The facts of the blog

You know, I was going to do a partial post this week, but I got sucked into a personal project that took up all my time today.  So, it’s very sad for you, but I personally feel like I got some shit accomplished.  You take the good, you take the bad, you take ’em both, and there you have: my blog.

Next week: less bad, more good.  Hopefully.

Incanto Liturgica I

"After the Clouds"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Once, at work, we were talking about how all bagpipe music was terrible.  I pointed out that, no, everyone just thinks all bagpipe music is terrible because 99% of the time, the only time you hear a bagpipe is when it’s accompanied by other bagpipes.  Few instruments will sound their best without a little counterpoint.  I was then challenged to play some “good” bagpipe music.  Easy, I said.  I then proceeded to play several things from my collection, concentrating mostly on Skyedance, of course.¹  People expressed surprise that I could so easily come up with such a “random” category of music.

I said: oh, I can pretty much come up with anything.  Give me a category—any category.²  One of my co-workers, being a complete smartass, said “okay, how about Gregorian chants?”

But, you see, this is child’s play, because Enigma is a thing.  The Germans, in fact, are quite enamored of setting Gregorian chants to hip-hop beats: in addition to Enigma, there’s E Nomine, and the a-bit-too-on-the-nose Gregorian.  Not to mention geographically nearby Era (from France), and the inevitable host of Enigma soundalikes, such as Bella Sonus (from the US).  But it was the distinctly non-Enigma stylings of Candian-bred Delerium that actually led to the mix that would enable me to play even more (and an even wider variety of) Gregorian chant music than I could do for bagpipes.

You may remember our initial introduction to Delerium from Shadowfall Equinox III, where I pointed out that they were really hard to pin down in terms of style.  I reiterated that when we saw them again on Apparently World, which you may already realize is a pretty big jump, stylistically.  But it was their track “Remembrance” that demonstrated to me that they too, could do the Gregorian chant thing, with arguably even more style and panache than their predecessors.  And so this became the mix starter: a track with elements of dark ambient, worldmusic, trip-hop, and, yes, that same bizarre combination of Gregorian chant set to hip-hop beat that Enigma first made famous.

The great thing about even just the bands I’ve mentioned, who all concentrate on Gregorian chants, is the wide variety of styles they bring.  For Enigma, I went with the über-classic “Mea Culpa”—with its long fade-in, it makes a great volume opener—and that track has an ambient, new age feel to it.  E Nomine’s “Das Abendmahl” has more of an industrial, techno energy to it.  Meanwhile, “Reborn” by Era has almost a poppy ambience, and even has intelligible English lyrics.  Then we have “Arcane Voices” by Amethystium, which is a Norwegian project with similar aspirations to those of Delerium.  This track is perhaps halfway between “Mea Culpa” and “Remembrance”: it has some ethereal qualities, but overall a neoclassical vibe with touches of dreampop and trip-hop.

But, hey: while Gregorian is great, and it was undeniably the inspiration for this mix, there really is no need to limit ourselves to only one kind of chant.  Most cultures have some form of this musical style, and it often carries a religious aspect.  “Incanto” in Latin means “I chant”; in Italian, it’s come to mean something closer to incantation: a spell, an enchantment.  “Liturgy,” of course, indicates a public service of worship; it’s often associated with the Catholic church, especailly the sacrament of the communion, but it can really mean any worship service, in any religion.

Of course, that Latin chanting that is common in Catholic services can be pretty cool when set to music too.  For the purest form of this, I went back to Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack to The Da Vinci Code,³ and then to the ever-dependable Dead Can Dance’s remarkable album Aion,⁴ which also has a bit of a Gregorian chant feel to it if we’re being honest.  I also threw in Bulgaria’s Irfan singing in what might be Latin—it’s really hard to tell with those guys—on “Invocatio II,” and I even put all three of those right in a row for you.  As we get further and further from the standard Latin liturgical style, you get Enya’s “Cursum Perficio” later in the volume; that’s definitely Latin, and it’s definitely a chant, but it retains far less of the religious air than something like “Salvete Virgines” has.  (Also, it contains the phrase “post nubila,” which translates to our volume title.)  Going back to Dead Can Dance, “Dawn of the Iconoclast” restores the religious overtones, but I doubt it’s actually Latin, and meanwhile Adieumus’s “Cantus Inaequalis” is definitely not Latin—it’s not anything, even ... just wordless vocalizations as specified by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.  But it certainly sounds Latinesque (the obviously Latin title helps with that mental impression), and it sounds a bit religious.  (I put all three of those right in a row for ya too.)

Our next set of three comes from the ethnomusicologists: Deep Forest’s second album features Roma chants from Hungaria, such as those found in “Marta’s Song”; Baka Beyond continues to concentrate on the chants of the Baka people from Cameroon (who inspired their name); and David Parsons, possibly most famous for his recordings of Indonesian gamelan music takes advantage of his track “Tjampuhan” to combine gamelan with what sounds like some traditional Tibetan music and possibly Tuvan throat singing.

From there we springboard to some Middle-Eastern-inspired tunes.  While the Arabic style of vocalization known as maqam is not exactly chanting, it shares many traits with it, including some religious associations (in this case Islamic rather than Catholic).  Conjure One is a project of Rhys Fulber, formerly of Delerium (the music industry can be quite incestuous); the vocals here are provided by Chemda Khalili.⁵  Shiva in Exile is another of those prolific Germans;⁶ some rando on the Internet said that the words of “Breathing” are in Kannada (a south Indian language), but who know if that’s correct or not?⁷  It is very pretty, though, and exhibits that same maqam style of “Damascus.”

Incanto Liturgica I
[ After the Clouds ]

“Mea Culpa” by Enigma, off MCMXC a.D.
“Arcane Voices” by Amethystium, off Odonata
“Invocatio II” by Irfan, off Seraphim
“The End of Words” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Salvete Virgines” by Hans Zimmer, off The Da Vinci Code [Soundtrack]
“Remembrance” by Delerium, off Karma
“Envelop” by Julianna Barwick, off The Magic Place
“Tjampuhan” by David Parsons, off Ngaio Gamelan
“Marta's Song” by Deep Forest, off Boheme
“Call of the Forest [reprise]” by Baka Beyond, off Rhythm Tree
“Damascus” by Conjure One, off Conjure One
“Breathing” by Shiva In Exile, off Ethnic
“Dawn of the Iconoclast” by Dead Can Dance, off Within the Realm of a Dying Sun
“Cantus Inaequalis” by Adiemus, off Songs of Sanctuary
“Cursum Perficio” by Enya, off Watermark
“Prayer” by Era, off Reborn
“Das Abendmahl” by E Nomine [Single]
“Adventus Sortis” by Australis, off The Gates of Reality

Total:  18 tracks,  78:02

This is another tough volume to talk about anything “unexpected” in terms of tracks, but I’ll take a stab at it.  We’ve seen Australis before, on similar mixes,⁸ and their track “Adventus Sortis” is actually quite reminiscent of Delerium’s “Remembrance” and Amethystium’s “Arcane Voices,” at least musically.  But you may be surprised to hear it here, since it includes barely any chanting.  But it is there, for just a few seconds, at two points in the song.  Plus it’s really cool, and it makes a good closer, so here it is.

But the only real deviation I took was the inclusion of Julianna Barwick, whose technique of looping and layering her own wordless vocals dozens of times over (and adding not much else) creates some amazing soundscapes.  Typically her work is a bit dreamy and ambient, but I really thought “Envelop” had a bit of a sacred air, and, while of course it’s not actually chanting, it’s hard to argue that Barwick (whose approach towards music was influenced by many years of church choir) isn’t singing some sort of liturgy here.  Plus it helps tie together the initial Gregorian-heavy tunes with the world tour that follows it.

Next time, we’ll revisit the intersection of childlike and creepy.

Incanto Liturgica II ⇒

__________

1 We’ve heard from Skyedance on Numeric Driftwood and Apparently World.

2 I believe I had already warned them of the two things I would not play: country and opera.

3 We first had a track from that album on Phantasma Chorale I.

4 For a fuller description of how much I adore this album, see Smokelit Flashback II.

5 Fun fact: Chemda is “the girl” in the Keith and the Girl comedy podcast.  She got range, y’all.

6 We originally met Shiva in Exile on Shadowfall Equinox, but expanded on him in Apparently World.

7 Presumably someone from south India.

8 Such as Shadowfall Equinox IV, Mystical Memoriam I, and Candy Apple Shimmer I.

A birthday to end the season

This is my birthday weekend, the last such for the year.  So I took the day off on Friday and just completely screwed around for 3 days.  I’ve accomplished nothing, but, since that was exactly what I planned on accomplishing, I feel like I’ve done pretty well.  Hopefully a longer piece next week.

Kickstarter: To Be or Not to Be (Over It All)

Lately I’ve been reexamining my relationship to Kickstarter.  Like all websites that suddenly take off, how you used it when it first arrived on the scene will inevitably give way over time to something new and different.  Remember how you used to interact with Aamzon when it first appeared? or Google?  Things are very different now.  But I think the most relevant analog to Kicstarter may be eBay.

Once upon a time, I used to enjoy going to flea markets with my parents.  There would be aisles and aisles of complete junk, and, every once in a great while, you’d find a treasure.  Only it was a treasure that nobody but you realized was a treasure: everyone else thought it was just more junk.  And so the price was ridiculously low.  And you would buy the treasure, and take it home, and marvel at how you got such a magnificent thing for such an amazing proce.  It was fun.

In the early days of eBay, that’s what it was like: an online flea market that served up treasures disguised as junk, but from the whole world.  What could possibly be better?  But, over time, things changed.  Once upon a time eBay was where you went to find great prices on stuff you couldn’t even find anywhere else.  Now it’s where you go to see what ridiculous price some idiot might give you for the junk you have in your attic.  Once a few years back I asked my father if he was still going to flea markets, and, if so, could he look out for something for me.  He said, “son, you can just get all that on eBay.” I said, sure, but who can afford that?

And so my relationship with eBay changed.  There’s so much stuff that I can’t possibly spend time just browsing.  And the stuff that I do want, everyone else now knows it’s not junk, and I can’t afford to pay those prices.  Basically, the only times I’ve been on eBay in the past ten years, I’d say, was when I was doing image searches to see what something looked like so I could decide if I wanted to buy it from some other site with much better prices.

And I think I’m reaching a similar point with Kickstarter.  When it first started up, you could go there and find artists and inventors who were creating things and needed your help to fund their ideas.  If you didn’t pledge, that creation would most likely never get made.  Of course, even if you did pledge, there was no guarantee: those early days are full of stories of creators whose ideas were much bigger than their ability to deliver, or who simply misjudged how much things were going to cost.  But you took your chances, and every now and again you got screwed, but mostly you got what you were buying into, even if you often had to wait an inordinately long time to receive it.

But things are different now.  The financial stuff is much clearer these days: people understand that Kickstarter is going to take their cut, and that the tax man is going to get his, and they understand not to include shipping in the pledge amount.  They’ve also figured out that you need to ask for way less than you really want so that you can guarantee you’ll hit the goal; what used to be considered core deliverables are now “stretch goals.” The initial funding goals of most Kicstarters are so low that they often fund within the first day—sometimes even within the first hour or two—and then the creators proudly put up some flashy graphic (“funded in 2.5 hours!!”) and you look at it and go: yeah, yeah ... in other news, water is wet.

There are now “Kickstarter consultants” to help you run a smooth campaign, and even multiple different companies whose entire raison d’être is help you fulfill the rewards.  There’s a site (Kicktraq) to graph your campaign’s progress and project your final numbers.  There are people who treat Kickstarter just like Amazon: they don’t actually need your money to pay for their product, because the product is already completed; they just want the Kickstarter buzz, and they know they can make more money this way.  As Kickstarter creators get more and more savvy, Kickstarter consumers get more and more demanding.  I read a post from someone on an Internet forum recently saying that they wouldn’t even consider backing a project unless the product were already ready to deliver.  And I thought: doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?

But things are different now, I have to admit.  Maybe it’s only in the few industries I tend to follow, but I suspect this is a general trend.  And the end result is, I often find myself wondering why I should bother to back a Kickstarter campaign at all.

Certainly not because the creator needs my support: it’s super rare these days for me to find any Kickstarter that hasn’t already met its goal.  Once the campaign ends, they will either struggle to get the physical product put together, or they’ll deliver it quickly because it was mostly (or even completely) done.  Either way, why wouldn’t I just wait and see how the thing comes out before committing to buy it?  It’s possible that they might charge more for it after the campaign is over, but that actually hasn’t been my experience: it seems to happen far more often that, in the absence of the exposure provided by Kickstarter, they drop the prices to attract those people who thought the Kickstarter pledges were too high.  So, for a chance at a lower price, I’m locking in my money for anywhere from months to years, and risking getting nothing at all at the end of the day?  What sense does that make?

Okay, fine: I miss out on some “Kickstarter exclusives” for many campaigns.  But, in exchange for that, I get to see whether the final product will materialize at all, and, if it does, if it will live up to the hype.  Once the product is done, I can actually read a review of it and decide if it really is worth the price.  If it is, I can buy it then.  If not ... then I just saved myself some money, and also however much time I would have spent fuming that the project was behind schedule.

For the past several years, for campaigns that in years past I would have immediately backed, about half the time I’ve just been making a note of the Kickstarter URL and setting myself a reminder to check up on it on whatever date it claims it will be ready.  I almost always have to give it a few more months after that date comes around.  Eventually, though, the product will come out (usually), and I can read a few reviews and decide if I want to get it.  I’ve done this a couple of dozen times now, and so far I’ve only found one product that I decided to purchase.  In every other case, I’ve said to myself, whew! dodged a bullet there.

And the other half of the time?  Well, I’ve had a lot of disappointments.  A lot of waiting around and wondering if my rewards will ever get fulfilled.  I have one project that funded over two years ago, and I did get the main product, and it was awesome, but I’m still waiting on one final “Kickstarter exclusive” to get done.  That company has done another five campaigns since then (and I’ve been waiting a year for the main product of one of those too), and I’m starting to just accept the fact that I’m never going to see that last item.  So even the promise of getting extra bits for backing is losing to lose its luster.  I keep thinking, if I hadn’t bothered to back the Kickstarter, but just waited for damn thing to be orderable online, I wouldn’t have spent any more money, and I also wouldn’t have the thing that I still don’t have, but I wouldn’t have had to be constantly whining about not having it to the company.  Just seems like it would have been better for everyone that way.

So lately I’ve been wondering: am I “over” Kickstarter?  Not exactly.  I think Kickstarter will continue to prove to be a valuable future-product discovery service.  Which is quite different from how it started out, but no less useful.  Well ... perhaps a little less useful.  But still handy.  I just think that my days of excitedly backing creators and looking forward to their creations are mostly over.  Perhaps a very few known, trusted creators may get my dollars at the time.  Perhaps some will win me over with their exclusive rewards.  Perhaps I’ll still find the occasional campaign that seems like it might not make its goal if I don’t pitch in.  But I think I’m taking all that with a grain of salt these days, and there will be a lot less of my dollars ending up in Kickstarter’s pocket, because that post-Kickstarter product’s price will go straight to the creator.  And, at the end of the day, I think we’ll all be happier about it.

Except Kickstarter.  But I suspect they’ll be okay.

Dark and Dreamful Daughter

After the cessation of “free Fridays” last month, my $work is kindly tailing us off slowly by offering us one “free day” per month for a few months, to be taken whenever we like.  I took my October free day this past Friday, so this weekend I’ve been enjoying the break.  I’ve only a couple of things to tell you about.

Tonight, all the family except my youngest and I went to a homeschool association teen event, leaving us two to have a father-daughter night.  I took her out to Taco Bell (which for some reason she finds quite exciting), then we came back and she suggested we watch a movie.

Now, the background you must understand is that, a few months back, I quoted something from The Crow to her.  Of those movies which I consider my all-time favorites—I sometimes refer to these as my “top X movies,” since the number only ever increases—one of my main criteria is quotability.  A good movie should provide lots of great quotes that you can bring up in everyday life, such as “buck up, little camper!” or “fuck me gently with a chainsaw” or “screws fall out all the time: the world’s an imperfect place.” I forget exactly which of The Crow’s great quotes I used in this instance (probably “this is the really real world—there ain’t no comin’ back”), but, the point is, my daughter didn’t recognize it: at not quite 10 years old, she’d never seen the movie, of course.  So I suggested we watch it, and, for some reason I can’t recall right now, we were alone at home that night as well.  Now, if you’re going to watch The Crow, you absolutely must watch it at night, with all the lights off.  It’s a very dark movie with a very creepy vibe, so you have to establish the proper atmosphere.  So we fired it up on the big TV, with the sound turned way up, and every possible light extinguished.  And I suppose she was really enamored of this, because, tonight, she requested another “dark movie” night.

So my choice for tonight was Dark City (the director’s cut, natch).  She seemed to enjoy it (as she did the previous choice), and she’s already picked out the next one (The Matrix).  So I suppose it’s become a tradition at this point, and I’ll have to start thinking of even more dark movies for her and I to watch.

The other thing I’ve been working on this weekend is my character for my youngest’s upcoming Witchlight campaign.  My inspiration for this character has been a race from a moderately obscure RPG that I bought but never played (primarily because the mechanics are super-wonky, in my opinion): Earthdawn.  Earthdawn, supposedly set in the same universe as the fantasy post-apocalyptic (and far better known) Shadowrun, had a lot of great fluff ... just not so great on the crunch.  While many of the races are the same in both games, Earthdawn does add a few new options, including a species of swashbuckling dinosaur people: the t’skrang.  This pic should tell you all you need to know about them:

So I had to make up a custom D&D race for them, which I’ve named the tsaagan.  “Tsaagan” is a genus of dinosuars in the raptor family—although it certainly sounds like a fantasy name—and these guys look a lot like raptors.  Plus the “ts” at the beginning is a nice homage to their inspiration.  So far I’ve written up the mechanics (the “crunch”), but not yet the lore (the “fluff”).  But that’s sufficient to get started, I think.  Next up I have to nail down the class, but I’m leaning towards fey wanderer, which seem particularly apropos given the setting.

And that’s all I’ve got for this week’s mostly non-post.  Next time I’ll work on something with a bit more substance.

Cumulonimbus Eleven I

"Devastate the Night Forever"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

My mixes have always been about having the exact right set of songs for any given mood.  If I’m feeling angry, Thrashomatic Danger Mix.  If I’m feeling morose, Tenderhearted Nightshade.  Sleepy is Numeric Driftwood; calm is Zephyrous Aquamarine or perhaps Moonside by Riverlight; weird and disconnected might lead to Smokelit Flashback, or Bleeding Salvador, or even to Cantosphere Eversion; creative depends on context: Shadowfall Equinox for work, Phantasma Chorale for fiction, Eldritch Ætherium for gaming.  But what about when I’m happy?  Well, again, it depends—there are shades of happy just like any other emotion.  If I’m in a bit of a party mood, it would probably be HipHop Bottlerocket; if I’m more bright and sunny, probably Salsatic Vibrato; if I’m more wordlessly content, Snaptone Glimmerbeam is a lovely choice.

But what if I’m really happy?  Just wanting to feel the pure adrenaline of music pumping through my body, every track an undisputed gem, played at the maximum volume your speakers will tolerate?  You know that feeling, don’t you?  Where, if someone wants you to turn it down, you’d rather just turn it off, because to listen to these songs at anything less than full volume feels fundamentally wrong.  You’re on cloud nine ... except this one goes to eleven.

This mix is where I put the songs that just make me ache for more music, make me wish it was possible to beam the sound directly into my brain, make me wonder how people can possibly survive in silence.  These are some of my all-time favorite songs from every decade ... although, being primarily a child of the 80s and a college student of the 90s, you can bet we’ll concentrate on that 20-year period more than the rest.

In point of fact, I really should be a child of the 70s: I turned 4 in 1970, and therefore 13 in 1979.  But I didn’t really blossom, musically, until the new wave and synthpop of the 80s, which would eventually become the “alternative” of the 90s.  So I’m not much, in general, for the 70s, musically speaking.  In fact, the only song on this mix which is technically from the 70s is the 1979 Cars hit “Let’s Go,” which I’m not sure I even discovered until the 80s anyway.  Certainly it is (like “Rock Lobster” and “My Sharona”) one of those 80s songs that just happened to come up a year ahead of its time.  With its percussive claps, surreal lyrics (“she’s so beautiful now, she doesn’t wear her shoes”), and strong synth underpinning, it’s classic 80s new wave, and the Cars would go on to be one of the biggest bands of the 80s, and one of the first two bands I ever saw live.¹  But as big as their biggest hits off Heartbeat City were for me, “Let’s Go” will always hold a special place in my heart.  It was for me one of the major musical pointers that the music of the 50s and 60s (that is, the music of my record-collector father) was well and truly transmogrified into something completely different.  I just love the song.

Weirdly, the closest thing to a 70s song on this mix is from 1981: “Burnin’ for You” by Blue Öyster Cult was lagging behind its time.  Many people will point to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” as the pinnacle of BOC, and, while that is a very good song, there’s just something about “Burnin’” that I love even more.  “I’m livin’ for givin’ the devil his due” ... how can you not want to sing along to that?

But from there we go truly and deeply into the 80s, and I’ll start by talking about one of my earliest understandings of what music could make you feel: “Urgent,” by Foreigner.  While 80s My Way concentrates on my love of the alternative side of rock, there was a lot of stadium rock in the 80s too.  Some will point to “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey; some will rather choose “Come Sail Away” or “Renegade by Styx.²  And even those who want to go with Foreigner would probably pick “Juke Box Hero.” But there’s a reason it’s always been “Urgent” for me, and that reason is Junior Walker.  Mark Rivera does the sax fills between the verses, but that solo is all Walker.  You can hear the moment when they overlap: Rivera (who was no slouch himself and would go on to play with Billy Joel, Peter Gabriel, and Simon & Garfunkel) fades out, and Walker (leader of Jr. Walker and the All Stars, member of the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame, with 3 albums in 2 years in the top 10 of Billboard’s R&B charts) explodes into the song with a high note on the alto sax that other people can only dream about hitting.  It’s a note so unexpected and pure that it literally gives me goosebumps every time.  The song has a lot more to recommend it, including some synth work from Thomas Dolby, and some of Lou Gramm’s trademark high-pitched vocals, but that sax solo does it for me every time.

After that, the 80s offer us some other really great tunes, such as “Your Love,” one of the iconic one-hit-wonder songs of the decade.  The Outfield never matched the heights of this song again, but this whole album (Play Deep) is quite good.  But nothing can quite match the plaintive cry that Tony Lewis imparts to this ultra-classic: “I don’t want to lose your love tonight ...” Then, from London to Milwaukee: the Violent Femmes were another amazing discovery of the 80s, and their debut album is insanely good, with every track a winner.  For some reason, I always favored “Prove My Love”; it was never the hit that “Blister in the Sun” was, nor even as well-recognized by aficionados as “Kiss Off” or “Add It Up”, but there’s something about Brian Ritchie’s basswork on this tune in particular that always spoke to me.  And of course the Replacements, while perhaps not as well-remembered as the others, were quite inflential on a whole generation of musicians and music lovers alike.  They could do soft, pretty ballads, but they could also just flat out rock, and “I.O.U.” is my favorite of the latter.  It’s raw, in some way; it makes you feel like you’re just hanging out in Paul Westerberg’s garage.  It’s fast, and it has an F-bomb or two (as do several other tracks here, for that matter), and it’s just awesome.

And would it truly be the 80s without some INXS and some New Order?  Again, I went with some slightly more obscure tracks over the more recognizable hits, but “Don’t Change” (by the former) is a soaring track that snatches you up and takes you along for the ride, while “Paradise” (by the latter) is one of the best that synthpop has to offer: a glittering, multi-layered track with so much going on, and some beautiful lyrics (one of which you’ll find in our volume title).  Our final stop in the 80s is by the too-often-forgotten Dreams So Real.  This Athens GA band, overshadowed by the many other more successful acts to come out of that city (R.E.M., the B-52s, Guadalcanal Diary, Indigo Girls, etc), was actually pretty kick-ass.  I saw them live as well, and lead singer Barry Marler seemed to have an aversion to crowds; bass player and backing vocalist Trent Allen did most of the talking, and Marler spent most of the show staring at his feet.³  But his wounded vocals rang out, especially on “Distance,” and Allen’s interjected responses of “ten thousand miles ...” make this song one of my all-time favorites of theirs.

While I was in high school in the 80s, the majority of my college career was in the 90s.⁴  Perhaps symbolically, “Distance” leads perfectly into “Fall Down” by Toad the Wet Sprocket, which is one of those songs whose lyrics instantly make you know exactly what the singer is talking about even though the words don’t actually make completely logical sense (such as “she hates her life, she hates her skin, she even hates her friends; tries to hold on to all the reputations she can’t mend”).  While I’ve joked that Toad doesn’t really rock,⁵ this is as close as they come.  While “Distance” is more plaintive and reaching for something, “Fall Down” is almost operatic in a matter-of-fact way; its emotion is understated, but still enough to grab you and spin you around.  Great song.

Of course, the true ballad of the 90s for me is “Crush Story.” Coming out in the middle of my fourth semester back at school, by the summer it was everywhere.  It was never a big mainstream hit, but it was top 20 on the “modern rock” charts, and WHFS gleefully played it constantly.  Not to mention me quickly snapping up the CD and also playing it constantly.  With snarky vocals (“this is better than love, baby!”), gorgeous harmonies, and just a catchy-as-fuck hook, this song will always remind me of some of my favorite times in my life.

And ditto that for “Policy of Truth,” which was from the year before.  I was already a major Depeche Mode fan, of course, and I was just starting to transition from cassettes to CDs when Violator came out.  Although I had promised myself to buy only used CDs—I was replacing an extensive cassette collection with what was soon to be an even more extensive CD collection, and I needed to watch my finances—I made an exception for this album, which I just knew was going to be magnificent.⁶  Nor was I disappointed.  Like many of the ablums I mention here, every track is great, but there’s something about “Policy of Truth” that just makes me want to crank up the stereo ...  Is it the cross-fading synth work? or David Gahan’s deep, booming vocals?  I dunno.  Just turn it up.

I’ve already talked about my discovery of Natalie Imbruglia, and how “Torn,” while a great track, still manages to be the worst song on Left of the Middle.  But this is my first chance to truly show you what I mean.  “Wishing I Was There” is one of those songs that starts off kinda happy and then manages to step it up a notch to absolutely rockin’.  “Every night the moon is mine,” Imbruglia sings into an almost quiet moment, “but when the morning comes ...” and blam! we’re off.  It’s an empowered track that makes you want to sing along.  Also somewhat lesser known, Juliana Hatfield (late of the Lemonheads) released Become What You Are in ‘93, and, again, every song kicks some ass.  But, for me at least, none more so than “Spin the Bottle,” which maintains Hatfield’s riot grrrl edge⁷ and heavy guitar buzz, but somehow conveys an innocence and joy that’s lighter than its lyrics.  And let us not leave the 90s without touching on the subgenre that some think defines it: grunge.  Although there were many great choices here, most of them are more suited to the Thrashomatic Danger Mix.  But Alice in Chains came out with the amazing Dirt in 1992, and they closed that album with the amazing “Would?” It’s got great basswork (from Mike Starr), even greater drumwork (from Sean Kinney)—not to mention that iconic vibraslap—some driving guitars from Jerry Cantrell and some fantastic loud/soft/loud vocals from Layne Staley.  Its just everything coming together perfectly, and I wanted it to close this volume just at it closes out Dirt.

Of course, the ultimate 90s song is from the post-grunge period: post-Cobain, post-Nirvana, Dave Grohl went on to form one of the greatest manufacturers of music that makes you want to crank it to max volume, the Foo Fighters.  The first time I heard “Everlong,” I was just blown away.  Unlike many of the bands and albums I talk about here, I don’t love every song the Foo Fighters do, but, when they hit the jackpot, it pays off big time.  We’ll see them again next volume, but, for this first outing, you can’t really top “Everlong.” It’s powerful, emotional, both touching and uplifting, and plus it absolutely rocks.  If there’s a mix starter for this particular mix, it’s definitely this one.

But I also wouldn’t feel right leaving the 90s without hitting my two favorite local (to my college town) bands: emmet swimming and Ebo.  Both have several great options, although Ebo typically rocks a little harder than emmet.  But when emmet rocks, they rock, and “Arlington” is one of my favorite power-pop moments from them.  Plus the lyrics are cool.  For Ebo, my absolute favorite of theirs is “California,” which is an absolutely spot-on indictment of sleazy guys trying to pick up women in bars (lead singer Dave was a bartender at our favorite local pub, which was—not coincidentally—where I first saw both bands).  Both are really fun to sing along to.⁸

Cumulonimbus Eleven I
[ Devastate the Night Forever ]

“Bright Future in Sales” by Fountains of Wayne, off Welcome Interstate Managers
“Prove My Love” by Violent Femmes, off Violent Femmes
“Policy of Truth” by Depeche Mode, off Violator
“Wishing I Was There” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“I.O.U.” by the Replacements, off Pleased to Meet Me
“California” by Ebo, off Secret Weapon
“Crush Story” by Too Much Joy, off Cereal Killers
“Paradise” by New Order, off Brotherhood
“Everlong” by Foo Fighters, off The Colour and the Shape
“Someday You Will Be Loved” by Death Cab for Cutie, off Plans
“Don't Change” by INXS, off Shabooh Shoobah
“Burnin' For You” by Blue Öyster Cult, off Fire of Unknown Origin
“Let's Go” by the Cars, off Candy-O
“Ain't No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant, off Cage the Elephant
“Little Talks” by Of Monsters and Men, off My Head Is an Animal
“Spin the Bottle” by the Juliana Hatfield Three, off Become What You Are
“Your Love” by the Outfield, off Play Deep
“Arlington” by emmet swimming, off Arlington to Boston
“Distance” by Dreams So Real, off Rough Night in Jericho
“Fall Down” by Toad the Wet Sprocket, off Dulcinea
“Urgent” by Foreigner, off 4
“Would?” by Alice in Chains, off Dirt

Total:  22 tracks,  80:25

From the 90s to the aughts.  In the first decade of the new millenium, I was less often swept up by a new track, but Death Cab for Cutie managed to catch me with “Someday You Will Be Loved,” an anti-love song in many ways, with a martial beat, a buzzing guitar break, and Ben Gibbard’s buoying vocals.  Somehow I want to take whatever trip Gibbard is promising even while he’s telling me that my affection is unrequited.  Similarly, the first time I ever heard Cage the Elephant, it was “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” and it was so different from anything else, and so powerful, both lyrically and musically; also, I don’t think it’s possible to sing along—“I can’t slow down, I can’t hold back (though you know, I wish I could) ... oh no, there ain’t no rest for the wicked until we close our eyes for good”—without knowing you’re singing a great truth.

But the truly awesome musical moment for me in the 00s was the moment I finally broke down and got the much-touted Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains of Wayne.  I mean, “Stacy’s Mom” is a fine song, sure, but could this album really be as great as its dedicated fans claimed?  Well, I’m not going to tell you every track here is a winnner, but the majority are, and it has the distinction of being the strongest opening four tracks of any album I can think of.  “Mexican Wine” grabs you immediately, and “Hackensack” puts you down gently, and “Stacy’s Mom” is in there too, but, oh my stars and garters, “Bright Future in Sales” is just magnificently transportative: it explodes into being (which is why I made it the volume opener), carries you raucously along, and demands you turn it up just a little louder.  It’s just amazing.

Finishing up in the teens, the times when I was really blown away were few and far between.  But then along comes Of Monsters and Men, sailing in from Iceland on a wave of joyous brass and percussive “hey!“s, with their smash hit “Little Talks.” The back-and-forth of Nanna Hilmarsdóttir’s and Raggi Þórhallsson’s vocals provide the perfect counterpoint for the explosive chorus, which assures us that “though the truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.” Part of the 00s and 10s subgenre (which is as far as I know yet unnamed) of big bands with orchestral instruments,⁹ Of Monsters and Men have a feel for the operatic (just watch any of their videos) and also a keen sense of pop hooks.  This particular song is just a masterpiece.

Next time, we’ll join in the chant.

Cumulonimbus Eleven II ⇒

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1 The other being Huey Lewis and the News, and I honestly can’t remember which came first.

2 Which of those latter two you lean towards depends on whether you favor Dennis DeYoung or Tommy Shaw.  I’m more of a Shaw man myself.

3 Not to imply that Dreams So Real is shoegaze, of course.  Like most of the Athens bands, they are jangle pop.

4 I took 3 years off after my sophmore year, and then went back for 3 more years starting in the fall of ‘89.

5 My standard line on this goes, if Toad the Wet Sprocket ever rocked at all, they’d be the Goo Goo Dolls; if the Goo Goo Dolls rocked more than they didn’t, they’d be the Replacements, and if the Replacements rocked constantly instead of only most of the time, they’d be Candlebox.

6 If my memory does not fail me, it remains the only one of my hundreds of CDs that I paid more than $10 for.

7 Which we’ll see most fully featured on a mix that we’ll come to in the fullness of time.

8 Fun bonus fact: both songs are mentioned in this short blurb from the Washington Post that I accidentally stumbled on while researching this post.

9 Others being Arcade Fire and the Decembrists.  Sometimes those two are referred to as “baroque pop,” but I’m not sure that really fits.

The Wild Beyond the Daughter

Well, the Free Fridays are over, but I’m still only posting full posts once every other week.  Ya read this blog against my explicit advice, ya gets what ya gets.

This week my youngest has been starting her deep dive into the newest D&D release, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight.  She’s decided it’s going to be her first actual D&D campaign that she will actually run—thus far, she’s only run a Dungeon World campaign^* of her own devising.  But I ordered the book for myself, and she fell in love with it, and now she has her own copy ... she even got the bundle with all the cool extras in it.  She’s very serious about it: she’s asked my advice on which section to read first to prepare, and she got some sticky tabs from Christy to mark the pages.

So that’s what our nine-year-old teenager is up to.  We’ll see if she carries through with it, but she’s thus far been very determined in her goals.  So I think it will happen, sooner or later.  That’s my girl.

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* If you don’t recall, Dungeon Word is a sort of D&D-lite game based on the Powered by the Apocalypse rules.

Origin of the Love of the Species

[Last night, I had a dream.  In this dream, I was explaining to someone where I got my love of animals.  I can’t remember exactly who I was explaining it to—I think maybe I had become famous for something or other and I was being interviewed.  In any event, this was one of those dreams that I had no recollection of upon waking (crowded out by other dreams, I think), but came to me nearly complete about half an hour later.  And it struck me (somewhat forcefully) that, had I been asked the question while I was awake, some of the things I said in the dream would have never occurred to me.  But sometimes dreams are good for that: remembering things you thought you’d forgotten, or even realizing things you never actually knew.  So I threw off my original plans for this week’s post, and I’m giving you this post instead, which combines both the answer I would give while conscious and, apparently, the answer I would give while asleep.]

My love of animals has always been a defining part of me, as long as I can remember.  In fact, I have a very clear memory of one Christmas, when I was very young—this may actually be my earliest childhood memory that isn’t a false one¹—when I had asked for a Noah’s Ark for Christmas and both sets of grandparents got me one.  The memory is of me on the landing of my grandparents’ house (on my mother’s side), which was halfway down the stairs (unlike in most houses, these stairs were more like the stairs in an apartment building or office building: you walked halfway down the stairs to the landing, then made a U-turn and walked the rest of the way down).  My mother was holding me in her arms, waiting for the rest of the adults below to give us the go-ahead that everything was prepared just so, and everyone was ready with their cameras and whatnot, and she was whispering in my ear that I shouldn’t be disappointed for getting the same gift twice and that I needed to act surprised and pleased.  In many ways, this sums up a pretty big chunk of my childhood: my mother, very preoccupied with other people’s opinions and desperate never to disappoint anyone, advising me how to think or react or feel.  The funny thing is, she needn’t have bothered.  I think my grandparents, at least on one side, were thrilled with my request for a Noah’s Ark, because they assumed it was a sign that I was properly absorbing my religious indoctrination.  The truth was, I was just in it for the animals—the boats were no different than a cardboard box or a zip-loc bag as far as I was concerned, and the human figures (if there even were any) were promptly lost.  All I cared about were the animals, and, you see, in two sets of of Noah’s Arks, there are twice as many animals, and many of them are different.  I didn’t have to fake anything.

My grandfather’s house, as it happens, is the very thing that I recently recalled as probably being instrumental to my love of animals, even though I never really realized it before.  My mother’s father, like 3 out of my 4 grandparents, grew up on a farm.  He knew a lot about nature: he was an amateur botanist, grew tomatoes professionally for a while, and knew how to skin a rabbit, as I discovered once in a rather horrifying manner which probably scarred me for life.  But he was also the only one of my grandparents to attend college, and ended up making the most money.  My grandparents on that side were what I like to call “small town rich:” in New York or Chicago, they might have been considered moderately well-off, but in the small town where I grew up (and where I was born, and where both my parents were born, and where this very grandfather attended high school, becoming a member of the very first graduating class of the same high school from which both my parents and I later graduated), in this small town, as I say, they were considered rich.  I think the story is that my grandfather made some money with his contracting business and ended up buying a huge tract of land that would later be developed into one of the two swanky neighborhoods in my town, and then made even more money selling off most of it for other rich people to build their houses on.  But he kept about an acre and a half, and that was where he built his house.  It wasn’t a mansion (small town rich, remember?), but it was a big, two-story house that was built into a side of a hill, so that from the front it looked like a one-story house, and then when you walked out the back door, you were on a balcony that ran the length of the house, looking out on his “yard” ... and that’s where the magic really was.

Because an acre and a half probably doesn’t sound like much compared to some of the compounds of the ultra-wealthy we might see on television, but let me assure you: an acre and a half is enormous to a five-year-old, a seven-year-old ... even a ten-year-old.  By the time I was in high school (perhaps even middle school—my memory for dates grows hazy with age, as it does for us all), they had sold the place and moved to Florida, as grandparents are wont to do, but a lot of my very formative years were spent there, wandering the grounds of this magical place.  Being the amateur botanist and later tomato farmer, for my grandfather this was mostly about his prize azaleas, which he cloned and grafted like some mad plant scientist; I even remember accompanying him on trips into the Appalachian mountains, looking for wild azaleas to infuse his creations with new genetic stock.  So there were a lot of azaleas, but also rhododendrons and flowering dogwoods and many other plants that I can’t remember and probably never even learned; there were gravel-paved walkways through flowers with riotous colors, and long greenhouses full of experiments (and, later, tomatoes).  But all that was window dressing, because for me it was all about the animals.

To the left of the house was a small pond where I used to catch tadpoles.  Since the whole place was built into a hill, that pond turned into a one-story waterfall that filled a much bigger pond.  (And, though I didn’t understand it till much later, there was a pump at the bottom of the big pond that constantly shunted water back up the little pond to keep the system going.)  In this pond were bullfrogs of truly impressive size: my mother said that my grandfather used to go “gigging” in his pond when she was younger, to catch frogs so he could enjoy frog legs for dinner.  There were of course various birds that were attracted to this waterscape: wading birds and the occasional duck or goose flying by during a migration.  The water flowed down articial canals that paralleled the flower-lined walkways and fed other ponds in other places.  There were water lillies and any number of water-loving insects: water striders and boatmen and dragonflies.  There were fish in the ponds too, of course: ornamental koi in the main pond at the bottom of the waterfall, and other, mostly smaller, fish throughout the system.  Rabbits lived there, as did moles, both of which my grandfather murdered happily (they were considered pests).  There were multitudes of squirrels, which my grandmother fed stale cheese crackers to in a large “bird” feeder attached to the balcony.  The kitchen had a sliding glass door, so you could sit at the kitchen table and watch the birds and the squirrels fighting over the bird seed and the sunflower seeds and the old crackers.  The squirrels were the most entertaining, of course, but you could also see cardinals and blue jays and robins, which their distinctive orange breasts, and occasionally chickadees or finches.  There were foxes and raccoons too, though I mostly knew of those from stories my mother told; I can’t recall ever seeing any personally, though I was always on the lookout.  At night you might see a possum, though, which are kind of scary in a way you don’t really realize until you meet one in person.  Also at night, the sound of the bullfrogs was nearly overwhelming, backed up by the crickets ... so many orthopterans: field crickets, grasshoppers, kaytdids.  In fact, it was trivial to catch field crickets, which we often did, and my grandparents even had a gold colored cage that sat on the hearth where we often put a cricket so you could listen to it indoors as well (but also let it go again when the sound inevitably became annoying).  There were chipmunks sometimes, and once or twice a larger rodent which might have been a muskrat or woodchuck.  I remember discovering rolie-polies, which my mother always called “sow bugs” for some reason,² and also digging for earthworms.  I’m pretty sure there were lizards, and of course my grandfather had a few turtles in the ponds, and there were probably a few snakes here and there, though I can’t recall for sure.  Lots of spiders too, and the occasional tick, which I learned at a fairly young age how to detach and kill (with a match, in an ashtray, till they popped).  Ticks and mosquitoes were about the only things I ever killed though: as far as I was concerned, if it was trying to suck your blood, it was fair game, but otherwise live and let live.  I was mostly horrified at my grandfather’s tendency to kill things he found annoying, and I already mentioned how disturbing it was to go into one of the many tool sheds attached to the greenhouses one day and find an inside-out rabbit, which my grandather was apparently curing, stretched out up on a high wall.  And don’t even get me started on the complicated mole traps, with their trip wires and cruel spikes.  But, for the most part, every trip in my grandfather’s “back yard” was a wildlife safari for me, and I have the fondest memories of those times.

I always asked for animal-related things.  I got a set of wildlife encycolpedias and read them nearly cover to cover, which is why I know a lot of the scientific classifications of things, like how spiders are arachnids not insects, but both arachnids and insects are arthropods, as are crustaceans, which rolie-polies are (the only land-dwelling crustaceans, in fact), and that ferrets and weasels are not rodents but rather mustelids, which are carnivores, similar to felines and ursines, and that the rodent-looking hyrax is most closely related to the elephant, and that a hyena is not a canine regardless of the fact it really looks like one, and that anemones are coelenterates (like coral) while sea liliies are echinoderms (like starfish) even though they both look like plants, and that earthworms are actually annelids (like leeches) while “true” worms are divided into flatworms, roundworms, and ribbon worms, and a bunch of other useless zoological trivia.  Of course, those encyclopedias are now nearly 50 years old, which is why I still get surprised sometimes when zoologists have changed their minds since then and I find out that skunks aren’t mustelids any more and rabbits aren’t rodents any more and the coelenterates have been broken up into the cnidarians and the ctenophorans (because a comb jelly isn’t really a jellyfish, apparently) and birds and reptiles are all the same thing now (goes along with dinosaurs having feathers).  Not to mention that I can still be surprised by the occasional nature documentary, or (in particular) watching Octonauts with my youngest child, when they talk about animals that hadn’t been properly classified or even discovered at all when my primary reference materials were written, such as the vampire squid or the blobfish.  Of course, I didn’t rely solely on a single source, and, after seeing some commercial on late afternoon television, I talked my grandmother on the other side into subscribing to a set of “animal cards,” which would come 10 or 20 or so to a pack, every month, and then whenever I’d go to that grandparents’ house I’d eagerly open all the packs that had come since I was last there and see all the new animals, and then I’d carefully put them in order in my handy plastic container: not in alphabetical order, of course, but in order by Linnaean taxonomy, making my own choices for the evolutionary order of the phyla, based mainly on my devouring of the aforementioned encyclopedias.  They didn’t always agree, and that irked me,³ but I kept on collecting them, until I needed to convince my grandmother to order a second container for the cards, and eventually she figured out that they were never going to stop sending her packs of cards (for a small monthly charge, of course) and she cancelled them.  Somehow I managed to retain the encyclopedias, although they’re much the worse for wear at this point, but those cards are long lost.

So, you see, I was really into animals as a kid.  That also extended to the media I consumed and my make-believe a lot of the time:⁴ I was really into Tarzan, and The Jungle Book, and Dr. Dolittle.  Of course, now I know enough to recognize that there’s a lot of problematic material in these stories, but not only was I too young to get that as a kid, I was also just glossing over the parts where the people were interacting.  I only cared about the animals.  If Tarzan was making friends with elephants, or Mowgli was being taught by a panther, or Dr. Dolittle was talking to flying fish, then I was paying attention.  The insensitive portrayals of indigenous people didn’t register for me: not because they were indigenous, but because they were people.  Unless you were an animal, or at the very least a human who could communicate on some level with an animal, I wasn’t too interested.  I also had a bunch of books from the perspective of animals: I particularly recall a set of books consisting of, I think, Black Beauty, Bambi, one of the Lassie books, a book about a raccoon, and perhaps one or two others ... Gentle Ben? Misty of Chincoteague?  I read them all so long ago I can barely remember any of the details ... I do have a memory of Lassie’s owner hiring a stranger to feed her some meat which made her mildly ill so that she would learn to never accept food from strangers, a trick which I found both cruel and clever.  But there were many more books to come, and movies (The Secret of Nimh and the wizard battle from The Sword in the Stone) and television (Cricket on the Hearth and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi) and even continuing into adolescence, when I discovered more sophisticated stories such as Watership Down.  I was also into any stories of people who could transform into animals, from Manimal to Maya from Space: 1999, which led to my predilection for playing druids in D&D.

And that doesn’t even begin to get into my pets: as a child, I had dogs, parrakeets, hamsters, fish, and turtles; as an adult I expanded into cats, ferrets, guinea pigs, and ball pythons.  I’ve also lived with iguanas, leopard geckos, rats, frogs, and bearded dragons, and suffered through my grandmother’s chicken coop and my mother’s attempts to keep rabbits and even squirrels.  I used to pet-sit for a tortoise, and I once had a good friend who was a beekeeper (and I only ever got stung once—valuable lesson: don’t stand directly in front of the hive, because that’s like standing in the middle of a busy bee highway).  Today we’re down to 2 dogs, 3 cats, and a relatively teeming tank of tropical fish, shrimp, snails, and one seemingly immortal dwarf African frog, but there’s constant talk of another bearded dragon, so who knows what the future will bring.

If you clicked on the link in the paragraph above, you read some of my thoughts on animals and how they’re people too.  Human beings who have the attitude that someone is “just an animal” and therefore not deserving of love or kindness due to having too much body hair or lack of opposable thumbs really irk me, and I’m sorry if you happen to be such a one.  For me, I’ve spent my whole life reading about, talking to, and interacting with animals, and not just the cute and cuddly ones.  All of them.  Sure, many of them are pretty dumb: a firefly, for instance, is never going engage with you on an intellectual level.  But, on the other hand, when you let that little guy crawl over your hand in the fading summer twillight, and he suddenly glows that greenish-yellow glow ... if that doesn’t touch you on a spiritual level, you are definitely doing something wrong in your life.  And that’s a friggin’ bug, man: the joy and affection you can receive from spending time with a ferret, the amiable call and response you can have with a guinea pig, if you learn to emulate its whistle, the comfort you can derive from having a ball python snuggled around your shoulders—these things cannot be replicated by humans.  Animals are not better than humans, of course, just different, and, if you think they are somehow lesser than, perhaps you’re not paying close enough attention.  Or perhaps you just missed out on a childhood spent in a huge back yard, learning about the diversity of life.

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1 And then again it might also be a false memory: childhood memories are slippery.

2 They have many, many names, as it happens: pillbugs, woodlice, doodle bugs, etc etc.

3 I’ve talked a bit about my OCD-adjacent obsession with lists of animals (and other things) in part I of my D&D and Me series.

4 And I talked about this in D&D and Me part 4.

Last of the Red Hot Free Fridays

And here we are at the final weekend where I receive a Free Friday from my $work as a reward for surviving the pandemic.  It’s been awesome having a 3-day weekend every other week for a few months, and I shall certainly miss it when it’s gone.  But all good things come to an end, as they say, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  Tune in next week to see how I manage that.

Fight the Current ... or Ride the Waves (depending)

A charismatic speaker starts espousing a crackpot theory.  The theory is based on an obscure book published by a little-remembered figure with strong ties to the Church and who is generally recognized to have no scientific credentials.  The speaker offers “evidence,” most of which is just drawings he himself made, and mostly just asks open-ended questions, because that way he can’t be held accountable for telling outright lies.  Everyone agrees that the public is likely to be misled by this person’s dangerous ideas, which could cause irreparable harm.

I bet that scenario sounds way too familiar to you in today’s world.  But I’m not talking about an “anti-vaxxer” or a climate-change-denier.  I’m not even talking about Tucker Carlson, surprisingly.  I am, in fact, talking about Galileo: the “little-remembered figure” was Copernicus, and the “crackpot theory” was heliocentrism ... the idea that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.  You may think I’ve twisted the facts, but it’s absolutely true that most of what Galileo offered as evidence were his own drawings, and it’s also true that (at least for many years), he avoided making statements of fact which might ruffle the feathers of the Catholic Church.  And it was quite a pervasive belief that Galileo’s ideas were putting the very souls of the public in jeopardy, which was considered far more insidious than merely putting lives at risk.

I present this story because we seem to be getting confused these days by what “skepticism” actually means.  And, admittedly, people such as the aforementioned Fox “news” host make it very difficult.  One the one hand, Tucker presents himself as a classic skeptic: hey, he’s just asking questions, right?  And people attack him just as they did to poor Galileo, just because he questions the accepted wisdom (of medical science, of climate change, of systemic racism ... take your pick).  Poor, poor Tucker—you see what happened to Galileo, right?  Convicted, imprisoned, ultimately died there.  That could happen to Tucker!

Obviously I don’t intend to defend Tucker Carlson, and obviously I don’t think he compares very favorably to Galileo.  But I think it’s important that we don’t dismiss Carlson because he asks difficult questions and demands proof: that actually is what a skeptic is supposed to do.  I think it’s important we dismiss Carlson because he doesn’t offer any answers and refuses to accept proof when it’s handed to him on a silver platter.  Sadly, people like Carlson give skeptics a bad name, and make us more prone to dismiss people who might actually have legitimate points.

But I don’t think we can lay the blame for the decline in skepticism squarely at the feet of Tucker Carlson and his ilk.  The sad truth is that skepticism, like almost all tools for good, is used quite selectively by the majority of people.  For a simple example, buried right in the middle of a very long (but interesting) New Yorker article, we find this nugget:

While acupuncture is widely accepted as a medical treatment in various Asian countries, its use is much more contested in the West. These cultural differences have profoundly influenced the results of clinical trials. Between 1966 and 1995, there were forty-seven studies of acupuncture in China, Taiwan, and Japan, and every single trial concluded that acupuncture was an effective treatment. During the same period, there were ninety-four clinical trials of acupuncture in the United States, Sweden, and the U.K., and only fifty-six per cent of these studies found any therapeutic benefits.

Obviously there’s some bias going on.  But I bet your instinctive reaction was to assume that the bias is on the part of the Asian studies: your scientific skepticism of course leads you to question those results.  By why not question the results on the other side?  Is it perhaps possible that the Western studies are biased against finding benefits that they don’t really believe in?

I’m not saying that’s definitely the case, of course—in fact, given my views on balance and paradox, you’ve probably already guessed that I personally think there’s some bias on both sides, and that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  But I find it interesting that most people that I know would naturally assume that the people who couldn’t find any evidence were more reliable.  On the one hand, you have scientific proof that a thing exists; on the other, you have no proof of anything at all.  And yet most people reading this will believe the side with no proof.  Why is that?

The answer, of course, is that it isn’t.  If I show you studies that show that vaccines work, and studies that show that they don’t, you’ll believe the positive ones.  On the other hand, if I show you studies that show that vaccines are linked to autism, and studies that show they aren’t, you’ll believe the negative ones.  The truth of it is, you’re just going to believe whichever studies you were predisposed to believe in the first place.  But, see, that’s not how skepticism is supposed to work.

Paul Kurtz, sometimes called the father of secular humanism and author of The New Skepticism, wrote:

Briefly stated, a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence.  The use of skepticism is thus an essential part of objective scientific inquiry and the search for reliable knowledge.

Question any claim: even the ones you’re already “sure” are true.  Demand logic and evidence.  These are great criteria.  Surely idiots like Tucker Carlson crumble under such demands.  But other areas are more gray.

The problem, as I see it, is that our Western viewpoints often lead us to the conclusion that, “we can’t prove that it works, therefore it doesn’t work.” Now, if you think about this for a second—and, remember: one of the things skepticism tells you to demand is consistency in logic—you immediately see that this is a ridiculous conclusion.  Try to turn in that deduction in any college class on logic and you’ll get a very disparaging grade: the argument is not sound.  The conclusion does not follow from the premise.  And yet you most likely accept that it’s true, as long as it’s in reference to something you’ve been taught is pseudoscience.

Let’s take one of my favorite examples: chiropractics.  Now, statistically speaking, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that you believe that chiropractics is complete hogwash.  Why?  Because of the lack of scientific evidence to support it, of course!  We can’t prove that it works, therefore it doesn’t work.  Q.E.D.  Of course, there are studies that show it does work.  But those are flawed studies, obviously.  They’re biased.  They weren’t rigorous.  It’s amazing how much effort we can put into debunking studies we don’t want to believe, and how little effort we put into debunking studies we do want to believe.  Because all those studies that said that chiropractics don’t work?  You didn’t question them at all ... right?

The silliest thing about this debate is that this is one of those areas where “works”/“doesn’t work” isn’t really a valid way to look at the problem.  Chiropractic is a medical treatment, like a drug, or a medical procedure that might be performed in a hospital.  And, I’m pretty sure we all understand that those types of things work for some people, and don’t work for others.  Some of that has to do with the quality of the drug manufacturer, or the expertise of the medical personnel performing the procedure, but most of it is just because we’re all different on the inside.  I mean, we’re all the same, but we’re also all different.  You and I might have the same medical condition, and we might take the same drug, in the same dosage, at the same times of day and in the same relation to when we eat or when we sleep, and it still might be the case that the drug works for you, and not for me.  People’s insides are just funny that way.

So, likewise, it’s silly to try to say that chiropractic works ... you can only say that it works for you, or that it doesn’t work for you.  It happens to work for me, but I have to tell you, I approached it with a very skeptical attitude.  I went to my first chiropractor, assuming it wouldn’t work.  I made the doctor explain exactly why it was going to work, and I didn’t believe a single word of what he said, because he was spouting off bullshit about chakras and energy pathways and shit like that that is very obviously not true.  And yet ... it worked.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t believe in it, and it didn’t matter that the doctor obviously had no idea how it worked.  It worked ... for me.  And I still go to a chiropractor today, several decades later.  I don’t go for every ailment, and I have certainly found complaints where it didn’t work, but, for many things (especially as I get older), it continues to work, despite all “evidence” that it shouldn’t.  Actually, since I want that consistency in logic that Kurtz was talking about, I did eventually find a chiropractor who approached the practice from more of a kinesiology standpoint, and he finally was able to make it make sense (mostly).  But none of that really matters, because, at least for me, it just works.  (I also enjoy it when people, confronted with this simple fact, try to “explain” it by saying that the relief is “all in my head.” “That’s fine,” I typically respond: “that’s where the pain is.”)

So, if you’ve tried chiropratic, and it worked, then you can say it worked for you ... but not that “it works.” Likewise, if you’ve tried it, and it didn’t work, then you can say that it didn’t work for you ... but not that “it doesn’t work.” And, if you haven’t tried it at all, I don’t think you can intelligently say much of anything.  You just don’t know.  And your scientific skepticism ought to demand evidence, which you can really only gather by trying it out.

Of course, when it comes to things like vaccines or climate change, the answer isn’t so easy.  You could just listen to everyone on TV, and most of the government, who are telling you that the COVID vaccine is safe, or you could listen to idiots like Tucker Carlson or the Russian bots posting to your Facebook account, or the rest of the government, who are telling you it’s not.  But, honestly, your scientific skepticism should be telling you not to take anyone’s word for it.  Sadly, unlike chiropractics, this is not something you want to settle via experimentation.  You have to read about it, and you have to read lots of different sources.  You have to listen to what scientists say about the various vaccines, shutting out what the media personalities and the politicians are saying, and try to evaluate which ones make sense.  There will be scientists on both sides, of course.  But, even without any scientific training, it’s amazing how simple it can be to read what a scientist is spouting and either say “yeah, that makes sense” or “what a nutbag!” In my experience, it’s actually quite rare for even a very well-trained scientist who happens to be a nutjob to able to hide this fact from you.  It does happen, mind you, but it’s rare.  And even when it seems like there are sane voices on both sides, usually there are a lot more sane voices on one side or the other.  Now, that still doesn’t always land you on the right side of the debate (see also: Galileo) ... but it’s a pretty good start.

So be skeptical, but be skeptical of both sides.  When you hear someone swimming upstream against the conventional wisdom, hear them out—at least until you can determine if they’re a nutjob (or a Tucker Carlson, who is really more of a douchebag than a nutjob).  Don’t be afraid to come to a conclusion that puts you at odds with what “everyone” else is saying, but also make sure you have facts and evidence and logic to back up that conclusion.  None of this is simple.  But, then again, life rarely is.

Waiting for ideas to harden

This week, vacation time is all over, and I’m set to make my second nighttime trip to the airport for the week.  So I’m not even particularly feeling up to writing you a nice non-post.  Sorry.

Hopefully next week will be a little easier.  I have a decent queue of post ideas piled up at this point—all I need is a bit of time to get them transmogrified from abstract to concrete.  Here’s to aspirational concretization.