Chapter 20

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What is this?

Travel with Welly Banks

Welly’s clothes were dripping, but not sodden.  Which made no sense, as he had only recently emerged from the water.  But perhaps that was a small thing among greater impossibilities, Johnny reflected.  The blue-skinned youth (if youth he was) put on a professorial air as he continued his speech to Roger.

“Let’s get the contractual stuff out of the way first, shall we?”  Welly started the drywashing thing again.  “I am an opener, not a pathfinder.  I open where I’m told, and am not responsible if the way opens into the heart of a supernova or the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.”  Roger nodded impatiently; Johnny turned to Aidan to ask him if this was likely to occur, but the water priest shushed him.  Welly continued.  “I will accompany you wherever you wish to go within the confines of Breen Lagoon, as long as your journey takes no longer than 7,919 minutes.”  (Johnny looked at Larissa; “one minute short of five and a half days,” she supplied under her breath.)  “But I cannot accompany you wheresoever you travel beyond the borders of the Lagoon.  You agree that you will not attempt to compel me to do so?”

Roger spat in her hand and thrust it out to Welly.  “Square deal,” she said.

Welly glanced at her hand with some trepidation.  “Er, yes,” he said, clutching his hands to his chest.  “I’m happy to take your word.  No need to exchange, um ... bodily fluids.”  He sniffed again.

Roger clapped him hard on the shoulder.  “Excellent, me boyo!”  She turned back to her crew.  “Aidan!  Can I get me clothes back now?”




Inside of an hour, The Sylph was back on the open ocean—or open lagoon, as the case might be—and moving along at a decent clip.  Johnny had given Roger a general direction and was feeling ahead of them every now and again to make sure they stayed on track.  Currently Johnny and Larissa were leaning on the railing, watching the gentle waves flash by.  The little blue snake around Larissa’s wrist uncoiled itself, scampered up her arm, circled her neck once, slithered down the other arm, and recoiled itself around her other wrist.  Johnny heard someone pacing behind them and turned around; it was Welly.

“I’m Johnny,” Johnny said, putting out his hand.  Welly kept his hands clasped together and sniffed again.  Johnny was beginning to get the impression that sniffing and sighing were Welly’s two major modes of communication.  Johnny lowered his hand.

“So ... you’re Welly, right?”  Welly just stared back.  “You’re the ... opener?  What exactly does that entail?”

Welly sniffed.  “I open, of course.”

Johnny felt the lunatic grin returning to his face.  “Of course.  And how does one go about ‘opening’?”

Welly sighed.  “One merely reaches out and ...”  He shrugged.  “Opens.”  His webbed hands gave a little flourish, as if to say: just so.

“So I could learn to do it, then?” Johnny asked.

Another sniff.  “You don’t learn to open.  You either can, or you cannot.  Given where you’re from, I would suppose that you cannot.”

Johnny’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.  “You know where we’re from?”

Welly glanced over at Larissa briefly, almost furtively.  “I know where you’re from,” he said.  It was obvious he was excluding Larissa from his declaration.

Johnny decided to let that slide.  “How do you know?”

A sniff.  “I’ve been there, of course.”

Johnny was puzzled.  After a week or so with Roger and a few years with Larissa, this conversation should have been old hat, but still he was feeling a bit lost.  Did Welly mean he’d been to DC?  “You’ve been where?” he asked.

“Some call it the Terrable Way,” Welly said.

“The Terrible Way?”  Johnny frowned.

Welly sighed.  “You said ‘Terrible Way,’ didn’t you?”

Johnny was confused.  “Isn’t that what you said?”

“No, not Terrible Way, Terrable Way.”

Johnny looked towards Larissa for help.  “Those both sound the same to me ...”  He shrugged.

Larissa gave the tiniest shake of her head, but said nothing.

Another sigh.  “Not ‘terrible,’ with an I,” he said.  “’Terrable,’ with an A.  Isn’t your world called ‘Terra’?”

Johnny blinked.  “Well, I guess ...”

“There you go.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that it sounds like ‘terrible’?” Johnny asked.

Welly’s sardonic half-smile flickered on the left side of his face.  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

Larissa finally spoke up.  “That pun would only work in English,” she pointed out.

“Hey, yeah,” Johnny said, feeling a light bulb go on over his head.  “How come you speak English?”

Back to sniffing.  “Are we speaking English now?”

Johnny looked baffled for a second, but Larrissa replied instantly: “Yes.”

Another sniff.  “Yes, I suppose we are, right this second.  I learned it when I visited the Terrable Way.  How else could I have studied your great comics?”

“Comic books?”  Johnny was confused.

Welly gave him a haughty look.  “No, comics.  Performers.”

This was getting weirder and weirder.  “You came to our world? to watch comedians?” Johnny asked.

“Yes, and I studied the great masters.  Henny Youngman, and Jack Benny, and Jackie Mason, and Bob Hope.  Also, some of the younger crowd: Bill Cosby, and Bob Newhart, and Rodney Dangerfield.”

Larissa intervened.  “Rodney Dangerfield has been popular for over 35 years, and performing, off and on, for 61.”

Welly shook his head sadly.  “Has it been so long?  I lose track of the time ...”

Johnny said, “You don’t look that old.”

“The secret to staying young is to eat slowly and lie about your age.”

Larissa frowned.  “Lucille Ball,” she said.  “But she also advised that one live honestly.”

Welly seemed to grow wistful.  “Lucille Ball, yeah, she was one of the greats too.”  Another sigh.  “That honest living thing was never for me though.”  Then he turned and shuffled off.




The days went back to melting together as they lapsed back into everyone sleeping and eating whenever they felt like it.  The open expanse of water never changed significantly—there was always mist off in the distance, although they never seemd to get closer to it, and an occasional island would appear, very far away, but mostly it was just open, calm water.  Apparently the light never changed in the Lagoon any more than it did in the swamp, so it became impossible to keep track of how much time had passed.  Or, at least, it was impossible for Johnny.  He had a feeling that Welly knew exactly how much time was passing, down to the minute.  And when his internal counter reached 7,919, Johnny knew somehow that he would just jump overboard and swim back to the hideous mermaid creatures.

“Why do you suppose it’s 7,919?” he asked Larissa at one point.

Larissa shrugged.  “Perhaps because that’s the one thousandth prime number.”

Johnny grinned.  “Sure,” he said.  “I’m sure that’s exactly why.”  Then he laughed raucously, startling a passing Bones.

At another point, he asked Welly why he worked for the mermaid creatures.  “The scalae?” Welly sniffed.  “Well, I suppose you have to work for someone, eh?  My employment options are somewhat limited around here.”  His pale ghost of a smile came back.  “You know the secret to success, don’t you?  Get up early, work late ... and strike oil.”  He looked at Johnny expectantly.

Johnny cast about for a suitable reply and came up with: “Um, Benjamin Franklin?”

Welly sighed.

“Joey Adams,” Larissa supplied.

Johnny blinked.  “I don’t know ...”

Larissa spoke up immediately.  “Joey Adams, born Joseph Abramowitz, January 6, 1911.  Humor columnist for the New York Post, author of The Borscht Belt, ...”

Johnny knew better than to let her really get rolling.  “Right, sorry.  A bit before my time, I think.  But, you were saying? about the scalas? or, scalae, or whatever?”

Welly shrugged.  “What’s to say?  They need an opener, and I open.  It’s not much of a gig, but it’s what I do.  Keeps me in fishes while I hammer out the act.”

“Fishes?” Johnny asked.  “Is that what they pay you?”

Welly arched an eyebrow and waved out at the unbroken expanse of water.  “Common currency around these parts, as you might guess.  What do you think we eat around here?”

Talking to Welly made Johnny feel a bit dim.  “Uh, sure, that makes sense.  But couldn’t you just catch your own fish?”

Welly sighed.  “I know I must cut a dashing figure in this outfit”—he gestured at his yellow-trimmed jacket, which was still dripping on the deck, although it must have been days since he’d come on board by this point—“but the fact of the matter is, I have a lethargic nature.  That is, I’m somewhat leisurely in my approach to piscine acquisition.”  Johnny blinked at him, and Welly sighed again.  “I’m like this horse I bet on one time: it was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of his trip.”

Johnny turned back to Larissa for help.  “Henny Youngman,” she put in.

Pretty much all the conversations with Welly went like that.  Which is why Johnny almost felt relieved when, after what he guessed was three or four days of travel, Roger called out from the flying bridge: “Oy! sea monster ahead!”

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What is this?

Guides: Benny Millares

[This is one post in a series about people who have had a great impact on my life.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series.]

I moved to southern California in 2007.  While The Mother had lived in this area before, I was in a strange new place where I knew no one and recognized nothing.  Little things were different: when I ordered chow mein I got chop suey, and when I referred to interstates by their numbers alone, I got funny looks from the natives for leaving off the definite article.  And of course I was starting a new job where I knew no one except the few people I’d met during my interview.

I started on the 2nd day of July (because the 1st was a Sunday).  Another person started on the same day as I did—someone who had also migrated from the East Coast, who also had long hair and a scruffy beard, whose name differed from mine by a single vowel and one doubled consonant.  Oh, he was significantly taller and far more Cuban than I, but we were doomed to be confused with each other for my entire six-year tenure there.  This was how I met Benny Millares.

Independence Day was during our first week of work.  Both of us had left our families back on the East Coast to work on the move, so we were both alone in corporate housing.  Had it been up to me, I probably just would have sat at home and maybe watched some fireworks on televsion.  But Benny convinced me we should go out.  We drove around the Hollywood Hills, window-shopped the ritzy houses in Bel Air, cruised up and down the Sunset Strip for a while.  We ended up in Venice Beach, just wandering around, stopping to chat with random strangers, watching fireworks when we could get to a place we could see them.  I’d like to say this is the sort of thing I’d done in my twenties, but the honest truth is I was never the sort to do that sort of thing on my own.  Oh, I’d tag along if my friends suggested it, but I was never the instigator.  This incident, on my third day of knowing him, became a metaphor for our relationship: he constantly forces me out of my comfort zone, pushes me to try new things, think outside the box, do more, be better.

When I ran my own business, I was usually the thinker and my employees were the doers.  But I could never think big enough to have that relationship with Benny.  It was always he who had the grand ideas and I who followed along, implementing as hard as I could and trying to keep up.  This was one of many role reversals we went through at work: first he despaired of ever seeing any change in the status quo but I was optimistic, then I lost hope while he found it; for a while, I was his boss, then he became mine.  But it was our respective roles as designer vs programmer that most defined us.  He’d think ’em up, and I’d code ’em down.

Benny stayed on after I left that job, but only for about six more months.  At that point he’d squirreled away enough money to afford to move to his Florida compound with his wife, mother, stepfather, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson.  A couple of months ago, I was able to parlay a work conference to Orlando into a bit of a family vacation—myself, the eldest, and the Smaller Animal went, while the girls stayed home.  Since Orlando is only two hours away from Benny’s new place, we knew we had to at least drop in for a visit.  But Benny, on top of being the deep thinker, hard worker, and gregarious extrovert, is also a generous soul, so we ended up staying there for several days.  I knew his wife, of course, having spent many meals and a few nights in their company in California, and I’d met his daughter a couple of times, but I didn’t know the rest of the family yet.  But I believe it really is true that good people attract other good people into their spheres, and all of Benny’s family are good people.  His stepfather welcomed us, his mother cooked breakfast for us, his wife cooked dinner for us, his daughter and son-in-law sat with us, watching movies and drinking beers.  And his grandson and the Smaller Animal spent nearly every waking minute togther.  All three of us had an excellent time and we hope we can go back again someday.

This just further illustrates why I’m pleased to know Benny.  He’s taught me, he’s managed me, he’s challenged me, he’s given to me and been willing to accept from me as well: the very definition of friendship, as far as I’m concerned.  Without Benny, my time at that job would have been quite different, and possibly much shorter.  He introduced me to Android phones, Cuban food, and e-cigarettes.  He’s traveled with me, eaten with me, and entertained me time and again with stories of his many jobs prior to his software career.  He’s been there when I needed him, and he continues to be available even though he lives on the other side of the continent.  I can easily say I’m a better—and more well-rounded—person for knowing him.




[For this exercise, I also asked my two boys to contribute their thoughts about our hosts.  The eldest gave me the following few paragraphs.  The Smaller Animal provided a few disconnected sentences at the very end, but it was like pulling teeth.  That’s more due to his shy nature than any lack of enthusiasm though.  Basically, he only talks when you’d rather he were quiet.  But I know that he really enjoyed hanging out with Anthony and considers him a new friend.]





Hey, how’s it going.  It’s me, the blog owner’s kid.  He posted my story about a bard one time? remember? no?  Well, good.  That story really kinda sucked.  Totally pulled the ending out of my ass.  Regardless, I’m pretty sure about five people are going to read this: my dad, my mom, Benny, and whoever else reads this blog for fun (the weirdos).  Anyways, enough grilling on my dad’s blog, let’s get to the meat and bones here.

Let me start off by saying: I’m still a minor.  If I walked up to some random 35 year old man, and tried to strike up a conversation, he’d brush me off.  Comparatively, if I walked up to some 14 year old person, and tried to strike up a conversation with them, they’d probably at least tolerate me.  It’s an unfortunate aspect of our society, that we think kids are stupider or less wise or whatever than adults (which is total BS, by the way).  But thankfully, there’s a lot of people who consider that opinion to be the stupidest thing possible.  And I’m friends with people like that.  I’m friends with Benny.

So, I’m guessing my dad is gonna shove this in the middle of his blog post, so I won’t try to explain who Benny is, I’ll just tell you why I like him.  He’s amenable, happy, and actually pretty fun to debate psychology and the future of life and immortality with.  Seriously, we talked about all that.  Again, he’s a fairly old guy with a fully grown daughter with a child of her own.  And he discussed philosophy with me.  Maybe that’s not super impressive to some people, but to me that really speaks to a level of understanding, that just because there’s a huge generation gap between us doesn’t mean we can’t chat and debate and argue.

So, earlier, I said I considered Benny to be my friend, and I can say that with complete sincerity.  Not only for all those reasons up there, but also because he’s an amazingly gracious host.  He accommodated us, even after we showed up at like 5 or 6 in the morning, gave us directions to his house in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, paid for things that he really didn’t need to ... I mean, come on.  Tell me right now you wouldn’t at least talk to the guy.

Anyways, I’ve fulfilled my obligations.  Goodbye, five people reading this, and if you’re among those five people, Benny: hey.  How ya’ doin’?





One thing that I liked about Benny’s house was the cats.  They are like Fred and George, but they have collars ... I can’t remember what their names were, but the one that looked like Fred was named either Tiger or Lion—I think it’s Tiger, actually.  I liked the pool, and I liked how there’s a waterfall at the pool.  I liked the drums that were in the shed place, too. 

I liked playing with Anthony because he’s cool.  He’s fun to play with.  He likes the same stuff I do, I think.  I’d like to go visit him again sometime.





So there you have it.  Thanks again for having us Benny.  And thanks for being such an awesome guy.

Showdown at the Corporate Corral

This week I had one of those moments at work where I realized I was fighting battles on several fronts and I felt like everyone was attacking me.  I hasten to stress that it only felt this way: after taking a few moments to step back and contemplate, I realized that everyone was just trying to get things done in what they thought would be the best, most productive way.  Not that any of us could agree on what the best, most productive way was, of course.  But, the point is, we weren’t in it to try to tear the other person down.  Coming to that realization enabled me to calm down and leap back into the fray with a little more gentility than my initial reaction.  Being able to step back and reassess is a valuable skill, by the way, although one that only came with experience in my case.  But that’s not the main topic I want to explore today.

The primary thing that this incident set me to pondering is why we bother to fight these battles at all.  Hey, we’re getting paid either way, right?  Why not just shut up and do whatever people want, even if you know it’s doomed to failure?  Well, the most altruistic viewpoint on this is that that’s a pretty apathetic stance to take: if you do that, aren’t you really saying you don’t care about the company you work for?  If you cared, you’d want the company to succeed by doing things properly, and not to waste time having to recover from failures.  By taking a stand and fighting for what you believe is right, you’re saying that you love your company and want to save it time (and therefore money) by increasing efficiency and aiming for victory.  Cue patriotic music here.

Now, I’m not saying there’s not an element of that in most of us who find ourselves embroiled in an argument over the “right” way to do something at work.  In my line of work, I think a lot of people really do care about whether their company succeeds or not, and, when they stop bothering to insert themselves into every discussion, it generally means they’ve checked out and they’re just daydreaming about job interviews.  But, let’s face it: enlightened self-interest only gets you so far.  At our cores, we’re generally motivated by things which have a more personal bent—we work to bring ourselves pleasure, and avoid ourselves pain.

My friend and former boss Benny believes that there’s simply a joy in being passionate about something.  That there’s an intellectual thrill in concentrated debate, and that this is how you grow and expand your knowledge.  If you can manage to defend your position with intensity but without dogma, you can either convert others to your point of view, or you can become converted yourself, and that’s a win-win proposition.  Either way someone leaves the conversation more enlightened than when they went in, and that’s a laudable goal.

I think it’s more complex than that, because I think people are more complex.  I’m not saying Benny’s wrong, of course ... just that he’s only right for Benny.  Everyone is going to have slightly different motivations for why they’re holding on to their viewpoints like a starving dog with a bone, and I think it’s worthwhile for each person to figure out why for themselves.  When we understand our own drives and ambitions, we can manage them better, and recognize when they’re about to lead us astray.  Which they do sometimes.

Now, let me take a brief detour here to point out that self-analysis is inherently flawed.  That topic could fill its own blog post, but for now suffice it to say that I firmly believe that when someone starts a sentence with “I’m the sort of person who ...” it’s time to put your skeptical glasses on.  So take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt; I try to do the same myself.

To understand why I can’t seem to help getting embroiled in these work debates, I need to tell you a story, and before I can tell you a story, I need to tell you about my dad.

My father is an interesting man with whom I have a complicated relationship, but we don’t need to go into too many details.  For the purposes of this particular story, what you need to know is that he’s a self-made man.  He went to work in a paper mill as a scalesman, a job that requires no education whatsoever, and worked his way up to being an industrial engineer, a job that typically requires a college degree.  In fact, he often said he was one of only three people in the history of his company to be given the IE title without a degree.  All that I knew about corporate culture in America before I got my own first job as a programmer, I learned from my father.

People share war stories and frustrations with their families, so it should come as no surprise that I knew some of the more egregious sins of middle management before I’d ever experienced them myself.  Here’s one so pervasive it’s almost cliché: the manager asks the employee to do something which the employee knows damn well can’t possibly work.  This situation arises because middle managers don’t actually know anything about how the business works, but they always think they do.  (To be fair, there are exceptions to this rule.  Just very rare exceptions.)  The employees know, because they’re the ones who have to do all the work.  But somehow the managers never seem to want to listen to them.  (I have theories on why this is too, but that will have to wait for another blog post.)  This is the sort of thing Scott Adams and Mike Judge are thankful for, but the rest of us just despise.  From listening to my dad, it seemed like this sort of thing happened all the time.  And, I have to say: my experience in the corporate world doesn’t contradict that impression.

So, how did my father handle these situations?  Very simple.  First, he pointed out why the project was not going to work.  He talked to as many people as possible about it.  If the manager persisted, he would put his objections in writing (memo, email, whatever).  If the manager told him to do it anyway (in writing), he just went ahead and did it.  Then, when the project inevitably failed, my father got to say “I told you so” ... with supporting documentation, even.

Now you have enough background to hear the story of the first time this ever happened to me.  I hadn’t been working at my first corporate job for even a year yet.  I tried to talk my boss out of the disastrous plan, then I put it all in writing (trying not to be a dick about it), then I went ahead and did it.  When it failed, I went to him with email in hand and said “I told you so.”  I don’t remember the exact words, but basically my boss looked at me and said, “Yeah, you were right.  Now go fix it.”

And this is when I discovered that the “satisfaction” of saying “I told you so” is vastly overrated.  Perhaps for my dad it’s enough to sustain him.  But, for me, it pales in comparison to the teeth-grinding frustration of having to do the work twice when you knew goddamn well it wasn’t going to work the first time.  In the years since then, I’ve developed an almost pathological aversion to doing things I know are going to fail.  Which brings us full circle to those heated arguments at work.

Look, I try to pick my battles.  If I feel like you have more knowledge or (more importantly) more experience than I do on a given topic, I try not to put up too much of a fight even if I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.  And of course one has to be congnizant that, if you go up against someone who’s already volunteered to do some quantity of work and you actually do manage to convince everyone that they’re going to do it the wrong way, it’s almost certain you’re going to be volunteered to do it “right.”  Which is not always desireable, either from the time aspect or the responsibility aspect.  But, if we’re talking about something I have experience with, and we’re talking about going down a road that I’ve been down before, and if I know damn well that when my team or my company did it this way last time (or the last two times, or the last three times) it was an abysmal failure ... well, then, I’m going to be practically psychotic in my opposition to that plan.  It’s partially because I want to save the company money and time, sure, and it’s partially because I want what’s best and most efficient and most productive for the team and for the business, no doubt, but, if I’m being honest, it’s probably mostly because I just hate to make the same mistake twice, and I positively despise making it thrice.  I don’t even like to watch people doing work I know is doomed to failure.  Makes me feel dirty.  Like watching a car accident unfold when you know you could do something about it but are afraid to get involved.  I feel like a bad person for letting it happen.

Although ... it seems to me like the fact that my motives may not be pure does not preclude them being a benefit to others.  I hope that people will take my passion—as annoying and frustrating as it may be sometimes—for the advantage it can be, and use it to its fullest.  Don’t look my gift anger in the mouth.  Just because my intentions are somewhat selfish doesn’t mean they can’t save you some heartache down the line.  And that’s worth a little ranting ... isn’t it?

a brief intermission

Rather lame for me to skip a regular post two weeks in a row, but I had a pretty important project at work to polish off before Monday, so I haven’t had as much time this weekend as I’d like.  And, as the hour grows later, I find it less and less likely that I’m going to come up with anything approaching a reasonable number of words for this week’s post.  So I think I’ll just wait until next week when I have a reasonable chance of coming up with something worth reading.

Tune in then.  Unless you’ve got something better to do.

Nothing to Say Again ... Yet Again

I can’t think of anything to write about this week.

Well, actually, I thought of several things to write about, but all of them seemed like they’d be more work than fun, and, if I spend several hours writing something that I don’t enjoy writing, you’re not going to enjoy reading it either.  Trust me on that one.  Maybe next week I can get my thoughts more organized and actually complete one of the several ideas I have in my “topics” file.

So, this is the third time I’ve written a post like this, and I seem to have started a tradition of using these posts as a retrospective on the blog itself.  And far be it from me to dismiss tradition, even one that I invented myself, mostly accidentally.

So, my handy dandy blogger.com control panel tells me I have 219 posts.  Checking how many of them are “interstitial” (that is, posts which mostly say that I’m not going to do a full post), I see 79, although some of those are more substantial than others (such as the very first “nothing to say” post), and of course 34 of them are posts over on my Other Blog.  Counting the Perl posts but discounting the remainder of the interstitials, that would leave us with 174 posts, which average around 1,500 words each.  At least, 1,500 is what I generally shoot for.  Why, you ask?  Well, I suppose it’s because I wrote my very first post, then went back and counted how many words it was, and it was 1,536, and I said to myself: that sounds about right.  Of course sometimes I fall short, and the post is only around 1,200, or even, very rarely, between 800 and 900.  But, then again, sometimes I manage to crank out 2,000-word monsters, so it probably all balances out.  If we figure 1,500 words as an average, that would be 261,000 words, which is pretty overwhelming.  If I just do a raw count of words in all the files in my blog folder (which not only includes several half-finished posts that haven’t been published yet, but also counts words in quotes and links and other things which I typically exclude in my personal word count, and would also count the interstitials), I get 250,001, plus the chapters of my novel (in a whole separate folder) adds another 56,687 words, for a total of 306,688.  (Also, it might be that there are some posts which aren’t in the directory: the very first post wasn’t in there, as it happens, although I downloaded it so I could count it just now.  But there might be others missing as well.)

Either way, somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million words doesn’t seem an unreasonable guess.  That’s a lot of words for you not to read.  I do continue to remind you not to read this blog, as if the title weren’t sufficient.  Occasionally I post links to this blog, especially on my other blog, when I don’t want to repeat myself and I’ve already expounded on a topic plenty.  Inevitably, this leads to someone’s smartass comment: “I went to the link you provided, but it said not to read it, so I didn’t.”  Oh ho ho.  Perhaps it actually does bear saying explicitly: I don’t particularly need you to remind me of the name of this blog.  I’m the one who named it.  If you’re confused about the name, please go back and read the first post, or even go back and peruse the first ”nothing to say” post, which contains some interesting meanderings about the nature of paradox and its application to a blog which I continue to write weekly at the same time I exhort the public not to read it.  Go on and read (or reread) those; I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.  Let’s move on then.

The name is really more of a warning that you have to make a conscious choice to read a post here, despite warnings to the contrary.  Perhaps a more realistic name would have been ”Warning: Management assumes no responsibility for any time wasted while perusing the content herein.  By continuing to read, you assume all responsibility for any crappy opinions you may encounter, any statements that may cause you to be enraged and/or disgusted, and/or any words that might be considered ‘bad’ by more sensitive readers.  The reader proceeds at his or her own risk.”  But, you know ... “Do Not Read This Blog!” just seemed shorter.

So I keep on writing and telling you not to read, and that’s unlikely to change.  After a quarter million words, why stop now?  I seem to have a winning formula going.  Plus, I’m starting to enjoy it.  At least a little.  Theoretically, you do too ... else why keep reading?  I doubt anyone is assigning you my blog posts as homework, so you’ve exercised your freedom of choice to read this far.  Said freedom of choice may realistically be better exercised elsewhere, if you ask me, but you’re a big boy or girl and don’t need my permission nor my advice.  In fact, you’re sort of ignoring my opinion to read all about my opinions on various topics.  And, at the end of the day, that’s the real reason this blog is named “do not read.”  Because, that way, if you ignore me and read it anyway, you’re forced to confront the fact that you can’t possibly listen to anything I have to say without simulataneously ignoring something I have to say.  It’s a great reminder that you should take crap you read on other people’s blogs with large quantities of sodium chloride.  And it makes you confront the paradoxes inherent in life by making you live one.  And you know how I feel about paradox.

So keep reading, if you must.  I’ll keep writing.  Except when I don’t.  It’s a crazy ol’ world we live in, but it’s the only one we’ve got.  May as well make the most of it.

Perl blog post #35

Today I waxed somewhat rhapsodic about a Perl-related Kickstarter project, over on the Other Blog.  There’s very little technical mumbo-jumbo, so feel free to pop over even if you’re not a fellow technogeek.  It’s mostly about the interesting choices that Kickstarter gives us techies sometimes.

A Reflection on Self-Contradiction

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. [Emerson]

No doubt you’ve heard this quote before, although some people seem to miss the “foolish” part.  Emerson isn’t bagging on consistency here.  What he’s talking about is dogma: getting stuck on an idea and refusing to let go, even in the face of contradictory evidence.  Perhaps it would help to look at the context of the quote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.  Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.  To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (1841)

What Emerson is advising is to admit when you’re wrong.  To embrace change, even in your own mind, and to refuse to look back and second-guess yourself.  To be completely comfortable with contradicting yourself.

I especially love how he says that a foolish consistency is “adored by little statesmen.”  If you follow politics even casually (which is about all I can stand to follow it, myself), you know that if a politician today dares to change their mind, their opponents will leap on them instantaneously.  “Flip-flopper!” is the typical epithet.  Refusal to compromise one’s principles has become a virtue, although refusal to compromise should probably not be a virtue in politics no matter what exactly one is refusing to compromise.  But, if we look back to Emerson, we see that those who do not “flip-flop” are employing a foolish consistency, which then speaks volumes about the volume of their brainpower.

Of course, the smart guys aren’t typically the ones we elect.  Adlai Stevenson is a great example.  He’s famous for two things: being intelligent, articulate and erudite, and failing to get elected to the presidency despite trying 3 times in a row.  Stevenson once said to reporters:

Isn’t it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor two opposing ideas in his mind?

Stevenson here goes a bit beyond Emerson, who talked about believing something today that was the opposite of what you believed yesterday.  Stevenson takes the next step and is perfectly willing to believe two opposite things at the same time.  For a Baladocian such as myself, this is an attractive proposition.

Of course, we needn’t limit ourselves to politicians—poets have weighed in as well.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” (51)

In just a few words, Whitman takes aim at why we contradict ourselves, and why it’s perfectly acceptable to do so.  The landscape of the human mind is vast, Whitman says.  Just as one vista may contain both mountains and canyons, both ocean and desert, so too does a person contain many ideas which are antithetical to each other.  This often leads us to feel conflicted.  We should not.  We should embrace the paradoxes in our nature.  Stephen Fry (who is neither a politician nor a poet, but easily as eloquent as either) puts it thus:

So we have first and foremost to grow up and recognise that to be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions.  I want this, but need that.  I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.  I’m maddened by this institution yet I prize it above all others.

— Stephen Fry, BAFTA speech, 2010

Oscar Wilde (once portrayed by Stephen Fry, perhaps not coincidentally) was, as usual, more succinct:

The well bred contradict other people.  The wise contradict themselves.

And now we’ve progressed from self-contradiction being acceptable, through it being something to embrace, and ended up with it being a sign of wisdom.  Sort of makes you want to start contradicting yourself right away.

Or maybe not.

At the bottom, I think all of these great speakers were saying something about the human condition.  Which is perhaps all that any writer—whether of essays, plays, poems, speeches, or merely witticisms—wants to do.  You can write things that sound pretty, but unless there is some Truth in it, it won’t have much lasting impact.  We all search for insight, both internally and externally, and the thing we most wish to be revealed is ourselves.  It’s difficult to understand ourselves from within ourselves, just as the classic fishbowl analogy teaches us.  Those folks outside the fishbowl have a much different perspective than those of us for whom 115.5 cubic inches of water are our entire world.  So we want those people who have the ability to express themselves with some flair to express something about ourselves that we can’t see from inside.

Of course, we also hate to be criticized, for other people to point out our flaws.  Yet I think we crave it at the same time.  Just another example of our inherent tendency toward self-contradiction.

I know personally that I hate to be wrong.  Sometimes I’m accused of hating to admit that I’m wrong.  But that’s not the same thing at all, and I don’t believe I have the latter problem.  To work hard not to be wrong—to attempt to forge the future in such a way as to be as good and right as you can manage—is admirable.  To refuse to admit you’re wrong—to deny the immutable past in which everyone already recognizes your folly—is just self-delusional.  So is it self-contradictory to work overtime to prevent the future mistake, while simultaneously being completely comfortable with those in the past?  Perhaps.  If so, I don’t particularly care.  I’ve been wrong many times in the past, and I know I’ll be wrong many more times in the future.  That doesn’t mean I have to accept it meekly.

Willingness to accept your mistakes is also part of being human.  To consult one last great orator:

I am human, and I make mistakes.  Therefore my commitment must be to truth and not to consistency.

— Gandhi

Mohandas K.Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.  The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.

— a Detroit News editorial

Indeed.  This week, I’m ever so much smarter than I was last week.  Last week I was a moron.  By next week, I shall be a genius.  I’ll be different, but I’ll still be me.  Misunderstood, multitudinous, opposing, conflicted, occasionally wise, always human.

Perl blog post #34

For the past week and a half or so, I’ve been in Orlando with the Larger Animal and the Smaller Animal.  Last Sunday in particular, I was exploring The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, so I missed a blog post for the first time in quite a while.  Sorry about that.

Part of the reason I was in Orlando was to attend this year’s YAPC, which you can read about over on the Other Blog.  I also spent some time with an old friend who lives about an hour and half to two hours north of Orlando, in the Silver Springs area.  Silver Springs is where you can take a glass-bottomed boat ride, which my grandparents took me on a few times as a child, so that was particularly awesome getting to share that with my children.  (If I know you personally, I’ve probably sent you a link to the many many pics I took while I was there.  I’ve just added the final pic and tweaked everything to perfection, but Dropbox apparently hates me at the moment.  It may take a couple of days before the final pics are there.  If you know me personally and I haven’t sent you the link, feel free to email me and ask.)

Traveling this year was particularly hideous, although much better on the way back than the way out.  Almost makes me want to stay home next year.  But I probably shan’t.

Anyway, read all about the conference if you like.  If you don’t like, you’ll have to wait until next week for further excitement here.

Perl blog post #33

 Well, it’s almost time for another YAPC, so I’m firing up the tech talk on my Other Blog.  Pop over if you’d like to see me solve a little mini-mystery in Perl.  I’ll likely be doing tech topics for the next couple of weeks, assuming I survive a week in Orlando with my elder two children.  Wish me luck!

Chapter 19 (concluded)

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Johnny looked desperately back at the fins.  There had to be something he could do ... something with his new abilities, perhaps?  But, so far, every use of them had involved being in contact with something, or sensing something far away.  He didn’t see how any of that could apply in this situation.

Suddenly he had a brainstorm.  He dashed back into the stacks and located Roger’s crossbow.  Then he sprinted up the ladder to the flying deck, barely using his hands at all.  He fumbled for the cabinet where Roger kept the flammable items and pulled out one of the bottle-looking flares.  Slamming the crossbow down on the deck, he put both feet on the brace and yanked hard on the cable.  It only clicked once, but this was a short distance shot, so that should be enough.  He loaded the bottle and shot almost immediately—Roger had taught him not to overthink his aim and just trust his instincts.  The shot was true, and the flare entered the water just behind the lobster woman ... just in front of the shark and marlin.  Almost immediately the green and red lights blossomed, under the water.  The marlin-headed scala immediately surfaced and began flailing about; Johnny thought she might be temporarily blinded.  The shark’s fin, however, cut cleanly through the underwater fireworks and continued straight on to the racing swimmers.

The head of the demonic mermaids’ leader burst out of the water just aft of the lobster scala’s tail.  Her teeth snapped together thrice; the sound reminded Johnny of hearing bear traps snap shut on televison.  The lobster woman screeched an alien gabble and increased her speed.  The shark scala breached and dove; the brown fin sunk cleanly into the depths.  The “inspirational” message to her companion had cost her some momentum though; Johnny could see she’d have to work hard to catch back up.  He took the opportunity to slide down the ladder to the deck railing again.

His mind raced.  He could take over the wheel from Bones, perhaps steer the ship into the lobster woman.  But he couldn’t really see from back there, and the great craft was hardly a precision instrument.  He’d be just as likely to hit Roger.  “Can you make it rain, or snow, or something?” he asked Aidan desperately.

Aidan kept his eyes on the race.  “I could do better than that: I can make the water around our lobster friend cling to her so she can’t escape it.  The problem is, by the time I can do that, she’s well into a whole different patch of water.  I could do it ahead of them, but then how do I keep it from affecting the good captain as well?  No, Johnny, I’ve made her slick, and I stopped the octopus lady throwing her stones, and I held the lampfish one up long enough to take her out of it.  But unless their leader gives me an opening to interfere with her as well, I’m likely to be of little further use in this contest.”

Johnny looked toward the far shore—it was actually the nearer shore by this time, as the race was well past its halfway point.  Roger was still flying through the water at a speed that beggared belief, but the lobster creature was gaining.  Slowly, almost impercetibly, but gaining.  It seemed likely that it would catch her before they reached the race’s end.

Then the shark scala rose out of the water like something in a horror movie, directly in Roger’s path.  Teeth flashed and arms with long hands and twisted fingers reached for her.  Without slowing whatsoever, Roger turned her crawl into a sidestroke.  One hand flicked out, almost like a caress, and touched the shark woman’s cheek; thick black blood began to spurt instantly.  The shark’s head lunged at her nonetheless, but Roger was already halfway past it.  She kicked at the scala hard, again using it to propel herself forward.  With an unholy screech, the shark crashed into the lobster.

After that, the race became pleasantly boring.




At the finish line, Roger stood in ankle-deep water, bent over with her hands on her knees, dripping and panting.  The scalae were a few feet offshore, in deeper water, their terrifying marine eyes promising a slow grisly death if the opportunity ever presented itself.  Johnny sincerely hoped the opportunity did not.

Finally Roger regained her breath and stood up.  She was still naked, still unconcerned.  “A fair contest!” she called to the mermaids.

There was much grunting and squalling, but the shark waved her hand and they fell silent.  “You cut me,” she said in an inflectionless tone.

“Aye,” Roger agreed amiably.  “No rule against that.  No rules against anything, for that matter.  And I just nicked ye a bit.  Ye’ll survive, I wager.”  She stared a challenge back at the leader.  “A fair contest,” she repeated.  It wasn’t a question, but still she seemed to be expecting an answer.

The silence stretched.  The shark woman ground her hideous teeth.  Finally, she spoke.  “A fair contest.”

Roger and Aidan let out identical exhalations of relief.  “Was there some doubt about that?” Johnny asked under his breath.

Aidan answered likewise, in a half-whisper.  “No doubt about the reality,” he breathed.  “But the perception of a losing party is always an open question.”  Johnny nodded.

Roger shaded her eyes with one hand.  “Our opener then?”

The scalae pushed someone forward.  It was the blue-skinned boy (or boy-like creature) who had brought the starter shell.  He reluctantly trudged through the water to the shore.

His skin was a medium shade of aquamarine.  The dark, slicked back hair was almost a helmet; it was short, cut high above the odd earfins, with just the hint of a widow’s peak in the front over a high forehead.  The eyes were a pale, watery blue, the nose looked lumpy and squashed, the mouth was small, and the chin weak.  The black fins where ears should be opened and closed as if they might be gills instead of hearing apparatus.  Both hands and feet (which were bare) were webbed.  He had on a simple jacket and pants, black, trimmed with narrow yellow stripes.  The jacket hung open in the front, exposing a tight, thin shirt which appeared to be just a shade bluer than his skin.  The wireframe glasses and a habit of drywashing his hands gave him a prissy air, as if he were an accountant or librarian, and, when he spoke, his voice was vaguely reminiscent of old Droopy Dog cartoons.  And yet he reminded Johnny of a nerdy teenager more than a dusty old man, for some reason he could not put a finger on.

He splashed up to Roger and sighed loudly.  “Captain?” he asked.

“Aye,” she replied, her eyes sparkling.  “Opener?”

He sniffed.  “Welly Banks, ma’am.  At your service.”


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What is this?

Chapter 19 (continued)

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The starting and ending points had been chosen, and they were simply opposite sides of the lagoon within the lagoon.  If the inner lagoon had been a clock with 12 at the point where it flowed into the bigger body of water, the race would have been from roughly 4 o’clock to 10.  The shore here apparently dropped off precipitously just after entering the water, so there were only a few feet of sandy shelf for Roger to stand on.  The lobster-headed scala, of course, could not stand; she lay on her side in the thigh-high water, her irridescent blue-green shell curled up under her belly.  Johnny could see what seemed like a billion little legs on the underside of the tail, wriggling tirelessly and making tiny whirlpools.

Roger raised her head, still completely unabashed by her nudity, and looked each of them in the eye.  “Remember, lads and lassie, ye may do anything in yer ken to aid me.  Anything.  Ketch?”  Johnny and Aidan nodded.  Larissa just stared back with her overlarge, liquid eyes.  Aidan whispered something under his breath and Bones flew off to the stern.

The shark scala was a few feet away, in deeper water, on the opposite side of the racing lane from The Sylph.  She said nothing, but the look she gave the lobster woman promised dire consequences if she did not perform.  The other scalas (or scalae) bobbed up and down behind her, making various tortured noises that Johnny supposed must be meant to be encouraging.

Roger called over to the shark woman.  “Ho there!  You have a starter?”

The shark mouth opened, the teeth still fearsome even after continued exposure to them, and a weird gutteral cry came from its throat.  After perhaps half a minute, with the echoes of the call just starting to fade away, a blue face surfaced beside her.  This head was almost entirely human-looking except for its odd hue and the fact that it seemed to have black fin-like appendages where its ears should be.  The hair was black and slicked back, and an incongruous pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat upon a bulbous nose, their frames curled around the earfins.  This new creature raised an arm, showing that he was wearing a black shirt with yellow-striped cuffs, and extended a blue hand with webbed fingers to the shark woman.  In it was what appeared to be large snail shell.

She took the shell and threw it at Aidan, hard.  The blue-skinned boy—for some reason, he reminded Johnny of a pimpled teenager—started to turn away, but the leader of the hellish mermaids put a leathery hand on his shoulder and held him there.

Johnny glanced over at Aidan, who was examing the shell.  He held it out over the water, palm upturned, and closed his eyes.  His lips moved, but Johnny could not make out any chanting.  After a few seconds he opened his eyes and nodded at Roger.  She nodded back and rolled her shoulders while working her neck back and forth.  Johnny could hear the kinks popping out as she tossed her head.  Then she bent one knee and threw the other leg as far back as she could, reaching her hands out as though she meant to dive.  When she was utterly still, Aidan tossed the snail shell onto the shelf between Roger and her opponent.

The water was crystal clear, so Johnny could see the shell settle onto the sand.  He could see the lobter woman stretch her arms out like Roger’s and tense her tail.  He could see that the toes on Roger’s forward foot were curled firmly into the sand.  Roger and the lobster creature were both staring intently at the shell.  As they all watched, it began to jiggle.  Suddenly, the horns of the snail inside the shell popped out.

Then a lot of things happened at once.

Roger’s leg straightened like an uncoiling spring and she shot up into the air, but more forward than up.  The lobster woman flung her tail out straight behind her.  The engine of the The Sylph sprang to life, and it also started to move.  Roger hit the water in a smooth dive, but the lobster woman was suddenly on her back.  It tried to grab her and pull her back, or perhaps it meant to pull her down and drown her, but Roger was slick.  Neither the hard-shelled arms nor the dozens of tiny feet could hold on to her, and Roger shot out of the scala’s grasp and added insult to injury by pushing off its head with her trailing foot.  Now Roger was a pace ahead and gaining, as the lobster woman twisted her body around to pursue.

Meanwhile, The Sylph was keeping pace with Roger.  Still trying to recover from the violent start, Johnny looked around wildly.  “What can we do?” he asked Aidan over the roar of the fan.  And then, without waiting for an answer, “and who’s driving the damn boat?!”

The corners of Aidan’s mouth turned up slightly, but Johnny couldn’t really call it a smile.  “Bones,” he answered.  “And I’m trying to find something to do.  Unfortunately, my abilities are limited at this speed.  She can move even faster than I expected ...”

Johnny was still trying to process the first answer.  “Bones is driving??  He can’t drive!”

Aidan waved distractedly.  “As long as we’re just going in a straight line he should be fine.”  Still staring down into The Sylph’s wake, he slammed a fist down on the railing.  “Damn!  I can’t reach anything bigger than a pinkeen in this water.  The scalae have scared everything off.”

Johnny blinked.  “What’s a ... ?”

“Minnow,” Larissa supplied softly from his other side.

A loud screech-squawk came out of the brass speaker in the bow at the same time as a huge splash sent ripples against the side of the airboat.  “What the hell was ...” Johnny began, but in the next instant his question was answered when a second boulder the size of his head hit the water, this one much closer to Roger.  He looked back to where they’d left the scalae by the shore, but the only one visible was the octopus one, whose tentacles were wrapped around more rocks.  She was perfecting her aim now, and the third projectile looked sure to cave in Roger’s head.  Johnny heard Larissa hiss between her teeth, like a teakettle coming to boil, and just at that moment the moray woman surfaced from underneath Roger, her teeth flashing in the sourceless light.  Roger rolled smoothly onto her back, and the rock took the moray creature in the shoulder instead.  Roger kept rolling until she was back on her stomach without missing a stroke.  Still, the diversion had cost her: the lobster woman had halved the distance between them.

There was an unholy screeching noise from the direction of the shoreline, and Johnny glanced back to see the octopus scala covered in pinching crabs.  Aidan grunted in satisfaction.

But the shark fin and the marlin fin now crested the waterline, not far behind the lobster and gaining steadily.  “Good thing she didn’t challenge one of them,” Johnny mumbled.

“Choosing their slowest swimmer does have some downsides,” was Aidan’s sardonic reply.

“Wait, where’s the other one?”  Johnny had suddenly remembered the angler fish mermaid.

Aidan’s voice was strained.  “She went too deep.  I’ve got her.”  His knuckles tightened on the railing.  “Although I won’t be able to hold her long.  But, at this speed, I think she’s out of it now in any event.”


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What is this?

Another reading week

Well, it’s another reading week for me, as I make yet another attempt to get back into my book.  Of course, the last time I had a reading week was nearly two years ago at this point, and it resulted in not a single further installment of the sputtering novel.  But, then again, I’ve had a fairly crappy year—starting from when I came back from sabbatical, really—and it’s only been recently that it’s shown any hope of getting better.  So that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.  Still, my characters—Johnny Hellebore and Larissa, primarily—have never been far from the front of my mind, and I finally feel like it may be time to restart the cranky engine of fiction production.  I can’t promise you a new installment next week, of course, but you may see something.  If nothing else, I’m finding and fixing typos, poor word choices, mixed tenses, etc.  I haven’t reuploaded the corrections yet, but the master document is updated through long about the beginning of “chapter” 11.  (I put “chapter” in quotes because the divisions in the story don’t really correspond to the “chapters” I’ve come up with for the blog.  So I have no idea if these chapters are anything even approaching reality or not.)

Anyway, I have nothing new for you this week.  Please feel free to reread the beginning of the book, if you like (start here).  Or read for the first time, if you didn’t read it the first time.  It’s mildly entertaining, if I do say so myself.

And Now for Something Completely Different ...

Alas, I’ve had no time to do a proper post.  I’ve spent a bit of time exploring doing an improper post, but all those plans seem to have fallen through as well.  As a last resort attempt to come up with some actual content as opposed to just a lame excuse, let’s play a game of Last Two.  (I totally made this up, by the way, in case you were wondering why you’d never heard of it before.)

Last two movies I watched: Dallas Buyers Club and RED 2.  Both decent.  Nothing to write home about.

Last two audiobooks I listened to: Currently listening to A Game of Thrones, read by Roy Dotrice, which I’ve previously read in paperback.  I also read A Clash of Kings, but had stopped there because I didn’t want to read too far ahead of the series.  Now I’m trying to get through the first 3 or maybe 4 on audiobook.  Last thing I finished was The Dying Earth, read by Arthur Morey.  It’s one of the few books credited with helping to inspire D&D that I’ve never actually read, so I thought I should probably remedy that, finally.  Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with it.

Last two physical books I read: Well, I’m currently rereading (for at least the third time) Lord Foul’s Bane, because my kid chose it to do a book report on (weirdly).  It’s a bit more pretentious than I remembered, but also more influential: I had never realized just how much Loial from Wheel of Time is a reflection of Saltheart Foamfollower.  Before that ... well, it’s been a while since I had the opportunity to turn actual pages.  Probably my latest reread of the Reign in Hell graphic novel.

Last two televison shows I watched: Hannibal and Penny Dreadful.  Hannibal I’m still enjoying, for the most part, although I thought this season has been straining credulity on Will Graham’s character; also, the number of scenes stolen from the books to jam into this series, which is supposed to be a prequel, is getting disturbing.  I mean, what are they going to do when they get to those points in the actual story?  Maybe they think they’ll never get that far.  But, they keep killing off people they’re going to need later, so I’m not sure how it’s all supposed to work out.  Penny Dreadful is new, of course (this was only the second episode), but I’m digging it so far.  I was concerned it would come off as too much of a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen rip-off, which there certainly are aspects of (but our African explorer is played by a totally different James Bond!), but it’s a very different vibe, and so far I’m intrigued.  We’ll see if it can hold up.

Last two restaurant meals I ate: Let’s see ... Friday we ordered Chinese from Golden Tiger, which is our go-to Chinese place, because it’s one of the few places we can find East-Coast-style chow mein here in California.  Before that ... I suppose Tuesday lunch with co-workers at Vito.

Last two things I bought at the grocery store: Well, I went to Trader Joe’s on Friday and bought a whole bunch of crap.  The last two thing I put in my cart were probably plantain chips and a 5lb bag of seedless mandarins.

Last two albums I bought: My One and Only Thrill by Melody Gardot and Keep it Going by the Mad Caddies.  Both recommended.

Last two times I took the kids outside: Just today we spent quite a while in the backyard playing in or near the pool.  The pool is still a bit cold, although it’s starting to get hot enough around here that the smaller two at least will brave it (at least for short periods).  But mainly it’s just shooting each other with pool water from squirt guns and throwing pool toys like diving rings at each other and stuff like that.  Before that, hmmm ... well, we all went out thrift shop shopping on Mother’s Day last week.  The Smaller Animal found a pair of goggles and the littlest one found two stuffed animals for like a buck.

Last two meals I cooked: Well, the word “cooked” seems to preclude making a salad, which I do quite often, so it’s probably going to have to be my scrambled omelette.  That is, it’s sort of like an omelette except that I scramble it.  I use trinity and what we generally call “pizza cheese”.  I made some this morning and probably yesterday too.  Once I cut up all the veggies, I usually make it over and over again until they’re gone.

Last two non-work programs I worked on: Just today I was trying to write a script to take a playlist and automaticaly look up the Amazon URLs for those tracks.  This would make it easier to post playlists like I did last week; I make lots of playlists for myself and I would be happy to share them with you.  But Amazon failed me by not having one or two tracks that I was looking for, and YouTube never has all of them, annoyingly.  You’d think by this point we’d have a better situation for sharing music over the Internet.  But whatever.  Yesterday I worked on the help system for my VCtools program, which we use at work, but I still develop on my own time.

Last two web pages I looked at: Uhhh ... before I started this post, you mean?  I guess Amazon and MetaCPAN, according to my browser history.

Last two animals I saw in real life: Um ... well ... I can see two of our cats from here.  Also two of my children, which are pretty close to being animals.

Last two messes I had to clean up: I have a kid who’s potty training.  You really don’t want to know.

Last two multi-syllabic words I spoke to another adult: Okay, now we’re just being silly.

So that’s what I’ve been up to.  Hope your day/week/month is just as exciting.

Mother's Day Mix

For Mother’s Day this year, we decided to give The Mother a handmade gift.  This traditionally carries connotations of cards made of construction paper or plaques made of macaroni.  But, hey: we live in the digital age, right?  We can do something more exciting than that.

Accordingly, my eldest and I put together a playlist for The Mother.  Now, you might think this is a pretty trivial thing to do, but it’s a bit more work than you might imagine.  First, you have to come up with a list of songs.  For this mix, we wanted songs that The Mother would enjoy, of course, but it needed to be more than just that.  We were looking for happy songs.  Songs that perk you up and lift your spirits.  When coming up with a mix, one of the best ways to start is to find one sing that epitomizes the mood you want and then build around that.  For this mix, the Larger Animal suggested a centerpiece of “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, which you probably know better by its chorus:

Don’t worry about a thing,
‘Cause every little thing
Gonna be all right.

So now you have a theme.  Next, you have to come up with 15 to 20 other songs to go with it.  Better to come up with too many and then you can whittle it down.  You’re looking for songs that fit the theme, but also provide some variety.  It’s okay to have an artist or two repeated, but don’t overload with too much from one band.  In fact, I don’t like to overrepresent any one genre, or even decade.

Once you’ve figured out which songs you want, now you have to go find them.  Some of them you probably have digitally already.  If you’re like us, some of them you have on CD, but you’ve never gotten around to burning them.  Which means you have actually find said CDs.  And some of them you may not have at all, which means you have to go buy them.  Happily, that’s pretty easy to do without ever getting off the couch these days, unless you’re looking for something really obscure (we weren’t).

Finally, you have to put them all in order.  Many people don’t bother at all with this step.  They just throw everything in a pot randomly.  But this is foolish.  Songs need to transition from one to the other.  If you have multiple songs from one or more artists, you need to spread them out.  There’s no use in having a variety if you’re going to put all the fast songs in a row followed by all the slow songs.  To get it right, you’ve got to experiment, which means listening to all the songs, or at least pieces of them, and that takes time.

And, of course, once you get all that done, you have to burn it to a CD.  Preferably with a decent burning program, one which has volume normalization and can write the track info and an album title.  Nothing beats having your giftee stick the CD into the car radio and having it announce “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Anyhow, for those interested, here’s the playlist we came up with.  It’s only 3 seconds shy of 70 minutes, which is all a typical blank CD can hold.  So I think I’m not exaggerating when I say this mix is chock full o’ goodness.

Links go to Amazon in case you’d like to purchase them for yourself.

• Bobby McFerrin - Don’t Worry, Be Happy
• Sheryl Crow - All I Wanna Do
• Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want to Have Fun
• Queen - You’re My Best Friend
• The Turtles - Happy Together
• Katrina & the Waves - Walking on Sunshine
• B-52’s - Love Shack
• emmet swimming - Sunblock
• Smash Mouth - Let’s Rock
• Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
• Pharrell Williams - Happy
• Feist - 1234
• Sheryl Crow - Soak up the Sun
• No Doubt - Just a Girl
• P!nk - Get The Party Started
• Lou Bega - Baby Keep Smiling
• Modern English - I Melt with You
• Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Here’s hoping you had the opportunity to do something nice for your mother today.

Camel Children

You never truly know how long your children can hold their breath until you tell them they can have “just one swallow” of your drink.

In the pool, when you’re trying to convince them that going underwater isn’t going to kill them, anything over 5 seconds is a major accomplishment, to be praised incessantly and talked about for days afterward.  But when they get hold of your straw, they can go 3 or 4 minutes, easy.  When they finally release it, there’s a great gasping intake of air—their lungs are practically bursting with the effort.  Sometimes they look a little blue.  It takes them several whole breaths to recover so they can dive back in for another try at the world record.

In our house, we refer to small humans who do this as “camel children.”  For some reason, all three of our kids have this trait.  It can become disconcerting to take two sips out of your drink and then realize you need a refill.  But after a while you get used to it.  And you yell a lot.  It’s a bit like a bad comedy skit, actually.

“Hey, put that back!”
“No, wait, don’t actually spit it back into the ... no, never mind.  Drink all you want.  I’ll just get another cup.”

My dad always had a bit of germophobia when it came to my brother and I drinking out of his glass.  Not that we wanted to very often—he always drank tea, which we thought was disgusting.  Not as disgusting as coffee, of course, but close.  Oddly, tea (and water) is pretty much all I drink these days.  Although I will admit to spiking my tea with fruit juice.  Keeps it from getting boring and it’s better for me than sugar.  Probably.  Anyways, straight fruit juice is too sweet (and expensive) to drink with any regularity, and straight tea is too strong to drink without sweetener and too close to water to drink at mealtimes, for me.  I drink water all day long, but, at meals, I need something with a bit more character.  Tea is better than water for this purpose, but not by much.  So, combine the two, and voilà.

Anyway, I never understood the whole germophobia thing, at least not from a parental point of view.  When you first bring home that first child, all scrubbed and pink and perfect, you probably have visions of everyone washing their hands before they touch the baby, regular bleaching of all the nursery toys, and compulsive disinfection of all surfaces your baby might ever touch, or, worse yet, lick.  By the time you get to child three (and usually long before), you’re happy if you can just keep the Windex and Pine-Sol out of their mouths.  They drool and spit everywhere.  They get sick and bodily fluids spew out of nearly every orifice.  They pee on the floor when you’re trying to potty train them.  And they poop: regularly, spectacularly, at inconvenient times, in inconvenient places, and in every possible color and consistency you can imagine (and some you can’t).  My daughter pooped four times a day for months.  Wash your hands before you touch them?  Yeah, right.

So I’ve never quite been able to grasp how you can maintain any fear of germs as a parent.  Your entire life is germs when you’re a parent.  The most you can hope for is that, every once in a while, your partner is willing to deal with the germs every once in a while, long enough for you maybe grab a bite to eat between poops.  Drinking out of your glass?  Man, I got over that one a long time ago.

So it’s not any fear of germs I have when my children come for my beverages.  It’s mainly the inconvenience.  Having to get back up and refill my glass or cup constantly.  ‘Cause, you know: they can drink it, but refill it?  Suddenly they’re magically incapable of operating the cup.

“I can’t get the lid off!”
“Oh bring it back here and I’ll do it.  And don’t forget to put the ice in first this time, okay??  And don’t spill it!”

Yes, only your oh-so-clever children are capable of spilling an empty glass.  They’ve drained it completely dry, yet somehow they can still find at least a few last drops to dribble on the carpet.  It’s okay if they have to turn the glass completely upside-down in order to do this.  They’re industrious that way.

This is part of the reason I use a cup with a lid on it.  A Starbucks cup is one of the best, but most anything that is difficult to break, difficult to spill, and gigantic will do.  For many years, I would use super-size drink cups from McDonald’s.  You know how hard it is to convince McDonald’s to give you a super-size drink cup with water in it?  It completely blows their minds.  When you ask for water at McDonald’s, they want to give you a container of water roughly the size of a Dixie cup.  That’s all they’re willing to give you for free.  Of course, nowadays, they’ll sell you bottled water, because the brilliant marketing people at the bottled water companies have managed to convince everyone that their own tap water is so disgusting that they really need to pay to drink somebody else’s tap water.  But that’s another rant.  The point being, back in the days when I used to go to McDonald’s, I would spend quite a bit of time negotiating for a super-size cup with water in it.

“And I want a super-size drink with that.”
“What kind?”
“Water.”
[On the little computer screen they have at the drive-through in an attempt to subvert the apppropriate Joe Pesci meme, the following line appears:]
1 Bottled Water: $1.50.
“No, not a bottle of water, a cup.”
[The line on the screen changes:]
1 Courtesy Cup: $0.00.
“No, a super-size cup.  Like I said.”
“Sir, we can’t do that unless we charge you for a full drink.”
“Okay, that’s fine.”
“What?”
“That’s fine.  Charge me for a drink.”
“So you want a super-size drink? what kind?”
“Water.”
“But, sir, you have to pay for the drink.”
“I don’t want the drink.  I want the cup.”
“But we have to charge you ...”
“Yes.  Charge me.  Charge me whatever you like.  I’ll pay an extra service fee if I have to.  Just give me the damn cup.”

Because that cup could last for months.  They were sturdy.  They were essentially unbreakable.  They could survive the dishwasher if you felt a compelling need for that, but, since I never put anything other than water in them, I didn’t really feel the need to wash them that often.  Sure, they had my germs in them, but they were my germs.  You don’t like it?  Don’t drink out of my cup.

Like that would ever stop my children.

But nowadays I use the Starbucks cup, or something similar.  They’re far more expensive than the McDonald’s cup, and not as sturdy, weirdly—oh, they’re impossible to crush, sure, but they’re brittle, and one good tumble onto concrete generally does them in.  But they can survive most falls, and they rarely spill.  They’re double-walled, which cuts down on the sweating and keeps the water cold longer.  And the straw has a little ring at the bottom which keeps little people from yanking it out and running away with it.  And it’s 24 ounces, which is only a bit more than half the size of the Mickey D’s cup, but still large enough that I don’t have to refill it that often.  Assuming, of course, my kids aren’t around ...

And I’m not the only one with this problem.  You know how they say you need to gets lots of water while breastfeeding?  The Mother has recently taken to claiming that she’s going to keel over dead from dehydration, because her water cup is always empty.

It’s not like we don’t give them their own cups.  Ours are just more fun to drink out of, apparently.

Well, in the grand scheme of things, there are worse problems to have, definitely.  If the worst thing I could think of about my children were their beverage thieving habits, I’d be a pretty damned proud parent.  No doubt about that.  And, it can be sort of majestic, when you consider it ...  The camel child, taking on gallons of liquid at a time so that they can go for days without further drinking, which enables them to play videogames in marathon stretches that would kill a lesser mortal.  It’s like having your own nature channel.

But enough about my children.  I must take my leave now.  I’m out of water again.

Big Heart Son

My second son (whom I often refer to as the Smaller Animal, or occasionally the tadpole) was born with a heart conditon.  At the time, I didn’t have a blog (were blogs even invented back then?^*), but I did have a website, since this was during the time I ran my own company.  So I took advantage of that and wrote a series of web pages about the experience.  Of course, my company is long gone, as are all its servers, and thus its website, but you know what they say ... the Internet is forever.  In this case, the Wayback Machine provides the trip down nostalgia lane.  The pictures are all gone, but the links all work and all the text appears to be there.  You could go read that, if you’re interested in a lot of details about the birth and medical stuff.

But it occurred to me that I haven’t really discussed the condition on this blog.  That occurred to me as I was telling people at my new work that I was taking the boy for his first treadmill test.  Of course, this being a new(ish) job, some of them had no idea what I was talking about.  (Some of them did, since I’m not the only person from my old job to land at my new job.)  Thus I was inspired to track down that very link to the Wayback Machine I threw out above.  Which is nice and all, and may be interesting to some, but it’s also pretty darned verbose—even for me—and very outdated.  The situation today is a little different.

First, the executive precis for those who don’t want to have to read all the gory details:

Your heart has 4 valves in it; their job is to open and close as the heart pumps so that blood can move forward where it’s supposed to go, but not backwards.  To do that job, they have flaps called “cusps.”  If the cusps don’t open all the way, that’s called “stenosis.”  My son was born with aortic valve stenosis, which means that blood couldn’t flow normally into his aorta because the valves weren’t opening all the way.  As a result, his heart had to pump much harder than usual.  That’s not sustainable, however, so doctors performed an emergency procedure on him to force the cusps open.  So now he has no problem getting the blood to move forwards.  However, when they force the valve open like that, it inevitably causes some tearing, so now the valve can’t close properly.  So the blood leaks backward (which is called “regurgitation”), and the flow can’t achieve full efficiency.  This is still a problem, but happily a much less serious problem.  The doctors estimated that my son’s heart wouldn’t last much more than a week with the stenosis.  With the regurgitation, it could last years, perhaps even decades.

It could last that long ... but perhaps it won’t.  In practical terms, that means that we’ve taken our child to get an echocardiogram (which is a bit like an ultrasound, except on your heart instead of your unborn child) every six months for his entire life, and it likely won’t be stopping any time soon.  This leads to an interesting cognitive dissonance: on the one hand, it becomes routine, almost commonplace; on the other, your stress level goes through six-month cycles of peaking to insane levels because you dread that this time is the time when they’ll finally tell you he needs the surgery.

Because the chances are very very good that my kid will, at some point in his life, need to have that valve replaced.  Which is a pretty scary prospect.  But there are important reasons for waiting.

First of all, whether it’s replaced by an artificial valve, a valve from a pig, or a valve from a human donor,^** replacement valves always wear out and have to be replaced again.  And, on top of that, replacement valves aren’t going to grow along with the patient.  That means that if you have to replace a valve before the patient’s heart is fully grown, you’ll have to replace it even before it wears out because eventually it will be too small.  So, the sooner you do the replacement, the more often you’ll have to do it.

The second important reason is that, if we had replaced his valve when he was born, that would have meant surgery, and any time you use the words “open-heart surgery” and “newborn” in the same sentence, that’s pretty damned scary.  Even today, if they tell us it’s time to do the replacement, we’ll still be talking surgery—specifically, a Ross procedure, which means swapping the aortic valve with the pulmonary valve (because the pulmonary valve is in front of the aortic valve, it’s easier to replace; therefore, you replace the bad aortic valve with the patient’s own pulmonary valve, which will grow along with his heart, then the replacement, which you know won’t grow and will eventually wear out anyway, goes in the pulmonary position where it’s easier to get at for the next surgery).  However, today they can also replace a valve without surgery: it’s called transcatheter aortic valve replacement, and it means that, instead of having to cut the patient open, they can use a cathether (small tube) threaded through the arteries and into the valve, and replace the valve via the catheter.  Now, today, they will only use this procedure if the patient absolutely can’t handle the surgery for some reason.  But, in the 8 years my son has been alive, it’s progressed from “theoretically possible” to “a viable alternative that’s almost as good as surgery.”  If we can wait 8 more years, maybe it’ll be better than the surgery.

So we wait.  The doctors assure us that it will be a very gradual change; we won’t be in a situation where we go in to get a check-up and they end up rushing him to the hospital (which is what happened when he was 2 days old, so thank goodness we won’t have to go through that again).  In fact, they told us that, if they identify the problem during the school year, they’ll most likely schedule the surgery for the following summer.  You’d think this would make it better, and I suppose in some ways it does.  But it also means that you tend to memorize every number they throw at you (thickness of the heart wall, pressure gradient between systole and diastole, size of the area allowing the leakage, etc) then freak out whenever one of them gets bigger.  Even though, of course, you have no real concept of scale for any of these figures.  Also, there isn’t just one number to focus on: there’s lots of them, and they interact in non-intuitive ways, and just because one gets worse doesn’t mean you should panic.  But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, either.

So now that my son is 8 years old, his cardiologist recommended him for a stress test.  Just like an adult would, he runs on a treadmill, all wired up on a continuous EKG, and then they do an echocardiogram after he gets tired to see if heavy exercise is likely to cause any problems that they couldn’t detect while he was just laying quietly on the table.  We went for this test two days ago, and I think he did pretty well.  His heartbeat didn’t get too high, and, from what limited ability I’ve picked up to read an echo over the past 8 years, I didn’t see anything to be concerned about.  His breathing was never labored; at his age, they stop the treadmill after getting up to 3.4MPH with a 14% incline, but I think he could have gone on to the next stage.  We still have to wait for the cardiologist to review the results, but it seems like, for now, we’re back to waiting.

One thing that struck me as I reread what I wrote 8 years ago is this quote from near the end:

We choose to believe that kharma, or the cosmos, or maybe even some supreme being somewhere (your “deity of choice”, as I am wont to say) is trying to tell us something.  We’re not entirely sure what it is yet, but we’re tentatively operating under the assumption that it has something to do with appreciating each other more, and letting go of the little things.  After this experience, some of the things that might have upset or worried us before seem a bit petty now.

And, hey, if that’s the wrong lesson, or even if it turns out there’s no higher power running around the universe at all, it’s probably still a decent attitude to cultivate.

I’d like to tell you that we took this lesson to heart and never let petty things get to us any more.  But I’d be lying.  Perhaps it’s the routine of the continuous tests that never seem to get easier but happily never bring bad news.  Perhaps it’s our attempts to make sure we treat our middle child just like our other two children—it’s desperately difficult not to spoil a child with a life-threatening condition hanging over his head, and I’m not entirely sure we’ve succeeded.  Perhaps it’s just that anything—even the terror we went through after his birth—can be internalized, categorized, and put behind us.  We move on with our lives, and that means we fall back into our normal behaviors, for better and for worse.  Sometimes I think that, as stressful as that time was for us, we’d do well to keep it close.  Most of the family arguments we end up having really do seem silly in the light of this sobering truth that we live with (and mostly ignore) every day.

But it’s also true that I feel lucky that we can have those silly arguments.  Without him, I don’t know that we’d be having those arguments, or even any arguments.  We wouldn’t be who we are.  No more so than the other two, but certainly no less so either, our leaky-hearted son is part of what makes us us, both individually and collectively.  I’m glad we got to keep him.  Hopefully that will continue for many years to come.

* Wikipedia says they were.  Happily, I was blissfully unaware of them.

** Interestingly, pig valves are more commonly used than human ones.  This is partially because replacing human valves is more complex surgically, and partially because heart valves are in short supply.  I guess that latter is because it’s pretty rare that you’d find a heart where the valves are working well but the rest of the heart is damaged, and, if the rest is not damaged, they’d want it for a heart replacement and not just cut the valves out of it.