not falling down

You know, it took me probably twelve years of consideration, concern and occasional pondering to figure out why people said you weren’t supposed to tuck your shirt into your underpants.

While I was looking up IMDB stuff for Ms. D____ just now, I noticed that one of her newest roles is the lead in a film adaptation of Shopgirl. I picked that book up for a dollar at the same time as Microserfs and read it just afterward, so that caught my attention.

I can’t assume that anybody out there has actually read Shopgirl, because I don’t recall it doing spectacular business and I doubt it would have seen print if not for its author’s celebrity. Steve Martin plots well and his jokes are rare but good, but a) nobody actually prints standalone novellas and b) it’s pretty lame prose. He’s a comedy writer, not a novelist, so he apparently never learned things like “show, don’t tell.”

That said, the book will probably translate well to a movie, I applaud the casting of Jimmy Fallon as Jeremy, and it’s kind of cool that Martin’s writing the screenplay himself. But even without knowing the plot, doesn’t anybody else find it a little weird that he’s cast himself as a romantic lead opposite Claire Danes?

I spent a lot of time outdoors in the woods this past weekend, and only discovered Monday night the wealth of bug bites this had bestowed upon me. Naturally, they were all in (shall we say) a couple of delicate, sensitive and well-covered areas. Like right under my socks.

“Ah,” I thought, “bug bites. Fortunately I don’t scratch bug bites, because I have willpower!”

I believed that, too. What I didn’t count on was all the walking and bicycling and shoe-wearing I get to do in the summer, and the fact that I have to dress up for work now. By the time I got home last night, I was no longer mentally fit to stand trial. Black socks get hot, and they chafe.

At last, I tore off the beastly things and went at my ankles like a crazed badger. It was glorious, ecstatic, full-body pleasure; it was sex with a thousand Claires. I have no regrets.

I’m paying for it now, of course, but I have willpower again. I know I can resist. And most importantly, today I’m wearing white socks.

People are going to start complaining that Homestar Runner has sharkjumped soon, I know. Or “sold out” (even though the Brothers Chaps have been selling merchandise, and living off those sales, for quite some time). How do I know this? Because there was an article on the front page of Section E, or whatever, in the newspaper here last Sunday. Strong Bad’s gone mainstream, so it’s no longer cool to like him.

I’ve been saying for about three months now that Homestar would be in Rolling Stone within a year. Me personally, I think that’s a great thing; when I see entertainers I like making money,* it fills me with glee. I realize that in this, I stand in the minority of hipsters. A great many of my peers take a vicious pleasure in hating that which they once loved. Soon enough they’ll start with the “I really prefer the early stuff,” even though we’re well into late-era emails already and they’re fantastic. Dangeresque has actually ousted Trogdor from his place as my favorite email character, and I didn’t think I’d see that day, but here it is. Who knows what’s going to be next?

Not me. Not you. But it’s pretty clear they’re only getting better.

So yes, this is pre-emptive antibacklash. I know the bitching will commence or has commenced, and to its participants, I want to give a very special secret message:

SHUT UP. YOU’RE WRONG.

Thanks!

* I was going to say “hand over fist,” but honestly, does anybody even know what that means?

Maria emailed and told me to “have a great day downloading Japanese characters,” which makes it sound like I’m putting lots of little anime people on my work computer. I was going to clarify that, but then I was like no, let them wonder. So wonder!

I tried to download Japanese text support here at work just now, not so much because I read a lot of Japanese but because having the module would make it quit yelling at me whenever I try to read Megatokyo. I got this error message:

Unable to download at this time. The internet may be busy.

Come on now. That’s not even trying!

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I think everybody feels that it’s a good idea because some of the kids who are gays and lesbians have been constantly harassed and beaten in other schools,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. “It lets them get an education without having to worry.”

“I have a very low opinion of high school, and the sorts of clean, effortlessly beautiful human beings one encounters there. I know that it is a source of torment. And I know that your shit is all tortured, because I’ve read your poems and seen that rendered skull spinning there on your page with the fire on it. I feel it.”

The first quote is from the news story above. The second quote is from Penny Arcade’s Tycho, who, I think, has a much better sense than Mr. Bloomberg of what it was like to go to a public high school. Who the hell actually believes that you can live from ages fourteen to eighteen and go to any school “without having to worry?”

Above and beyond that, the formation of a public school specifically for people with a given demographic spike is a horrible, stupid thing. Yes, I realize that many public high schools (inner cities, rural areas, metropolitan magnets) have distinct socioeconomic and racial skews. I hardly think that’s something to emulate.

Through middle school and about half of high school, I was very small, socially inept and more committed to books than I was to other humans. Yes, it was fucking hard. If I’d had a special magic refuge school where I could have gone to be with my own kind, I would have leapt at the chance, and I doubt I’d be able to really function in any kind of social situation now. I’d never have learned to interact with people who were different from me. Another quote from the same article:

The Hetrick-Martin Institute’s Web site says … “We believe that success requires the ability to respect and value the diverse human community.”

Yes. Fine. Good. I agree. But think about it for a second: violence comes from fear. The only way to overcome fear of the other is by making a connection, finding common ground, and learning that it’s part of the same. How is further alienation supposed to overcome xenophobia?

I support gay rights. I support the right to not get harrassed and beaten up in school–of course I do–but I know the only way that people will ever gain that right is through learning in an integrated setting. There are lots of ways to teach respect and the value of diversity, and none of them are called “segregation.”

Please note that the wedding of Jon and Amanda will be powered by technology! And I don’t know, maybe I read it wrong, but I think the reception band will be Los Naked Mariachi.

Man, I wish somebody had told me.

Says Mister Crummy, regarding this last entry:

“The obvious thing that comes to my mind is ‘3001′ by Arthur C. Clarke, which is an awful book but which features, among other things, tame, semi-intelligent velociraptors who do menial tasks like gardening. This is just an incidental detail which is not important to the story, but it’s portrayed as a good deal for everyone including the no-longer-extinct dinosaurs…

Another one is David Brin’s Uplift series, in which one type of genetic engineering (making semi-intelligent species fully intelligent) is seen as a social good and a duty. Some of the characters in the books are genetically engineered chimps and dolphins.

If a piece of technology is central to a science fiction story then usually something has to go wrong or the technology has to be abused in some way, or there’s no story. I like Brin because he’s good at coming up with different drivers for conflict.”

He’s right, and that’s a common weakness of science fiction: Neat Idea Syndrome. My Creative Writing visiting professor, Nancy Zafris, told me when asked that yes, SF did have a pretty low standing within her literary circles.

“Why?” I asked. “There’s so much vibrant, progressive fiction out there.”

“I don’t know,” she said, distastefully. “It just always seems like there’s a problem, so they have to… do something with the computer, and that’s the end.”

Which you know is ridiculous, if you’ve ever read SF, but it does make a point: Neat Idea SF exists, and it’s perceived by the casual reader as a) all the same and b) boring. The casual reader is pretty much right, when the story doesn’t involve you with a character. When it gets down to it, a Neat Idea may catch your fancy, but eventually humans are only interested in reading about themselves.

So yeah, now I want to read David Brin, because what Leonard says makes him sound like exactly the right kind of character-focused writer. Unfortunately, my current bedside reading pile is staggering. I went to the library again tonight, with my newly repaired bike tires, and picked up yet more of my reserved books (Frank Miller, Diana Wynne Jones, Rob Thomas). I’m going to have to get a new box when I move on Friday just to keep my library stuff in. Is there a twelve-step program for this kind of thing?