever uses the word “evolve,” in the first edition.  (And, in the second, he added the phrase “by the Creator” to make it clear what he was talking about.)

The hint, of course, is a bit of the quote above, combined with a reference to the famous ship that Darwin sailed on, HMS Beagle.

That’s Why I Failed Recess

The ninth post in my series was about Getting Shit Done, and, when I was trying to think of a title for it, I kept remembering a joke from my childhood.  As the hint suggests, I’m pretty sure the first time I heard it was on Fat Albert.  It might have been Rudy who said it, or then again it might have been Russell—he was always a smartass.  Then again, we’re talking about 40-odd years ago, so I might be misremembering altogether and it was never in Fat Albert at all.

Anyways, here’s how I remember the joke:

A: I don’t play.  That’s why I had to quit school in the third grade.
B: Whaddaya mean?
A: ‘Cause the teacher said “recess,” and I said “no, I don’t play.”

There are countless variations of this joke, including the more concise version I used for my title, used in the common venacular, multiple rap songs, blog posts by other people, Facebook user names, tweets, and Internet memes.  In fact, this is a meme from before we knew what memes were.

Plus it’s really funny.

What We Talk About When We Talk About DWIM

Along about Part 10 I wrote a post that was so damn long I had to break it into two pieces.  Originally the title of this post and the following one were going to be switched, so that the title of this one could be a callback to the mention of “m’colleague” which I had dropped into the text.  (Instead, I ended up using that for the hint for Part 11.)  But eventually I made the switch to the titles that we have now because it just made better sense: this post was a fairly long digression in the form of a story from my college days, and this title fit that perfectly.

The title, of course, is a paraphrase of the title of a famous short story by Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” as well as the book which contains it.  In the story, two couples talk about everything but love over a bottle of gin (thus the hint), but really love is all they’re talking about.  You see the parallel in my post.

Really, though, I’m not a huge Carver fan.  The best thing about “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is probably the title.  “Cathedral” is better.

Please Mr. Perl, Will You DWIM?

If you are a connoisseur of Britsh comedy, the television series at the very top of your must-see list is of course Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  After that, it should be The Young Ones and Blackadder, although we might quibble over which one should come first.  Next on your list, before Fawlty Towers, before Red Dwarf, and, yes, even before AbFab, should be A Bit of Fry & Laurie.  If you think of Hugh Laurie simply as House, or (even worse) as the insipid father of Stuart Little, you really don’t know Hugh Laurie (in fact, you may not even realize he’s British).  Likewise, if all you know of Stephen Fry is his voice—he’s the Cheshire Cat in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, the narrator of Little Big Planet, and a prolific audiobook narrator, including the UK version of the Harry Potter books and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—you’re missing out.

A Bit of Fry & Laurie is at once similar to Monty Python and also removed from it.  There’s still a certain amount of the surrealism (perhaps a bit less), but very little of the physical comedy such as the Ministry of Silly Walks or the Gumbys.  Most of it was like taking the best verbal humour of the Pythons (such as the Argument Clinic, or my all-time favorite, the penguin on top of your television set) and cranking it up to 11.  Stephen Fry would often do the heavy lifting in such sketches—playing the Groucho, or the Abbot, role—but Hugh Laurie had many talents other than just being an outstanding straight man.  One of which is an amazing range of musical ability: he plays guitar, drums, harmonica, sax, and, of course, piano.  At the end of every show, Fry would turn to Laurie (who he often referred to as “m’colleague”) and say: “Please Mr. Music, will you play?”  To which Laurie would respond by playing the piano in a loungy sort of way, usually while Fry mixed ridiculously named cocktails such as the Swinging Ballsack.  Occasionally he would elaborate the phrase to enhanced levels of flowery silliness; my favorite of these was:

I say, as I like to on these occasions, those six refreshing words that unlock the door to sophisticated evening happiness. I say: Please Mr. Music, will you play?

If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, I highly recommend it.

The End of the Beginning

Here at Part 12 I finally decided to start wrapping things up.  However, I knew it would take me (at least) two posts to conclude satisfactorily, so I needed a title to reflect that.  “The End of the Beginning” is (appropriately) the final track on the sophmore album of the Darling Buds, Crawdaddy.  Although Crawdaddy came out in 1990, it definitely has that late 80’s sound, including a remarkable similarity to the Primitives, particularly their first two albums Lovely (‘88) and Pure (‘89).  Although technically speaking the Primitives were English while the Darling Buds were Welsh.  But to us stupid Americans that subtle distinction is lost.

Although it was a Brit who made the comparison I reference in the hint: specifically, Dave Kendall, creator of MTV’s 120 Minutes.  He made the clever observation in his review of Crawdaddy, and I couldn’t help but agree, even though I probably like the Darling Buds a bit more than the Primitives.  But it’s a close thing.

The first track on Crawdaddy, “It Makes No Difference,” has one of the coolest hooks of the 80’s.  Too bad you’ve never heard it.

On the other hand, if you want to hear this track, YouTube is your friend.

Here’s to Future Days

And finally we reached the end, and I decided to touch on my thoughts about Perl’s future.  The title for this one took absolutely no thinking or searching at all.  While there can be no doubt that Into the Gap is the pinnacle of the Thompson Twins’ career, Here’s to Future Days is also a great album, the last of the good TT records before they transmogrified into Babble (whose debut was better than the last three efforts from the Twins put together ... not that that’s saying much).

Here’s to Future Days was also (probably not coincidentally) their last album as a threesome: it may not have seemed like Joe Leeway was adding much other than standing around looking cool (much as Andrew Ridgely did for Wham!), but apparently that was an illusion, because they sure sucked without him.  Definitely most people think of the Thompson Twins as a trio, and wonder what’s up with calling themselves “twins.”

But of course the truth is the name has nothing to do with the number of band members.  The first (little known) TT album was recorded with four members, and the second featured a whopping seven, before they trimmed it down to the famous three, who would go on to produce the Twins’ three great albums: Quick Step & Side Kick (known simply as Side Kicks in the US), Into the Gap, and Here’s to Future Days.  Nope, the name was simply a reference to Thomson and Thompson, the detectives from The Adventures of Tintin who only look like twins.

“Future Days” is the track on this album that contains the lyrics “Here’s to future days / Here’s to future ways,” which is what I hear in my head whenever I read this title.  If you’d like to have it stuck in your head as well, YouTube can arrange that for you.

In Conclusion

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I spent quite a bit of time mentally wrestling with a title for this post itself.  Should it be some sort of self-referential thing, being that it would be the title of a post about titling posts?  Should it somehow proclaim to the world that it was a meta-title?  Should it be a quote about naming things, or about clever wordplay?

In the end, I decided to make it a shout out to one of my favorite book-gifts as a child.  I got my fair share of fiction, certainly, but my family also recognized that an aspiring writer must have a love of language, so I got a fair number of dictionaries, thesauri, etc.

I was eleven years old on Christmas in 1977, the year that my grandfather presented me with the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, which had been published for the first time that very year (although much of it was derived from the earlier version, which was similarly titled but without the “Morris”).  It’s a “dictionary” only in the sense that the entries in it are alphabetized.  Lovingly crafted by husband and wife William and Mary Morris, it’s not so much a reference work (although it can be used as such) as it is a mishmash of fascinating tales of how English expressions came to be; I was fond of just opening it to a random page and reading whatever I found there.  I was rarely disappointed.

The Morris’ youngest son Evan carries on the family tradition on the web, writing as the Word Detective.  On his “about” page, he quotes fellow etymologist John Ciardi:

The more words I traced back through time for our readers, the more I appreciated Ciardi’s observation that each word, no matter how humble, was “a miniature fossilized poem written by the human race.”

And that’s what this exercise in naming was like: a verbal archaeology expedition, a paleontologist finding words trapped in amber.  My love for this sort of thing is certainly directly traceable back to the Morris dictionary, and the many hours I spent perusing how words and meanings become bent and reshaped to suit new ends across the generations.  Yeah, I was a weird kid.

So, this week’s installment, while longer than I’d anticipated (and probably longer than you’d hoped), at least may provide some insight into how these titles get here and where they come from, and why I tend to obsess over them more than is probably healthy.  Next week I probably won’t be so garrulous, most likely because I’ll be busy catching up on all the things I didn’t do this weekend because I spent too much time on this blog post.  But it’s been fun.  For me, anyway.  For you ... well, didn’t anyone tell you not to read this blog?

Perl blog post #32

Well, it’s finally happened: my never-ending blog series on my relationship with Perl has ended.  You can check out the final installment over on my Other Blog.

For 13 weeks, I had to come up with clever titles for my blog posts, and I decided to lift them directly or paraphrase them from various sources: books, movies, songs, TV shows, poems, quotes from famous people, etc.  I knew that some people would instantly recognize some and scratch their heads over others, and different people would do so with different entries.  I figured perhaps no one would recgonize them all, as they were quite an eclectic mix ... from the the Bard to the CW (though of course I might be wrong about that).  So I thought it might be sort of fun to give everyone a second chance at guessing them.

Next week, I’ll do a blog post (here, not there) explaining all the miscellaneous references.  In the meantime, feel free to guess at them and see how many you can get.  I’ll include the hints I left on the Other Blog:

1. The Road So Far: a Winchester recap
2. The Power of OOP: Johnny Colla would have done a mean sax solo
3. A Moose Once Bit My Sister: I apologize for the obscure references; those responsible have been sacked
4. A Worthy Program, Exceedingly Well Read: also, profited in strange concealments ...
5. Speaking with the Speech of Coders: a present from Vietnam
6. Perl is Engineering and Art: what’s to learn? it’s a snake ..
7. The Most Powerful Weapon Which You Can Use to Change the World: according to Tata, not Perl at all ...
8. Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful: there was grandeur in his view of life from the Beagle
9. That’s Why I Failed Recess: it was funnier when Rudy said it to Fat Albert
10. What We Talk About When We Talk About DWIM: involving two couples and a bottle of gin
11. Please Mr. Perl, Will You DWIM?: a plea to m’colleague Hugh
12. The End of the Beginning: once described as “sounding more like the Primitives than the Primitives”
13. Here’s to Future Days: why are they called “twins” if there’s three of them?

I rewrote one hint to make it work for people who may not have read the actual blog posts.  Have fun, and tune in next week for the answers!

Perl blog post #31

My never-ending Perl series on my Other Blog is finally ending.  Hop on over and check out part one of the thrilling two-part conclusion.  Or, you know, don’t.  Totally up to you.

Unreal Life

Today I’m taking a bit of a break from my Perl series over on my Other Blog, on account of The Mother is gone this weekend and I’ve been chasing 3 kids around the house for 3 days.  A trinity of trinities, I suppose, although the perfection implied is looking more like perfect exhaustion at this point.  Said 3 kids are now (almost) 15.5, 8, and 2.  There are many interesting bits of fallout from having kids spaced out like that, but the one I’ve been pondering lately is that I’ve now been watching children’s television pretty much continuously for 15 years.  I’ve written about this phenomenon before, although I really only scratched the surface.

Eventually, all that stuff starts to run together in your brain, and it becomes one giant, colorful, frenetic, singing, vocabulary-spouting, Spanish-speaking whirlwhind melange of light, sound, and giggles.  And, you know, you start to wonder what your life would be like if you lived in a children’s show.

You don’t?  Well, maybe it’s just me.

But, anyway, here’s my Letterman-style top 10 things that would be different about our family if we were children’s television stars.  Enjoy it just for the surreality, or see if you can figure out which specific shows I’m referring to in each item.^*

10. We’d all fall over backwards when we laughed at something.

9. We would turn invisible when frightened.

8. Our youngest would keep a screwdriver in her diaper for tricky escapes.

7. Our potatoes would be moonlighting as detectives.

6. We would live in constant fear of our personal possessions being stolen by a fox.

5. We could take the train to visit our distant ancestors, but not our grandparents.

4. Our guinea pig could play the trumpet.

3. No one could find the snails.

2. We’d have a pet chair.

1. If we were unsure what lesson to draw from events, we could consult the Wheel of Morality.

* Tip: If you need help with the answers, the period at the end of each item is a link.

Perl blog post #30

Another in my continuing (never-ending?) series about my relationship with Perl on my Other Blog.  This one delves more into the minutiae of Perl, so I won’t even suggest that you try to make sense of it if you’re not a techie.  But it’s all I have for this week.  So, you know, there you have it.  Or not.  Take your pick.  Or don’t.  That’s okay too.

Perl blog post #29

I’m still doing my series on Perl and Me, over on my Other Blog.  You should check it out if you’re a techie person.  If you’re not ... well, I told an interesting story about my college days, so there’s that at least.

Well, I mean, it’s interesting if you know anything about computer science.

Okay, so I told an entertaining story about my college days, which you may or may not see the point of, if you’re not a coder.  But it does reveal all sorts of heretofore-hidden secrets about what a slack ass I was when I was in school.  So ... yeah.

Perl blog post #28

I continue on my quest to understand Perl, and understand myelf.  This week there’s a fair amount of technical jargon, but also a fair amount of self-discovery.  Pop on over to the Other Blog and check it out if you’re so inclined.

Perl blog post #27

This week, yet another entry in my ongoing tech series over on my Other Blog.  This one is a bit more technical than the past couple, but it still contains some interesting philosophical bits about evolution.  Check it out.

Perl blog post #26

Another post in my ongoing series about why Perl over on my Other Blog.  This time I essay the topic of education for computer programmers, and I talk about which parts of my own education were most useful.  In this particular post, I barely even mention Perl, so go on and check it out, even if you don’t normally dig my tech posts.  It’s very non-tech-reader-friendly, trust me.

Perl blog post #25

Somehow I managed to get my latest Perl blog post out on my Other Blog before I keeled over dead from relapsing into the sickness that laid me low just after Christmas.  So I’m writing to you now from beyond the grave.  At least that’s what it feels like.  You know how people say they feel like death warmed over?  This is more like death left out to get get cold and stale.  I wish I felt warmed over.  That would be a major improvement.

Anyhow, go read the post, or not.  I mena, it’s only my dying wish.  But, you know ... do what you like.

Perl blog post #24

This week I continue my exploration of Perl as (sort of) literature.  This one is mildly more technical than the last, but still not out of the realm of interest for you non-techno-geeks, so I encourage you to check it out.

Perl blog post #23 + Hoilday Redux

In my ongoing series on my Other Blog, this week I’m talking about the relationship between coding and fiction writing.  It’s probably the least technical of the series, so don’t be afraid to hop on over and check it out, even if tech stuff isn’t your cup o’ tea.

In other news, I can now report from firsthand experience that having the entire family sick for Christmas really sucks donkey balls.  We were actually at urgent care on Boxing Day.  (Nothing serious, as it turns out, but we did get some antibiotics, so that’s nice.)  Still recovering, as various family members go into mini-relapses, sleep for 11 hours and feel better for a while, etc.  Hopefully we’re all better by New Year’s.

Perl blog post #22 + Happy Holidays (again)

Primarily this week I will refer to you my ongoing series on why I program in Perl, over in my Other Blog.

However, it’s also Christmas-time again—my fourth since starting this blog—so I will also take a brief moment to wish you happy holidays and merry christmahannukwanzaakah.^*  You may recall my “happy holidays” rant from two years ago (and, if you don’t, I highly recommend you check it out, for the awesome Christmas mix I provide if for no other reason).  I mentioned then (as I did the year before as well) Fox News’ “War on Christmas” meme that they trot out every year in the hopes it will get some traction.  This year it’s gotten very silly indeed.  Gretchen Carlson bitches about a Festivus pole.  Megyn Kelly informs us that Santa just is white, children.^**

But my favorite clip was Bill O’Reilly pointing out that, since Hannukah came in November this year, saying “happy holidays” didn’t make any sense because Christmas was now the only holiday left.  I suppose if you celebrate Kwanzaa, Yule, or Pancha Ganapati, Bill considers you beneath notice.  Somehow I can’t help but feel that’s contrary to what is generally considered to be the Christmas spirit.

This year we introduced our kids to A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time.  Aside from having awesome music (interesting side note: I heard “Linus and Lucy” on a radio station playing Christmas music the other day—is that really a Christmas song?), it has a really sweet message.  Here’s a show which has been airing since before I was born,^*** and they were already railing against the commercialization of Christmas.  How would they react to the situation today?  There were several places around where I live that actually trotted out the Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving this year.  But the special makes some cutting remarks about commercialism (we had to explain to our kids that aluminum Christmas trees were a real thing), folds in the religious message with a moving monologue by Linus, and ends with a touching scene of unity, as all the kids who have been verbally abusing Charlie Brown the entire episode now gather together and sing around his little-engine-that-could Christmas tree.  Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, he may be the Charlie Browniest, but he still deserves love and respect and fellowship, especially at this time of the year.  Perhaps Mr. O’Reilly has forgotten that.  Or perhaps he never learned it.

In any event, I wish you all the very best holiday you could possibly have, no matter what it may be, no mater whether it’s come and gone or is yet to come.  And, if you celebrate Christmas as I do, I hope you really enjoy the Mystery Days this year.

__________

* ™ Jon Sime

** If you click on that Daily Show link, be sure and watch the second video that pops up as well, for maximum cognitive dissonance.

*** Okay, not very long before I was born, but a bit.

Perl blog post #21

Continuing my series on why I use Perl (as opposed to some other language), today on my Other Blog I talk about object-oriented programming and what’s nifty about it, with some shout-outs to some of my previous blog posts here along the way.  Wander over and check it out if any of that sounds intriguing.

Perl blog post #20

Today I’ve done another technical blog, although it’s not very technical.  It’s the story of why I’m a Perl programmer (as opposed to a C programmer, or a Java programmer, or any other sort of programmer), and it’s part 1 of a long series I’ve been wanted to do for a while now.  If you’re interested in those sorts of personal history details (or comparative language studies for computer code), hop on over and check it out.

You are Who You Choose to Be

I started out this post by looking for a good quote to expand on, but what I found was that many of the quotes I’ve collected through the years seem to be interrelated.  This makes sense, if you think about it, since I am of course attracted to quotes which reflect my own outlook on life; thus, many of the quotes touch on various aspects of that.  In fact, insofar as we do trust quotes to illuminate Truth for us (and I’ve also talked about why we shouldn’t), we must be cautious in trusting overmuch the quotes of any one individual, for there’s a certain amount of editorial censorship going on.

But when several quotes from disparate sources start to form a pattern, supporting each other and giving credence to the idea that a deeper Truth is here embedded, you may want to take notice.

Let’s start simply.  Here’s my favorite line from Men in Black—this is from the scene where K first explains to the soon-to-be J about aliens, and J wants to know why all the secrecy:

J: People are smart.  They can handle it.
K: A person is smart.  People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.

Here K (played by Tommy Lee Jones) makes a crucial distinction between a person as an individual, and people as herd animals, prone to mob mentality.  J (played by Will Smith) is a New York City cop: he does know it, and has no answer to this.

I like this quote because it’s a bit of a meditation on individuality.  As primates, we’re not exactly herd animals, and we’re not exactly pack animals, but we’re definitely not loners.  If you have cats (or have ever interacted with them in more than superficial ways), you know that cats are, by nature, solitary.  They tolerate other cats, sometimes, like they tolerate you ... sometimes.  I am one of those rare people who is perfectly balanced between loving dogs and cats, so I’ve had my share of both, and had the opportunity to observe them in domestic situations.  Every cat is different, as every dog is different, as every human is different, but there are fundamental natures of each.  My favorite Just So Story is “The Cat That Walked by Himself”, and whenever I interact with cats I hear my grandfather intoning that excellent Kipling line: “I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.  I will not come.”

But humans are not like this.  Humans have an instinctive need to belong, to cluster together against the dangers of the big, bad world.  Sometimes this goes too far, and we develop an us-against-them mindset that becomes toxic.  But, in measured doses, this instinct of ours can produce loyalty, self-sacrifice, and a fierce protectiveness of our friends and family—of our tribe.  So this is something that’s neither good nor bad.  It just is.

Of course, there are exceptions.  One of the great things of being a firm believer in balance and paradox is that I can tell you in all seriousness that people are all the same and that all of us are different.  Depeche Mode tells us that people are people, and they’re not wrong.  And Ray Stevens tells us that everyone is beautiful in their own way, and he’s not wrong either.  Indeed, it is the very paradoxical nature of humans that makes them simultaneously capable of such togetherness and such individuality.

Or I could say that it makes them simultaneously capable of conformity and disruptiveness.

There’s no doubt that some value conventionality and orthodoxy, while others value individualism and originality.  Actually, it’s probabaly more accurate to say that most of us value both, just in differing proportions.  I of course favor a position somewhere between the two, and also I value both at once.  But I doubt anyone who’s met me would fail to agree that I come down more on the side of individuality.  If I were a role-playing geek (which, you know, I am), I would tell you that my alignment is Chaotic Good (with leanings towards Chaotic Neutral).

If you find it too difficult to draw deep philosophical meaning from a science fiction movie which was (let’s face it) a bit silly (even though it was lots of fun), how about we look to something Steve Jobs said (this is from a Wired article in 1996):

I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart.  I have a very optimistic view of individuals.  As individuals, people are inherently good.  I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.

Notice that while this is slightly more learned-sounding, it’s exactly the same sentiment.  Now, I’m cheating a bit here, because I’m reusing both these quotes: I used them in my explanation of Cynical Romanticism.  But there I was concentrating on the downside of people.  Here I want to take the opposite approach: the upside of person.

E. E. Cummings once said (in his Advice to Students, 1958):

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

and I think this sums up my attitude towards conformity in as concise and complete a manner as possible.  Being different is hard ... this is why we end up with cultures like goths or punks, with gangs of people trying so hard to look different that they all end up looking alike.  Being different requires figuring out what “different” means: for you, in your family, in your town, in your society.  “Different” is different for everybody.

In fact, probably the biggest obstacle to people being themselves is not knowing who “themselves” is.  Before you can shine as a unique individual, you’re going to have to figure out who you actually are.  “Know thyself” advises the inscription at Delphi, but it’s a terribly difficult task.  We humans have a tendency to think we understand our own minds, but it turns out we’re pretty terrible at it, in general.  We lie to ourselves, we exaggerate our strengths and downplay our weaknesses, we avoid the darker corners of our psyches because we’re afraid to find out what’s in them.  But if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can come to understand yourself reasonably well, and then you can start truly becoming who you were all along.

And then it gets really hard.

Because, no matter how much we claim to celebrate individuality, we do a damn fine job of ostracizing anyone who doesn’t fit our definition of “normal.”  And “normal” is boring.  In fact, it’s a bit scary.  Jodie Foster once said:

Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.

But of course the farther you get away from it, the more dirty looks and eye rolls and disapproving sniffs you get.  This is why Cummings describes it as a battle.  And all he did was throw the rules of grammar out the window and decapitalize his name every now and again.

So I’ve fought the good fight for much of my life.  I’ve stood out even when it meant sticking out, and I’ve gone my own way when going along would have been much easier (and safer).  Mostly I haven’t done this out of any particular moral imperative, or pride, or anything of that sort.  Mostly I was just too stubborn to conform when I probably should have.  But I’m not unhappy with how it’s all turned out.  I don’t have too many regrets, at least not on that score.

Being yourself is a worthwhile endeavor.  You will stand out in people’s minds, and make an impact on them even when you can’t remember ever having met them.  You will occasionally annoy, and occasionally frustrate, but you will also occasionally delight, and occasionally inspire.  That makes it all worthwhile, in the end.  At least it has to me.

Another quote I’ve always found thought-provoking, even though it’s somewhat trite, is often attributed to Confucius (which, like most things attributed to Confucius, is beyond unlikely and into ludicrous), and sometimes attributed to someone named Patrick Bryson (whoever that is).  But I’ve often thought its pithy simplicity held the promise of something more.

Always be yourself.  Otherwise, who are you?

Good advice indeed.  Along with the advice in the title of today’s post, which comes from The Iron Giant, which is an excellent film about being yourself.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you should seek it out.  Some things are worth the effort.

Everything Old is New Again

I was looking for a poem today.

It was the first poem that I ever wrote, or at least the first I can now remember having written.  It was nearly fully-formed in my head when I woke up one morning, and I remember the experience very clearly.  It was after I dropped out of college and after I moved out of my parents’ house, in that first non-familial dwelling where I lived with countless roommates whose faces were constantly changing.  The quality of light in my bedroom was strained: the sun had no doubt lightened the sky as best it could before actually emerging above the horizon, but there were also curtains to mute the brightness even further.  Everything in my room seemed to have a grainy quality, like a badly filmed movie.  I got up and grabbed one of my college notebooks, which I had not thrown away because there were still blank pages in them, and I wrote it all down.  I believe I had to make up part of it, so the last few verses aren’t nearly as good as the intial ones, which were a gift from my subconscious.  I can still recite the first two stanzas nearly perfectly, after all these years ...

But now I can’t find it.  I know I still have a copy; probably more than one.  I transcribed it several times, in different media.  (No doubt it exists on a few dead hard drives as well.)  At the very least, I should have the copy that I submitted for my poetry class, during my second tour of college, since I saved nearly everything I ever wrote for any of my writing classes: two semesters of fiction, two of non-fiction, one of poetry, and one of advanced writing.  My poetry professor said it reminded him of Poe’s poetry.  I said, thank you.  He said, that wasn’t a compliment.

I never cared much for poetry.  It’s dense, and difficult to parse.  Fiction has a flow to it; once you get properly cranking, you can just write it forever.  Or at least I can.  Poetry is more about agonizing over every word.  It’s spare, and exacting, and needs to communicate one thing while saying another.  If you’ve ever wondered if poetry is as difficult to write as it is to read, the answer is yes.

Oscar Wilde once said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” My poetry professor certainly believed that.  His attitude was, if you want to pour all your personal feelings out on paper and call it poetry, that’s fine.  But, as soon as you bring it into my classroom, you give me permission to tell you it’s crap.  He made at least one person in the class cry, that I recall.  I made sure that any emotions I tried to capture in my poetry weren’t my own.  Much safer that way.

While I couldn’t find my first poem, I did find the first poem I submitted for that class.  Rereading it, I suppose it isn’t terrible, though it certainly isn’t great either.  It was based on someone I’d met my first year back in school, and it was an attempt to capture a more complex emotion than just the simple one-word things we typically use in our everyday speech.  I don’t know how successful it was at that, but at least it recaptures that emotion for me, as I reread it.  But then I knew what I was trying to say in the first place, so it may not work as well for you.  But judge for yourself:

I am not in love.
I mean, he’s a sweet guy and all, but
it’s just a fling.
A brief encounter.
A few weeks of passion.
It’s just shallow.
You know?

I met him
where I work.
He comes in a lot.
The stale, smoky air,
the cool green felt,
the constant clack of the balls—
it has an undeniable attraction for some.
Like him.
I remember noticing him.
I liked the easy way he moved,
his long, blonde hair tucked under a hat
or a bandana.
His intense concentration,
his confident style:
he was like an artist at work.
He has good hands.

We never really spoke, he and I,
until that night.
I was drunk and he was drunk
and we were together
and he was intelligent
and witty
and charming.

And I was surprised.
I mean, a lot of guys wear their leather
and their long hair
and play their boyish games,
and they think they’re cool.
But they have no substance.
But he ...
he was different.
He is different.

What?  Yes, I know.
He has a girlfriend.
But she’s far away,
and it doesn’t really matter because
it’s just shallow.
You know?
Am I wrong?
Don’t sit there so quietly,
tell me what you think.
You won’t hurt my feelings.
It’s not like I love him.

The other night I was alone.
It was the first night I’ve spent along since
that first night.
But I didn’t miss him or anything.
I sat around, I did some homework,
different stuff.
And I dreamed ...
I dreamed I was a little girl
and I was standing in a field
and the field was full of beautiful flowers
and the sun was shining—
I remember how warm it felt on my skin—
and birds were singing ...
it was really pretty.
And off in the distance,
way far away,
was a tree.
It was the most perfect tree—
it was a maple,
with perfectly shaped green leaves
and strong, straight branches
that started close to the ground and went up
almost like a ladder.
It looked so cool and inviting,
and I wanted to climb it so badly,
so I started running
and I ran and I ran
and the tall grass whipped my legs
and the wind tugged at my hair
and I was going faster and faster
until everything around me was a blur of sound and motion
but that tree never moved.
It never came any closer.
It was exactly as far away
as it was before.
And when I woke up,
very suddenly,
I felt out of breath
and my legs ached.
Isn’t that odd?

He’ll be over again tonight.
I’ll be glad to see him,
even though I wonder
sometimes.
He’s going away for the summer.
He’s going to stay with his girlfriend.
And by the time he gets back,
I’ll be gone.
Didn’t I tell you?
I’m moving.
To Vermont.
It doesn’t really matter anyway—
it’s just shallow.
I hear him on the stairs now,
so you’ll excuse me.
The time we spend together won’t last long,
so it’s very special.
I treasure each moment.
But, in a way,
I’ll be glad when summer comes.
One can only take so much intimacy.
After all,
I am not in love.

From the condition of the copy I found, I suspect this was a first draft, so it might have gotten better; I can’t recall.  But it still has a certain quality that I like, despite the fact that it was written when I was young and foolish, and (to plagiarize They Might Be Giants) I feel old and foolish now.  It could have almost been a prose piece, but I think the linebreaks actually add something to the flow (or non-flow) of it that makes it more interesting than it would be if it were just written in paragraphs.  But of course I’m biased.

I’ll keep on looking for the original poem that I actually wanted to share with you.  Or maybe the rest of it will come back to me.  In the meantime, I revisited my cento from a few months ago and produced a key for the original references.  I was starting to feel bad about not crediting the original authors.  Plus it’ll save you some Googling, if you really wanted to know the sources.

---

• Title, first half: original
• Title, second half: A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

• Stanza 1, Line 1: traditional (recycled by Peter Straub, Shadowland)
• Stanza 1, Line 2: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (recycled by Charles Schulz, Peanuts, and Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time)
• Stanza 1, Line 3: Jane’s Addiction, “Of Course,” Ritual de lo Habitual
• Stanza 1, Line 4: English nursery rhyme (recycled by Neil Gaiman, Stardust, and Stratus, “The Fear,” Fear of Magnetism)

• Stanza 2, Line 1: Guadalcanal Diary, ”... Vista,” Flip-Flop
• Stanza 2, Line 2: The The, “This is the Day,” Soul Mining
• Stanza 2, Line 3: Shakespeare, Macbeth, (recycled by Agatha Christie, book of the same name)
• Stanza 2, Line 4: Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Canto the second”
• Stanza 2, Line 5: John Irving, A Widow for One Year, (recycled by himself, book of the same name)
• Stanza 2, Line 6: V.S. Pritchett, At Home and Abroad

• Stanza 3, Line 1: Dead Can Dance, “Black Sun,” Aion
• Stanza 3, Line 2: “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens”, traditional Scottish poem
• Stanza 3, Line 3, first half: Frank Herbert, Dune
• Stanza 3, Line 3, second half: Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• Stanza 3, Line 4: Emily Brown, “Enemy of Time,” This Goes With Us

• Stanza 4, Line 1, first half: A.S.J. Tessimond, “Cats”
• Stanza 4, Line 1, second half: Po Chu-i, “The Red Cockatoo” (translation by Arthur Waley)
• Stanza 4, Line 2, first half: Tool, “Disgustipated,” Undertow
• Stanza 4, Line 2, second half: Tori Amos, “Happy Phantom,” Little Earthquakes
• Stanza 4, Line 3: R.E.M., “Swan Swan H,” Life’s Rich Pageant
• Stanza 4, Line 4: Incubus, “Pardon Me,” Make Yourself
• Stanza 4, Line 5, first half: Lewis Carroll, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
• Stanza 4, Line 5, second half: The Beautiful South, “From Under the Covers,” Welcome to the Beautiful South

• Stanza 5, Line 1: John Mayer, “No Such Thing,” Room for Squares
• Stanza 5, Line 2: e.e. cummings
• Stanza 5, Line 3: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• Stanza 5, Line 4, first half: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
• Stanza 5, Line 4, second half: Shakespeare, Hamlet

• Stanza 6, Line 1: Saiyuki, “Where the Gods Are”
• Stanza 6, Line 2: Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
• Stanza 6, Line 3: Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”
• Stanza 6, Line 4: Blind Melon, “No Rain,” Blind Melon

• Stanza 7, Line 1, first half: Harvey
• Stanza 7, Line 1, second half: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Stanza 7, Line 2: traditional (recycled by Peter Straub, Shadowland)
• Stanza 7, Line 3: Satchel Paige (but also attributed to many others)
• Stanza 7, Line 4: Will Smith, “Just the Two of Us,” Big Willie Style
• Stanza 7, Line 5: the Kaiser Chiefs, “Time Honoured Tradition,” Employment

The Clock Ticks Life Away

The Mother took a brief (and well-earned) vacation this weekend, and I’ve also had a few lingering work issues to take care of, so there’s no post for you this week.  Too bad so sad for you.  Next week should be a bit lighter.

The Horror of Advancing Age

No time for a proper post, but I will leave you with a thought I had this weekend.

In general, I don’t feel old.  My beard is almost completely white, my oldest child is taller than I am (and has a moustache now), and, every time I stand up after sitting for any length of time, I have to crack my ankles before I can take a step.  Yeah, it’s true that I’m generally the oldest person on my tech team (although at my current job I suspect I have at least a fighting chance at “second oldest”).  And, yeah, I’m in many ways crotchety, creaky, grumpy, and falling apart.  But I’ve refused to grow up my whole life and I’m not really about to start now.

Still, every once in a while something sneaks up on me and catches me by surprise.  This weekend we watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which (if you haven’t seen it), is one of those very serious lives-of-high-school students movies, somewhat like The Breakfast Club, which is certainly one of my all-time favorite movies.  (Interesting side note: John Hughes wrote the original screenplay for Perks and was going to direct the film as his comeback, before his death kinda put a damper on that plan.)  This movie stars Hermione Granger and Percy Jackson, which is a pretty awesome combination, at least in the magical powers department.

Possibly because I re-watch Breakfast Club on a pretty regular basis, high school movies still seem relevant to me, no matter how old I get.  This is a pretty good one; I definitely recommend it.  The problems the kids have to deal with don’t seem trivial, but neither are they overblown.  And the acting is quite maginificent—I was especially impressed with Ezra Miller, who I only knew previously from his brief but appropriately disturbing turn in We Need to Talk About Kevin.

So it was by turns funny and touching, and I thorougly enjoyed it, and there were no problems at all ... except.  Except there’s this part where first Hermione, and then later Percy, stand up while riding in the back of a pickup which is going full speed through a tunnel.  You know, when Teen Wolf went “van surfing,” that didn’t bug me at all, but, man, I must be getting old, because the whole time I was watching this pickup thing I was so nervous that one of those damn kids was going to go tumbling out of the back of the truck and get smushed by a semi cruising along behind them or something.  At the very least it was a serious case of road rash waiting to happen.  I kept wanting to shout at the screen “sit down, you stupid kid! you’re going to break your fool neck!”

So ... yeah.  Getting a bit old, I guess.  As Twain says, “It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.”

Genethlian Cartography

Today, I spent the time I normally would spend writing a blog post for you building a new Heroscape map.  If it makes you feel any better, it’s a really cool one: Avalanche, by Hero-X, from the now-demised Shadowlock site.  I have no idea whether it’ll be any good to actually play on, but I intend to find out, if the boys are willing.  The sprite helped.

So it’s a me-focussed weekend (mainly becuase my birthday is coming up).  Come back next week and perhaps I’ll have something more entertaining for you to look at.


On the off chance that you are a fellow ‘Scaper, and want to build this map for yourself, you can download the instructions here.

The Sop of Originality

Quick, which band is the originator of grunge music?

I bet most of you—something on the order of 97 to 99% of you, in fact—replied “Nirvana.”  Which is a lovely answer: their radio anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is what introduced grunge music to the world.  I can remember the first time I heard it: it was Industrial Night at the Roxy, in downtown DC, in 1991.  I won’t go so far as to say it changed my life—I was already very much into alternative music, otherwise why would I have been attending Industrial Night?—but it certainly jolted my system.  I had no idea it was about to take the airwaves (and, shortly thereafter, the nation) by storm, but I knew this was something ... special.  Something profound.  It’s 22 years later now and I’m still listening to new songs from the Foo Fighters coming on the radio: that’s a decent run for any modern band and its descendants.  It doesn’t rival the Beatles or the Stones, but it’s a damn fine run, and it ain’t over yet.

But of course Nirvana didn’t invent grunge music.  The first incarnation of Nirvana came together in 1985 or ‘86.  Soundgarden had already been around for at least a year, as had Green River, who begat Mother Love Bone, who begat Perl Jam.  Green River’s roots, in fact, go back as far as 1980, and the roots of the Melvins go back to 1983, at least, and they together spawned Mudhoney, who is certainly the best Seattle grunge band you’ve never heard of, hands down.

And Seattle is the birthplace of grunge, right?  Here’s what Kurt Cobain said about writing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to Rolling Stone:

I was trying to write the ultimate pop song.  I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies.  I have to admit it.  When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band.  We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.

And the Pixies, you see, were from Boston, whose grunge scene is underrated nearly to the point of being unknown, even though it included great (but little-known) bands like the Pixies, Buffalo Tom, and of course Dinosaur Jr., who formed in 1983 and not only wrote what is arguably the best grunge quatrain ever:

I know I don’t thrill you
Sometimes I think I’ll kill you
Just don’t let me fuck up, will you
‘Cause when I need a friend it’s still you

but also what is surely the greatest remake ever.

But what is the point here?  (Other than to re-educate you on the finer points of grunge music, naturally.)  I think the point is that some Nirvana fans may be offended by my pointing out they didn’t invent grunge, they merely popularized it. As if that somehow takes away from their genius.  Am I saying that Nirvana is just a rip-off of the Pixies?  No, Kurt Cobain said that.  I think I’m saying that originality is overrated.  It’s held up as some sort of sacred cow, and, if a thing isn’t original, it’s therefore inferior.  But Nirvana is not inferior to the Pixies ... I’m not saying they’re better, merely that they’re not any worse.  Coming in second or third or fifth or tenth in the chronological list of grunge bands doesn’t make them any less insanely good than they truly are.  Everyone had done what they did before, but no one ever did it like they did, before or after.  Why do we care if they were first or not?

We can move into the wider world of music.  Can there be a Lady Gaga without Madonna?  No, not really.  Does that make Lady Gaga a “Madonna rip-off”?  Certainly not in the pejoritive way that the phrase is generally used.

We’ll expand to movies.  Can Dark City exist without Metropolis?  No, certainly not.  Hell, I’m not sure Dark City could exist without The City of Lost Children, but that doesn’t make Dark City any less brilliant.  Hell, I’ve heard it argued that The Matrix doesn’t exist without Dark City (although their releases are close enough together that it’s more likely a pair than a rip-off), but that doesn’t take anything away from The Matrix either.

Comic books: I’ve always loved Moon Knight.  Moon Knight is a rich guy who fights at night with a mysterious, scary costume and uses a lot of gadgets ... sound familiar?  Yeah, Moon Knight is pretty much a Batman rip-off.  So what?  How does that make him any less cool?

Literature: I’ve already talked about how I feel about the Wheel of Time series being accused of being a Lord of the Rings rip-off.  I’ve also heard it accused of being a Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones) rip-off, which is amusing, since the first book of Wheel of Time was published before George R. R. Martin even started writing the first book of Song of Ice and Fire.  But let’s say you’re willing to flip it around and accuse Martin of ripping off Jordan instead: I still say, so what?  If it were true that Martin deliberately and consciously sat down and said “I’m going to rewrite Wheel of Time, only better” (and I truly don’t believe he did), who cares?  What Martin produced is still awesome.  You could argue whether it’s better than Jordan or not, but, in the end, it’s different, and they’re both very good.  They could have been ripping each other constantly throughout the respective series (which, although it’s true that Jordan started first, were being published simultaneously), and I would only be grateful for the cross-pollination.  It’s not like whoever got there first gets more points or something.

In my discussion about the Wheel of Time question, I made another analogy: Harry Potter being described as a rip-off of James and the Giant Peach.  I chose it for a number of deliberate reasons.  The most obvious being that James and the Giant Peach was published 4 years before J. K. Rowling was even born, so it completely eliminates any question of whose idea came first.  Also because I don’t think it’s a criticism that’s ever actually been made; rather it seems to be the case that any series which is even remotely like Harry Potter is proclaimed to be a rip-off of it: A Series of Unfortuante Events, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Artemis Fowl, the Bartimaeus trilogy, the Septimus Heap series, Children of the Red King, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, The Wednesday Tales, etc etc ad infinitum.  But of course the one that concerns me is the one that I’m currently engaged in writing (assuming I ever get back to it), Johnny Hellebore.

So this question of originality hits home for me, and I must admit I have an ulterior motive.  It only occurred to me after Johnny Hellebore was completely fleshed out as a character that he shares a lot of similarites to Harry Potter, especially physically.  He’s a white, English-speaking, male, teenaged boy, thin, with black hair and eyes that are some shade of green.  The differences, particularly at this level are so slight as to be laughable: American instead of British, a bit older, eyes more blue-green than Harry’s piercing green.  They’re both parentless, although Johnny isn’t an orphan, and one might even go so far as to make a comparison between Larissa and Hermione (although I feel that’s unflattering to Hermione, really).  The farther along you go, of course, the more you have to struggle for the similarites against the profound differences instead of the other way around, but by that point you’ve established your foundation, and your audience is more likely to grant you the benefit of the doubt.  And, while I’m telling you that all of this only occurred to me after the fact, you only have my word for that, no?

For that matter, while I can assure you that I was not consciously trying to “rip off” Harry Potter, how can I make any definitive statements about what my subconscious may or may not have been up to?  I certainly had read the Harry Potter books—several times—as well as listened to the audiobooks and watched all the movies.  And I respect the hell of out J. K. Rowling: she’s a dead brilliant author with an envy-inpsiring talent for both characterization and plotting that I certainly could do worse than to emulate.  So was Harry kicking around in the back of my brain, casting an influence on this idea?  I’m sure he must have been.

Still, Johnny Hellebore is an entirely different story than Harry Potter.  One is aimed at younger readers, though it’s good enough that older readers will appreciate it as well; the other is aimed at older readers, and, though younger readers may certainly appreciate it, it requires a much higher maturity level.  One focuses on a sense of wonder and a fierce joy that only slowly becomes eclipsed by the darker themes of the series; the other is dark from the very first page, and it’s the joy and wonder that serve as the counterpoint.  One is a story of a boy growing into a man; the other is a story of a boy who is in many ways a man already, but who exists in a state of being “stuck”—not necessarily stuck in childhood, but just in a deep a rut in his life, which is a state that all of us experience, at many different points in our lives.  One was very likely influenced by Roald Dahl; the other is more likely influenced by Stephen King.

Still, the comparisons will inevitably be made, and, on one level, I find it flattering.  As I say, Rowling is a brilliant author and even to be mentioned in the same sentence as her is quite nice.  Still, one doesn’t want to be thought of as a rip-off, right?  But then that got me wondering ... why not?

It seems to me that we’ve somehow elevated originality into some Holy Grail.  Everything has to be original.  Except ... nothing is original.  At this point in human history, everything can be said to be derived from, descended from, influenced by, or in the vein of, something else that we’ve seen or heard or read before.  There’s just so much out there ... how could you not sound familiar, even if only by accident?

So, I say, let’s set aside originality.  Can we not rather ask—should we not rather ask—it is good?  Who cares whether it’s original or not, as long as it’s valuable, inspirational, emotionally involving, socially relevant, philosophically touching, mentally engaging ... does it speak to you?  If it does, then doesn’t it deserve to be evaluated on its own merits?  I think it does.  I’ll take my Nevermind and my Doolittle, thank you very much.  They’re both pretty damn rockin’.

National Heroscape Day 2013

Well, it’s October, and you know what that means: another National Heroscape Day tournament.  If you need to refresh, Heroscape is one of my favorite games, and last year was the first year my middle child (a.k.a. the Smaller Animal, from when he was the younger of two) was old enough to attend.  He decided not to go this year, as he wasn’t feeling well, but my eldest (currently 15) decided to invite his current Band of Merry Men, so yesterday we took a road trip to Van Nuys for the annual get-together.

Last year we had our record low for attendance: only 8, 3 of which I brought with me.  This year was better—we were up to 10 total participants—but I provided 5 of them.  So I’m happy that attendance is on the rise, but I’d prefer it if more of it could come in from other quarters.

One bright note for this year: we’ve finally allowed Valhalla Customs units, which you may recall are the community-developed continuation of our beloved (but discontinued) Heroscape.  I think this is the future of the game, and, inasmuch as its the only future we’re likely to get, I’m glad to see my fellow ‘Scapers embracing it.  We should be happy there’s a future at all, really.

With so few attendants, we only needed 3 rounds to settle the standings.  Up to now, I had come in dead center of the pack 4 times, and next-to-last once.  This year I came in dead last, so I suppose I’m now at 4 and 2, in terms of acceptable performance.  I’ve never been super-competitive with the game: I’m in it for the fun.  So I’m happy enough with finishing up in the middle.  Being at the end is a bit of a bummer.  But I drew another newbie for the first round (he’d never played anyone other than his son before), so I spent a fair amount of time helping him out, and my last game was against one of my son’s friends, who was even newbie-er than that, so I wanted to help her do well as well.  So I don’t really mind those losses, both of which were close games (one of them down to 20 points, out of a possible 520).  The middle game was the big bummer though: I got the bad luck to go up against my son, and he’d been practicing against my exact army all week.  He ended up completely crushing me, handing me my only total defeat of the day.  Ah, well: he was happy enough, and beating me helped him finish up right in the middle of the pack (5th place, getting the very last of the prizes we had).  So I can’t really complain.

The newbie who I played against in the first round brought his 8-year-old son with him (which makes him, as you may recall, just a year older than the Smaller Animal).  He wasn’t going to enter the tourney itself, but we would have had only 9 without him, so he did.  And that went really well, despite the fact that he seemed to have the exact same focus issues that my son has (although I think he took losing much better than mine would have).  I hope to get these two boys together soon, either for Heroscape or just for hanging out; I think they’ll hit it off famously.

As we usually do, after the tournament we stuck around and played more games.  The four teenagers played a two-vs-two game of Heroscape, while the other father, his son, our host, and I played Fluxx.  Fluxx is one of those games that can either go fast or take forever, and this one went on for quite a while.  The teens finished up their Heroscape game and started up a massive round of Munchkin.  Father and son had to leave, so our host and I worked on tearing down the Heroscape maps while the kids finished up Munchkin.  Then we ordered some pizza and played two medium-length games of Fluxx with the 6 of us left.  This is the Monty Python version, and we went through the entire deck at least 3 times, so we got to play nearly every card at least once, including the Fake Accent card (which got played about 3 times) and the I Want to Sing! card, which unhappily was cancelled before it got around to me, or else I would have been pulling 2 extra cards every turn, potentially for the remainder of the game.  “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay, I work all night and I sleep all day!”  Ah, well, I guess they didn’t appreciate my singing.  Not as much as they did the outrageous accents of our host, which ranged from something I can only describe as Scottish-brogue-with-throat-cancer to actually barking (which I promptly dubbed his “Labrador” accent).  As for the teens, they eventually decided that the most outrageous accent they could think of was Valley Girl, and spent at least 15 minutes trying to out-ohmahgod! each other.

So another excellent year was had, despite all of us ending up in the bottom 60%, and we hope to have just as much fun next year.

Salad Days

                  My salad days,
When I was green in judgement,

— William Shakespeare

When I was in college (for the second time), I was invited by a friend of mine to a picnic with some folks he worked with.  We were typical college students (by which I mean that the word “picnic” typically implied several twelve-packs and maybe a few bags of chips, if you were lucky), but this was to be an adult picnic.  I’m still not sure why he brought me.  Probably just for moral support.

You may remember that I talked before about how I don’t socialize well with strangers (even though I’m quite gregarious with people I know).  So in this particular setting, I mostly just watched and listened.  I, who’d never really been an “adult” in the conventional sense—and still haven’t been, I suppose—was essentially a visiting anthropologist observing a strange tribal culture.  And, while I was dutifully cataloguing greeting rituals and parental models for acceptable public behavior, I heard this phrase:

“I simply must have that recipe!”

Now, you must understand that, at that age, I had no clue that real people actually said that.  Out loud.  In front of other people.  Sure, you see it on televsion, but television people aren’t real people, after all.  I thought it was a phrase found in old movies from the 50s, and possibly in ironic treatises on the illusions of domestic bliss, but never spoken by real people.  Out loud.  In front of other people.  It was like I had been transported into some alternate universe.

Well, now I’m older.  Now I understand ... that real people still don’t actually use those words, but the sentiment, at least, is occasionally genuine.  So, somewhat oddly, I’m going to give you a recipe.  Which you simply must have.

Once upon a time, I rarely ate salad.  Not that I disliked it—salad was just one of those foods that I had a strong neutrality towards.  I was happy enough to eat it—in fact, I very occasionally craved it, which always seemed to stun my friends, no matter how many times they saw it—but there were just lots of other foods that I liked more.  So why not eat them instead?

These days, I make a giant bowl of salad twice a week.  The Mother helps me eat it, mostly, but the baby will leap into my lap when I have some, and even the eldest will partake occasionally.  (The middle child is still in that picky eater phase.)  This change is due to two very important factors.

The first is that I moved.  I never really liked fruits and vegetables until I moved to California.  Of course, I’m older now, and we do begin to appreciate such things a bit more as we get older.  But mainly I believe that the food is just plain better here.  I used to live on the East Coast, remember, and I’m guessing that a lot of the fruits and vegetables I was eating were coming from California anyway—just after a very, very long trip, which doesn’t do much for the taste.  And (at least when I lived there) you could get organic food, but you couldn’t actually afford it.  Now that I’m here on the West Coast, I’m closer to where a lot of the food is actually grown, and the organic choices are not that much more expensive than the regular ones.  Organic celery, for instance, is less than 50¢ more than regular celery where I shop.  Will I pay a couple of quarters more per week to get celery that is better tasting and most probably better for me?  Of course I will.  Even across all my items, I can buy 100% organic fruits and vegetables for well under $20 more than if I didn’t, per week.  A few yuppie food coupons per month to eat healthier—yes, yes, some people will dispute that, but even more importantly, in my book: to enjoy it more.  If there happen to be health benefits, I consider that gravy on the cake.  Sure, the quality is inconsistent.  Sometimes you get something that’s less than stellar.  But the awesomeness you get the rest of the time more than makes up for it.  Trust me on this: even if you can’t, where you live, afford to eat organic all the time, do it occasionally, just to treat yourself.  You’re worth it, right?

The second factor, though, is due to the discovery of the right accoutrements.  A salad is composed of three basic ingredients: vegetables, dressing, and ... other.  The extra bits that make different salads different.  It can be meat, like a chef’s salad or oriental chicken salad.  It might be fruit, or nuts, as in the case of a Waldorf, or cheese, as in a Cobb or a Caesar.  If you’re just stuck with veggies and dressing, you’re missing out.  At the very least slap some croutons or bacon bits on there.

But, for me, the ultimate salad accompaniments were a gift from our Sister Family.  The Mother was having a salad one day, and I saw her putting pistachios and feta cheese on it.  This struck me as terribly odd, so I asked about it.  This was the favorite salad of her best friend (matriarch of the Sister Family, in case you didn’t follow that link), she explained, so she was giving it a try.  Now, I was pretty sure that I didn’t like pistachios, but I couldn’t really remember why.  (Later I decided it was probably because I don’t like pistachio ice cream, which is a pretty stupid reason, if you think about it.)  And I’m certainly always encouraging my children to retry things they decided they didn’t like a long time ago, because your tastes change over time.  So I tried it.  And it was good.  Seriously good.  Better than seriously good: like into the “fucking fantastic” range.

So now I’m going to tell you how to make your own salad that you will enjoy just as much as I enjoy mine.  Unless, of course, you are a totally different person than I am with totally different tastes.  In which case I refer you yet again to the name of the blog (q.v.).

Vegetables  The base of any good salad is its veggies.  Now, different people like different vegetables.  For instance, some people like radishes, while I think radishes taste like dirt.  So, while I’m going to tell you the veggies that I like, the exact types aren’t that important.  Use whatever you like.  Mainly I want to give you some general tips.

If vegetables are the base of the salad, lettuce is the base vegetable.  Most salads are concocted of a whole lotta lettuce and a few other veggies.  This is presumably because lettuce is cheap.  However, you’re not looking to make a cheap salad; you’re looking to make a delicious salad, so don’t overdo the lettuce.  Let it be a supporting player: it’s not strong enough to pull off a leading role anyway.

For years I was a staunch supporter of iceberg lettuce.  It’s simple, and it tastes good.  Other people would say it’s boring.  I don’t care: I don’t want exciting; I want yummy.  When you hand me a big ol’ plate of arugula, or micro-greens, it certainly looks exciting.  But it tastes like eating grass.  I am not a cow.  Don’t serve me grass.

Romaine is fine.  It’s not my favorite, but at least it doesn’t taste like grass.  The Mother prefers it, and disdains my beloved iceberg.  So it was always a bone of contention when creating salads.  Lately, however, we’ve reached a compromise: butter lettuce.  Butter lettuce is as crisp and dependable (and tasty) as iceberg, but not as boring, so it makes a good choice.  I typically buy it by the bag and I use about a bag and a half for the base of my salad.  If there’s any leaves which are even the least bit brown or wilted, I just toss them to the side and feed them later to the guinea pig (lizards or turtles are also good for this purpose).  You may ask, why a bag?  Mainly because that’s how my store sells it.

For the rest of the vegetables, there are just a few tips.  First, get what you like.  Don’t try to fool yourself into eating veggies you wouldn’t eat separately by sticking them into a salad and hoping you won’t notice.  You will.  Buy them as fresh as you can, because there’s no way you’re going to go to the store every time you want a salad (especially since you’re going to want this one a lot).  Sure, fresher is better, but let’s be realistic too.  I buy enough to make two big salads every week.

Lastly, buy organic.  Seriously.

Here’s what I use:

• 1 large bell pepper (green’ll do, but red or orange is nicer, for color)
• 1 large cucumber (American or English)
• 3-4 small cucumbers (Persian)
• 4-6 ribs of celery
• 4-5 green onions or scallions (which in some places are the same thing, but even if different should be interchangeable)

Buy whatever you like that you can reliably find.  Outside of not being able to find American cucumbers for part of the year, everything on my list is available year-round where I am.  (And, when I can’t get American, I just substitute English instead.)

Then chop all that shit up and throw it in a big salad bowl.  I peel my cucumbers first, but you don’t have to.  Chopping is a big pain in the ass, but once you taste this salad, you won’t mind it so much, because the end will justify the means.  But that’s why I always make much more than I can eat: so I don’t have to chop so often.

For storage of leftovers, a gallon Ziploc bag will do fine.  Maybe add just the tiniest splash of water to keep it moist.  It won’t sit in the fridge long enough to go bad, trust me.

Extras  Like I said above: pistachios and feta cheese.  I suppose you could experiment a bit here—slivered almonds, maybe? goat cheese, perhaps?—but don’t, at least not until you’ve tried the original.  It’s pretty awesome.

For pistachios, I buy dry roasted, unsalted, shelled halves and pieces.  Raw wouldn’t be as good, in my opinion.  You can also get them organic, but honestly the taste difference for nuts is not nearly what it is for veggies.  But you certainly don’t want to have to shell them yourself, and you don’t need the extra salt.

I buy pre-crumbled feta with “Mediterranean herbs.”  I have no idea what that means, exactly, but it tastes good, so I go with it.  You can also buy it in blocks and crumble it yourself—it’s a little bit cheaper, but not enough to be worth it, if you ask me.  Plus then you don’t get the “Mediterranean herbs” ... whatever those are.

Add your extras to the individual servings.  Your pistachios and feta will get soggy if stored with the leftover salad.

Dressing  I like lots of different kinds of dressing.  My absolute favorite is bleu cheese.  But that’s not what I use for this salad, because this salad really shines with Thousand Island dressing, and that’s what you should use too.  You can use your favorite brand of Thousand Island if you like, but what’s really awesome is to make it yourself.

I taught myself how to make Thousand Island dressing because I didn’t want all the sugar and MSG and other various crap in the store-bought brands, and my local Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry a healthy version.  But, as it turns out, it’s easy to make, and I get to buy mostly organic ingredients, which is nice.

Now, I don’t measure things when I cook, for the most part.  I mean, think about it: whose is the best cooking you’ve ever had?  Your grandmother, right?  Now, did your grandmother ever measure anything?  No, of course not.  Grandmothers have better things to do with their time than fiddle with measuring spoons and whatnot.  So, when I say “tablespoon” below, I don’t mean an actual measured tablespoon; I mean just take the big spoon out of your silverware drawer.  Likewise, “teaspoon” means the little spoon—I actually use a baby spoon, since I have a baby around, but I also heap it pretty high, so it’s probably the same as a normal teaspoon if you fill it closer to level.  And “3 count” means you pour at a reasonable rate for a count of three (like mixing a drink).

• Mayonnaise: 5 tablespoons (not heaping)
• Ketchup: 9 good squirts
• Yellow mustard: 1 good squirt
• Dijon mustard: 1 little squirt
• Sweet pickle relish: 9 teaspoons
• Vinegar: 3 count (I use balsamic white vinegar)
• Sugar: 2 heavy pinches
• Salt: 1 heavy pinch
• Pepper: 12 grinds

Throw that all in a big bowl and just stir it up.  Now grab one of those 12 oz squeeze bottles they sell at the store (or get ’em on Amazon) and a funnel, pour your dressing into the bottle, and you’re pretty much set.  The only other bit you need to do is to cut the top of the nozzle pretty low, or else the pickle relish will get stuck in the tip.  I also cut it at a bit of an angle, as that seems to give me a wider opening.  The amount above is pretty much exactly enough to fill the bottle (sometimes I’m a bit over, but I just dollop that on my current salad).  When you run out, just make more.  Easy peasy.


Hopefully you’ll give this a try and come to love salad as much as I do.  I used to eat a little bowl of salad before getting a bit plate of spaghetti, or burritos, or whatever.  Nowadays I eat a big bowl of salad and then check to see if I even have any room left over for the “main” meal.  That’s gotta be more healthy in the long run, right?

Perl blog post #19

This week I saw a cool Perl blog post that I just had to respond to, so I did, over on the Other Blog.  If you’re into Perl, hop on over and check it out.  If not, go amuse yourself for another week and check back in then.

A Cento for a Sunday

When I was in college, I took a Shakespeare class where we had to do a group project.  For our group’s project, one of my fellow students suggested that we put on a short skit, talking about the plays, but using the Bard’s own words.  We carefully culled bits and pieces of dialogue from the plays, put it in the mouths of our characters, and, by putting exisitng things into new context, we created new meaning.  I was fascinated by this process and have occasionally found myself doing it for other occasions.  One of my best friends asked me to do a reading at his wedding, of anything I liked, and I cobbled together several different quotes on love and fashioned a complete speech out of it.  It was generally well-received.

I’ve also tried my hand at creating poems like this.  It turns out that poetry created thus actually has a name: it’s a cento.  I’ve done a few over the years (despite the fact that poetry isn’t truly my forté), but none of them were particularly good.  Today, I give you a new cento that I “composed,” which I think is better than my previous efforts, although perhaps still not great.  The lines (or in some cases half-lines) here are mostly quotes from other poems, books, songs, or movies, although some are old things other people have recycled before me.  Most are quotes that appealed to me and ended up in my quote file, but a few I had to hunt down specifically to fit parts of the “narrative.”  All I personally added were a few connecting words here and there, and the first half of the title, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything (contrast with the second half, which is rather deliberately chosen not only to offset the first half euphoniously, but for its meaning in its own source).

I thought of listing all the sources here, but I’ve decided against it, mostly because it’s more fun to let you discover them on your own.  I’m pretty sure that judicious Googling will turn them all up, so I don’t worry that the original authors will fail to be attributed.

Consider this a first draft and be kind to it.  It’s new, and doesn’t much know what it’s saying yet.

Cobblestone Fray, Cottleston Pie

Once upon a time, when we all lived in the woods,
on a dark and stormy night,
all of the animals are capably murderous—
still, you may get there by candle-light.

You got devils living in that head,
watching the whites of your eyes turn red
by the pricking of my thumbs.
Where’er we tread ‘tis haunted holy ground,
like someone trying not to make a sound.
At sunrise, there is the sound of drums ...

It’s all sex and death as far as I can tell,
drinking the blood-red wine.
Fear is the mind-killer; blood is compulsory.
And I’ve made an enemy of time.

No less liquid than their shadows, speaking with the speech of men,
Satan must be our cousin, and does his crossword with a pen.
What noisy cats are we,
with the perils of being in 3-D,
and why the sea is boiling hot?  He’s won a lot of friends ...

There’s no such thing as the real world, but
there’s a hell of a good universe next door.
Little things are infinitely the most important.
Respite and nepenthe: to die, to sleep no more.

We’re all alive for a reason.
People need good lies.
Thou wast not born for death, but
when you stop dreaming, it’s time to die.

I recommend pleasant, but we’re all mad here.
I am the king of the cats!
Dance like nobody’s watching,
cry, ain’t no shame in it,
and that is the end of that.